The Perfect Storm
is a great example of Hollywood taking a true event that needs no embellishment or standard schmaltz to make it engaging, adding the embellishment or schmaltz anyway, and ending up with a weaker product for it.
The storm of 1991 grabbed the attention of the nation for a reason. I watched all the reports of the storm from hundreds of miles away, spellbound and horrified.
This film, which purports to put us in the center of the storm, fails to do the same. The problem is that we’ve been lulled into “it’s a typical Hollywood movie” coma by the ridiculous speeches put into the mouths of all the actors, particularly George Clooney, who is forced to act as though being the captain of a small commercial fishing vessel isn’t work, but a higher calling akin to being a priest or a brain surgeon or a kindergarten teacher. Every character gets their moment in the sun so that we’ll feel their loss when it happens, and as a result, the movie takes FOREVER before we get anywhere.
Ironically, the storm is somewhat skimped on: There’s a brief scene which utterly fails to explain what the storm is, how it occurred and why it’s noteworthy. Instead, we get every possible disaster at sea aboard the Andrea Gail first. Of course, since no one from the ship participated in the filming of this movie — for obvious reasons — the fact that the whole sequence has been made up out of whole cloth makes it even less engaging.
And for all the talk of how much money was involved in creating the special effects, it all looks remarkably like a Hollywood invention, not a real ship at sea — unless ships at sea are now lit like Hollywood sound stages.
The poor actors trapped in this film do excellent work with the too-standard material, and make the film more watchable than it ought to be. But ultimately, I found myself wanting to watch Jaws again, or re-read The Old Man and the Sea, the two stories the filmmakers desperately aped and swiped from, coming up with a product that measures up to neither.
This is a renter.
After getting slapped around all last season in the Survivor Fantasy League, I’m in the lead, for now, with my tribe (Ellis Truss) with 349 points.
It’s all about loading up on the people guaranteed of lots of airtime and betting that one of them will speak first at tribal council. Stephenie rarely disappoints in that regard.
My team is Gary, Margaret, Bobby Jon and Stephenie.
Frankly, this part of the season is my least favorite. It’s hard to get to know who’s who and the team competitions are either interchangeable (if the teams are roughly equal) or feel like bullying (because once one team starts to win, they typically tend to keep on winning).
Somebody’s Miracle
The new Liz Phair album, “Somebody’s Miracle,” is pretty interesting.
It splits the difference between her older stuff and her self-titled CD a few years ago. It’s polished, but at the level of her previous albums “Whip-Smart” and “whitechocolatespaceegg,” not to the gleaming level of “Liz Phair.”
It’s very personal and honest, with some very frank discussions about her divorce, the substance abuse of people she knows (and possibly herself) and coming out the other side.
From “Leap of Innocence,” the album’s lead-off track:
And my mistake was being already married.
I wanna make a leap of innocence to you.
I guess when you were living the high life,
It’s one of those things that just can’t last,
Kind of like love in California.
But I never had such a blast.
Her lyrics aren’t at the wacky level they once were, but they still are quite fun and interesting. She remains one of the best lyricists of her generation.
From “Got My Own Thing”:
Ooh boy, I’d love to help give enough rope to hang yourself,
And watch the silly things you do.
Ooh boy, I’d love to help give enough rope to hang yourself,
And I hope you swing it this way too.
Boy, I do.
From “Table for One”:
It’s morning and I pour myself coffee.
I drink it til the kitchen stops shaking.
I’m backing out of the driveway,
And into creation.
And the loving spirit that follows me,
Watching helplessly, will always forgive me.
Oh, I want to die alone,
With my sympathy beside me.
I want to bring down all those demons who drank with me,
Feasting bleed through me,
On my desperation.
For those who want it to be “Exile in Guyville, Part V,” it’ll likely be a disappointment, but it’s a great portrait of where she is now, at 38, a divorced (and possibly re-married) mother who once was a college drop-out with a four-track recorder and a guitar.
Recommended for all fans of her previous work, save those who just want repeats of EIG (you know who you are). And an FYI for the women who are threatened by her sexual frankness (and you know who you are, too), there’s little of it this time around — the song “Can’t Get Out of What I’m Into” was banished to import versions and an iTunes “exclusive.”
Liz Phair was interviewed by the site with the most annoying name ever, E! Online. It’s apparently the only e- or i-site to not get sucked under the waves when the dotcom bubble burst.
It was just a small song with sad lyrics that we really seriously forgot about. Apparently, my producer had picked it back up and started working on it again once we stopped recording and turned it into the label. I got these calls from the label where they’re freaking out about this song, and I’m like, what are they talking about? What song? It was ‘Everything to Me.’ Because the lyrics were so sad, and because I wrote about my previous relationship, it was just so wild that would be the one people responded to the most. It was life-affirming that if you put meaning into something, people respond.
In other news, Somebody’s Miracle is on sale Tuesday. If you buy it from iTunes you can get the extra track, “Can’t Get Out of What I’m Into,” that’s “exclusively” available on the Japanese import version, but without paying Amazon 30-something bucks for it.
A review of the album is coming. I want to listen to it a few more times first. I like it, though. I like it a lot. It may be my second-favorite Liz album after whitechocolatespaceegg. It’s mostly just lacking the great wordplay I enjoyed so much on that album.
Sam Raimi and company have been maniacal about secrecy about the villains in the next Spider-Man movie, but it sounds like Kirsten Dunst, who plays Mary Jane Watson, may have just let the cat out of the bag:
“We have really great people though as the villains in this film, Thomas Haden Church and Topher Grace — Venom and Sandman,” says Kirsten Dunst while promoting her film “Elizabethtown.”
“Maybe I wasn’t supposed to say that,” she says, checking with her rep, who assures her the information has already been released.
The “Interview with a Vampire” actress is a little shaky on the information at first, saying that Church would play Venom and Grace would take on Sandman, before reversing her claim when a journalist expresses disbelief. “It’s the other way around. You’re right,” she concedes.
Skinny little Topher seems a strange choice for Venom, unless they’re doing him with CGI for the most part, which would make sense.
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