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What a Seattle morning. Gray as Glenn Beck's heart outside, but the energy where I've been indoors is off the charts. I had to visit REI's flagship store to get a new exercise BPA-free hydration system (translation: plastic water jug on a belt). Every dood or doodette there was AMPED! at 9:15am. This came after dropping Maya into the friendly din of Friday activity that is her pre-school (ah, the excitement of the sabbath's cup runeth overeth). And before sticking my head into the Espresso Vivace across from REI where the crowd was lined up out the door although no one waiting for a fix seemed to mind. Our society has so many squeaky wheel moments. Waiting for coffee can surely be one of them. But when you see a group of people being this tolerant and kind to one another (while buying drugs, no less) it gives me hope that we CAN all get along. At least until that second jolt starts tipping the collective attitude a bit more toward Happy Hour and thoughts of the weekend and...well, I'll just try to enjoy the moment.
I'd be an incomplete version of myself if I didn't at least weigh in on Arizona's immigration bill. It would surely be easy to scoff at the stupidity of that bill's timing and intent. It is, after all, one of the stupidest bits of legislation I've ever seen come down the pike. I can't see how it isn't undercut or gutted entirely by the lawsuits already mounting. But for me, one aspect remains largely forgotten in the discussion. In a best case scenario, who wins? Did the bill's sponsors envision a reduction in Arizona's budget for services that are somehow available to illegal immigrants? Did someone expect an atmosphere of intolerance would scare immigrants away, sending them to the other border states and erecting a metaphorical border the length of not only Arizona's southern desert, but those American borders to the east, west and north? I don't have anything to base this on other than gut instinct and way too much time spent listening to the blather on all sides, but I do have a best case scenario theory. Arizona wanted to draw the population of Tea Partiers there, to buy the overbuilt suburbs of Phoenix (one of the worst real estate markets in the country). They wanted to draw the Tea Party to hold an anti-Burning Man and similar caravan events for Euro-America. The problem is that summer's basically here. Arizona sucks this time of year. Maybe some of their more short-sighted residents wanted to make that a year-round thing. That, after all, would make about as much sense as anything I've heard.
Hope your own questions are answered in the asking today. Rock on.
If I've learned anything by moving regularly from the highest of high to the lowest of low brow movies, it is this - Nicholas Cage is the worst living actor on the Planet. Maybe of all time. There was a time when "Raising Arizona" earned him a bit of slack to step away from that pronouncement. But after suffering through a recent Cage double bout of the mental runs, I can no longer afford to give him that much rope. First of all, "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" is a complete sewer of dumped cliches and flushed mental hygiene products. I give it a strangely-coveted big phat F rating. Weirdly, it got enough flaky good press that I thought I'd grind through it via Netflix. Big mistake. It's not that it's gritty. It's just bad. And Cage is by far the worst part of it. Given that he's on screen in every single scene save a few interspersed short expositions with even less likable characters, well...you've been warned.
Then I moved onto "Kick-Ass" in the theatre. It's a little "s" success of a movie. There's enough sweetness layered into the silliness to make it entertaining front to back. My rating - a very watchable C-plus. But as much as Nicholas Cage should be hilarious and perfect for the good Dad doing bad things training his assassin daughter, he is just doubly awful. Much of the time he's vamping Batman including the horrible Christian Bale accent from "The Dark Knight". But he slips out of the accent enough while in costume to sound more like Adam West from the 60s TV version, and he doesn't seem in control enough to figure out which persona he's making fun of. He just about ruins every scene he's a part of as a result. There was a time when I maybe liked him as an actor. I'm sorry to say that was a few decades ago and I've officially given up on him. So use that to buck up and do some good work, Nick-o. I doubt you will, but I don't want to be entirely a downer.
In contrast, one recent small movie that stuck with me for like 10 minutes because of the leading actor's performance (in a good way) was "The Ghost Writer". It's not Roman Polanski's best. Or even very close to it - he's got bigger issues than work right now given his extradition and associated legal fight. Still, in "The Ghost Writer" the political-thriller story is overdone and the humorlessness of most of the action made it feel so cold and dated. But Ewan McGregor is fantastic. He adds something to every line and his infectious charm is the perfect counter point to an otherwise downbeat film. He almost single-handedly earns a recommendation for the film. Instead, I'll give it a C-Plus and say wait for the rental. And whatever Ewan's in next, right in line next to me.
Hope your own reviews move you instead way above the mean today. Rock on.
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