The Pioneer Cabin Tree, a giant sequoia in Calaveras Big Trees State Park, is one of the more fascinating things you could find in a state park.
Sadly, past tense.
Here’s some very old photographs of it, the first from before she was fully hollowed out in the 1880’s…
Here’s another, different century…
And finally, a more recent shot…
Well, as I stated above, the tree is no more. Recent bad weather caused the tree to finally fall (article is by Hudson Hongo and found on gizmodo.com)…
…so why not have a little fun with the 5 Worst Plays of All Time?
I have to say, as (in)famous as that Garo Yepremian “throw” is, and I will fully grant you it may be the Miami Dolphin fan in me, but how does a botched -and I’ll grant you hilariously panicked/botched- throw following a blocked kick equate to some of the terrible plays presented beforehand?
The infamous “butt fumble” (#5) or the Indianapolis Colt’s bizarre formation (how did the coach, or anyone on the field and playing for Indianapolis for that matter, not see this would be a disaster?!) for my money are far worse plays.
Here is another batch of bad plays, this one from this past season…
Anyway, its Friday and the weekend is within sight. All’s good! 😉
Train to Busan, a South Korean production, immediately made my list of films I intended to catch after their theatrical run (in this film’s case, I don’t believe it played in my area).
The few reviews of it I read were glowing and intriguing, noting the film was a high-tension zombie film set, for the most part, on a train traveling from Seoul to, you guessed it, the city of Busan.
So I waited and, after a while, the film was made available for purchase, I found it via VUDU on sale one day and, rather than wait for Netflix to get it, gave in and outright bought the film. Yesterday I finally had a chance to see it and I’m pleased to say I don’t regret the purchase one bit.
Train to Busan’s two main characters are Seok Wu (Yoo Gong), a self-centered fund manager who barely has time for his very young daughter, Soo-an (Soo-an Kim). He’s revealed to be a ruthless financial “shark” who is willing to ease an investor’s concerns over the phone and then turn around and make a killing selling the same stock he just told the man to hold on to (I hope I remember this right! 😉
When the workday is done we see him in a garage talking on the phone to his wife, who lives in Busan, and whom he is in the process of divorcing. She tells him their daughter wants to come to Busan to see her and essentially begs him to do the right thing on her birthday (which is the next day) and allow her to come to Busan for a visit.
Seok Wu doesn’t care to do so and tells her. When he reaches his apartment and gives his daughter her birthday gift, a Nintendo Wii game system, his daughter’s reaction isn’t what he was expecting. He asks her why she isn’t impressed with this gift and the daughter points to the Wii system she already has and which he gave her as a gift for “Children’s Day”.
Feeling guilty over this and noting it is clear his daughter wants to see her mother, Seok Wu agrees to take his young daughter on the train to Busan. He figures to miss only half a day of work and be back at the office by the early afternoon. Together they drive to the station but along the way see fire trucks roaming the streets and a big fire taking up an entire floor of a high rise. They don’t stop to dwell on the tragedy and instead drive on, reaching the train and boarding it.
We are presented with a larger cast of characters on the train, some of whom will be a part of the story. Not one of them notices a distressed woman with mysterious bite marks on her leg board the train.
Very soon, pandemonium begins.
Train to Busan, as I noted above, very much lived up to my expectations. It is exciting, action filled, and tense as hell. It also knows when to slow down and give us character moments…along with building up the tension for the next action/horror scene.
For those adverse to gore, the film does not dwell on or show much of it, which I didn’t mind at all. Sometimes, particularly in zombie films, gore becomes the way to give audiences doses of horror but in a film with this giddy amount of high tension, it wasn’t necessary to have much of it.
Though I ultimately loved the film, there are a couple of minor negatives worth noting. For example, the film’s characters were just that, more “types” than “real” people. Given the fact that the central core of characters is fairly large and the movie has only so much time to present them and then put them in danger, I didn’t mind though some others have pointed this out as a negative.
A little more problematic is the fact that this is a fairly low budget film. Granted, outside of Hollywood “blockbusters”, most films made in foreign lands don’t have anywhere near the money the bigger Hollywood films require. Nonetheless, there were some scenes in Train to Busan which I suspect the film’s makers would and could have made far larger and impressive had they the budget to do so.
Regardless, these two negatives are at best very minor. Train to Busan is an exciting, action/tension filled zombie film that easily sits atop the list of the best of the genre.
If the article’s headline doesn’t make it obvious, Ms. Nicholson’s article defends some of what many perceive as the worst of 2016, be it films like The Brothers Grimsby, Gods of Egypt, or Warcraft.
She also states this about The Nice Guys:
Ryan Gosling’s 30-second pants-cigarette-gun-newspaper-bathroom door shuffle is better choreographed than anything in La La Land.
Here’s that scene:
It seems like only yesterday (well, it was actually two days ago) that I noted The Nice Guys was one of the most disappointing films, to me, released in the past year. While I didn’t hate it, the plot was nonsensical, the action was muted (our dubious heroes never felt like they were in any real danger), and while there were some truly hilarious moments in the film, it seemed all of them were encapsulated in the movie’s trailers. Including the scene above, which I agree with Ms. Nicholson was a thing of beauty.
While I may not entirely agree with Ms. Nicholson’s love for The Nice Guys (or, indeed, the other films she feels were unfairly trashed as…uh…trash in 2016), the reason I pointed out her article is because it reflects how people nowadays are becoming way too judgmental about other people’s opinions.
Once again: They are opinions. Works of art, by their nature, can turn on person A while simultaneously turning off person B. I may love movie X while the vast majority of people hate it…and its OK. My liking the film does not negate your not liking it, just as surely as my not liking a film doesn’t negate your liking or loving it.
Yet this simple statement isn’t reflected in online comments. Indeed, in her article Ms. Nicholson concludes her first paragraph, in which reveals she gave The Brothers Grimsby a “thumbs up”, by defensively stating:
Even so, when I filed my thumbs-up review, five weeks into a new job I adore, I sucked in my breath before clicking send. Sticking up for trash isn’t a fireable offense, but it does guarantee that for the next two years, any time I write a less-than-rave review of the latest DC gloommerung, some egg on Twitter will rebut, “Yeah, but your clearly a moron for liking Brothers Grimsby.” (Misspelling intended.)
I totally see her point here, even as she indulges in the same finger pointing (“DC glommerung”?).
Once again: So freaking what if she liked The Brothers Grimsby or Gods of Egypt or Warcraft or any of the many other films released last year that many panned and even more stayed away from?
Seriously: So what?
Even if the films are, at best, a “guilty pleasure”, if you’re getting enjoyment out of something, why does it become such a crime? Many people hated Batman v Superman (you knew I’d get there eventually, didn’t you?), some almost hysterically so. I’ve read many of the more even-keeled posts from people who state, point by point, the things they don’t like about the film and, in many cases, can’t fault their logic.
It didn’t stop me from nonetheless enjoying the hell out of the movie.
There were waves of biting comments regarding the new Ghostbusters. It was “sexist”, it wasn’t funny. It was stupid. It was insulting the studios would dare remake such a beloved cinematic treasure. Seriously? I mean, I can see people being bothered by a remake of, say, Casablanca or Citizen Kane but Ghostbusters?
There was even an early preview review of the film, posted on YouTube, in which the person who saw the film ravaged it for its sexism (he felt the ending in particular and the use of the power weapons pointed to this) and the fact that it was just not funny at all.
I saw the film, hoping for the best but expecting the worst and, you know what? It wasn’t bad at all. Was it the Best-Damn-Comedy-Ever-Made™? No. Not by a long shot. But it was an enjoyable time-killer with some very funny scenes and effects that weren’t anywhere near as “terrible” as some stated.
The point I’m making (over and over again) remains this: It’s fine to love or hate or anything in between a film. Or a song/album. Or a book. Indeed, anything artistic. It’s perfectly legitimate to have an opinion on it. Just as its perfectly acceptable for others to have the same or opposite one.
The problem lies when people seem to feel their opinion is fact.
I really like the Benedict Cumberpatch/Martin FreemanSherlock series. The show, which first premiered in 2010, just started its fourth season. This season, like the others, features only a few “episodes”, in this case four. The first episode in the fourth season, The Abominable Bride, premiered, if you can believe it, exactly one year before this episode, on January 1, 2016! Though there are few “episodes” per season, truth be told each one is more like a full feature film.
Anyway, what made Sherlock stand out, at least when it originally premiered in 2010, was the fact that it was set in modern times. This isn’t a new concept, however. When the original stories were written, of course, they were set in the then “modern” days. At least one of the well regarded Basil Rathbone Holmes’ film, 1942’s The Woman in Green, was set in the then present World War II era.
Apart from modern technology and its present setting, what makes Sherlock work so well is the great acting, for the most part great scripts, and the laugh out loud moments. This is not just a good series, but a great one, in my humble opinion. The only episode of the run thus far I can think of that disappointed me was, ironically enough, their version of The Hound of the Baskervilles (their version was retitled The Hounds of the Baskerville), arguably the most famous of all of Mr. Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories.
For about 1 hour and 20 or so minutes of season four’s second episode, entitled The Six Thatchers, I was completely engrossed and delighted by what I saw. This was damn good television, first dealing (I’ll try to be vague here to avoid spoilers, for now) with a leftover from a crime presented last season and its coverup before settling on the main mystery involving six busts which, you guessed it, are of Margaret Thatcher.
There were plenty of twists and turns and things don’t always make a heck of a lot of sense (only six such busts were ever made? And they can be traced to the six people who bought it years before and they still have them?!), but the fact is that Sherlock works even when the plot get overly busy…or just plain silly. Again, its the breezy nature of the show, the witty and at times hilarious banter, that keeps everything moving.
But those last eight or so minutes of the episode…
Ugh.
I’ll now, alas, get into SPOILERS so if you haven’t seen the episode and intend to, please stop reading right now. I’ll get into this after the trailer…
SPOILERS FOLLOW!!!!
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!
Still here? Ok, I think I’ve offered enough warning.
Between the central mystery, the episode also deals with Watson and his wife Mary (Amanda Abbington) having a child and Sherlock’s (of course) weird reactions/interactions with the child. As it turns out, the central mystery of the episode winds up involving Mary and, more specifically, her past.
In Sherlock’s reality, the character of Mary Morstan was a highly skilled, super-secret mercenary. In short, she was a very efficient wetworks officer and part of a group of four who carried on with some very sordid affairs. She gives this up to be with Watson and has a child but the mystery of the “Six Thatchers” winds up relating directly to her.
In her last mission, things went very bad and Mary thought her fellow mercs were killed. One was not. He was tortured for years and, while listening to his captors talk, thought Mary had betrayed the group and therefore he wanted to get her…and get revenge. I won’t go into more details here, but suffice to say that eventually it is discovered a seemingly mousy secretary was the real culprit and Sherlock and Mary confront her at an aquarium.
Here’s where things get really stupid.
Others show up, including Inspector Lestrade and Mycroft Holmes and several other police. The woman is surrounded yet she draws a gun. They talk to her, tell her to put it down, but she’s set off and fires at Sherlock…and Mary jumps in front of Sherlock and takes the bullet intended for him.
She dies.
Christ.
Look, I know the Mary Morstan character dies in the Doyle stories. Killing off a female, especially one bound to one of a series’ main characters, isn’t a terribly new concept as we then have the characters revert to their original state (check out how many women romance the Cartwright brothers in Bonanza only to either leave at episode’s end or die tragically and be completely forgotten by the next episode of the show). Boys will be boys and having a “woman” attached to one of the characters can be viewed as problematic to storytelling.
However, the manner in which they kill Mary is so damn stupid. I mean, is that the best they could come up with? Have this mousy elder woman completely surrounded by (one has to assume) well armed officers yet she manages to fire off a shot? In the time it takes her to get the gun out of her purse she could -and should!- have been taken out by either the brainy Sherlock Holmes or the deadly assassin for hire Mary, both of which stood only feet away from her.
Further, Mary “jumping” in front of the bullet also feels dumb. The way its presented in the episode, she fires and then Mary jumps in front of the bullet. Sorry, but it just don’t work that way. The bullet would hit Sherlock well before Mary could react, much less jump in front of him.
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
They say familiarity breeds contempt and, granted, we now have several episodes of Sherlock and, perhaps, as a viewer I’m a little more discerning and less forgiving for perceived failures. Perhaps.
Still, this is the first time an episode ending left me so disappointed. I’m not giving up on the show, of course. Even with the terrible (IMHO!) ending, the rest of the episode was delightful. Let’s just hope the remaining two episodes to come redeem this horrible ending.
Yesterday and while feeling myself in a mental fog (don’t ask…and, no, it has nothing to do with drugs or alcohol, neither of which I consume), I was flipping through the channels and hoping to get my feet on the ground (figuratively) when I caught the start of the 1995 film The Prophecy.
I’d heard about the film and knew there were several sequels made to it (according to Wikipedia, this film has produced four sequels). I also knew it had the delightfully off-kilter Christopher Walken in it as the bad-guy and so I stuck around and watched it.
Wow.
Look, the movie is, at best, a fairly low budget “B” movie with a pseudo-religious plot that doesn’t make a whole heck of a lot of sense.
Counterpoint: You have Christopher freaking Walken playing the angel Gabriel, who walks the Earth and talks in your typical Christopher Walkenese while hunting down a soul hidden from him…a soul which would lead to the end of a war in the heavens which, we’re told, is stalemated.
Christopher Walken’s Gabriel is indeed your badguy, and he’s an absolute hoot, turning from “nice” to “nasty” with remarkable ease. If there’s any real negative to say about this film (other than the fact that the plot is silly as hell), it is the fact that the movie should have had Mr. Walken in every scene.
Anyway, back to the plot.
So you have this evil soul hidden in the body of some military man who dies of old age and the angel Simon (Eric Stoltz in what amounts to a semi-long cameo) takes the soul from his body and hides it in the body of a little girl (Moriah Shining Dove Snyder) while Gabriel and his minions try to get their hands on it. As stated before, this soul is so evil having it on Gabriel’s side will give him an advantage in the eons long War of Heaven.
Simon enlists the aid of a former priest, now policeman named Thomas Dagget (Elias Koteas) to…I dunno, help or keep his eyes peeled or something. Gabriel eventually finds and kills Simon while Dagget, close behind, figures out the little girl is the target and, with the help of Katherine (Virginia Madsen), the little girl’s teacher, they hold off Gabriel and try to free the girl of the evil extra soul she carries. Got it?!
Look, we’re not talking Casablanca here.
But for some at times cheesy fun and a wonderful evil performance by Christopher Walken, plus a you-have-to-see-it-to-believe-it cameo by another pretty big named actor at the end of the film (I won’t give him away…suffice to say he was in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and, like Mr. Walken, his appearance in the film is a total hoot), you could do a lot worse than spend some time with The Prophecy.
Opinions of works of art, one must repeat to oneself, is a subjective matter.
That book or movie or artwork of song you like, even flat out love, might be crap -or worse!- to others. I’ve always been fascinated with reading negative opinions on works of art, even those I may like that others do not (Need I repeat, for the upteenth time, the fact that I happened to love the much maligned Batman v Superman?).
Sometimes reading negative reviews, provided the reasoning is strong/logical, provides a fascinating alternate look at things you might find very good. Again, the key here is to read an informed, logical explanation for why something doesn’t work for you.
Sadly, not all the movies presented in this list are given an explanation for why they’re on the list. For example, at #7 is Martin Scorsese’s The Silence. I haven’t seen the film and don’t know if I will, but I’m curious as to why it falls in this list. So too film #6, The Lobster. Some have offered great praise for this film while others feel it isn’t all that great. Why does he feel it fails badly enough to make it to his worst of the year list?
But the main reason I bring up Mr. Reed’s list is for movie #8, The Nice Guys. Here’s what Mr. Reed had to say about that film:
Afflicted by the same hammered, incomprehensible immaturity that makes modern American comedies unwatchable by any sane person’s standards, this action spoof of the brain-dead, odd-couple cop-buddy franchises popularized by Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, or Eddie Murphy and Judge Reinhold, is equally dumb and forgettable but not even half as amusing. This one, by the jarringly untalented writer-director Shane Black, is merely violent, vulgar and stupid.
I was very eager to see The Nice Guys when I first heard of it. Shane Black, the movie’s director/writer, was the man who wrote the screenplay to one of the older films referenced in this mini-review, the Mel Gibson/Danny Glover film Lethal Weapon. Naturally, I was damned curious to see the film, for Mr. Black’s presence (he also directed the very funny Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) but also to see how Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe would interact. When the trailers appeared, things looked encouraging…
When I finally got to see the film, it proved a disappointment. The best laughs, as I noted in my original review, were found in the movie’s trailer. The mystery wasn’t all that intriguing and by putting a 13 year old character in the center of the film (she is Ryan Gosling’s daughter), whatever danger the characters faced was dissipated as I just knew Mr. Black and the film’s backers wouldn’t dare actually endanger a 13 year old.
I ultimately gave the film two and 1/2 stars, noting it was just a little above average. And yet the film has made the “best of” lists of several critics, something I find baffling and perhaps why I can’t help but smile at Rex Reed’s biting remarks regarding this film.
While I wouldn’t put The Nice Guys on my “worst films of the year” list, it may well be #1 on my “Most Disappointing” films of the year. I don’t believe I’ve had as high hopes for any other movie this year as I have The Nice Guys and, if I’m being very honest, despite finding the film “OK”, it was far, far less than I had hoped.
Not bizarre enough? How about this more recent article by Matt Novick and presented in Paleofuture.com which points out something that occurred to me a few days before (had I only been a little quicker on the ol’ fingers)…
