MOVIE: Smoke Jumper (2008)

[Note:  The blog's been quiet this week because I'm out of town for a meeting.  But I'm taking a few minutes to post this movie review because the reviews are starting to really pile up!  New Boyfriend write-up should be up mid-week next week, by the way.  Yay!]

I love cheesy disaster movies — flicks about twisters, tsunamis, earthquakes, and, of course, BIG FIRES.  And you know what?  So does my mom.  Man, I totally scored on the Mom Front, right?  Anyway, a couple of weekends ago, I was down hanging with my ‘Rents and this was one of the movies Mom and I picked up. (Incidentally, this movie is in the IMDb under the title Trial by Fire, even though it was clearly released on DVD under this other title.  That happens sometimes.  Not sure why.)

Surprisingly enough, it’s actually pretty good (by which I mean, “good” for a made-for-TV disaster movie — let’s keep this in perspective. . .).  It’s about a young woman firefighter who is blamed by her squad when she’s the last person to see her firefighter-father alive in a burning building.  Of course, it wasn’t actually her fault he got killed, but the rest of the squad is made up of stupid misogynists, and they’ve been looking for a reason to push her out pretty much since her first day.  This excuse works great, and the next thing she knows, she’s grieving for the loss of her dad AND the loss of her career.

When she learns that the local smoke jumpers group is hiring (those are the firefighters who parachute in to fight forest fires), she decides to try out.  And from here forward, you can pretty much substitute the storyline from G.I. Jane to get the gist of the story (except plus fires and minus Viggo Mortensen in short-shorts, more’s the pity).   Woman defies odds, trains hard, kicks the physical requirement’s hiney, gets the job, meets resistance, saves someone’s ass to prove she’s worthy, is finally accepted.

So, yeah, the story isn’t all that original, really, but overall, the movie is pretty entertaining and well-acted.  Plus:  cute firefighters in uniform.  Bonus!

Anyway, if you like the cheap thrills a disaster movie provides, you might consider checking this one out.  I’ve seen worse forest fire movies, that’s for sure.  In fact, I remember one in which one character broke their leg in one scene and was shown walking normally — not even a limp! — in the next.   Oh yeah, and in that same movie, the bad guy caught on fire and then was later shown wearing the same clothes, completely unscathed.  Nice trick, bad guy!  This one at least scores points for continuity, even though that also makes it a bit short on unintentional laughs (which, obviously, is something I thoroughly enjoy).  But yeah, if you like these kinds of things, you’ll probably like this one too.  Check it out.

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Genre:  Adventure, Disaster
Cast:  Brooke Burns, Rick Ravanello, Robert Moloney

Damn.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/theater/19richardson.html?hp

Natasha Richardson, dead at age 45.

MOVIE: Touch the Top of the World (2006)

Based on the memoir of the same name, this entertaining made-for-TV movie is about the first blind man (Erik Weihenmayer) to summit on Mount Everest.  The story begins with his childhood, when a rare eye disease began to gradually take his sight from him.  By the time he was a teenager, Erik was completely blind.  A meeting with a blind wrestler inspired him to continue to pursue his love of sports, and it wasn’t long before he began to try (and then excel at!) climbing as well.

After several successful summits of other mountains, Erik was encouraged by friends to give Mt. Everest a try.  With the help of some incredibly awesome buddies, and the financial support of blind people all over the world, Erik sets out for the toughest climb of his life, overcoming insurmountable odds and finally making it to the top of the world.

This movie is obviously a made-for-TV flick — the scenery is pretty fake in a number of places, and there are notable pauses in the story where you can tell there was a commercial break planned.  But the acting is wonderful (especially from Facinelli and Bruce Campbell, who plays Erik’s very supportive father) and the story is inspiring and well-organized.

I love movies (and books!) about climbers.  It’s a sport I find utterly insane, but at the same time, I’m absolutely mesmerized by tales  about it.  It takes a special something to want to climb Mt. Everest, I think.  (Whether it’s a good something or a bad something is debatable.)  But whatever it is, I don’t have it.  And sometimes when I see movies like this I think maybe I wish I did. (You know, until the ubiquitous scene in which the climbers start puking their guts out (or worse!) from altitude sickness.  Then I go back to considering them  insane.)

In any case, Erik’s story is pretty damn cool, and after having seen this film, I’m definitely planning to read Weihenmayer’s memoir soon.  Recommended!

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Genre:  Adventure, Non-Fiction
Cast:  Peter Facinelli, Bruce Campbell, Kate Greenhouse

MOVIE: Quarantine (2008)

Wow, this is a first.  Mark this date, people!  We finally have an American remake of a foreign horror movie that DOES NOT SUCK!

In fact, in many ways, I would argue that Quarantine is actually BETTER than the original Spanish version of the same story, [REC].  [REC] does a few things better than its successor (I liked its ending better, personally — it was scarier, for one thing, and had more of a focus on the documents, photos, and clippings on the wall in the attic, which are pretty important).  But for the most part, I found the bulk of Quarantine to be just as scary, if not scarier, than [REC] (oh man, the sound of that body hitting the floor early on –  I even knew that was coming and it still made me jump out of my seat!) and it also made a noble attempt at trying to make the overall story a bit more understandable, which I appreciated as well.

Of course, it’s AMERICAN, which also means it over-explicates things, assuming the audience will consist primarily of a bunch of morons.  (Though who can blame them, really, considering the fact Pulp Fiction lost out to Forrest Freakin’ Gump in the 1994 Academy Awards?)  (Yes, I’m still mad — shut up.)   But it managed to avoid the number one sin of American horror movies, which is to swap out the truly scary stuff and replace it with extra gore and a preponderance of lame “Boo!” moments that make you jump out of your seat only because the musical punctuation was so jolting and not because they were actually at all scary.  Man, I hate that crap.

(By the way, I’m not going to bother describing the plot of Quarantine here, as it’s virtually identical to the plot of [REC] and you can read all about it in my review of that movie instead.)

Additionally, Quarantine fixes the big glaring error in [REC] that involved the reporter and her cameraman rewinding a bit of their film and watching it again, while we WATCHED them watch it again — nice trick since the only reason we can see them in the first place is because that same  tape  they just rewound is still somehow rolling, right?  Um, continuity girl?  No soup for you, one year!   That annoyed me in the original, but they worked around it in the remake fairly legitimately.

And Jennifer Carpenter — ho-ly HELL, my people.  She kicks ass in this.  I’m in LOVE with her now, no kidding.  When she does “absolutely hysterical with terror,” I BELIEVE it.  Quite frankly, she was making ME absolutely hysterical with terror and I was watching this from the safety of my seat on the train from Washington to Oregon last week.  No rabies-infected, neck-chomping old ladies to be seen!  But I’ll tell you this much:  had one suddenly burst through the door into my rail car, I’m not sure I would’ve been that surprised.  That’s how completely sucked into this film I got.

Of course, this  was only my first viewing of Quarantine, and I have no idea if I will love it this much when I watch it a second time (which I will likely do next week, by the way — I’ll report back).  Sometimes I’m blown away the first time around, and the second time through, all I see are flaws.  Additionally, I’m coming at this from a much different perspective than the majority of viewers, in that I’ve actually seen the original (which has still not been released in the U.S.).  Nevertheless, last week on that train, this movie scared the beheysoos outta me.  And that, my friends, is VERY hard to do.  Even if it sucks the second time around (doubtful, but not unheard of), I’ll still vividly remember my first experience with this film for a long time to come, and that’s not worth nuthin’, if you ask me.

[Netflix me | Buy me]

Genre:  Horror
Cast:  Jennifer Carpenter, Johnathon Schaeck, Jay Hernandez, Steve Harris

BOOK: Prayers for Rain by Dennis Lehane

This is the first of the Kenzie/Gennaro series that I’ve read, but I’m familiar with both characters from the film version of the book that comes right before this one in Lehane’s series, Gone Baby Gone. While I enjoyed that movie, I have to confess that nothing about it inspired me to pick up any of the books featuring the same two lead characters. Now that I’ve finally done so, I’m sorry it took me this long AND that I ever saw the movie to begin with. Because, alas, I think that since my first experience with Patrick Kenzie was via Casey Affleck, that character is always going to look like Casey Affleck to me. And that’s not really a plus, in my book (because Casey Affleck looks 12 years old, and Patrick Kenzie doesn’t read that way to me).

That said, this is a really great mystery and now that I’ve gotten a taste of the series in print, I’m definitely looking forward to reading more (note: I’ve read other novels by Lehane, just not ones from this set). In this installment, private detective Patrick Kenzie has split from his old partner-slash-girlfriend Angela Gennaro, after their disagreements about the way their last case was handled drove a wedge between them. Patrick is feeling pretty burned out by his life AND his career as this story opens, but can’t resist agreeing to help his latest client, a young woman named Karen Nichols, who reports that she’s being stalked by a guy at her gym.

It doesn’t take long for Kenzie (and his tough-guy buddy Bubba) to scare the patooties out of the stalker and resolve the case for Karen. So you can imagine his surprise when, six months later, he’s listening to the news and hears that Karen has just leapt to her death — naked — from the roof of a building in downtown Boston.

Determined to find out what happened in those six months to push Karen (literally) over the edge, Patrick manages to talk Angela into working with him again, and the gang begins an investigation that leads them right to the victim’s twisted, estranged brother.

Or so they think.

This is a brilliantly written and intricately plotted novel, with many of the same types of moral complexities found in the story behind Gone Baby Gone. Definitely a hit with me, and I look forward to the rest of the novels in this series.  (p.s. And yes, that song by The Cure gets stuck in my head every time I see the title of this novel.)

[MYSTERY]

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MOVIE: Rogue (2007)

Last month, I was pleasantly surprised by the awesomeness of a movie named Black Water, about a killer crocodile in Australia.  A few days after I reviewed it, a reader emailed me to tell me I just had to see HER favorite Aussie croc flick, Rogue, which also happened to star one of my ex-Boyfriends of the Week.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that, in addition to featuring Michael Vartan as promised (hubba hubba), it was also written, produced, and directed by the same guy who made the Australian horror movie Wolf Creek, which was one of my favorite films of 2006.  Dude, sign me up!

I finally settled down to watch Rogue over the weekend, and while I will say it wasn’t as good as Black Water, it’s still pretty darned entertaining and well worth a rental for anybody who likes a decent man-eating monster movie.

Rogue opens with a fish-out-of-water character, magazine writer Pete McKell (Vartan), on assignment in Australia and bored off his behind.  To pass the time and potentially give himself something to write about, he decides to go on a boat tour of the local river, which runs through the Kakadu National Park in the northern part of Australia.  The tour guide, Kate Ryan (Radha Mitchell, who I love), starts the tour off with some fascinating information about the local crocodile population — information those of us who know from horror movies instantly recognize as fateful foreshadowing.

For example, we are told that the northern area of Australian has the most salt water crocodiles of anywhere in the world (which answers a previous question of mine: why are there so many crocodile movies set in Australia?).  We’re told they can grow to be quite enormous in size — 25 feet in length and over 2 tons in weight.  That they like to watch their prey for a while — stalk them, really — and learn their habits so they can sneak attack them when the time is right.  They can also jump right out of the water — quite high, as a matter of fact — and in the water, they can swim as fast as 20 mph.  ‘Zounds!

When the group sees their first crocodile in action (jumping right out of the water, no less), we overhear comments from the tourists along the lines of, “Imagine if it bit you!” and “Wow, looks like it could jump right into the boat!”  Kate replies soothingly, “You’ll be safe as long as you don’t go into the water.”  Words methinks she shall be eating quite soon.

The tour is almost over when suddenly, one of the tourists sees a flare go off in the distance.  Kate decides they’d better go check it out, so instead of heading for home, she makes the mistake of turning down a side river into an area she tells Pete they aren’t actually supposed to go into because it’s “protected.”  And if by now you still don’t know this boat is headed for major disaster, you just haven’t been paying attention, yo.

As it is quickly revealed to us, the flare was shot off by two idiots in a speedboat who had, earlier in the tour, been harassing Kate.  Unfortunately for all involved, there’s a REALLY BIG crocodile in that area with a bit of a territorial chip on his shoulder.  The croc ends up bumping both boats, sending all the humans on board into the drink.

The survivors of the first croc attack quickly swim to shore, but it’s clear from the terrain that the island they’ve landed on is one that disappears under water as soon as the tide comes in, and therefore, they’re going to have to get across the river to the land on the other side if they want to get out of there before the croc eats them all.

While they ponder what to do, the croc returns periodically to pick up another snack or two, and “Imagine if it bit you!” guy finally gets to live the dream.

Eventually, of course, they figure out a way across, and some of them make it and some of them don’t.  But the movie doesn’t end there, oh no.  Instead it goes on to a final act — one I think would’ve been better omitted, personally — that involves Kate being snatched by the croc and Pete, our intrepid hero, going after it to try to save her.  That, of course, results in a lengthy man vs. reptile fight scene, for better or for worse, and an extremely disappointing lack of trauma-induced making-out on the part of the two main characters.  All that and still no kissing?  What WAS the point, I ask you?

Though this is definitely NOT as good as Black Water, which featured much more authentic suspense and a lot less predictability and silliness, I still really enjoyed this flick.  Vartan and Mitchell are both good, and it was also nice seeing John Jarratt as someone NOT totally freaky-psycho (he played the creepy Crocodile Dundee killer in Wolf Creek, but is a big sweetie in this one).  If you enjoyed Black Water, or you like creature features in general, this one is definitely worth a rental.

Actually, pick up Black Water while you’re at it, invite me over, and we’ll make it a crocodilian double feature!  I’ll bring the popcorn.

And also, my cat.  Just in case we need to use her as bait.

[Netflix me | Buy me]

Genre:  Horror
Cast:  Michael Vartan, Radha Mitchell, John Jarratt, Sam Worthington, Caroline Brazier

Castle debuts tonight on ABC!

I’ve been seeing mixed reviews of Castle, Nathan Fillion’s newest TV series, which premieres tonight on ABC (10pm).  Some say it’s cheese-o-rama.  Some say it’s lame but fun.  Some say episode two is WAY better than the pilot so hang in there.  Some say get out before it sucks all the air out of your head and your brain implodes (I paraphrase).

Not a single one has said what I want to say, though, which is that I don’t give a rat’s hiney if this show is any GOOD.  I just want to see Nathan Fillion and his thoroughly lickable nose back on my TV set once a week.  Cheesy?  Lame?  Murder She Wrote with a dude?  Man, whatever!  Give him some snarky dialogue and throw in a scene now and again where he’s changing his shirt, and you’ll have a fan in me for LIFE.

I’ll let you know what I think after I see the pilot (which may not happen tonight, I should warn you).  Feel free to post your own comments after you see the show below!

[ABC's official site]

New Rainy Day Gardening blog post

What are you supposed to do to your garden in March, up here in the still-frozen Pacific Northwest?  Read my latest RDG post and find out!

http://rainydaygardening.blogspot.com/

Dollhouse and Why Matt Keeslar Can Never Play a Bad Guy Ever Again

So, this weekend, I finally sat down and watched the first three episodes of Joss Whedon’s new FOX series, Dollhouse.  Prepare yourselves for a very lengthy review, most of which will be of the ranty and irrationally-upset variety.

Because I’m disappointed, to say the very least.  And kind of cranky, to say the very most.  And also surprised to realize I’m still planning on watching it for at least a few more weeks, despite my disappointment and crankiness.  I am an enigma, wrapped in a riddle, wrapped in a piece of bacon that’s been crisped to perfection.

Mmmm, bacon.

It’s a miracle I have anything to say about this show to begin with, to be honest.  After the first train-wreck of an episode, I not only almost didn’t continue on, but  was sorely tempted to have all memory of it erased from my brain while I was at it (ha!).  By the end of the third episode, however, I was kinda-sorta glad I’d hung in there (kinda-sorta), and, I confess it, I’m kinda-sorta thinking I’ll hang in there for at least a few more weeks to see where it’s going.

That said, I have a LOT of problems with this show (not the least of which was its casting of ex-Boyfriend Matt Keeslar as a super-duper psycho crazy guy, but more on that in a minute).

And my primary complaint about this series can be summed up thusly:  its entire premise is totally lame.

That’s never a good way to start a show.

For those who haven’t tuned in, the show is about a secret organization that has somehow gotten its hands on a bunch of gorgeous young people (including ex-Buffy actress Eliza Dushku) and turned them into blank slates, devoid of any personality traits whatsoever.  When someone comes to this organization needing a certain type of person, the organization picks one of the “dolls” from the “Dollhouse” and uses a fancy-pants computer thingy straight out of Total Recall to “imprint” a new persona on the doll.  That doll wakes up and actually IS the new person for a finite amount of time, depending on the client’s requirements.

I’m not going to complain (much) that we’re given no idea how this works, where the absolutely vastly ginormous database of personas has come from (since the personalities used to imprint the dolls are all apparently from real people, which, whaaa. . .??),  etc.  We’re only a few episodes in, after all.

Instead, allow me to complain about these things. These VERY BAD THINGS:

1.  Rip-off city!  This series literally doesn’t have an original bone in its body (much like that cliche).  What the heck, Joss?  I already know you’re a genius, so why is every single element of your new series a total and obvious rip-off of something else?  To wit: Total Recall, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Alias, all the Buffy episodes featuring Adam, every episode of Law & Order: SVU that has to do with human trafficking, La Femme Nikita, My Own Worst Enemy, Paycheck, etc. etc. etc., all of which I have enjoyed more than I enjoyed the first three episodes of Dollhouse, I might add.

And yes, you did read that right.  I just said I thought even PAYCHECK was better, and it co-starred Aaron Eckhart in Calvin-on-picture-day hair.

2.  As if it weren’t bad enough that the premise itself is unoriginal, each episode’s storyline so far has also been pretty uninspired.  Take that episode with Matt Keeslar, where he “orders” the perfect outdoorsy girl to sleep her way up a mountain with him (because one of the Dollhouse‘s specialties is high-class prostitution, naturally), and then proceeds to turn her loose in the woods and attempt to hunt her down with a crossbow like she was an elk.  Good lord, how many times have we seen that done? Do not make me count the ways.

And the kidnapping episode?  Where Echo (Dushku) got imprinted to be a master kidnapping negotiator lady?  At one point, she says to the father whose daughter has been snatched that she’s been negotiating with kidnappers, “all her life.”  You gotta be kidding me that he didn’t bust out in mad laughter at that comment, given the fact she looks all of 17 years old.  Besides, he knows she’s a “doll,” so why did he appear to find that statement of any comfort to begin with?  Plus, haven’t I see this movie?  Starring Russell Crowe and Meg Ryan?

So far, to me anyway, the actual “storylines” of each episode seem like afterthoughts, quickly ripped off from somewhere else and tossed into place to fill out the hour, all so Joss can spend 5-10 minutes of each episode fleshing out his primary premise and Eliza Dushku can pretend she’s Jennifer Garner on Alias and play dress-up a lot.  Yawnsville, Illinois.

3.  You know what else doesn’t work for me?  That all the clients of the Dollhouse know how it works.   They know the person they encounter after they’ve placed their order is a blank slate with a computer-generated personality, and they know they can make that person be or do anything they want.  It costs them a bazillion dollars to do so, but they’re all rich beyond measure in the first place, so who cares?

Why is this  a problem?  Well, first of all, there’s no way all those clients could keep the Dollhouse a secret — you’re telling me that all those pervs and dorks purchasing “dolls” for sex aren’t going to be bragging about the hot chick they just scored with to all their pals?  None of whom are going to gossip about that with THEIR pals?  None of whom know or come into contact with any reporters?  My ass.

And how about this:  If you were a father whose daughter had been kidnapped, would you hire a REAL kidnapping negotiator expert or would you hire a FAKE kidnapping negotiator expert?  Yeah.  Me too.

What would’ve made this far more intriguing, in my opinion, would’ve been keeping the nature of the Dollhouse a total secret from everyone, ESPECIALLY the clients.  Make the Dollhouse the place you go to find the perfect “agent” for any job, and let the clients think those people are real people; that the Dollhouse is an enormous collective of mad skillz.  Because you can’t keep something like this a SECRET in today’s world.  To me, that is an utterly ludicrous element of this show’s entire premise and, frankly, I am irked by it.

4.  Also, Matt Keeslar?  As an evil psycho guy?  Sands of Zanzibar, Dubbie!  That just doesn’t work for me after The Middleman, I’m sorry.  (Incidentally, The Middleman got canceled — ABC Family bastages!)

5.  Essentially, the dolls serve primarily as super-duper expensive prostitutes who aren’t even allowed to maintain their own brains.  I’m disturbed.

6.  Also disturbing:  This is a Joss Whedon project?  Where the hell is the snappy banter?  Snappy banter might have a chance in heck of saving this show from its ludicrous-ness.  Worked for Buffy and Firefly, right?  Did we not happily suspend all disbelief for those shows, despite the fact they were about vampires and space cowboys?  Yes, yes we did.  And we were rewarded for it with genius, not hack.  I want genius here.  And so far, I ain’t gettin’ it.

7.  Eliza Dushku gets on my nerves.  The end.

And now a list of the GOOD THINGS (just to balance this out):

1.  Tahmoh Penikett is darned good-looking, gosh darn it, even though I keep waiting for him to call Galactica Actual and deliver his sitrep.

2.  Sure, nothing about it is original (NOTHING AT ALL, PEOPLE!) — nevertheless, it’s all stuff I love, and even though I could get the same effect from a double-feature of Total Recall and seasons 1-4 of Alias, I’d have to get off the couch for that (swapping out the DVDs, etc.).  With Dollhouse, it comes to me.  Weekly.  With Tahmoh Penikett.  Laziness wins again!

Um, yeah, and that’s pretty much it for the good things, I’m sorry to say.

Will this series survive?  It’s highly, highly doubtful.  And I can’t decide if I’m sad or happy about that.  Obviously, I’m sad because I love Joss and want him to be successful in everything he does.  But I confess I’m also kind of happy, because this show is just plain weak and if it got the boot, maybe he’d try something else that would end up being better.

Amore — eet ees so complicated sometimes.

By the way, a couple of quick other TV things:  Reaper came back this week, did you notice?  I confess I burned out on it before the end of last season, but am ready to give it another try now that I’ve had a break.  And I do confess to a massive crush on Sock — who could blame me?

Also, raise your hand if you almost threw up when Katee Sackhoff turned up on Nip/Tuck.  Ugh.  Me too.   Katee!  Start running your offers by ME first — your manager is going to kill your career!!

Discuss.

BOOK: Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell.

I’ve long loved Sarah Vowell and yet, oddly, this is the first book of hers I’ve ever picked up. She’s on The Daily Show often, though, and is so funny and clever in person I can hardly stand it. And, of course, she was the voice of Violet in the animated film, The Incredibles. Needless to say, this terrific book did not disappoint. It’s hilarious, fascinating, and just utterly bizarre in concept.

Said concept? Vowell, who is a history buff, decides to go on a pilgrimage of three presidential assassinations (Lincoln’s, McKinley’s, and Garfield’s), taking us to the sites of their deaths, the monuments of their lives, and everywhere in between, as she regales us with factual stories about the figures involved in the assassinations, as well as the cultural and political circumstances that led to the murders to begin with.

What I loved about this book was not only that it was extremely educational (I knew a lot about Lincoln’s history, of course, but not much at all about McKinley’s and Garfield’s), but that it was quirky, witty, snarky, and just plain fun to read. Vowell is brilliant — sharp-witted and sharp-tongued — and the stories of these three men and the motivations of the various men who wanted them dead are just as riveting as any work of crime fiction. Highly, HIGHLY recommended, and I’m looking forward to reading more by Vowell as soon as possible!

[NON-FICTION]

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