The Harry Potter Movie

I know that others have already weighed in on the new (6th) Harry Potter movie, but I thought I would throw in my $.02 and see if it generates any discussion.  

I saw the movie with my daughters (14 and 10) and a friend of my older daughter (also 14).  The kids loved it.  I didn’t like it very much.  This was actually the second time my older daughter had seen it.  She went with a big group to the Midnight premier last week — several kids her age and two adults.  The kids all loved it.  The two adults didn’t like it very much.  I wonder if this is a pattern that others have noticed.

So, what didn’t I like about it?  For one thing, like the fifth movie, I felt that the movie had no discernible plot.  I’d read the book (I’ve read all the books, and enjoyed them very much, particularly the later ones), so I knew what was happening.  But if I hadn’t known the book, I think I would have been utterly lost.  I felt like I was watching the Sportscenter highlight reel from the book.  All the big events were covered, but there was no narrative thread tying them all together.  As I say, I felt this same way about the fifth movie, but the fifth movie ends with that magical battle in the Ministry of Magic, and it was so stunningly spectacular on the screen, that I was able to forgive a lot that came before.  I didn’t feel that this 6th movie had an effective ending to offset earlier flaws.  There is that one very cool battle scene earlier in the movie. (I won’t say more so as not to give it away to those who haven’t seen the movie yet, except to say that this battle isn’t in the book, so you will be surprised.)  But I would have preferred that they skip that battle and have the final fight at Hogwarts.  It was an effective climax for the book, and would have been for the movie as well.

There were other liberties taken with the book as it was translated to the screen, and while I’m usually fine with that (the changes Peter Jackson made to LOTR never bothered me), I felt that these changes detracted from the story.  Most of the changes I refer to revolved around the development of Harry and Ginny’s relationship.  I won’t say more.

The acting was no worse than it was in earlier films.  Alan Rickman is always good and Emma Watson remains the best actor of the three leads.  Daniel Radcliffe might have been less wooden this time around; Rupert Grint didn’t have much to work with in this movie, and didn’t do very much with what he had.

If I had to rate the movie on a 1 to 5 star system, I’d give it 2 and a half.  It had enough to entertain, but was, in my opinion, pretty mediocre.

Other opinions?

EIGHT MEN OUT and the Game I Used to Love

We watched John Sayles’ movie Eight Men Out last night.  Netflix, of course.  It’s an old movie.  It came out in 1988, right around the same time as Field of Dreams, when  hollywood seemed to be in the midst of a mini-obsession with the Shoeless Joe Jackson story.  Hollywood does this — remember when Tombstone and Wyatt Earp came out within months of each other, after we’d gone years without seeing a movie about Earp?  But I digress….

For those of you who don’t know, Eight Men Out tells the story of the Black Sox scandal of 1919.  Seven players on the American League champion Chicago White Sox — including pitchers Eddie Cicotte and Lefty Williams, position players Happy Felsch, Chick Gandil, Swede Risberg, Fred McMullen, and Jackson, who was one of the game’s greatest stars —  conspired with a group of gamblers to throw the series to the Cincinnati Reds.  The Sox were the overwhelming favorites going into the series, and the conspirators believed that they could make a killing by betting on the Reds and letting them win.  Some of the players were more enthusiastic participants than others.  Jackson always claimed that he went along for the money but did nothing to help the Reds win any games.  Sayles film portrays him as naive, uneducated, and very much a victim of his manipulative, smarter teammates.  An eighth player, Buck Weaver, knew of the conspiracy but took no money and played to win throughout the series.  Sayles portrays him as a victim of his teammates’ malfeasance as well.  All eight players were charged and put on trial, and all of them were eventually acquitted.

By this time, however, baseball’s owners had hired the sport’s first commissioner, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who vowed to clean up major league baseball.  Landis chose to make an example of the eight Black Sox players and banned all of them from the game for the rest of their lives.  The ban was the only thing that kept Jackson from being elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.

It was a good movie — not great, but good.  And I’ve been thinking about it all morning.  I’m a huge baseball fan.  Or at least I used to be.  The recent revelations about widespread steroid use among some of the games biggest stars have shaken my faith in the game.  Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Rafael Palmeiro, Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez — all have admitted using steroids or have been implicated so convincingly that their continued denials have become meaningless.  Other players are known to have used performance enhancing drugs, and several of them have been suspended temporarily.

And yet, over the past 50 years, only one player in Major League Baseball has faced a lifetime ban from the game like the one given to the eight Black Sox conspirators.  That one is Pete Rose, who didn’t use steroids, but did, it seems, bet on baseball games in clear violation of the league’s rules on gambling.  Rose’s ban was handed down by then-commissioner Bart Giamatti, but it was almost as if the ghost of Mountain Landis was hovering over the game.  Baseball has a thing about gambling that can be traced directly back to 1919, and Rose’s ban reflected that.  Now don’t get me wrong:  I’m not defending Pete Rose.  I’m not even suggesting that Rose’s ban should be lifted (although I think that a case could be made for this).  The truth is, never liked Pete Rose.  I always thought that if baseball hadn’t existed he would have spent his life as a small-time thug.

But just as the men who ran baseball in 1919 turned a blind eye toward the corruptive influence of gambling on the game until Landis forced them to face the problem and deal with it, today’s owners and the media outlets that account for much of their revenue, have ignored the steroid problem.  In 1998, when McGwire and Sosa staged their epic joint assault on Roger Maris’s single season home run record, baseball was still reeling from the 1994 strike that nearly destroyed the sport.  Never mind that McGwire’s arms looked like something out of a Popeye cartoon.  Never mind that Sosa had transformed himself from a skinny little kid who could run fast into the most consistently prolific home run hitter the sport had ever seen.  It was all good!  The balls were flying out of the park and the sport was popular again.

I was always a small kid, and I’m a small grown-up.  One of the things I loved about baseball was that there was a place in the game for guys like me.  Unlike football or basketball, which demanded that its stars be huge, baseball could be played and won by smaller players.  Sure, everyone loved Babe Ruth.  But if a guy could bunt and steal a base and slap a key hit to the opposite field, he could win ball games for his team.  The game that I see on TV today isn’t like that, at least not the way it used to be.  Everyone is expected to hit home runs.  And everyone does.  Which means that everyone is suspect.  Look at a major league roster these days and you’ll see guys with Popeye forearms playing every position.  Are all of them juicing?  I want to say no, of course not.  But in all honesty, I don’t know.  When the penalty for using steroids is a fifty game suspension that still leaves intact two-thirds of a multi-million dollar annual contract, it’s hard to see why players wouldn’t juice.  The downside risk is minimal; the upside earning potential is staggering.

But a lifetime ban would balance that equation.  Alex Rodriguez is a great player.  So was Barry Bonds.  Their accomplishments on the field, however, have been forever compromised by the fact that they cheated.  Playing baseball at the major league level is not a right, it’s a privilege.  If placing a bet on a baseball game is cause to strip a player of that privilege, isn’t using steroids?  If Joe Jackson and his fellow conspirators are considered cheaters because they influenced the outcome of games by not trying hard enough, shouldn’t Manny Ramirez be considered a cheater for influencing the outcome of games by making himself into a juiced-up physical freak?  Isn’t it possible that baseball needs to be saved again, even if it means barring from the game some of its greatest stars?

I used to love baseball, but the game lost me when it decided to tolerate lies for the sake of television revenue.  If baseball can lose me, it can lose any and every fan.  I loved it that much.  The only way to get me back is for its leaders to say, “Enough!  If you cheat, you leave, never to return.”  The fact that this hasn’t happened yet tells me that the steroid problem is so big, baseball’s owners and commissioner can’t afford to take such a stand.  There’d be no one left.

Stuff — Updated

It’s been a pretty hectic couple of days.  Thursday was my birthday, today is my younger daughter’s birthday, and in between we had her party (a pool party — great success) and a trip to Chattanooga for a movie (“Bedtime Stories”) and a sushi dinner.  Fun stuff. 

We also had to negate the contract we had on the house we’d hoped to buy.  Not so fun.  Long story, which I won’t discuss in detail, except to say that this had nothing to do with selling our house or getting a loan and everything to do with something on the seller’s end of the deal.  We’re disappointed, but relieved that we got out of the deal when we did rather than getting ourselves deeper into what would have been a far worse situation.  But we still have earnest money at stake and hope to get it back without things turning too ugly.  More as it develops.

Today we’re scrambling to finish a school science fair project and preparing for one last nice dinner to celebrate the pair ‘o birthdays.

Another BOW Award for McCain — Surprise!

Most of the major organizations that give out awards — the Academy of Motion  Picture Arts and Sciences, which gives the Oscars; the Baseball Writers Association of America, which gives the Most Valuable Player, Cy Young, and Rookie of the Year Awards to name a few — don’t like to recognize the same person twice in a row.  Generally it takes a performance in the second year that is so overwhelming that it simply can’t be ignored.  For instance, Tom Hanks won the Oscar in 1993 for his terrific performance in Philadelphia.  But the following year his work in Forrest Gump was so outstanding that the Academy had to give him the award again.  Same with Mickey Mantle’s back-to-back MVP awards in 1956 and 1957 — he was the best player in the league both years.  How could the baseball writers deny him the award?

 

Well, gentle readers, I find myself in the same position with this week’s BOW (Buffoon Of the Week) Award.  Last week’s deserving winner was Republican Presidential candidate John McCain, whose statements and actions in the wake of the Russian military’s incursion into Georgia were shameful and reckless.  How could I have known that McCain would outdo himself this week?  How could I have guessed that in a week relatively short on buffoonery, McCain would come up with such a remarkable gaffe?  Actually, I suppose if I’d been watching the previous six months of his campaign more closely, I would have been prepared for this. . . .

The Passing of a Storyteller

One of my favorite directors has passed away.  Sydney Pollack, who directed The Way We Were, Out of Africa, Tootsie, The Firm, Absence of Malice, The Electric Horseman, Three Days of the Condor, and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, among his many credits, died yesterday of cancer.  Different directors excel at different things, of course.  I think that no one does spectacle like Spielberg (for instance, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Saving Private Ryan); Peter Weir excels at bringing striking imagery to his films (Think Witness, The Year of Living Dangerously, Galipoli).  Sydney Pollack was simply a terrific storyteller.  His filmmaking was never flashy, but never once in watching one of his films did I find myself questioning any of his artistic choices.  His films were seemless.

Pollack also produced many well-known films, and he got his start as an actor.  And in fact, whenever I think of Pollack, the first thing that comes to mind is a scene that Dustin Hoffman prevailed upon him to act in Tootsie.  Those of you who have seen the movie might remember the scene in which Hoffman’s character barges into the office of his agent, played by Pollack, and demands to know why he hasn’t been getting any acting jobs.  The resulting argument over how difficult Michael is to work with, remains one of the funniest five minutes you’ll ever see in any movie.

In any case, I’ll miss Sydney Pollack the actor and Sydney Pollack the producer.  And I believe that Hollywood will be poorer for the loss of Sydney Pollack the storyteller.

Movies as Homework

As I’ve mentioned in this space many times before, we live pretty much in the middle of nowhere.  It’s not that there’s nothing around, but ours is a small college town in the midst of rural Tennessee.  It’s at least a 25 mile round trip to a decent grocery store.  If we want organic foods, the round trip is closer to 100 miles.  A big bookstore?  Also 100 miles, particularly if we want an independent.  Same with music stores, and Thai food, and any edible sushi that doesn’t involve a Pepperidge Farm Goldfish.  There’s a small movie theater here in town, but it’s at least a forty-five minute drive to the nearest first-fun movie theater that offers enough movie choices for a family of four.

Not surprisingly, we do a lot of shopping on the net.  And, also not surprising, we figured that NetFlix was made for people like us.  Any DVD we want is just a click away.  Free postage, a flat fee for as many movies as we can watch.  What could be better, right?   

I should pause here to say that I have no complaints about how NetFlix works, or about their customer service.  Anytime I’ve called, the people I’ve talked to have been polite and helpful.  The movies arrive just when they’re supposed to.  We send back a movie, and before we know it, there’s another one in our mailbox.  Another movie.  Just sitting there, waiting to be watched.  It’s probably a good one.  I mean, we put it in our queue, right?  It ought to be good.  It’s probably one we’ve been talking about seeing.  We know that we really ought to watch it.

Have you ever been caught in traffic while riding in a taxi?  Your eyes keeping flicking to the meter, and every few seconds the fare increases, even though you haven’t moved at all.  You know the feeling, right?  Well, that’s how my wife and I are starting to feel about NetFlix.  Between work and stuff for the kids and just the general demands of keeping the household running, we barely have time to sit and talk to each other, much less watch a movie.  But the movies are just sitting there.  You can almost hear them ticking like that freakin’ taxi meter — that flat rate doesn’t seem like such a good idea anymore.  If we watch a movie every weekend and maybe even a second on a Wednesday night, it’s a great deal.  But after a couple of weeks, that movie gathering dust next to the telephone is getting pretty darn expensive.

I was up until 11:30 last night watching “The Good Shepherd.”  It was a decent movie.  At one point I know that I really wanted to see it.  But that was before it had been sitting in my house for three weeks.  That was before I realized it was two hours and forty-eight minutes long.  I used to like movies.  Now they feel like homework.  Another one arrives and immediately I start trying to figure out when I’m going to get done with it, when I’m going to turn it in.

I sent “The Good Shepherd” back this morning.  I don’t know what the next title in my queue is, but I know it should be here by Friday or so.  I just hope it’s short.

Today’s music:  Branford Marsalis (Renaissance)

“Stardust” — The Movie

We saw “Stardust” last night (for those of us living in the boondocks, NetFlix really is a wonderful thing….), and I have to say that I thought it was a terrific movie.  For those of you who would tell me that the movie isn’t nearly as good as the book, I have no doubt that’s true.  I love Neil Gaiman’s work, and I have every intention of reading it.

But this, it seemed to me (and I do say this without having read the novel yet), was one time when Hollywood got it right.  The movie is funny, suspenseful, well acted, visually stunning, and a tremendous amount of fun.  Watching Robert De Niro as the closeted Captain Shakespeare was a particular treat.  We were an audience of six — three adults, a 20 year-old male college student, and two younger girls, ages 12 and 10.  All of us loved it.  That’s saying something.

If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it.

Today’s music:  Jerry Douglas (Under the Wire)