Signs.

Theme is signs. First thing I thought of was M. Night Shyamalans' movie, Signs; well filmed with a quaint farm and it's occupants surrounded but not protected by a corn field. Great looking farm. I would rate the movie supernatural lite. Loved the visuals.

Back when Mel was only an actor,

And Phoenix not yet a rapper,

a Culkin, not Macaulay,

played an asthmatic son.

It was Bo the daughter,

who turns out at the end,

had left clues all over,

and who would have guessed,

They looked quite invincible

but that wasn't the case,

turns out the alien's weakness

was something home based:

WATER...

(I love the baseball reference. Ha, you had to watch it to understand.)

Taken tonight, edge of backyard. Cornfield.

From Butterflies 07-11-10.

From 2010-07-30corn-etc

Frozen River.

This looks like an interesting film. I've heard nothing but good about it.

It won the Grand Jury Prize - Dramatic at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

Rotten Tomatoes has it rated at 85%.

From Rotten Tomatoes:

Synopsis: Courtney Hunt's feature directorial debut FROZEN RIVER is a powerfully unflinching tale of two women, who, driven by economic hardship, form an unlikely partnership smuggling illegal immigrants across the Canadian border.

Melissa Leo turns in a gritty performance as Ray, a struggling dollar-store cashier and mother living in a trailer home in upstate New York who is desperate to make ends meet.

During a frenzied search for her deadbeat spouse, she apprehends Lila (Misty Upham), a Mohawk Indian from an area reservation, attempting to steal her car.

In the process of taking back her vehicle, she learns of Lila's smuggling operation through an unpatrolled corridor within Mohawk territory--the frozen St. Lawrence River that forms part of the border between the U.S. and Canada.

Out of necessity, they form an uneasy alliance:



Another point of interest to me is I'm part Seneca Indian.

They are part of the Iroquois Nation that also includes the Mohawk tribe.

We had many relatives up in that area.

I can't wait to see it.

It probably won't make it out to the sticks so either I'll hunt it down or wait for the DVD.

First Snow (2006)

Jimmy Starks is a stringy long haired salesman (Guy Pearce - Memento) whom at first comes off as somewhat unlikeable, fast talking, and self-centered.

On the road near Albuquerque, his car breaks down. Stranded in the middle of nowhere while his car is being repaired, he visits the trailer of fortune teller (J. K. Simmons - I remember him as the dad in Juno).

The fortune-teller makes a couple predictions (which later in the movie come true, giving him some credence as a psychic). Continuing to tell Jimmy's fortune, he then sees something bad that almost causes himself to have a seizure.

The future for Jimmy doesn't look good. - hence the title of the movie. (Let just say his demise is connected to an occurance of weather as in the title.)

Guy does a good job playing a character with that prediction over his head along with other stressful issues in his life. I liked him more and more as the movie progressed. William Fichtner (Prison Break) has a small part as a co-worker.

Nicely cast as his girl friend is the pleasing but not distractingly pretty, Piper Perabo. I knew I had seen her before but she wasn't familiar enough for me to make a connection. (By the way, she starred in Coyote Ugly.) I liked her in that movie too.

Trailer:

Entertainment Weeky's review here: (Owen Glieberman). EW does a good job with movies. I like to read their upcoming movie reviews and make mental notes of what to keep an eye out for.

I caught this on cable.

The ending wasn't entirely satisfying or unpredicted but overall I liked the characters and plot. I'm glad I watched it.

Apocalyptic bebop.

Inspiration for the title found in the lyrics of Home of the Brave by The Nails.

HOME OF THE BRAVE

Oh God of Hell

I said I love the suit

That the devil gave me

To wear to Beirut

Where the whores are dancing

On the table tops

And the juke box plays

Apocalyptic bebop

Well I love Paris

I love the dizzy streets

Where the flowers of sin

Bloom in the heat

If I were a ghost I’d be pleased

Living among these French mysteries

But the place to go’s

Another latitude

Where Jesus is wearing

His blue suede shoes

And the pink neon lights

Up the thoroughfares

Between what is

And what’s not there

You know the place

It’s not too far away

Let’s take a trip

To the Home of the Brave

Forget about London

Forget about Spain

Get out of New York

Take the Train to the Plane

Hong Kong smells like dying fish

And Berlin still stinks of Auschwitz

I wanna go where the wild things play

I wanna go to the Home of the Brave

Somebody meet me at the airport

At about half past ten

Tell Jose, Nikita and all the boys

Down in the bunker

Marc Campbell is coming home again

Anyway, I had this song stuck in my head. Then thinking of it, it seemed somewhat connected and appropriate for a movie I had just seen and one I just heard about.

ROAD (the movie) and a link at Rotten Tomatoes

First, the one I just saw on cable. It is kind of like a Twilight Zone episode. Strange things happen as the couple drive from environmental disaster site to another.

In ROAD, Margaret (Catherine Kellner), a freelance photographer on her first big job, uses the latest government-supplied technology to survey environmental disaster areas.

Jay(Ebon Moss-Bachrach), her unemployed ex-boyfriend is along for the ride.

The trip does not go exactly as planned ....(I liked some the underplayed but definitely not normal world things that happen in the course of their roadtrip.)

NEXT. This is the one I heard about while searching for info on the one I saw.

The Road (previewed here at USToday - coming out this fall ??)

The Road is a 2006 novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. It is a post-apocalyptic tale describing a journey taken by a father and his young son over a period of several months across a landscape blasted years before by an unnamed cataclysm that destroyed civilization

The film, which stars Viggo Mortensen, Charlize Theron and 11-year-old Kodi Smit-McPhee, also was shot in Katrina-ravaged New Orleans and on Mount St. Helens in Washington state for scenes of devastation.

And what started all this? A song by Siouxsie Sue and the Banshees. Quite haunting in my opinion. It used to get lots of airplay around here.

"Cities in Dust" was written and recorded by English rock band Siouxsie & the Banshees.

The song obliquely describes the city of Pompeii, destroyed in a volcanic eruption in 79 AD.

Water was running; children were running
You were running out of time
Under the mountain, a golden fountain
Were you praying at the lares shrine?
But oh your city lies in dust, my friend

We found you hiding we found you lying
Choking on the dirt and sand
Your former glories and all the stories
Dragged and washed with eager hands

But oh your city lies in dust, my friend

Hot and burning in your nostrils
Pouring down your gaping mouth
Your molten bodies blanket of cinders
Caught in the throes .......

And your city lies in dust

Into the Wild, paper and digital.

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer is a true story of “a young man from a well-to-do family who hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter."

I read this book last spring. Usually I read fiction. And if I am going to read a non-fiction book, I wouldn't normally pick one that ends in tragedy. A friend lent it to me - she thought I would like it. I had read Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air about climbing Mt. Everest and liked his narrative style.

I put aside whatever John Sandford or Harry Potter (I'm predictable) I was reading at the time to read it. It's not a really long book but it gives a really good picture of Christopher's character. He uses the name Alexander Supertramp during his travels which I thought interesting - dropping out of society to live in the wilderness but maintaing a link to rock and roll.

What impressed me the most about the story was how much people he met liked him and wanted to help him.

The book includes stories from people who knew or met Christopher during his journey. Sean Penn made it into a movie that was just released with Emile Hirsch playing Christopher. I never heard of him and think that should actually help the movie - I think he should be unknown to us as we learn about him.

Here is an excerpt from the book Into the Wild:

THE ALASKA INTERIOR
April 27th, 1992

Greetings from Fairbanks! This is the last you shall hear from me, Wayne. Arrived here 2 days ago. It was very difficult to catch rides in the Yukon Territory. But I finally got here.

Please return all mail I receive to the sender. It might be a very long time before I return South. If this adventure proves fatal and you don't ever hear from me again I want you to know you're a great man. I now walk into the wild. --Alex.

(Postcard received by Wayne Westerberg in Carthage, South Dakota.)

Jim Gallien had driven four miles out of Fairbanks when he spotted the hitchhiker standing in the snow beside the road, thumb raised high, shivering in the gray Alaska dawn. He didn't appear to be very old: eighteen, maybe nineteen at most. A rifle protruded from the young man's backpack, but he looked friendly enough; a hitchhiker with a Remington semiautomatic isn't the sort of thing that gives motorists pause in the forty-ninth state. Gallien steered his truck onto the shoulder and told the kid to climb in.

The hitchhiker swung his pack into the bed of the Ford and introduced himself as Alex. "Alex?" Gallien responded, fishing for a last name.

"Just Alex," the young man replied, pointedly rejecting the bait. Five feet seven or eight with a wiry build, he claimed to be twenty-four years old and said he was from South Dakota. He explained that he wanted a ride as far as the edge of Denali National Park, where he intended to walk deep into the bush and "live off the land for a few months."

Gallien, a union electrician, was on his way to Anchorage, 240 miles beyond Denali on the George Parks Highway; he told Alex he'd drop him off wherever he wanted. Alex's backpack looked as though it weighed only twenty-five or thirty pounds, which struck Gallien--an accomplished hunter and woodsman--as an improbably light load for a stay of several months in the backcountry, especially so early in the spring. "He wasn't carrying anywhere near as much food and gear as you'd expect a guy to be carrying for that kind of trip," Gallien recalls.

The sun came up. As they rolled down from the forested ridges above the Tanana River, Alex gazed across the expanse of windswept muskeg stretching to the south. Gallien wondered whether he'd picked up one of those crackpots from the lower forty-eight who come north to live out ill-considered Jack London fantasies. Alaska has long been a magnet for dreamers and misfits, people who think the unsullied enormity of the Last Frontier will patch all the holes in their lives. The bush is an unforgiving place, however, that cares nothing for hope or longing.

"People from Outside," reports Gallien in a slow, sonorous drawl, "they'll pick up a copy of Alaska magazine, thumb through it, get to thinkin' 'Hey, I'm goin' to get on up there, live off the land, go claim me a piece of the good life.' But when they get here and actually head out into the bush--well, it isn't like the magazines make it out to be. The rivers are big and fast. The mosquitoes eat you alive. Most places, there aren't a lot of animals to hunt. Livin' in the bush isn't no picnic."

It was a two-hour drive from Fairbanks to the edge of Denali Park. The more they talked, the less Alex struck Gallien as a nutcase. He was congenial and seemed well educated. He peppered Gallien with thoughtful questions about the kind of small game that live in the country, the kinds of berries he could eat--"that kind of thing."

Still, Gallien was concerned. Alex admitted that the only food in his pack was a ten-pound bag of rice. His gear seemed exceedingly minimal for the harsh conditions of the interior, which in April still lay buried under the winter snowpack. Alex's cheap leather hiking boots were neither waterproof nor well insulated. His rifle was only .22 caliber, a bore too small to rely on if he expected to kill large animals like moose and caribou, which he would have to eat if he hoped to remain very long in the country. He had no ax, no bug dope, no snowshoes, no compass. The only navigational aid in his possession was a tattered state road map he'd scrounged at a gas station.

A hundred miles out of Fairbanks the highway begins to climb into the foothills of the Alaska Range. As the truck lurched over a bridge across the Nenana River, Alex looked down at the swift current and remarked that he was afraid of the water. "A year ago down in Mexico," he told Gallien, "I was out on the ocean in a canoe, and I almost drowned when a storm came up."

A little later Alex pulled out his crude map and pointed to a dashed red line that intersected the road near the coal-mining town of Healy. It represented a route called the Stampede Trail. Seldom traveled, it isn't even marked on most road maps of Alaska. On Alex's map, nevertheless, the broken line meandered west from the Parks Highway for forty miles or so before petering out in the middle of trackless wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. This, Alex announced to Gallien, was where he intended to go.

Gallien thought the hitchhiker's scheme was foolhardy and tried repeatedly to dissuade him: "I said the hunting wasn't easy where he was going, that he could go for days without killing any game. When that didn't work, I tried to scare him with bear stories. I told him that a twenty-two probably wouldn't do anything to a grizzly except make him mad. Alex didn't seem too worried. 'I'll climb a tree' is all he said. So I explained that trees don't grow real big in that part of the state, that a bear could knock down one of them skinny little black spruce without even trying. But he wouldn't give an inch. He had an answer for everything I threw at him."

Gallien offered to drive Alex all the way to Anchorage, buy him some decent gear, and then drive him back to wherever he wanted to go.

"No, thanks anyway,"Alex replied, "I'll be fine with what I've got."

Gallien asked whether he had a hunting license.

"Hell, no," Alex scoffed. "How I feed myself is none of the government's business. Fuck their stupid rules."

When Gallien asked whether his parents or a friend knew what he was up to--whether there was anyone who would sound the alarm if he got into trouble and was overdue Alex answered calmly that no, nobody knew of his plans, that in fact he hadn't spoken to his family in nearly two years. "I'm absolutely positive," he assured Gallien, "I won't run into anything I can't deal with on my own."

"There was just no talking the guy out of it," Gallien remembers. "He was determined. Real gung ho. The word that comes to mind is excited. He couldn't wait to head out there and get started."

Three hours out of Fairbanks, Gallien turned off the highway and steered his beat-up 4 x 4 down a snow-packed side road. For the first few miles the Stampede Trail was well graded and led past cabins scattered among weedy stands of spruce and aspen. Beyond the last of the log shacks, however, the road rapidly deteriorated. Washed out and overgrown with alders, it turned into a rough, unmaintained track.

In summer the road here would have been sketchy but passable; now it was made unnavigable by a foot and a half of mushy spring snow. Ten miles from the highway, worried that he'd get stuck if he drove farther, Gallien stopped his rig on the crest of a low rise. The icy summits of the highest mountain range in North America gleamed on the southwestern horizon.

Alex insisted on giving Gallien his watch, his comb, and what he said was all his money: eighty-five cents in loose change. "I don't want your money," Gallien protested, "and I already have a watch."

"If you don't take it, I'm going to throw it away," Alex cheerfully retorted. "I don't want to know what time it is. I don't want to know what day it is or where I am. None of that matters."

Before Alex left the pickup, Gallien reached behind the seat, pulled out an old pair of rubber work boots, and persuaded the boy to take them. "They were too big for him," Gallien recalls. "But I said, 'Wear two pair of socks, and your feet ought to stay halfway warm and dry.'"

"How much do I owe you?"

"Don't worry about it," Gallien answered. Then he gave the kid a slip of paper with his phone number on it, which Alex carefully tucked into a nylon wallet.

"If you make it out alive, give me a call, and I'll tell you how to get the boots back to me."

Gallien's wife had packed him two grilled-cheese-and-tuna sandwiches and a bag of corn chips for lunch; he persuaded the young hitchhiker to accept the food as well. Alex pulled a camera from his backpack and asked Gallien to snap a picture of him shouldering his rifle at the trailhead. Then, smiling broadly, he disappeared down the snow-covered track. The date was Tuesday, April 28, 1992.

Gallien turned the truck around, made his way back to the Parks Highway, and continued toward Anchorage. A few miles down the road he came to the small community of Healy, where the Alaska State Troopers maintain a post. Gallien briefly considered stopping and telling the authorities about Alex, then thought better of it. "I figured he'd be OK," he explains. "I thought he'd probably get hungry pretty quick and just walk out to the highway. That's what any normal person would do."

And the movie trailer, Into the Wild:

The Jacket.

“Academy Award Winner” Adrien Brody in his last couple of movies, has played loners existing in worlds of their own (in movies named appropriately for those worlds): The Pianist, The Village, and The Jacket.

Adrien Brody, with his everyday good looks, does a great job playing Gulf War vet Jack Starks. Co-star Keira Knightly, beautiful as ever, has a smaller but important part playing Jackie; a mysterious character and sometime love interest that interweaves herself into Jack’s life.

Jack is truly one unlucky guy.

A Marine sergeant in the Persian Gulf War in 1991, Starks smiles kindly at a native kid, who responds by shooting him in the head. This is the start. Things go white as Jack tells us, "I was 27 years old the first time I died."

Miraculously, he survives. That may have been good luck, but bad luck follows:

After a long recovery, Starks is seen a year later hitchhiking in his native Vermont, where he encounters a young woman, Jean (Kelly Lynch), with a small daughter, Jackie (Laura Marano), by the roadside. Jean has just about passed out and her beat up pickup has stalled.

Jack Starks quickly gets the truck going. Jean is so drunk that while nodding in and out of consciousness, she thinks he had tried to molest her daughter Jackie.

Jack continues on his way; this time hitching a ride with a young guy (Brad Renfro - very short appearance) who is promptly stopped by a highway patrolman. The driver immediately opens fire on the officer and flees the scene.

Starks, who was wounded in the crossfire and blacked out, is blamed for the cop's murder and promptly sentenced to an institution for the criminally insane.

Since he suffers from amnesia, Jack gets locked up in a mental asylum, under the care of doctors Kris Kristofferson (Cisko Pike 1972 - a classic) and Jennifer Jason Leigh. (I love her work.)

Dr. Kristofferson (creepy, intimidating) has a somewhat unorthodox “treatment” involving putting Jack in a strait-jacket, shooting him full of drugs and locking him in a morgue drawer for several hours on end.

Trapped in the drawer, Jack somehow manages to travel 15 years into the future to investigate his own untimely death.

He wakes up in what he will later discover is 2007, standing outside a diner in a snowswept landscape. He meets a cute goth gal (Keira Knightley) who seems strangely drawn to him.

And while at her house, he discovers ... his own dog tags. I like these things in movies. You must remember details and how they come into significance later. Here, his dog tags.

How can that be though? Time tripping? Clearly, she's the little girl, Jackie. But he can't be Starks, she insists, because Starks died, and not long after he was committed.

His death, then, is imminent, unless he can figure out how it happened and whether there's any way to prevent it....

Another version of the trailer:

Adrien Brody...Jack Starks
Keira Knightley...Jackie
Kris Kristofferson...Dr. Becker
Jennifer Jason Leigh...Dr. Lorenson
Brad Renfro...Stranger in station wagon
Kelly Lynch...Jean
Laura Marano...Young Jackie

"The Jacket" was written by Massy Tadjedin from a story by Tom Bleecker and Marc Rocco, and directed by John Maybury. Brian Eno, a favorite of mine does the score. (A small bit of trivia: he did the “Windows 95” startup sound, along with producing some work with T-Heads and U2, also working with Bowie – plus tons of other stuff.)

Help from:

http://www.viewlondon.co.uk/review_2421.html

http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/reviews/cl-et-jacket4mar04,1,2699773.story

http://movies.eastbayexpress.com/

Another movie I like. I think both Brody and Knightley were well cast and the movie itself (though dark at times) was entertaining. I liked the ending too. I thinking I should maybe do a lighter movie next time; A story of a boy and his dog sounds good. Old Yeller? Never mind.

Film noir, movie, Brick.

I like movies. I'll watch the popular ones and enjoy them with everyone else but I also try to see some that are not as well known but I feel are worth watching. This movie is called Brick.

Film Noir is one of my favorite film genre's; which primarily describes a look, a feel, in stylish Hollywood crime dramas. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as stretching from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key black-and-white visual style (shadows, steaming vents on darkened streets, reflections on a rainy pavement, snappy affected dialogue – I think Gilmore Girls set in the 1940’s.)

Further defined from the excellent reference wiki:“We'd be oversimplifying things in calling film noir oneiric (pertaining to dream), strange, erotic, ambivalent, and cruel...." by the French critics Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton in their 1955 book Panorama du film noir américain 1941–1953 (A Panorama of American Film Noir). Gotta love that scene in the link (black and white). It is the essence of what I'm talking about.

However it’s defined, I know it when I see it.

Brick.

This is a story of a loner who infiltrates high school cliques to investigate his ex-girlfriend's disappearance. When she goes missing, Brendan vows to uncover the truth; battling through the seedy dealings of his high-school crime ring to solve the mystery.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Brendan Frye, a junior-league Humphrey Bogart and his ex-girlfriend is Emily (Lost's Emilie de Ravin.- Claire Littleton).

He enlists the aid of his only true peer, the Brain, (and his only friend) Matt O'Leary; a Rubik's Cube obsessed, bespectacled, whiz kid.

Brendan's search sends him into a world of characters like rich-girl sophisticate Laura, intimidating Tugger, substance-abusing Dode, seductive Kara, jock Brad, and - most ominously - non-student, the Pin.

Only by gaining acceptance into the Pin's closely guarded inner circle of crime and punishment that Brendan will be able to uncover clues about Emily and the suspects that he is getting closer to. One of the best of the cast is Lukas Haas, playing Pin. He's sinister and effete, and still lives at home with his mother. Yes, his mother. I find that ironic.

Brick pays homage to film noir with similar story structures, notable characters, and a witty, quirky, well paced dialogue of a 30s/40s hard boiled detective thriller.

Directed by Rian Johnson, there are many great moments, camera angles, lighting, characters; never a lack of suspense while keeping the sense of film noir alive.

A sample of film noir dialog coming from Brendan (well quoted in other reviews so I’ll use too) in his locker-lined hall of the school to a bunch of adversaries: "Throw one at me if you want, hash head," he growls to one of a bunch of dopes threatening to punch him out. "I've got all five senses and I slept last night - that puts me six up on the lot of you."

From the soundtrack: Sister Ray, Velvet Underground.

A moment...

I always liked the movie Momento. Black and white (movie clips) pictures going one direction timewise while the movie itself is going the other way (you had to see the movie to understand - sorry). I only have one black and white picture included here, the pictures are reversed - last to first. This one, the last (first) one has a "Hebron" road sign in it. You can't believe how happy I was to see it.

I woke up to weather news on the radio that many local roads were closed because of blowing snow. Living in the sticks means a 10 - 15 mile trip to work via a country(ish) highway. Open fields border the highway, so if you are out in the open you can't see. Snow just takes over.

I started out this morning and got about a half a mile out into the country. One car ahead was already in a ditch with another stopped to help (in my lane). I slowed to a stop and was considering my options. Then, looking to my right, I saw a big, new, white sedan slowly drift into the snowbank next to me. The driver couldn't stop and rather than rear ending me, she took the snow bank - all in movie type slow motion. And that not being enough, I looked in the mirror and saw another car sliding towards me. I moved ahead about 10 feet and avoided my second accident of the morning.

With all traffic stalled, I turned around (not easily) and headed back home. Clint has a four wheel drive Jeep. I borrowed it. After trying a side road to work (lesser traveled - but lesser plowed) option, I regrouped and went back and drove to work on the original highway (the cars that almost hit me were still in the ditch). This time I followed a semi-trailer - they forge a path and you can always see them above the snow. Made it to work. Late.

That was the easy part. Getting home was worse.

Now I'm driving Clint's Jeep, of which I can't even work the radio properly. Four wheel drive but I'm uncomfortable driving. I left work while hearing on the radio that the road I was taking home was considered closed. Well, no one stands there and tells you you can't use it so I did (and I wasn't the only one - they were just discouraging usage of it). It eventually got me there; scary, white knuckle driving, but there.

I was driving so slow on the way home I was able to take a couple pictures. No danger. I was only going about 15 miles an hour.

Lastly, I'd like to add I really hate whiteouts.

You can't see where you are going, but because of that, you can't stop either or you risk being rear ended. There are a couple places where you have to drive about a length of a football field on faith - you can't see any oncoming cars or the road. You just hope the people coming the other direction are doing the same thing in their lane, not your's. The last two pictures were the first two taken.

One Momento in my life. And it worked out. Yea.

A day in my life. Beatles, A day in the life. (Bonus: quick photo clip of Mick and Marianne) I think.

Daytona, a movie, and a song.

Nascar’s season begins this Sunday. The Daytona 500. Different from other sports, Nascar starts the season with it’s biggest race. It’s Super Bowl.

Nascar’s roots are of southern drivers illegally hauling booze in souped up cars during the 1930’s and 40’s. Depression southerners had figured out that cars and speed were tickets to a better life. With few options beyond the farm or factory, the best chance of escape was running moonshine.

Even today, the shady, get away with what you can attitude still survives. Just days ago, five teams were caught cheating and have been punished by suspensions or fines.

Ruining Toyota’s debut in Nascar, the new Michael Waltrip team was one of the guilty. They got caught trying to use an illegal fuel additive found in jet fuel. That’s so outrageous it’s funny.


A movie that captures the spirit of Nascar is Days of Thunder.

Tom Cruise as Cole Trickle. Robert Duvall as Harry Hogge. Nicole Kidman as “brain surgeon”, Dr. Claire Lewicki.

One of the more famous lines to come out of it was “he *rubbed* you. And rubbin, son, is racin'.” Also in the movie, building a car while cheating on the specifications was a desired skill.

I’ve seen this movie way too many times. It was Clint’s favorite movie for many years - for awhile, it was on every time I came home. Now, It’s one of those (like the Back to the Future series) movies, that if you find it flipping through the channels you end up watching it.

Days of Thunder revolved around a talented, hot-shot auto racing rookie, Cole Trickle (Cruise), who, after trying his hand in the American open wheel ranks, seeks to win on the NASCAR circuit. His mechanic mentor, Harry Hogge (Duvall), acts as his crew chief and Dr. Claire Lewicki (Kidman) is a young and beautiful brain surgeon who tries to tame Cole.

Some NASCAR aficionados also took offense at the overuse and exaggeration of the "rubbing" (bumping) action of NASCAR, featuring maneuvers between cars that were overly dangerous and uncommon, even for the period of time in NASCAR history that the movie was filmed. This included a scene where Cole, after having been knocked out of a race at the very end by an opponent, instructed his pit crew to replace his flattened tires, proceeding to run out on the track and smash his car into the victorious rival who knocked him out of the race.

The plot was very loosely based on some real-life NASCAR personalities: Duvall's character was based on crew chief Harry Hyde, Cruise's on Tim Richmond, and Randy Quaid's on a composite of several owners, one of whom was Rick Hendrick. Hendrick also provided the movie cars, driven by then-NASCAR drivers Greg Sacks, Bobby Hamilton, and Hut Stricklin, with Hamilton making his Cup debut at Phoenix in 1989 in a movie car. Although this was not acknowledged by the film publicly this was obvious to fans from many coincidences between the film and well known events.

Kidman's casting as a brain surgeon was also panned by some critics; as a stunning 23-year-old who looked that age or younger, she looked completely implausible as a doctor, let alone a surgeon (who typically do not begin to practice until their thirties). Her casting probably had a considerable amount to do with Cruise's real-life interest in her - they married soon after.

A favorite part of the movie of mine is Cole and Claire in a car in a parking garage. She’s yelling, "Let me out of the cah.(my spelling) Let me out. - Let me out or I'm getting out." - The accent made it. Love repeating that dialog.

Othe noteable quotes from the movie.

Cole getting used to Nascar racing:

Harry Hogge: Cole, you're wandering all over the track!
Cole Trickle: Yeah, well this son of a bitch just slammed into me.
Harry Hogge: No, no, he didn't slam you, he didn't bump you, he didn't nudge you... he *rubbed* you. And rubbin, son, is racin'.

Cole running a couple of test laps for the first time:

Harry Hogge: What do you know about stock car racing?
Cole Trickle: Well... watched it on television, of course.
Harry Hogge: You've seen it on television?
Cole Trickle: ESPN. The coverage is excellent, you'd be surprised at how much you can pick up.
Harry Hogge: I'm sure I would.


During a pit stop:

Harry Hogge: All right. While we're still under a caution, I want you to go back out on that track and hit the pace car.
Cole Trickle: Hit the pace car?
Harry Hogge: Hit the pace car.
Cole Trickle: What for?
Harry Hogge: Because you've hit every other goddamned thing out there, I want you to be perfect.


Doctor and patient:

Dr. Claire Lewicki: Boy, you're very quick.
Cole Trickle: You oughta see me drive.

(The quote above is very lame. I had to include it. Ha)

Gimme Some Lovin'

The Lathe of Heaven.

The Lathe of Heaven.


Probably the most famous sci-fi movie you couldn't watch for over 20 years.

(The book is by Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (born October 21, 1929), an American author. She has written novels, poetry, children's books and essays, and is best known for her science fiction, fantasy novels and short stories.)

I saw this on Chicago’s channel 11 (public television), in 1980. And from the number of times it was aired, I was obviously lucky to have caught it. (I finally bought the VHS on ebay a year or so ago).

Dreaming that could change reality. Or change the world. Main character, Bruce Davidson - you see him in movies now-a-days as the person you would love to hate. Here he has a sympathetic role.

Also while reading reviews, I noticed two other movies I own and like were mentioned as similiar movies: Run Lola Run and The Butterfly Effect. I had never connected them, but they all deal with changing what's already happened.

For two decades, it has been the Holy Grail for almost an entire generation of science fiction fans. Named among the top 100 greatest works of science fiction by Entertainment Weekly magazine, its return to the public eye has been long anticipated, helped in part by the devoted efforts of its fans, who lobbied for its re-release in public pleas, grassroots Internet campaigns, and tireless letter-writing crusades. And though it did not bask in the same level of mainstream popularity that George Lucas' "Star Wars" franchise experienced, it has made an indelible mark in the annals of science fiction filmmaking nonetheless.

It was back in 1980 that "The Lathe of Heaven", a modestly budgeted made-for-television movie based on the best-selling novel by Ursula K. Le Guin, made its first and only appearance on North American public television. Though it was never seen again, "The Lathe of Heaven" developed a cult following, even among those who never had a chance to see it when it was initially aired.

For the past twenty years, the only means to view this sci-fi masterpiece was via poor-quality bootlegged videotapes, often sold at outrageous prices at sci-fi conventions or on eBay. However, this all changed in June of this year, with the long-awaited rebroadcast of "The Lathe of Heaven" by public broadcasting television stations across North America, and the promise of the film's availability (digitally remastered no less) on VHS and DVD by the fall.


The 1980 adaptation—generally faithful to the novel—was produced by the public television station WNET, directed by David Loxton and Fred Barzyk. It starred Bruce Davison, Kevin Conway, and Margaret Avery. Due to rights issues surrounding the use of a clip from the Beatles tune "With A Little Help From My Friends" (the song is integral to one of the novel's plot points), it was never re-aired after the network's rights to rebroadcast the program expired in 1988.

It would be another twelve years before it was released to home video in 2000 (in fact, the home video release is remastered from a tape someone recorded from the original broadcast; PBS, thinking the rights issues would dog the production forever, did not save a copy of the production in their archives). The rights issue was solved by replacing the original Beatles tune with a cover version of the same song.





The novel is set in Portland, Oregon. The 'real world' had been destroyed in a nuclear war and George Orr has dreamed it back into existence as he lay dying in the ruins. This places him in the first of many realities we encounter in the book, where he is a draftsman and has long been abusing sleep deprivation drugs to prevent himself from dreaming.

It is set approximately 30 years in the future, relative to when the book was first published, and overpopulation, famine, malnutrition, global warming, urban blight, and massive wars in the MIDDLE EAST are a commonplace. (ALL FIT THE PRESENT UNFORTUNATELY)

Orr is forced to undergo "voluntary" psychiatric care for his drug abuse, under threat of being placed in an asylum.

He begins attending therapy sessions with an ambitious psychiatrist and sleep researcher named William Haber, who discovers Orr's power to dream "effectively" and seeks to use it to change the world. His experiments with a biofeedback/EEG machine nicknamed the Augmentor enhance Orr's abilities and produce a series of increasingly intolerable alternate worlds, based on an assortment of utopian (and dystopian) premises familiar from other science fiction works:

When Haber directs George to dream a world without racism, the skin of everyone on the planet becomes a uniform light gray.

An attempt to solve the problem of overpopulation proves disastrous when George dreams a devastating plague which wipes out 75% of humanity.

George attempts to dream into existence "peace on Earth" - resulting in an alien invasion of the Moon which unites all the nations of Earth against the threat.

Each effective dream gives Haber more wealth and status, until late in the book where he is effectively ruler of the world. Orr's economic status also improves, but he is unhappy with Haber's meddling and just wants to let things be. He becomes increasingly frightened by Haber's lust for power. He seeks out a lawyer to represent him against Haber, and while he falls in love with her and even marries her in one reality, this effort is unsuccessful in getting him out of therapy.

Eventually, Haber becomes frustrated with Orr's resistance and decides to take on effective dreaming himself. Haber's first effective dream represents a significant break with the realities created by Orr, and threatens to destroy the Earth completely. He is stopped by Orr through pure force of will. Reality is saved, but distorted, and Haber's mind is left broken.

"The Lathe of Heaven" debuted some twenty years ago, and remained one of the best-kept secrets in the history of science fiction filmmaking-- that is, until recently. Despite its low-budget roots, "The Lathe of Heaven" holds up remarkably well, and is still as intriguing and thought provoking as it was back in 1980. It is one of the few great works of science fiction that will stand the test of time.

Hard Candy.

The title "Hard Candy" comes from the internet slang for an under-aged girl.

This is a film that will sometimes rely on shock value so the less you know the better. In simplest terms, it is a two character psychological thriller. The dialog is well written and intelligent. (bringing to mind Oleanna – David Mamet.)

At times it is intense but it continues to draw you in. I really liked it.

(the following is part of a review from Roger Ebert)

Jeff (Patrick Wilson) is a photographer who hangs out in Internet teen chat rooms, and strikes up a predatory friendship with Hayley (Ellen Page). She agrees to meet him on neutral territory, a coffee shop, but soon suggests they go to his home. He offers her a drink. She laughs: "I know better than to accept a drink mixed by a strange man." So she mixes the drinks.....


The film succeeds in telling its story with no nudity; the R rating comes "for disturbing violent and aberrant sexual content involving a teen and for language." The young girl is not objectified but has free will throughout, lives in the moment and improvises.

There is undeniable fascination in the situation as it unfolds. It is an effective film. Although I may be concerned about how some audience members may react to it, I cannot penalize it on the basis of my speculations about their private feelings. Seen as a film, seen as acting and direction, seen as just exactly how it unfolds on the screen, "Hard Candy" is impressive and effective. As for what else it may be, each audience member will have to decide.

Pink doing Aerosmith’s – Janies Got a Gun



Janie's Got A Gun
Dum, dum, dum, honey what have you done?
Dum, dum, dum it's the sound of my gun.
Dum, dum, dum, honey what have you done?
Dum, dum, dum it's the sound

Janie's got a gun
Janie's got a gun
Her whole world's come undone
From lookin' straight at the sun
What did her daddy do?
What did he put you through?
They said when Janie was arrested
they found him underneath a train
But man, he had it comin' Now that Janie's got a gun
she ain't never gonna be the same.

Janie's got a gun
Janie's got a gun
Her dog day's just begun
Now everybody is on the run
Tell me now it's untrue.
What did her daddy do?
He jacked a little bitty baby
The man has got to be insane
They say the spell that he was under the lightning and the
thunder knew that someone had to stop the rain

Run away, run away from the pain yeah, yeah yeah yeah
Run away run away from the pain yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Run away, run away, run, run away

Janie's got a gun
Janie's got a gun
Her dog day's just begun
Now everybody is on the run
What did her daddy do?
It's Janie's last I.O.U.
She had to take him down easy and put a bullet in his brain
She said 'cause nobody believes me. The man was such a sleeze.

He ain't never gonna be the same.
Run away, run away from the pain yeah, yeah
yeah yeah yeah
Run away run away from the pain yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Run away, run away, run, run away

Janie's got a gun
Janie's got a gun
Janie's got a gun
Everybody is on the run

Janie's got a gun
Her dog day's just begun
Now everybody is on the run
Because Janie's got a gun
Janie's got a gun
Her dog day's just begun
Now everybody is on the run
Janie's got a gun

Aqualung - Jethro Tull



Aqualung - Jethro Tull

Sitting on a park bench
eyeing little girls with bad intent.
Snot running down his nose
greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes.
Drying in the cold sun
Watching as the frilly panties run.
Feeling like a dead duck
spitting out pieces of his broken luck.
Sun streaking cold
an old man wandering lonely.
Taking time
the only way he knows.
Leg hurting bad,
as he bends to pick a dog-end
he goes down to the bog
and warms his feet.
Feeling alone
the army's up the rode
salvation à la mode and
a cup of tea.
Aqualung my friend
don't start away uneasy
you poor old sod, you see, it's only me.
Do you still remember
December's foggy freeze
when the ice that
clings on to your beard is
screaming agony.
And you snatch your rattling last breaths
with deep-sea-diver sounds,
and the flowers bloom like
madness in the spring.