Today’s movie: Gangster No. 1

Continuing the recent theme of quirky British gangster movies and even plain old gangster movies, we saw the new Malcom McDowell/Paul Bettany flick Gangster No. 1 (the official site pissed me off some with a Flash intro that can’t be skipped passed and other than some clips from the cutting room floor is a surprisingly useless website). One of the real positives for this film is that all the dialog, for a change, is understandable to American ears.

The action is split between 1968/9 and 1999. The film opens in the latter period with Malcom McDowell surrounded by a table of associates in a very fancy ballroom with a boxing match going on in the center. The men are chatting and laughing, reminiscing, when one of them mentions that another “golden oldie, Freddy Mays” is getting out of the joint after 30 years. McDowell gets up from the table, leaving his pals wondering why, and leaves. We flash back to the ’60s and hear McDowell’s voiceover tells us that we’re seeing the younger him (Paul Bethany) in a pool hall and he has been summoned to meet Mays for the first time.

Through the rest of the movie, even though the character (who is never given a name) is played by mostly Bettany, we have McDowell providing the voiceover. No doubt that Bethany does look like a young McDowell; he will be familiar to you as Crowe’s imaginary friend in A Beautiful Mind and Geoffrey Chaucer in A Knight’s Tale. Given that there are three other characters we see in both times, all played by the same actors using makeup, I don’t really understand why Paul Bettany doesn’t play our protagonist throughout. Nothing against McDowell but I don’t see that he does much that Bettany couldn’t.

Frankie Mays (David Thewlis) has established himself as an English crime lord (nicknamed The Butcher of Mayfair) and is quite good in the 1968/69 sequences but not much in the later scenes. Saffron Burrows is quite lovely, all legs, and big eyes, as the nightclub dancer who’s pushed into love at first site with Mays, much to the dismay of our protagonist.

Director Paul McGuigan is responsible for keeping us engaged. There are no real subplots here, just the two main lines of action and while he does go in for a little more of the red stuff than one might deem necessary (and why do we need to see the older gangster Tommy’s puke?), it’s all believable, all straightahead. The script is credited to a Johnny Ferguson but he has no other credits in IMDB and this makes me wonder if this is a pseudonym.

The climax actually comes in the next to last scene, a confrontation between McDowell and Thewlis, and, in this reviewer’s opinion, should have been the end; the last scene is unnecessary and really detracts from what’s come before. Overall this is a very bloody, violent film so don’t go if this makes you ralph.

Also, the film was released in the UK and elsewhere in 2000, one must wonder why we’re seeing it here only now.

Recommended but not for the quesy

Rich get richer dept.

Amazing tax avoidance scheme allowed by the IRS which, surprise, only benefits estates larger than $10 million: I.R.S. Loophole Allows Wealthy to Avoid Taxes. Buy expensive life insurance, claim you paid the lowest fee charged despite having paid much more (the premium would be considered a gift to the heirs), then avoid even the gift tax by using a trust. Brilliant move by a creative insurance agent and lawyer and ridiculous that the IRS would approve it–but they did, in 1996!

BlogWords

Some people have been making up special blog words lately, so I thought I’d share a few of my own:

  • bloggie chan – detective who uses his blog to solve mysteries

  • blogfinger – blogger plotting to take over the world

  • bloginator – special AI weblog using Blogger’s post to the past feature to save Mankind.

  • blogdiculous – a blogger getting out of control

Good things happen too

Just to be sure you readers understand this, I am a pretty happy guy and have been most of my life. This site may come across differently at times but that’s for the same reason that news shows feature stories about death, destruction, and criminals–happy stuff doesn’t give one much to write about. But I’m proud to say that I won Rob’s movieline of the week contest this week, and happy that I did. Of course I used Google to find the answer, I didn’t actually remember the Ah-nuld line. Still, a win is a win. And happiness is a good thing wherever you find it.

Bushinations

Krugman: The Private Interest. More on Bush’s refusal to admit mistake, in this case the plan to privatize Social Security even though we’ve learned since this came out in 1999 that the stock market can (*cough*) come down (*cough*). He quotes Houston Chronicle reporter R. G. Ratcliffe who wrote in 1998: “A pattern emerges: When a Bush is in power, Bush’s business associates benefit.”

Going wireless

With the Sweet One moving in here soon and me jonesing for some new tech toy, I splurged on some sort-of necessary equipment to set this house up for WiFi Compliant networking. Hello, 802.11b, goodbye Cat 5 cable! Linksys makes some extremely easy to set up and install equipment: BEFW11S4 – EtherFast® Wireless AP + Cable/DSL Router w/4-Port Switch and WPC11 – Instant Wireless Network Adapter. Her desktop PC will get a wired connection to the access point when it arrives.

Linksys makes the good stuff

No more need for the perfectly good Linksys PCMCIA Ethernet adapter and annoying dongle, so it gets X’ed out.

Update, 30 minutes later: The web is an amazing thing, as I am constantly reminded. Minutes after I published this entry in it’s original form an email from E. J. Fischer arrived; he’d seen my blog passing through Blogger.com’s Fresh Blogs listing. To get in that list, a blog needs to be one of the first 10 blogs published in any given minute (as determined by the clock on a particular Blogger server). Clicking through to my blog, what does EJ see but my entry about getting 802.11b set up here. EJ’s dad invented 802.11. EJ writes the Maelstrom Cognizance weblog.

Free Bruce?

If you thought Free Dimitry was a big cause celeb in the online world last year, wait for what might become an even bigger anti-DMCA campaign. Open source veteran and HP executive Bruce Perens plans a public demonstration of a modified DVD player that will make him a DMCA outlaw?

Replace me

Ev is advertising the position I previously filled for them: Pyra Labs – Jobs: Customer Support. You’ll be working with a great group of customers and good people at Pyra. Just remember, when things get tough, to repeat to yourself, with eyes closed and face turned towards the sky, this little mantra: “The customer support rep did not write Blogger. The customer support rep did not select, install, or configure the servers. The customer support rep did not make malicious changes to the customer’s template.”

Some old rockers…keep rocking

For example, Canadian power trio Rush. Their latest release, Vapors, is consistent with the body of work they’ve made over the last 28 years (Rush, 1974, and Fly By Night, 1975), rocks as hard as ever but doesn’t stagnate. Neil, Alex, and Geddy have always been techies and so it’s no surprise they have a pretty sophisticated website all done in Flash. Given that their days of huge album sales are over, the group is using the site to collaborate with fans–homemade videos, fan record reviews, and more–and not just minimal material related to a new release. When I clicked on the ’70s Photo Gallery, Closer to the Heart just started playing (and no annoying RealPlayer or WMP popping up either). One quible: Shoreline Amphitheater is in Mountain View, not San Francisco! [via Phil’s Own

Passages: Chaim Potok, 73

One of the great Jewish American writers of the pos-WWII era, Chaim Potok died today of brain cancer. Often compared to Herman Wouk, Potok focused more on the challenges of living as a religious Jew in American society while Wouk focused his stories more on Israel. Potok was perhaps best known as the author of The Chosen and My Name is Asher Lev. He was also an ordained rabbi, a university professor, and editor in chief of the Jewish Publication Society of America

The Original Superman is online

Not sure how long this scanned in copy (ACTION COMICS NO. 1) will be allowed to stay online by the copyright owner. To me, it’s only of historical interest, even though I’m a Superman fan, because the actual comic is pretty pitiful. Somewhere along the line later the beginning was redone and became much more interesting.

Today’s movie: Love, Honour and Obey

Sometimes Tivo Sugestions are really brilliant, yeah. Jonny Lee Miller gets lifelong pal Jude Law to bring him into uncle Ray Winstone’s North London mob in Love, Honour and Obey and, fancy that, Jonny is after a bit more of the old bang bang than Ray and Jude are really up for. Definitely one of those quirky English gangster films of recent years like Sexy Beast and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and not a bad example at that. In a strange twist, most, but not all, of the characters have the same first name as the actor playing the part.

Jonny is a courier bored out of his skull with life. He’s a childhood buddy of Jude’s and sees the mob as a way out of his troubles. Jude is not inclined to bring him in but Jonny comes up with a moneymaking scheme that clinches the deal. Soon enough he’s showing signs that he’s much more aggressive than the others, who seem content to earn their dosh and explore their sexual inadequacies. This aggresiveness leads to a series of mishaps for know-nothing gang member Perry beginning with a stabbing (by Jonny) and ending with a revenge firebombing (to revenge an unauthorized action by Jonny against the other gang). It also almost brings open warfare against the rival South London gang. No one can get quite to the level of anger and despair, other than Jonny, though, and so the two leaders find a way out.

Ray is married to TV star Sadie. One part of the movie that doesn’t match up with the rest is a subplot where Sadie’s co-star on a soap opera tries to play up a romance between the two. This does piss off Ray no end, of course, and lead to a serious beating for the co-star but the only way it ties back into the main plot is to show that even a tough guy can be lead around by a woman.

Recommended if you can put up with not quite understanding all the dialog due to British accents and overly loud soundtrack.

She Spies, Monk: The Sweet One lays down the law

As she says in her weblog, this new show on NBC sucks. The girls are gorgeous, no doubt, but the writers were going for a kind of whacky Austin Powers meets La Femme Nikita thing, with a little Candid Camera thrown in, and didn’t come close pulling it off.

The Sweet One said to me, “Even Monk is better!” and I agree. We’ve watched the pilot and the first regular episode of this new Tony Shalhoub series and are liking it. Think Felix Unger to the modern extreme as a brilliant police detective. Bitty Schram plays his nurse and has to keep him from giving in to his neuroses and keep other people from tossing him in an institution. Plus, it’s set in San Francisco and environs. This is pretty original so far and if the writers can keep this going can be a big hit.

Today’s book: Resurrection Day

Resurrection Day, by Brendan DuBois, is an alternative history novel by a mystery author. Maybe that shouldn’t matter but I get a different feel from it than, say, something by Turtledove or Stirling. Good enough, until the ending, but a thriller and not alterna-SF.

Alternative history stories always posit some known historical event and change it, then play out the consequences of that change; the classic example is Turtledove’s How Few Remain. In that story a messenger gets through to General Lee, who died before delivering his message in reality, allowing Lee to win the Battle of Antietem in 1862 preserving the Confederacy’s independence. The novel takes place 20 years later, when the two Americas are about to face off again.

Resurrection Day is set in 1972, ten years after the Cuban Missile Crisis spun out of control and both sides launched nukes: the Soviets got the worst of it but America lost big too, with DC, New York City, San Diego, and south Florida melted by nukes. Times are still really hard for Americans, with shortages of many necessities and continuing martial law, and few of the characters see any end to the misery.

Carl Landry is the protagonist, a former Kennedy idealist (he enlisted in the Army when JFK was elected, hoping to help realize that dream) who was a Special Forces advisor in South Vietnam when the bombs went off, continued in the Army in the early post-nuke years (the book never makes clear if his hitch was unilaterally extended or he re-upped), and then in 1968 returned to Boston and taking a job as a reporter with the Boston Globe. The job was a veteran’s benefit and many of the other reporters make clear their opinion that he’d have never been hired otherwise. Landry is assigned to cover the murder of an old vet and through this stumbles into a potential nightmare conspiracy that might lead to the end of the United States as an independent nation and, of course, often leads him into situations where he’s lucky to come out alive.

DuBois creates an interesting place in this novel, respecting that some cultural trends were probably so on course or inevitable that even a nuclear war couldn’t derail them and also detailing the realities of this life in an involving way. But I wouldn’t say that the plot itself is as compelling is it could be. Final judgment: I enjoyed reading this but I’m a big alternative history fan.

Tonight’s movie: Road to Perdition

Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, and Jude Law go Prohibition era gangsters in Road to Perdition. So many others have acclaimed this as the movie of the year and the best gangster film since Godfather 2 but allow me to disagree. Sure, I enjoyed it, thought it was well-made, well-acted, with an interesting and original story, but it still doesn’t top The Bourne Identity or Spider-Man as my choice for best of 2002.

Hanks plays completely against any previous role, which many have commented on, but I think he was perhaps not the best choice as he’s gruff but not, well, menacing; the scene where he confronts the club owner is an excellent illustration. Jude Law reminds me so much of Malcolm MacDowell circa Clockwork Orange in this film. The way customer designer Albert Wolsky and the makeup department collaborate to emphasize his face yet take away his hair is probably why. Tyler Hoechlin is intense as Hanks’ son.

Director Sam Mendes and screenwriter make one big mistake, though, when they have Hoechlin narrate the opening standing on a beach. Otherwise I really like the way Mendes works, he’s not a film school graduate but a stage director and he gives us film which shows his fascination with the possibilities film offers visually and aurally that he doesn’t have on stage.

Recommended, certainly