A loud, unstoppable, mechanical behemoth only dumb, slow-witted audiences will embrace

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen NO STARS
PG-13, 150m., 2009

Cast & Credits: Shia LaBeouf (Sam Witwicky), Megan Fox (Mikaela Banes), Josh Duhamel (Major Lennox), Tyrese Gibson (USAF Master Sergeant Epps), John Turturro (Agent Simmons), Ramon Rodriguez (Leo Spitz), Kevin Dunn (Ron Witwicky), Julie White (Judy Witwicky), Isabel Lucas (Alice). Written by Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci, and Alex Kurtzman. Directed by Michael Bay.

I will not be surprised if Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen goes down as the number one worst reviewed film of 2009. The film deserves the honor, so much so that I actually hope it gets nominated for several Golden Raspberry Awards at next year’s Razzies and wins.

The film is critic proof and wasn’t made for movie critics. The picture was made for dumb, slow-witted audiences who have no sense of adventure and imagination, and for kids whose idea of adventure is to watch a lot of things get blown up.

For 150 minutes, I sat there waiting for something interesting, if not exciting to happen, and I got nothing. Such a testament will not sit well with those who saw Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen opening weekend bringing in over $200 million to date who will all argue and tell me a lot happened over those grueling two and a half hours seeing a bunch of good and bad robots fight like a couple of slow moving overweight sumo wrestlers. In the middle of it all are plenty of sound and visual effects loud enough there was no way I could possibly get in a twenty minute nap.

Like 2007’s box office hit, Transformers, once again I had a hard time figuring out which robots were good and evil. The only thing I could discern is that the good robots (all right kiddies-I’ll call them by their politically correct names because you are, after all, the ones who play with these things-Autobots) lead by Optimus Prime have bright colors (blue, red, yellow, purple, and green) with eyes that are the equivalent of blue light bulbs. The bad robots, called the Decepticons, are all grey with red lights for eyes.

The Autobots disguise themselves as various sports cars and 18-wheelers. The Decepticons arrive on Earth as giant meteors smashing into and sinking aircraft carriers and submarines before turning into mechanical prehistoric four legged monsters or fighter jets.

When it comes to the cuteness factor, an Autobot named “Bumblebee” who disguises himself as a yellow Camaro and friend to Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeouf) provides the film’s humor using quotes from movies and playing clips of songs as a means of communication.. The thing even has feelings. In an early scene when Sam tells Bumblebee he won’t be taking him to college, the Autobot spews out what I assume is green anti-freeze for tears.

Then there are a couple of jive-talking robots named Skids and Mudflap disguised as a couple of red and green Chevy compact hatchbacks who bicker and fight with each other and admit they don’t know how to read.

If there is one thing positive I can say about the film’s predecessor is that I don’t recall Transformers being as vulgar when it comes to foul language and sexual innuendos. When there is no chaos and mayhem going on, there are scenes of bathroom humor that take place at the Air and Space Museum, which got grins from everyone else in the audience but me. They did the same when John Turturro’s ousted government agent character drops his pants revealing a white thong. When Witwicky’s girlfriend Mikaela (Megan Fox) and his college roommate (Ramon Rodriguez) get transported to Egypt where the final battle between the Decepticons and Autobots takes place, we see Mikaela lying face down on the roommate’s private parts.

This brings me to the subject of the entire cast itself, all of whom are reduced to nothing more than talking props. Their jobs are simple. LeBeouf’s parents (Kevin Dunn and Julie White) are required to run for their lives when the robots start fighting. The armed forces, led by Josh Duhamel of NBC’s Las Vegas (2003-2008), are required to offer cover for the Autobots. LeBeouf’s Witwicky is required to do a lot of running for his life and trying to figure out why the Decepticons want what is inside his brain; some knowledge about alien symbols.

Finally Megan Fox’s job is to offer drooling males, and females and young kiddies who have yet to be told by their parents about the birds and the bees, sexy shots of her in tight jeans shorts and boots, as she paints a motorcycle. She is the film’s offering of soft-core pornographic eye candy minus the nudity; a slice of feminine cheesecake to go with that hefty dish of expensive visual effects.

Fox gets every opportunity to show off her feminine sexuality at one point dressed in a leather outfit, in which she strips down to an above the knee dress and some white pumps, and show off a dominatrix side treating a little Transformer like its her pet dog yanking it on a chain who instead of using a whip, she threatens to put the robot’s other electronic eye out with a blow torch. When the little Transformer develops an attachment to her, it starts humping her leg.

As I browse over the past few paragraphs of this review, I have noticed I forgot to tell you about the plot. Well, that’s because there isn’t much of one, at least not one I can make sense of anyway. I know the Decepticons want revenge and want what’s inside of LeBeouf’s brain to use his knowledge to take over the world. I know the Autobots led by Optimus Prime need to stop them, which takes the cast to the pyramids of Egypt where the final battle takes place.

I have no idea what it is the Decepticons are so pissed off about. I don’t know why in order to win a battle against a Decepticon the Autobot must be a “Prime.” I can only assume such questions are answered in the animated television series from decades ago I never watched or the short lived comic book series from Marvel I never read. I have never played with, much less owned a toy Transformer in my life. I don’t even buy the Star Wars Transformers and I still, to a certain extent, collect Star Wars toys.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a sad testament of how dumbed down audiences have gotten today. Audiences apparently don’t want a movie full of engaging characters or a good story like Star Trek (2009), for example, which exhibited a sense of adventure, even if the space battles felt as though the filmmakers were channeling the Star Wars movies.

The film is a true waste of celluloid junk movie making and deserves a rating far lower than the NO STARS rating I have given it. How I wish there was a lower rating I can give this movie the way my seventh grade teacher thought up a new letter grade to give failing students that was lower than an F called an F+ or F-. Up until today, I never thought it was possible for director Michael Bay and producer Jerry Bruckheimer to score making a movie as bad as their previous collaboration, Bad Boys II (2003), which sadly went on to gross $140 million.

I now stand corrected.

©6/29/09

Recalling the Michael Jackson of the 1980s before the curtain came crashing down

Upon hearing the death of Pop star Michael Jackson June 25, 2009 at age 50 of cardiac arrest, brought about not surprisingly by a combination of perscription drugs the singer was likely addicted to, I did not do an imitation of his famous moonwalk dance as fans did.

I did not go out the next day like countless fans to spend hundreds on Michael Jackson cds, magazines, and anything else they could get their hands on.

If I shed any tears for the singer, which will remain my secret and mine alone, I would have done it in the heat of the moment; the result of reading all the coverage on a variety of news websites that night, which almost completely overshadowed the death of actress Farrah Fawcett who had passed away hours earlier at age 62 from cancer.

What I did do after hearing that the King of Pop was gone, I began recalling several of Jackson’s hits from the early 1980s l enjoyed hearing like “Beat It” and “Thriller.” The one tune I could not get out of my head that day was “Billie Jean.”

Then there was the 1983 music video “Say, Say, Say,” I watched on www.youtube.com where Jackson collaborated with ex-Beatle Paul McCartney. The two played a couple of conmen named Mac and Jack who sell a magic potion “guaranteed to give you the strength of a raging bull.”

It was over twenty years since I last heard that song and it was a joy to see and listen to it again.

There is a certain kind of nostalgia that came to mind recalling those songs. That nostalgia was the ushering in of VHS video recorders and the arrival of pay cable television. Living in Chicago at the time and unlike most of my friends whose parents either had cable or owned a VCR, or both, we never got a video recorder until my grandparents bought us one for Christmas 1983, along with our first VHS owned movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), which back then cost $50.

Whereas everyone I knew got to see Jackson’s 14-minute dancing zombie video, Thriller, on MTV three weeks before Christmas in 1983, I didn’t get to see it until the summer of 84’ when it came out on video cassette. Honestly, my only interest in seeing it was not so much Jackson as it was seeing the singer turn into the undead and start dancing alongside several other rotting corpses.

Whereas I thought the song’s best selling point was actor Vincent Price’s ghoulish monologue near the end, the music video’s selling points were that it was directed by John Landis, who helmed Animal House (1978) and The Blues Brothers (1980) while the visual effects were handled by Oscar winning special makeup artist Rick Baker (An American Werewolf In London-1980).

The fact I had seen George Romero’s 1978 horror sequel, Dawn of the Dead, a couple weeks earlier, however, increased my interest. The film was about four survivors who take refuge in a shopping mall from flesh eating zombies who have taken over the world and I assumed Jackson’s Thriller would have almost the same premise but set to music.

I admit, perhaps shamefully, that I actually owned one of Jackson’s greatest hits CD and sometimes had it playing in the car as I made my hour long drives to and from work at my former IT job.

As the pop star’s private life and eccentricities got stranger and more out of control over the years, however, I had a hard time comparing this talented dancer and singer from Gary, Indiana whose music videos from the 80s I saw on MTV (when we finally got cable) and heard on the radio with the person who in recent years was being accused of child molestation charges. By the time those allegations hit, whether he was guilty or not, or paid off his accusers to buy their silence, I decided that was it. I said to myself, “Jackson had crossed the line”, and I wasn’t going to listen to songs that were written by someone who might possibly be a pedophile.

Yet still, there is no arguing that the guy was not talented, much like John Belushi, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Heath Ledger, Jim Morrison, Marilyn Monroe, and Elvis Presley before him who died giving in to the demons of illegal or prescription drug use.

The day after Jackson passed away, the pop star’s ex-wife, Lisa Marie Presley, who was married to the singer from May 1994 to January 1996, wrote in her online blog that the King of Pop told her that his death would echo that of her father, Elvis Presley, who died at the age of 42 on August 16,1977. Presley’s official cause of death was cardiac arrhythmia and was supposedly attributed to prescription medications but never proved because the autopsy report was sealed.

"I promptly tried to deter (Michael) from the idea, at which point he just shrugged his shoulders and nodded almost matter of fact as if to let me know, he knew what he knew and that was kind of that,” Presley wrote on her blog. "The hardest decision I have ever had to make, which was to walk away and let his fate have him, even though I desperately loved him and tried to stop or reverse it somehow."

Perhaps the saddest revelation on whether Jackson, who was about to kick off a comeback tour of 50 shows in London in July ironically titled “This Is It”, was really happy with his success came from the singer himself when friend Uri Geller asked him if he is lonely.

The King of Pop’s response was “Uri Geller, I am a very lonely man.”

If there is any lesson to be learned here other than realizing how dangerous it is to rely on prescription medications is the notion that money doesn’t buy happiness.

My feelings about Michael Jackson are the same as my feelings for Elvis Presley. Sure I liked some of their music but I was never a fan of neither. Yet, I own Elv1s 30 #1 Hits on compact disc and have several of The King of Rock n’Roll’s songs on my ipod.

I suppose listening to that CD is how I prefer to remember Presley. Not as that bloated, overweight, over worked, sweaty picture I saw of him in author Albert Goldman’s 1981 unflattering biography of the singer called Elvis, or watching him in a scene from the 81’ documentary, This Is Elvis, in which he can’t remember the lyrics to “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”

I don’t know if I will ever download and listen to any of Jackson’s early number one hits again.

I will say that for a brief moment on June 25, I preferred to remember the Michael Jackson of the early 1980s over the Michael Jackson we had seen in recent years whose scandalous private life became the subject of jokes for late night talk show hosts and endless fodder for the tabloids, and who now, rest assured even in death, is not going to get a moment’s peace.

©6/27/09

Fulfilling a dying friend's request...Star Wars style

Fanboys ««½
PG-13, 90m., 2008

Cast & Credits: Sam Huntington (Eric), Chris Marquette (Linus), Dan Fogler (Hutch), Jay Baruchel (Windows), Kristen Bell (Zoe), David Denman (Chaz), Christopher McDonald (Big Chuck), Seth Rogen (Admiral Seasholtz/Alien/Roach), Danny Trejo (The Chief), Ethan Suplee (Harry Knowles), Billy Dee Williams (Judge Reinhold), William Shatner (Himself), Carrie Fisher (Doctor), Kevin Smith (Himself), Jason Mewes (Himself), Ray Park (THX Security Guard #2). Screenplay by Ernest Cline and Adam F. Goldberg based on a story by Ernest Cline and Dan Pulick. Directed by Kyle Newman.

Fanboys is a humorous but often times, unnecessarily raunchy look at how die-hard fans of the now classic Star Wars trilogy (Star Wars-1977, The Empire Strikes Back 1980, Return of the Jedi-1983) excitedly prepared themselves for the new prequel, Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace, the year before its premiere May 19, 1999.

To be more precise, the story focuses on a group of childhood buddies, Eric (Sam Huntington), Hutch (Dan Fogler), Windows (Jay Baruchel), and Zoe (Kristen Bell) who take their dying friend, Linus (Chris Marquette) on a cross country trip to George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch near Nicasio, California with plans to break in and steal a copy of Star Wars – Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

I have to admit given the amount of hype created when Lucas announced plans to return to Star Wars territory in the mid-1990s, I would not be surprised if, and I am not going to hesitate in saying this, some deranged fans did perhaps dream of breaking into Skywalker Ranch to get their hands on a bootleg copy of Episode I.

Such a story would have probably made headlines in the entertainment industry if it turned out some devoted fans acomplished such a feat. The only reason as to why they did it was to fulfill a dying friend and fan’s wish to see a long awaited film that he knows he would not be around to see with everyone else a year later. On that aspect, George Lucas could be like The Wizard of Oz, granting that dying fan’s final wish. I don’t think he would have said no much less prosecute the group for trespassing once he had heard the reason. The drive-by media probably would not have been too kind.

I can understand the fan’s excitement back then given that how much of a fan I was of the original trilogy when I was in grade school. When Kenner, now known as Hasbro, announced in 1996 that they were returning to producing Star Wars figures and toys, I saw it as a chance to relive my youth again, given that I no longer owned any of the original figures and toys. I was not so much excited that Lucas would finally get to telling the background story of how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader as I was being given the opportunity to get my hands on all those original trilogy toys I missed since Kenner stopped making them in the mid-1980s.

Even I couldn’t keep myself from escaping the hype in May 1999. It was like embracing “the Dark Side” of mass marketing. The week before Phantom Menace’s premiere, I stood in line for four hours at the Galaxy 9 theater in Garland, Texas along with everyone else waiting to buy advance tickets for myself and several co-workers for an early screening on May 19. I can’t recall if anyone was dressed up as any Star Wars characters but I can say that to my disappointment, I saw no women wearing Princess Leia’s slavegirl oufit from Return of the Jedi people can now buy for less than $100 to wear on Halloween, or to fulfill some male or female’s erotic private bedroom fantasies.

Fanboys is at its best when it parodies the gangs' dedication to Star Wars acting out Jedi-mind tricks and arguing about the characters from the original trilogy. When Linus (Marquette) argues with Eric (Huntington) how gross it was for Leia to passionately kiss Luke in The Empire Strikes Back, the other retorts back that Luke didn’t know Leia was his sister until Return of the Jedi. The most memorable argument is a discussion on how Harrison Ford has never made a bad movie in his career as they pass by a billboard sign advertising his film, Six Days, Seven Nights (1998), on their way to California. 

The most clever moments are not so much the cameos from former Star Wars vets Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams, and Ray Park but how the characters utter dialogue from the original trilogy that fits in with their current situation. When Eric unexpectedly shows up at a Halloween party in an early scene, Hutch jokingly utters the line Billy Dee Williams' Lando Calrissian said to Ford's Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back.

“You’ve got a lot of guts coming here, after what you pulled,” Hutch says.

What I wouldn't give to get the opportunity to use this line on an ex-friend of mine who moved out of state last year and didn't bother to leave me a forwarding address should he decide, for no reason, to pop back into my life. Moreover, I'm not so sure I'd be too friendly about it either.

The downside of Fanboys is it doesn’t quite achieve the emotional core I was looking for given that much of the story has to do with the dying friend's quest to see Episode I with all his friends before the public does.

I wonder if people who remember standing in line the summers of 77’, 80’ and 83’to see the original trilogy when the films were showing on less than 1,000 screens nationwide and waited in line to buy tickets to see Phantom Menace was like a nostalgic return back to yesteyear?

Such a notion may just be what Fanboys is all about as echoed by Linus near the end to Eric who he hadn’t kept in touch with for three years. Maybe it wasn’t about the chance to see Episode I before everyone else does, Linus says. The cross country trip was more about getting back together again as a group of buddies all of whom shared a common interest. Perhaps that was the point of waiting in line with so many others that day to get tickets for Episode I.

At least that’s the message I got from watching Fanboys. I have to say from 1996 to May 1999, collecting Star Wars merchandise was like a return back to yesteryear. Those years were, to quote a familiar line from the original trilogy, “Before the Dark Times” before learning that the prequels were not as good as the original trilogy.

Up until May 19, 1999, this was a happier time when not a single fan dared ask their friends the dreaded question about Episode I, “What if the movie sucks?”

©4/25/09

ER ends and so too perhaps are the days of memorable long running dramas on the major networks

“So that’s it?” said the character Ernest Borgnine portrayed on the final episode of NBC’s ER which aired April 2. Like so many memorable guest stars that included Alan Alda, Ray Liotta, and Don Cheadle the medical drama featured over its 15-year-run, Borgnine played an elderly husband who stood vigil at his dying wife’s bedside asking Dr. Tony Gates (John Stamos) that question when she passed away.

The answer to that question, though, may not just apply to that character’s situation or the end of NBC’s long running medical drama where 16.2 million viewers tuned in for the finale, but an end to noteworthy shows the three big networks (NBC, ABC, CBS), ok, four when you include Fox, have to offer.

Sure viewers are still tuning into The Simpsons, and the never ending Law & Order and CSI franchises and Lost. I suppose when it comes to soap opera dramas, or should I say trashy soap opera silliness, viewers still have Desperate Housewives, Brothers & Sisters, and Grey’s Anatomy on ABC to look forward to.

When I say “noteworthy dramas”, however, I am talking about my own personal favorite long running shows like Chicago Hope, Homicide: Life On the Street, NYPD Blue, St. Elsewhere and, though I stopped watching years ago as the entire original cast was replaced by newcomers, ER.

Yes I admit when mentioning these shows, I claim personal bias thanks in part to the characters I enjoyed watching who went through a variety of personal problems while on the job. There is no denying they weren’t memorable. I found, for example, television’s best police detectives were the fiery volcanic mountains of anger, negativity, and perfectionism Andre Braugher and Dennis Franz displayed in Homicide: Life On the Street (1993-1999) and NYPD Blue (1993-2005).

As for St. Elsewhere (1982-1988) and Chicago Hope (1994-2000), the brilliant, ego driven, self absorbed surgeons William Daniels and Mandy Patinkin played on the series were my favorite characters. I admit I have a fond weakness for TV characters who are complete assholes and make other people’s lives in the workplace miserable. They are the villains who made some of these shows worth watching. Such was the reason why I couldn’t get enough of Paul McCrane’s Dr. Robert “Rocket” Romano on ER. When a helicopter crashed on him thus ending the life of his character in the series’ 10th season, I am certain I was the only one in mourning.

These programs offered the dramatic equivalent of what viewers are watching today on the cable networks. Since the late 90s, their favorite characters have been a mobster going through a midlife crisis and wonder if he really got whacked in the final episode in The Sopranos (1999-2007), women obsessed with sex, fashion, and high heels in Sex and the City (1998-2004), and whether or not the remains of the human race will finally reach Earth and evade the cyborg Cylons forever in the reincarnated Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009).

Today’s popular dramas are the ones on cable where viewers are interested in are the high stakes deals of an immoral litigator played by Glenn Close in Damages, the daily struggles of a firefighter (Dennis Leary) in Rescue Me on FX, and the life of a chemistry teacher turned criminal in Breaking Bad on AMCtv. Vampires are the latest characters hungry for warm flesh as opposed to mobsters in True Blood on HBO. Even the animated half hour series, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, has been a ratings success for The Cartoon Network.

Such is the kind of material the major networks used to air and are now ignoring at an alarming pace. Why else do you think the high school sports drama, Friday Night Lights, almost got axed by NBC? Thanks to DirecTV, the show was saved and has recently been renewed for two more seasons on its satellite network before airing on the peacock. The trouble is it is only 13 episodes per season versus the usual twenty plus.

With ER gone, so too is the next big long running drama to look forward to every week on network television.

You got to go to cable to find that where FX, AMCtv, Sci-Fi, and HBO reign supreme over the kinds of programming Fox, ABC, CBS, and NBC used to offer.

©4/5/09

First Lady Michelle Obama "trash"? Tammy Bruce says yes-I say no

I admit the comment uttered by radio talk show host Tammy Bruce, subbing for Laura Ingram March 23 on WBAP sounded humorous, if not a little shocking, when she referred to First Lady Michelle Obama as “trash in the White House.”

What I found humorous was when Bruce compared Michelle Obama’s comments to a grade school class about how her classmates made fun of her in grade school for wanting to get good grades and talking like a “white girl” comparing her with the nitrus oxide kid seen on www.youtube.com who was drugged out after visiting the dentist crying, “Is this going to be forever?”

“No, it’s not going to be forever, Nitrus Oxide kid,” Bruce mockingly said. “It’s not.”

This was followed by Bruce calling the First Lady, “You know what we've got? We've got trash in the White House. Trash is a thing that is color blind, it can cross all eco-socionomic kind of categories, you can work on Wall Street or work at the Wal-Mart. Trash are people who use other people to get things, who patronize others, who consider you bitter and clingy.”

I found all this funny, at first that is. Reading over Bruce’s comments and then listening to Michelle Obama’s comments to the grade school kids a couple more times the next night when the liberal drive-by media picked up on it, I started asking myself what is the point Bruce is trying to make? I found it to be the racist equivalent of shock jock Don Imus’ comments back in 2007 when he referred to members of the Rutgers University women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos.”

The comment was not funny but insulting and uncalled for.

After reading over Bruce’s comment, I thought to myself, “This doesn’t describe Michelle Obama.” If anyone comes to mind who is "trash", it’s Bernard Madoff, the disgraced financier currently sitting in jail awaiting a 150-year prison sentence this June in a 20-year Ponzi scheme which supposedly earned him up to $65 billion.

Madoff is trash. But Michelle Obama? As much as it pains me to fight for the side of a liberal, I have to say no, she is not. I admit I don’t care the least for this president and I take great pride in what President Obama referred to in his election victory speech last November at being called “those Americans” whose support he has yet to earn. He didn’t win my vote and like Rush Limbaugh, I want this president to fail. I can offer a number of reasons why I think what President Obama is doing is bad for the country versus the disgrace of calling the First Lady “Trash in the White House.”

I really have no idea what Bruce, who on her website, www.tammybruce.com describes herself in the very first line of her biography as “an openly gay, pro-choice, gun owning, pro-death penalty, voted-for-President Bush authentic feminist” is trying to say.

Listening to a clip Bruce played of Michelle Obama speaking to the grade school class, I fail to see where Bruce is coming from.

“Getting good grades was always important to me and it wasn’t because my parents were hounding me or that they had the expectation,” Michelle Obama said. “It was something that I wanted for myself. I wanted an A and I didn’t care whether it was cool 'cause I remember there were kids around my neighborhood who would say, “Ohhh, you talk funny. You talk like a white girl." I heard that growing up my whole life. I was like, I don’t even know what that means but you know what, I am still getting my A.”

Ok. So what’s wrong with that? I may be wrong in what the First Lady was telling those grade school kids but all she is saying is she wasn’t going to allow the criticisms of fellow students who say she talks like "a white girl" and keeping that from getting straight A's.

Why should Michelle Obama lower her own expectations because of what other people think of her or how she talks? Why should anyone for that matter?

Tammy Bruce is like MSNBC host, Rick Santelli, whose on air rant in February about responsible home owners taking up the slack for irresponsible ones who don’t pay their mortgages when it comes to President Obama's stimulus package got national attention. I haven’t heard anything controversial from Santelli since. I suspect I won’t hear anything controversial from Bruce any time soon either. Like Santelli, I never heard of Tammy Bruce until now.

I don’t agree with her comment, but at least she has the balls to say what’s on her mind, even if it doesn’t make sense.

Thankfully though, I heard no other conservative commentators discuss Bruce’s comments on their shows in the days following. They were all too busy interviewing and promoting talk show host’s Mark R. Levin’s new book, Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto, which has been selling out at bookstores since its release March 24. I still haven’t been able to get a copy.

I suspect Levin’s new book will offer far more constructive arguments about revitalizing the conservative movement versus a female conservative pro-gay talk show host who calls the First Lady “trash in the White House.”

At least I have heard of Mark Levin.

©4/5/09

Remembering Natasha Richardson: (1963-2009): devoted wife and mother first- a stage and screen actress second

I didn’t want to believe the story on the New York Post’s website the night of March 17, 2009 when they reported that Tony award winning actress and film star, Natasha Richardson, 45, was brain dead and was on life support at New York’s Lenox Hill Hospital; the result of a brain injury she sustained during a skiing accident while on vacation with family the day before in Quebec.

I had a couple good reasons not to trust the story in the Post.

For starters, the newspaper was the only media outlet to report the tragedy when no one else at the time had confirmation.

The other reason why I refused to accept what eventually became the truth was not only because of how unexpectedly sudden the tragedy had happened. It was because I never saw Natasha Richardson as a movie star, at least not in the sense that she made any noteworthy blockbusters or was always on the radar of the tabloid entertainment press stirring up senseless controversy.

Looking over Richardson’s filmography, I had only seen her in one movie, the little seen World War II drama and box office failure, Fat Man and Little Boy (1989), which starred Paul Newman and Dwight Schulz; the star of NBC’s The A-Team (1983-1987).

The role was a minor one for the Tony award winning actress who was 25 at the time in which she played the doomed mistress of Schulz’s J. Robert Oppenheimer; the architect behind the building of the atomic bombs eventually dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima that brought about the end of World War II in 1945.

Looking over her celebrity photos on the internet sometimes posing with her husband/actor Liam Neeson (the two starred together in the 1994 film, Nell, and married soon after), I saw Richardson more as a beautiful, elegant, happy, vibrant working mother of two boys who not only donated time to such notable charities as the American Foundation for AIDS Research (her father director Tony Richardson died in 1991 from the disease), but also put her family and kids first before work.

“I want my sons to be my top priority,” Richardson was once quoted saying in People.

Those celebrity photos as well as her work on the stage and screen are now images frozen in time.

What makes her death most upsetting is how it could have been avoided to begin with. The first reports said the actress was reportedly talking and joking saying she felt fine after taking a fall during a skiing lesson and refused medical treatment when paramedics were called in the first time. The situation, however, grew worse within the hour when she started having headaches. Suddenly, the idea of dying from what didn’t seem like a nasty fall but what is now, according to the autopsy done by the New York medical examiner, the result of injuries caused by a blunt impact to the head sounds too much like a cruel unfunny joke.

My first reaction upon hearing her life threatening injury, given how people in this country want cheap nationalized health care the way Canada and other countries do is I have to wonder if her skiing accident had happened here in the states, would she have stood a chance.

In a USA Today article, Tarek Razek, director of trauma services for the McGill University Health Centre which represents six of Montreal’s hospitals in Quebec, was quoted saying the drive from the Mont Tremblant ski resort where Richardson was staying at is two-and-a-half hours from the nearest hospital.

“It’s impossible for me to comment specifically about her case, but what I could say is…driving to Mon Tremblant from the city (Montreal) is a two and a half hour trip, and the closest trauma center is in the city,” Rezak said. “Our system isn’t set up for traumas and doesn’t match what’s available in other Canadian cities, let alone the States…and many other developed countries.”

Centre Hospitalier Laurentien in Ste-Agathe, the first treatment center Richardson was taken to doesn’t specialize in head traumas, Rezak said. Moreover, Quebec has no medical helicopter system unlike the United States.

“Not being airlifted directly to a trauma center could have cost Richardson crucial moments,” Razek said. “A helicopter is obviously the fastest way to get from Point A to Point B.”

Then there is the question, despite my refusing to believe that helmets prevent brain injuries much the way I don’t believe seat belts in cars save lives in auto accidents, why wearing a helmet has never been made a mandatory requirement whether you are a beginner or an experienced skier.

According to an unnamed staff member at Mont Tremblant, Richardson was offered a protective helmet during her ski lesson but declined.

“We are heartbroken that we didn’t do more to persuade her to wear one. A helmet would have cost her just ten dollars (Canadian),” the unnamed staff member told the British newspaper, The Sun. “Every skier is encouraged to wear a helmet, especially beginners like Natasha. But it is not legally enforced and they can always refuse.”

The issue of what could have been done to save her is probably not what is on the minds of Richardson’s prominent acting family of both the stage and screen who include her sister, Joely Richardson, and their mother, Oscar winning actress Vanessa Redgrave, right now. They are not mourning the loss of a star but a daughter, sister, and a beloved and devoted wife of two boys.

Their personal loss and ours is like a nightmare. You wake up only to find out there is still no happy ending. It is just so…heartbreaking.

©3/22/09

Rourke’s Best Actor loss causes right wing conspiracy theories to take flight

Something was eating away at my insides the minute I learned that Sean Penn, and not Mickey Rourke, had won Best Actor at the 81st Annual Academy Awards Feb. 22 for his performance as the late political gay activist Harvey Milk in the biopic, Milk.

I couldn’t put my finger on what it was that was troubling me. I suppose it could have been my stomach telling me it wanted to be fed.

Ok, that was part of it, but that wasn’t the main issue at the time. The first thought that came to mind upon hearing Penn’s name and given that the lead character he plays is homosexual, was didn’t the gay community and AIDS sufferers get their day in the sun already at the 1994 Oscars when Tom Hanks won for his performance in Philadelphia (1993) playing an AIDS stricken lawyer fired by a conservative law firm?

“Was that not enough,” I asked myself.

It was really irritating me that I couldn’t figure out why Rourke, whom I and most everyone else who has seen him in his tragic comeback role as Randy “The Ram” Robinson in The Wrestler, and whom most believed would win Best Actor, lost to Penn.

In an Entertainment Weekly readers’ poll taken the week after the ceremony, 46 percent say Rourke should have won over the 37 percent who were for Penn, while 26 percent say the biggest surprise of Oscar night was Penn winning.

I got my answers a day later when I came across bighollywood.breitbart.com, a conservative website that gives readers the right wing perspective on what liberal Tinsletown stands for. From there, the conspiracy theories flew and I cannot say they weren’t illogical.

“Hmmm….why did Mickey Rourke win Best Actor in every other award ceremony besides this one,” wrote Brett Joshpe on the site. “As I said, the Academy punished Mickey for his gratitude towards President Bush for keeping our country safe from Islamo-facist terrorism. Instead, it chose to award its biggest donkey, Sean Penn.” Another writer on the site named “Mr. Wrestling IV” wrote how he knew already there was no way Rourke would win the Oscar.

“I knew this was never going to happen, that the Academy would never vote for a guy who said he was “not one of those who blames Bush for everything,” and that they vote for Sean Penn because of his political stances, not in spite of them, as Penn likes to pretend,” Mr. Wrestling IV wrote.

Rourke, who, at one point, left acting to pursue a boxing career, has always been one to not shy away from his opinion, even if it means ticking off everyone in Hollywood.

“Actors should shut up about politics because they tend to be ill-informed finger-pointers who just cozy up to some flavor-of-the-month liberal, you know,” he once said.

I am not going to argue with him on that one, after all look at who we now have as president.

As early as 2006, Rourke defended Dubya for the war on terror.

"George is doing a hell of a job during very difficult times, more power to him. Screw all them people who don't like him," Rourke said.

He came to Dubya’s defense again during the former president’s remaining days in office in January this year.

"President Bush was in the wrong place at the wrong time, I don't know how anyone could have handled this situation," the actor said in an interview with GQ magazine on dealing with the 9/11 and terrorism. "I don't give a (expletive) who's in office, Bush or whoever, there is no simple solution to this problem. I'm not one of those who blames Bush for everything. This (expletive) between Christians and Muslims goes back to the Crusades, doesn't it. It's too easy to blame everything on one guy. These are unpredictable, dangerous times, and I don't think that anyone really knows quite what to do."

I would find it rather ironic, no, strike that. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the reason Rourke lost to Penn had more to do with his defense of “Dubya” than spending the last 20 years burning all his bridges with everyone in Hollywood.

I was really looking forward to Rourke’s acceptance speech on Oscar night if he had won, which most likely would have been filled with some colorful langauge that would have had ABC censors worried. I shed no emotion unlike everyone else in the audience who had tears in their eyes when the late Heath Ledger’s name was announced winning as expected, his best supporting actor nomination as The Joker in The Dark Knight posthumously.

I can’t say the same if Rourke had won and dedicated the gold statue to his 18-year-old pet Chihuahua, Loki, who had just recently passed away and who he credits for saving his life. I understand where Rourke is coming from, being a dog owner myself who is also caring for a sick pet with heart disease and was just told by my vet that my 12-year-old Lhasa Apso named “Mad” Max, has maybe six to eight months to live, give or take if the medications he is on work.

Instead of awarding an actor who had been through the depths of hell, much of it his own making contemplating suicide and going through a divorce among them, and made a comeback, “Hollyweird” not only chose to award an actor who had already won once, but at the same time, made it into a political issue when it came to California’s Proposition 8 and how the state restricted the definition of marriage to only opposite-sex couples and elimating same-sex couples’ right to marry.

To quote Sean Penn, thank you “you commie, homo-loving sons of guns.”

I am not going to argue that Penn didn’t deserve the award. If this had been a different year and both actors were not competing in the same category, I would have been all for Penn winning. By the same token, I am a little displeased that Milk has not been released in the Mesquite and Garland area theaters close to home and is only showing at art house theaters to where I got to drive 30 minutes out of the way just to see a two hour film. For all I know, perhaps Mesquite residents don’t want a movie about a gay activist playing in the same theater where Friday the 13th is showing.

My problem with Penn winning is, like Michael Moore’s acceptance speech for Bowling for Columbine (2002) bashing President Bush at the 2003 Oscars, instead of having the win be about awarding the performance or the movie, it was about the individual promoting their own cause and personal agenda.

“For those who saw the signs of hatred as our cars drove in tonight I think that it is a good time that for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect and anticipate their great shame and the shame in their grandchildren’s eyes as they continue that way of support,” Penn said. “We’ve got to have equal rights for everyone.”

Is it not bad enough that the Oscars are no longer about American films getting top recognition and that we have no Titanics, no Godfathers, no Star Wars, no Schindler’s Lists, to root for on Oscar night? Whatever happened to giving an Oscar to an actor or actress because of their performance? I thought Oscar loves comeback stories when it comes to out of sight stars returning to the spotlight with a critically praised performance?

As far as who the real winner was on Oscar night, there is only one and that is the actor who didn’t win.

I have always believed that awards are not everything. They may be accomplishments but they are material things at most. You don’t take that stuff with you to the grave when you die, you know.

Rourke summed it up best to Barbara Walters about what winning the Oscar would mean if he won.

“Personally, It would mean a great deal to me,” he said. “It would be a tremendous honor. It would sum up a whole comeback thing I guess in a material kind of way. But in the big picture, you can’t eat it, you can’t (expletive) it, and it won’t get me into Heaven.”

Thank you, Mickey Rourke!

©3/2/09