There’s a group sport aspect to piling on a movie, a mob mentality thing. It’s hard to always know why one movie is tagged as “it,” but Elizabethtown was. (I’ve heard some critics say it was because of a bad longer cut at the Toronto Film Festival, where all the critics saw it, and then never bothered to see the final cut, and just ran with the review of the — announced as such — unfinished product.)
The truth is, this isn’t a bad movie. It’s not, say, Con Air or Deep Blue Sea or Instinct. But it’s also not a great movie, the kind that Cameron Crowe is capable of, like Almost Famous or Singles. (Or even Jerry “Show me the money!” Maguire.)
It features, like all of Crowe’s movies, sharp dialogue (although Crowe may be a touch too in love with it here), quirky characters, some clever bits (Claire’s road trip map is simply awesome) and, as always, amazing, wonderful, terrific music.
Unfortunately, this time, the whole is equal to a touch less than the sum of its parts. Orlando Bloom is OK. Susan Sarandon is great, but seems to have dropped in from a different movie. Kirsten Dunst is alternately wonderful and exasperating.
Elizabethtown is probably one more severe edit away from being a great, tight, touching movie, the kind Crowe is eminently capable of.
But this DVD isn’t quite it.
A recommended rental for fans of Crowe or Dunst, and stalker-level fans of Bloom.
At least, that’s what Wired says:
According to recent research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, I’ve only a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any e-mail message. The study also shows that people think they’ve correctly interpreted the tone of e-mails they receive 90 percent of the time.
“That’s how flame wars get started,” says psychologist Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago, who conducted the research with Justin Kruger of New York University. “People in our study were convinced they’ve accurately understood the tone of an e-mail message when in fact their odds are no better than chance,” says Epley.
The researchers took 30 pairs of undergraduate students and gave each one a list of 20 statements about topics like campus food or the weather. Assuming either a serious or sarcastic tone, one member of each pair e-mailed the statements to his or her partner. The partners then guessed the intended tone and indicated how confident they were in their answers.
Those who sent the messages predicted that nearly 80 percent of the time their partners would correctly interpret the tone. In fact the recipients got it right just over 50 percent of the time.
“People often think the tone or emotion in their messages is obvious because they ‘hear’ the tone they intend in their head as they write,” Epley explains.
At the same time, those reading messages unconsciously interpret them based on their current mood, stereotypes and expectations. Despite this, the research subjects thought they accurately interpreted the messages nine out of 10 times.
Given how many stupid fights I’ve seen over e-mail and on message boards, I’m surprised this percentage isn’t even worse.
Reprinted from a message board post. Author: me.
For those just watching with this season, do yourself a favor and rent the [previous] seasons ASAP. The money train storyline is especially great, although it’s the least-involved with the current stuff. (Seasons one and four, on the other hand, directly lead into the current chaos.)
I think [a] comparison with Tony Soprano is a good one. Tony is, without reservation, a guy in an ugly business, doing ugly, evil things. But he’s also a man who loves his family (although not perfectly, or even close to it) and his friends. We see him in his own context, so while we appreciate that he’s a villain — a point brought home several times a season, when we see him commit murder or even worse — we also root for him to succeed in his environment, where he’s hardly the biggest villain in town. The series will almost certainly end with the FBI busting him for good, and that’ll be apt, but until then, it’s exciting to see how close they can come without him getting busted. (I watch it on DVD and don’t have HBO, so no idea what’s going on in the current run.)
Det. Vic Mackey is even more interesting, especially since we tend to know a lot more about this fictionalized version of LA’s Rampart Division and its corrupt anti-gang task forces [than we do the New Jersey organized crime scene]. Unlike Tony, Vic doesn’t think of himself as a bad guy. He’s a “good guy” doing “what needs to be done,” either to beat the really bad guys (which he does), to mitigate the unwinnable crime problems (which he does) … or to compensate him and his men for what they perceive to be an underpaid and thankless position.
And really, for the most part, that last one is the only thing most viewers tend to really take issue with. It’s one thing to maneuver gang politics so that a major boss goes to prison and the new #1 is someone he has more control over (and drugs are diverted away from schools and open gang warfare is kept to a minimum), it’s another to see Shane extorting oral sex from prostitutes.
Since Vic’s successes, unlike Tony’s, are based on his wit and charm, and not the army of goombas he can bring to bear on a problem, it’s exciting to watch him work, especially in the face of ever-increasing odds. Because — for those who came in late — the higher-ups KNOW that Vic’s dirty. He was best buddies with an assistant chief for years until that character was eventually caught with his hand in the cookie jar. In that role, Vic did a lot of the brass’ dirty work and when he says he now feels like this is a political witch hunt, he’s not entirely wrong. Sure, he deserves to go to jail, but those who turned him loose and turned a blind eye to what he was doing will go free. Vic and Shane were able to kill Terry because they had been tipped off by others in law enforcement.
He is not the only dirty cop in Los Angeles, and he’s arguably not even the dirtiest on the show. (See last season for what Shane unleashed looks like.) Without Vic, Lemonhead probably wouldn’t be dirty, but without Vic, Shane would be one of the biggest criminals in LA, and he’d be hiding behind a badge. As it is, he’s channeling these guys (along with Ronnie, who I always feel sorry for, since he gets so little plot time) towards what is arguably the greater good … most of the time.
So yeah, people root for Vic. They also rooted for Captain Monica Rawlings when she was going after him and just like a lot of us rooted for Terry in the pilot.
I suspect this series will end with Vic eating a bullet and taking the blame for the crimes of the Strike Team and, knowing Vic, leaving [police captain turned city councilman] Acaveda holding the bag, one way or the other.
Villain- and anti-hero-centered series aren’t for everyone. The Shield doesn’t get an M rating just for the occasional bare butt.
I’m not sure what happened in the creation of The Legend of Zorro. There are some good elements lost in the mess, but they’re crushed under layer upon layer of other stuff, that was seemingly added by an endless parade of Hollywood executives.
Zorro is still a great, enduring icon, probably today moreso than ever. But when the filmmakers make a Zorro movie that isn’t about a charismatic swashbuckler, but instead seems to center on explosions, a weird proto-socialism and divorce (in 19th century California, no less), you know the heart of the film has gotten lost. Oh, and there’s some truly awful “cute kid” and “cute animal” bits.
Skip this one and watch the original a second time.
I don’t think a lot of people noticed this story on the Daily Press Web site this week or, if they did, grasped its importance. Maybe I’m wrong. But it is important, and (hopefully) points the way towards an exciting new era for the Daily Press, Hesperia Star, Desert Dispatch and other papers in our little corner of the Freedom Communications empire:
HESPERIA — One motorist was killed and another seriously injured early Wednesday morning in a crash that shut down all traffic on Main Street near Topaz for at least two hours.
An eastbound motorist apparently strayed onto the right curb, then overcorrected and veered to the left across all lanes before crashing into a westbound green Honda.
The motorist in the green Honda was killed, while the driver of the other car was airlifted to an area trauma center.
Other than not having a byline, pretty standard stuff for the Daily Press site, perhaps. Or perhaps not:
For more on the story, see Thursday’s Daily Press.
That line at the bottom referencing the full story the next day tells it all: This was news that was being published on the site between print editions and that would not, in this form, ever appear on paper.
Once upon a time, newspapers could afford to create “extra” editions, to let everyone know when major breaking news had occured. The economics of that practice, along with broadcast media that could do it faster and less expensively, killed it off pretty well. I’ve never been at a paper that printed an extra edition while I was there, although a few had in the past.
The Internet can change that.
So often invoked as the scary boogeyman by the old guard in the newspaper industry, the Internet is a printing press essentially without cost. Creating a new Web page for readers to view doesn’t cost measurably much more than having them read the page that you created several hours ago. And with that epiphany in hand, the industry can leverage newsgathering — particularly local newsgathering — that the broadcasting companies cannot, with a credibility that few bloggers/citizen journalists currently have. The biggest papers — the ones with more than three people on their New Media staffs — are already dipping their toes in this water, although mostly just with Associated Press feeds.
It was a small step. The Daily Press site is still static pages that have to be manually updated (hand-coded) to make a change or to add a story. Kate Rosenberg, or whoever wrote that initial breaking news piece, couldn’t just pull up a browser window on her computer in the newsroom and add the story, which an editor could then approve and send to the site.
But it’s the first step on a journey that could lead to some very exciting places. In 50 years, I don’t believe that anyone will differentiate between a print news company, a television news company or a radio news company. We will all be producing text, video and audio, which our readers will use as they wish. All the end-user wants is timely, accurate and convenient news. There’s no point in waiting 50 years for us to get there. So it’s exciting to begin that journey, no matter how large the step.
More steps to follow. Soon.
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