Reviews and More

As if there aren’t enough dancing programs on television, NBC has decided to get into the game with something called Superstars of Dance. This show follows on the heels of the ABC hit Dancing with the Stars, the FOX show So You Think You Can Dance, and a handful of dance series on cable networks. Ugh, enough is enough already!

Superstars of Dance will premiere on January 4, and will feature professional dancers from around the world competing against each other in different disciplines. I don’t think this sounds like a formula for success, since half the appeal of the other programs in this genre is that the contestants are either celebrities or regular joes trying to get their big break.

I mean, is anyone going to know — or care about — the “professionals” who will be appearing on the show? Can you even name a single professional dancer? I can’t, and you better believe I’ll find better things to do than tune into Superstars of Dance. The only excitement to come out of a show like this would be if a contestant had to withdraw because of Plantar Fasciitis or something. Um, no thanks!

I’m betting the show doesn’t get picked up for a second season. I doubt that this will have the kind of broad appeal that the other dancing programs do.

Political corruption is so commonplace these days that we hardly bat an eyelash when we hear about the latest scandal involving a member of the U.S. government. A Senator was busted for propositioning a man in an airport bathroom? Someone else sent sexually explicit text messages to an aide? Yet another pol was busted with a high-priced prostitute? Ho hum. The only thing that seems to really shock us is when the culprits are so brazen about their actions that they practically dare someone to bust them (witness Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s attempts to sell a U.S. Senate seat).

So by today’s standards, former president Richard M. Nixon’s role in the Watergate break-in and subsequent cover-up attempts seem rather mundane. Is there anyone out there who thinks a similar act by a sitting president would consume the news cycle for more than two whole years today? I don’t. But back in the 1970s, it was a stunning act of deceit, one that caused Nixon to resign and reinforced the public’s distrust of government.

Nixon never admitted to wrongdoing, but he did come very close to it when he sat down with British journalist David Frost for an interview a few years after leaving office. Frost was supposed to be a softball kind of journalist, a playboy type of talk show personality rather than a hard-hitting interviewer, so it seemed odd that he would even be interested in sitting down with Nixon anyway. Apparently, Frost thought that he’d be able to make big bucks from advertisers if he got the president to talk about Watergate and Vietnam.

So Frost put up $600,000 of his own money to get Nixon, hired a team of professional researchers to help him with the preparation, and began filming the four days of interviews. At that point, he only had 33% of the necessary outside funding, and it appeared that the whole idea would turn into a colossal failure.

But on the very last day of the interview, Frost buckled down and started hammering Nixon on Watergate. He elicited the now-infamous quote that “if the President does it, it’s not illegal” and got Nixon to hesitate for a long moment when put on the spot about admitting guilt. Based on those two things, Frost was able to make a fortune from the tapes, Nixon was able to unburden his conscience (as much as possible without actually signing a confession), and 400 million people around the world tuned in to watch the interviews.

The Ron Howard film Frost/Nixon takes a behind-the-scenes look at what happened prior to, during, and after those interviews, mostly from Frost’s point of view.

My Reaction: Although I wasn’t exactly expecting a gripping political thriller here, I wasn’t quite ready for the utter snoozefest that Frost/Nixon turned out to be. I admit that I was suckered by all the rave reviews this film has earned from critics like Roger Ebert and Peter Travers, and decided to see this one based on the strength of their comments alone. Ugh, that’ll teach me!

First of all, neither of the lead characters in this film were likable at all. On the one hand, you have the unbalanced, paranoid, defiant Richard Nixon (played by Frank Langella), and though Ron Howard tries to show Nixon’s vulnerabilities and loneliness, it simply wasn’t enough to make me feel anything for the man. On the other hand, there was the shallow, just-happy-to-be-here David Frost (Michael Sheen), who cared more about making a killing off his investment than about uncovering any truths. Again, I couldn’t sympathize or otherwise care about what was happening to this guy.

Yes, I know these are historical figures and therefore the actors can’t very well turn them into something they weren’t, but still… what I’m driving at here is that I don’t understand why anyone would think that this would be a compelling topic for a feature film instead of, say, a documentary.

Also, I was decidedly underwhelmed by what people consider to be Nixon’s “admission of guilt”. He paused and looked a little remorseful. That was it? Sorry, but if that’s the highlight of David Frost’s journalistic career, I really don’t understand the big deal was about. It wasn’t exactly Jack Nicholson screaming, “You’re goddamn right I did!” in A Few Good Men, know what I mean?

Frost/Nixon might appeal to those who first saw the actual interviews as they aired in the late ’70s or to those students of history who are intensely interested in the Nixon administration. But for average moviegoers like me, I think the whole project falls flat. I give it 4.0 stars out of 10, and wouldn’t sit through it again if you paid me!

One of my goals as an avid reader is to get through the entire list of 100 books designated by the Observer (UK) newspaper as the greatest novels of all time. I’ve currently covered about 65 percent of the titles, with the most recent being The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers. Unlike most of the other entries on the list, I’d never even heard of this book or its writer, but since the work was described as “a prewar invasion-scare spy thriller by a writer later shot for his part in the Irish republican rising”, I figured it would be a fun and engrossing read. Unfortunately, this is the kind of novel that doesn’t stand the test of time and came off as boring rather than exciting.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The novel is told from the point of view of Carruthers, a young clerk in the Foreign Office whose friends have all gone away from London for the holidays. Faced with the prospect of spending a couple of boring weeks all alone in the city, Carruthers seizes on a late arriving invitation to go “yachting”. The invitation is from a man named Davies, whom Carruthers doesn’t know very well, having met him just once before. Nevertheless, Carruthers packs his bag, gathers numerous supplies that Davies asked for, like a stove, compass, spring plungers, and other miscellany, and sets off to meet up with the ship, the Dulcibella.

Upon arriving at port, Carruthers is shocked to discover that this adventure won’t be like any other yachting excursion he’s been on. Instead of a luxury boat with as crew to handle all the work, the Dulcibella is an old, cramped, creaking thing, with Davies and Carruthers as the only passengers. What’s more, their destination, according to Davies, won’t be some exotic resort like Monte Carlo, but instead will be the Frisian Islands near Germany. Despite all this, Carruthers decides to stick it out with Davies.

As the two head towards the Frisian Islands, the reader slowly learns about their individual characters and about the true purpose of the trip. Davies is an exceptional seaman who knows everything there is to know about boats, maps, charts, and tides. Carruthers, while woefully inexperienced on a boat, is a quick learner, unafraid of manual work, and possesses a sharp intellect that ends up serving him well on the real mission, which is to expose a ring of German spies working out a plan to invade England from the north.

The rest of the novel then deals with various aspects of the suspected invasion plan, telling how Davies got his wind up in the first place, how he thinks the spies can be found out for sure, and how he and Carruthers actually go about doing just that. The novel is highly detailed in respect to nautical distances, tide levels, and the like, so if you don’t follow along with the accompanying maps, a lot of the action will be lost on you.

My Reaction: I was looking forward to reading this “spy thriller”, but let me tell you, The Riddle of the Sands is hardly thrilling in the modern sense of the word! To say that the action unfolds at a leisurely pace would be generous; Childers takes his own sweet time about every little thing in the novel. In fact, if I hadn’t read a summary of the novel prior to picking it up, I wouldn’t have known what it was about until 14 long chapters into the narrative!

Even when the purpose was revealed, the plot seemed kind of ridiculous. Would two men really take on an entire ring of spies without contacting English authorities for backup or help? Sure, I guess Davies brought up some objections, like not wanting to get Dollman’s daughter in trouble or not wanting to run the risk of having an official laugh in his face, but still… it seemed like quite a stretch that two guys would be able to pull off everything that Davies and Carruthers did.

Aside from the plot problem, I do have to give Childers credit for providing some in-depth characterization for the two leads. The reader actually comes to learn a lot about Davies and Carruthers, and I enjoyed the fact that the two men were so vastly different, and yet were able to operate on the same page most of the time, eventually getting to the point where they knew what the other was thinking and could depend on each other to act in certain ways in certain situations.

Another positive point in the book’s favor is that the writing is very good. Childers manages to be engaging more often than not, which is quite a feat given what little is going on most of the time. But the fact that I stuck with this rather long book despite how boring it was is a testament to the writing and the characters, so the experience wasn’t as painful as it might have been.

Overall, The Riddle of the Sands has a very dated feel to it. It’s not the kind of thriller that fans of John Le Carre or other more recent spy novelists are familiar with, but I suppose the book has a place for history buffs. Just know that you’re in for a long journey if you decide to tackle this title!

I’d heard about something called The Last Lecture back when it first started generating buzz over a year ago, but I’m always slow to try out the latest “Internet sensations” because these things tend to disappoint more often than not. But after all this time, the story of Randy Pausch, the former Carnegie Mellon University professor who bravely battled pancreatic cancer still resonates for millions of people. I finally read the book and watched the actual lecture over the weekend — and both were pretty amazing.

Pausch’s last lecture was a talk given at CMU as part of a regular series that the university put on for students. Basically, professors in different disciplines are asked to put together a “final talk”, something that they’d want to leave students with if they never spoke in their area of expertise again.

Paush, a computer science prof, went in a more literal direction, as he had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer and had only a few months left to live. He decided to talk not strictly about computer science, but about how to live a good life. To him, that meant achieving your childhood dreams and helping others to achieve theirs.

The lecture, which lasted for one hour and sixteen minutes, covers a variety of topics, starting with Pausch’s childhood, and moving on to the personal milestones he has achieved, the highlights of his teaching career, and carving out what he hopes to be his legacy.

In the book, Pausch explains that he deliberately decided not to talk about the most important things in his life, his wife and children, because he didn’t think he would be able to hold it together for that long. But nevertheless, we see at the end that it was really all for them anyway.

The book, which followed the lecture, is obviously similar to the original talk and uses many of the same quotes and photographs (Pausch used slides in his lecture). But the book of course contains a lot more stuff that Pausch couldn’t fit into the lecture, and gives even more detailed information on some of the things he touched upon in the original talk. I found that watching the lecture first and then reading the book was a good way to take in the whole experience.

While there’s not exactly a lot of ground-breaking advice in Pausch’s Last Lecture, the professor’s charisma and upbeat delivery make the time fly by, and of course the message is worthwhile for everyone.

Check out the video on YouTube by following the link below. Pausch’s Last Lecture has been viewed more than 8.2 million times to date — a staggering number for sure!

Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture

This was a big weekend in Hollywood, with lots of new releases hitting the theaters in time for Christmas. Of particular interest to tabloid watchers was the head-to-head battle of famous exes Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt, with the romantic comedy Marley & Me going up against The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Well, Team Jen fans can rejoice, as early returns indicate Marley & Me raked in $37 million to claim the top spot at the box office. Despite mixed reviews, this film about a dog that acts like he’s been drinking from the nespresso machine a bit too much won the hearts of moviegoers — just as the original book did.

Benjamin Button, on the other hand, received generally good reviews, but just didn’t carry the same family appeal as Marley & Me. This film, based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, earned $27.2 million, which was good enough for third place.

The Adam Sandler comedy Bedtime Stories had a strong debut with $28.1 million in gross receipts to take the No. 2 spot, while the Tom Cruise WWII thriller Valkyrie earned $21.5 million in fourth place.

Another new release, The Spirit, cracked the list in the No. 9 spot with $6.5 million in ticket sales.

Here’s the complete Top 10 at the box office for the weekend ending 12/28/08:

1. Marley & Me, $37 million
2. Bedtime Stories, $28.1 million
3. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, $27.2 million
4. Valkyrie, $21.5 million
5. Yes Man, $16.5 million
6. Seven Pounds, $13.4 million
7. The Tale of Despereaux, $9.4 million
8. The Day the Earth Stood Still, $7.9 million
9. The Spirit, $6.5 million
10. Four Christmases, $5 million

So I’ve been thinking that I should start watching a new television series this season. I know I watch way too much TV as it is, but my excuse remains that I need to have something to talk about on this blog!

Anyway, I’ve already dropped a couple of shows from last season (CSI, Prison Break), have stopped watching the DVDs of a couple other series that I was interested in at first (Ghost Whisperer, Without a Trace), and am on the verge of dropping at least one more this year (Grey’s Anatomy), so my schedule isn’t as packed as you’d think.

The problem becomes, which series should I take on? The current No. 1 show on television is something called The Mentalist. I couldn’t figure out what it was about just from the title, so I went and watched the pilot on the CBS homepage. It turns out the show is another procedural along the lines of CSI or NCIS, only instead of emphasizing forensics or investigative skills as a means of catching the bad guys, the main character is able to do so just by means of… observation.

He basically comes into the crime scene looks carefully at everything, and is able to piece together what happened just like that. For instance, if the outdoor lighting is still on when detectives arrive in broad daylight, then he knows the crime occurred at night. Or if the bed hasn’t been slept in (I love how TV characters always make their beds every day!), then the mentalist will make a different assumption about the crime.

Another option for me is The Closer, which I’ve heard some very good things about. Unfortunately, this is another police procedural, and there are just so many that I can have on my plate at one time, know what I mean?

And finally, I’m also considering watching Damages, starring Glenn Close as a high-powered attorney. I used to love courtroom dramas, and while my Boston Legal DVDs are fun and all, it would be nice to get back into something a bit more on the serious side of things.

At any rate, I’m open to other suggestions as well. If any of you watch these shows or if you’ve got a better idea for me, let me know!

Growing up as a Chicago Bears fan, I heard the names Gale Sayers and Brian Piccolo hundreds of times even though the two men played before I was even borrn. I knew that the immensely talented Sayers and the mightily determined Piccolo became great friends at a time when racial tensions were extremely high, and of course I heard of Piccolo’s courageous battle with cancer, a battle that he ultimately lost at the tender age of 26.

I’d also heard of a made-for-TV movie about their friendship called Brian’s Song, which is often hailed as one of the best sports movies of all time. I’ve always wanted to see that movie, but never actually sat down to watch it until recently, when I picked up a copy of the DVD from my library. Maybe it was all the years of hype and buildup or maybe it was the fact that the movie was made some 35 years ago, but I walked away feeling supremely disappointed by the experience.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): In 1965, Gale Sayers (played by Billy Dee Williams) was the top draft pick of the Chicago Bears and came to the team amidst much buzz and great expectations. Fellow rookie Brian Piccolo (James Caan) also joined the team that year, but he came via free agency as he was undrafted out of college. Both men were running backs, so they ended up spending a lot of time together during training camp. Both made the team, were assigned to room together on the road (an unprecedented occurrence in 1965, considering that Sayers was black and Piccolo was white), and eventually became close friends.

Over the course of the next four football seasons, Sayers and Piccolo become even closer as their careers begin to take off. Sayers was named Rookie of the Year in 1965 after racking up 2,272 all-purpose yards and scoring 22 touchdowns, while Piccolo worked himself into a starting job in the backfield. The two even overcame adversity together. After Sayers went down with a serious knee injury, Piccolo made it his personal mission to help get Sayers back into playing shape — which he did.

Then it was Piccolo’s turn to run into physical issues. After suffering from fatigue, coughing bouts, and difficulty breathing, Piccolo went to a hospital for tests. Doctors discovered a cancerous tumor in his chest, and though they removed it, the cancer had already started spreading to other parts of Piccolo’s body.

The rest of the film then shows Piccolo’s final days, as both he Sayers struggle to come to terms with his imminent death.

My Reaction: As I said, I was pretty disappointed with Brian’s Song, and am having a hard time understanding why this film is consistently mentioned as one of the top sports movies of all time. For one thing, it barely even qualifies as a sports movie, as football was merely incidental to the plot. Nothing would have changed substantially if the two men had been involved in any other profession, so I’d classify this one as a (melo)drama rather than a sports film. But that’s just me.

I also thought Brian’s Song was hurt by its very short running time. I’m usually all for shorter films and realize that this movie was originally made for TV, but even so, 71 minutes was simply not long enough to develop the characters and allow the audience to form an attachment to them. I didn’t feel as though I knew Gale Sayers or Brian Piccolo any better after seeing this movie, which shows that the film didn’t serve its purpose. Yes, I know that a 1971 audience would have been far more familiar with the two players’ lives than a 2008 audience, but this still bothered me.

To make matters even worse, Caan and Williams were both incredibly stiff in their roles. Neither did a very good acting job, which served to cap off an all-around bad experience. From Caan’s jarring use of the “n” word in several scenes to Williams’ wooden delivery and exaggerated facial expressions at key moments, I often felt like I was watching an amateur production at the community theater.

Overall, Brian’s Song is simply too dated to have much of an impact on today’s audiences. I usually love sports movies and true stories, but this is definitely an exception. I give the film 4.5 stars out of 10.

Hawaii is one of those books that I’ve been meaning to read for a long time, but have put off because of the sheer size of the thing. Like almost all of Michener’s works, Hawaii is an epic in every sense of the word, and comes in at well over 1,000 pages. I had some doubts about being able to sustain interest in the book throughout its entirety, so I wasn’t in any real hurry to tackle it. But I finally got around to it last month, and though it did indeed take a looong time to get from cover to cover, I’m proud to say I actually did it!

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): It’s pretty much impossible to give a comprehensive summary of a book of this length in a single blog post, so I’m going to have to just cover the basics here. Michener mixes fact and fiction to give a sweeping account of the history of Hawaii, from the beginning of the islands to the mid-1950s.

The novel starts by describing the geological machinations that helped form the islands, and then moves on to discuss the earliest inhabitants who arrived from Bora Bora and Tahiti. Those two topics are given the shortest coverage out of the entire novel, but are fairly interesting nonetheless.

From there, Michener brings the action up to the 1800s, when missionaries from New England settled on the island to help convert the “savages”. This is when character development really begins to take off, and when the complex, interwoven stories of all the major players start to take shape.

Finally, the novel goes on to present the tale of Chinese and Japanese workers who were imported to the island to help work on the sugar and pineapple plantations. Through it all, Michener focuses on a handful of families to give the novel a personal feel — and to show how each generation deeply influenced each succeeding generation.

My Reaction: I have to admit that it was a bit slow going in the beginning. While the geological formations and the primitive beliefs of the Bora Borans was interesting to a point, I think Michener went into far too much detail (and for far too long) for my tastes. I’m not surprised to hear that many people give up on this novel before even getting to the missionaries… there is quite a lot to wade through in the beginning, and it does feel like filler after a while.

But once the missionaries came into the picture, I was hooked. The success of a book of this length absolutely depends on the author’s ability to create compelling characters that the reader will want to stick with through thick and thin. Michener did remarkably well in this respect. In fact, I didn’t even realize how much I liked some of the characters until they were out of the picture. For instance, when Michener mentioned in passing that Dr. John Whipple finally died, I felt sad — even though I didn’t pay much attention to the character while he was in the midst of everything.

Another reason that I think Hawaii succeeds as a whole is the way that Michener makes each successive group of characters even more interesting than the last. Although Chinese immigrant Char Nyuk Tsin’s story started out exceedingly slowly, by the time her character was fully developed, I had invested myself deeply in her. She was truly fantastic!

Yes, there were several boring patches along the way and it does take some determination to stick with Hawaii until the end. But this is a novel that definitely deserves all the critical praise and commercial success it experienced when it was initially published. You won’t be sorry for the effort you put into reading this one!

Now that my son is home for winter vacation, I thought it would be fun to take him to see the latest Disney CGI film Bolt. I’d read some earlier reviews that indicated this particular movie wasn’t quite up to the usual Disney standards, but figured my son might still enjoy it, especially with a cute dog as the lead character. Turns out I should have heeded the lukewarm reviews and waited to catch this one on DVD.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Bolt (voiced by John Travolta) is the canine lead of a popular TV show. On the show, Bolt has superpowers and can do things that no ordinary dog can, as he fights nefarious criminals with the help of his human Penny (Miley Cyrus). The key to Bolt’s success as an “actor” is that he absolutely believes that everything he’s doing is real. He believes that Penny is in danger, that his superpowers actually work, and that he’s helping to save the world. To perpetuate the illusion, the producers don’t let Bolt off the set on weekends, so the dog knows nothing of the outside world.

Then one day things change drastically as Bolt inadvertently falls into a crate headed from Hollywood to New York. Once he escapes, his first concern is to find Penny. But of course he has no idea that he’s actually all the way across the country — and doesn’t find out what’s going on until he hooks up with a cat named Mittens (Susie Essman). Bolt, still under the impression that he’s a superhero, demands that Mittens help him locate Penny, which the cat must do after Bolt ties them together with a leash.

After figuring out that Bolt is from Hollywood, Mittens tells him that they have to get a ride back there. They jump into the back of a U-Haul, and thus begin their cross-country adventure. The rest of the film deals with the various obstacles they encounter along the way, a new companion they pick up in the hamster Rhino (Mark Walton), as well as Bolt’s reaction when he learns that he’s just a regular dog after all. And of course, this being a Disney movie, everything works out for the best in the end.

My Reaction: Both my 5-year-old son and I thought Bolt was pretty boring. To be honest, the opening sequence that showed all that action from the TV show was the most exciting part of the entire film, and had us thinking that it would have been a better idea for the screenwriters to have made a movie in that vein instead of the one that we ended up with.

I don’t know if it was the voice actor or what, but Bolt wasn’t the least bit interesting as the main character. There was nothing about him that made him sympathetic, so it was kind of hard to care about his plight. Perhaps if there had been a few more scenes at the beginning to show him bonding with Penny things would have been different. But as it was, I wasn’t in his corner at all — which of course made it hard to sit through all of his adventures.

The supporting characters weren’t much help at all. While both Rhino and Mittens were ok, they didn’t do anything memorable, nor were there any great moments featuring these guys. And it seemed that a couple of storylines were inexplicably dropped — like not pursuing the thread about what happened to Mittens’ family or why Rhino was so quick to leave his human. Usually Disney movies bring these things full circle, but not in this case.

Overall, there’s very little about Bolt that will appeal to either children or adults. After seeing it, I’m not at all surprised that it’s under-performing at the box office. It was disappointing for a Disney film, and I give it just 5.0 stars out of 10.

Three new releases helped knock last week’s top movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still all the way down to No. 4 this weekend. The Keanu Reeves sci-fi thriller took in just $10.2 million in its second week, bringing its North American gross to $48.6 million.

The new champ is Yes Man, a comedy starring Jim Carrey. This film earned $18.2 million, a number that many studio analysts agree would have been higher if not for bad weather in some key U.S. markets. Yes Man fended off a strong challenge from Will Smith’s new movie Seven Pounds, which received decidedly mixed reviews while hauling in $16 million.

Another new release, the CGI film The Tale of Despereaux, came in third place for the weekend after generating $10.5 million in ticket sales. Powered by the voice talents of Matthew Broderick, Dustin Hoffman, and Emma Watson among many others, this movie will appeal to the family crowd during the Christmas season.

No other new releases cracked the Top 10 this weekend, but expect a major shakeup next week as the studios unleash their heavy hitters for the big holiday.

Here’s the complete Top 10 at the box office for the weekend ending 12/21/08:

1. Yes Man, $18.2 million
2. Seven Pounds, $16 million
3. The Tale of Despereaux, $10.5 million
4. The Day the Earth Stood Still, $10.2 million
5. Four Christmases, $7.75 million
6. Twilight, $5.23 million
7. Bolt, $4.26 million
8. Slumdog Millionaire, $3.25 million
9. Australia, $2.33 million
10. Quantum of Solace, $2.15 million