Another Nomination for Gore

Al Gore was recently nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by a Norwegian member of Parliament. Boerge Brende, the man who nominated Gore, cited Gore's extensive environmental work, including last year's Oscar-nominated documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

"A prerequisite for winning the Nobel Peace Prize is making a difference, and Al Gore has made a difference," Conservative Member of Parliament Boerge Brende, a former minister of environment and then of trade, told The Associated Press.

Brende said he joined political opponent Heidi Soerensen, of the Socialist Left Party, to nominate Gore as well as Canadian Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier before the nomination deadline expired Thursday.

"Al Gore, like no other, has put climate change on the agenda. Gore uses his position to get politicians to understand, while Sheila (Watt-Cloutier) works from the ground up," Brende said.

This made me think about efforts being made by some folks on the left side of the aisle to persuade Al Gore to run for President in 2008. A lot of people think that Al Gore is the most qualified person in the country to be the President.

I agree. But I don't think he should run.

Don't get me wrong. If he were the nominee, I'd vote for him, and I'd do it with a smile on my face. I think he was wrongly maligned by his opponents in 2000, I think he was portrayed as stiff when he's really not, and I think that he's a strong, able and intelligent leader.

But Gore's found his niche. He's eloquent, passionate, and most of all effective as an advocate for climate change awareness. I can't help but think that another Presidential campaign, if unsuccessful, would set his work back at a time when it really can't afford to be set back.

Others would counter that if elected, Gore could reach much more with his message. But could he? With the other pressures of the Presidency, could Gore devote as much time to this pressing cause as he can currently? And could he really reach more people as the President than he has as the maker of the third highest-grossing documentary of all time?

I'd love to see a Gore Presidency. More than that, I'd love to have seen a Gore Presidency. I think he'd make a good President. But I think the work he's doing now is more important, and I think he sees that.

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Epic Movie

Last night I got home from work around 5:00, and my roommate Jason told me that he and Darren were going to the movies at 5:40, and that I was welcome to go along.

"What are you going to see?" I asked.

"Epic Movie," he said. I groaned. "Well, you don't have to go if you don't want to," he said.

"No, I don't have anything better to do. I'll go. I'll just bring a book along."

At this point I should explain to my reader(s) that we have a deal through our cable company that allows us to get two free movie tickets at the local theater every Tuesday. So does Darren. The only reasons I would consider going to so transparent a piece of crap are because it was free, and I didn't want to sit holed up in my room all night.

"Jason, isn't there anything else playing?" I asked.

"Smoking Aces," he replied. "But we're probably going to save that for next week."

"Why?" I pleaded. "For the love of God, why?"

"Well, from the reviews, Epic Movie is bad enough that it probably won't be in the theater by Free Movie Tuesday next week, but Smoking Aces will probably still be there by then."

I shit you not.

Jason's reason for wanting to see this movie actually hinged on how bad it was.

But again, I didn't have anything to do, so I packed a book in my pocket and set off for the theater.

* * *

I've seen a lot of bad movies in my time. I know this, and I've reconciled myself to the fact. One of the most recent movies I saw in the theater (again, with Jason and Darren on a Free Movie Tuesday, thank God) was Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj. I'm not exaggerating when I say that that movie didn't even make me smile, let alone laugh. I don't know why I keep doing it, except that I may be predisposed to enjoy having something to complain about.

Epic Movie comes from the proud tradition of such incomprehensible spoofs as Scary Movie, Scary Movie 2, Not Another Teen Movie, Scary Movie 3, Date Movie, and Scary Movie 4. I use the word "incomprehensible" because I simply can't figure out why some of the subjects of these movies' "satire" (I use the term very, very loosely) make it into the movies. For instance, a significant portion of Scary Movie 3 was premised on a spoof of 8 Mile. There was an extended bit in Scary Movie 2 that was a spoof of a Nike commercial.

If you're scratching your head, then I'm right with you.

Armed with the knowledge of how bad this movie was going to be, and with the knowledge of how stupid its forebears had been, I was still a bit taken aback at just how revoltingly unfunny this movie was.

First of all, as Darren and I were quick to note, it mainly spoofed The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which I loathed. That didn't really help it, I guess.

Second, and I think most importantly, Narnia was arguably the only really "epic" movie that it spoofed (I guess an argument could be made for others, like Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and X-3: The Last Stand). Let me expound a bit. Scary Movie was made primarily because there had been a glut of new horror movies, and it directed its "satire" at those movies and their own silly conventions. Juvenile, but the first one worked (at least a little). Hell, even Not Another Teen Movie, though it didn't choose subjects that were all completely current (spoofing Sixteen Candles in 2001? Come on now), kept its subjects to ones that were relevant to its ostensible premise.

Epic Movie, on the other hand, spoofed such things as MTV shows Cribs and Punk'd (making fun of Ashton Kutcher for wearing trucker hats is so 2004), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Casino Royale, Harry Potter, Nacho Libre, and The Da Vinci Code (I probably missed some during the part where I took a nap). Maybe nearly everybody else takes a more expansive view of the word "epic" than I do, but seriously, I'd think they could have come up with some better candidates (Lord of the Rings and The Matrix trilogy come immediately to mind).

Third, it just wasn't funny. I forced some laughs, just to try them on, and to try to fool myself into having a good time, but it just didn't work at all. I could see where the writers and director wanted the audience to laugh, but my usual reaction at those points was to mutter a disinterested, "So that happened." In addition to the complete lack of humor, I had one major gripe with the structure of the film. Nobody expects these things to be marvels of continuity, but I get a bit frustrated when I watch two characters violently killed (beheading and having her heart cut out, respectively) only to reappear with no ill effects mere seconds later.

It's not worth telling you what this movie was about. It'd be too painful for me to recall, and too painful for you to read. Suffice it to say that about halfway through the movie, I consciously balled my coat up into a pillow and went to sleep for about 15 minutes.

Never, ever see this piece of crap.

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Thank You for Smoking

Last night I went to see Thank You for Smoking with my friends Jason and Dave, and it was amazing. Funny, relevant, well-written, tasteful, all of the above. It's not in wide release, so you've got to search a little bit to find it, but do yourself a favor and seek it out. It's well worth it.

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Tags: Movies, Thank+You+for+Smoking

A Random Question, to Some

I was wondering if anybody could help me find a way to get reliable information about the descendants of Louis B. Mayer. Particularly, I'd like to see if he had any children other than the two daughters I've read about in the limited biographies I've been able to find.

See, here's the thing. There's this girl that I know that claims to be the granddaughter of Louis B. Mayer. She has the same last name as he does. That, I guess, is supposed to be part of what makes us believe her. Oh, and she's rich. Rich people don't lie. But on IMDB's biography of Louis B. Mayer (for those of you who don't know, he's a huge movie magnate, one of the three founders of MGM), it says that he was born in 1882 and died in 1957, at the ripe old age of 75. What's more, the Wikipedia biography says that his two children, from his first marriage (which ended in 1947) were both daughters. They were Irene and Edith. Irene was married to David O. Selznick, the legendary producer of Gone With the Wind.

Here's my point. This girl could not have retained the Mayer name directly through Louis B. Mayer. It's not possible, because he had only daughters who married and took the names of their husbands.

Here's the slightest bit of doubt, though. Mayer was married again in 1948, according to IMDB. According to my own research, this girl's father graduated from college in 1970, which would have meant he would have been born in 1947 or 1948. The only possible scenario I can imagine where this man could be the son of Louis B. Mayer is if Mayer had a tryst between his two marriages wherein he impregnated a lady that he did not go on to marry, but who gave the baby Mayer's name anyway.

If anybody can help me get the final details to close this case once and for all, please let me know.

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My Obsessions

There are a lot of things I'm interested in, but those interests tend to come and go with time. For instance, right now my interest in politics is waning, though that's largely due to the coarseness of the public debate. But there are a few things in which my interest has only intensified over the years.

1. Minesweeper. Yup, the Windows game. I've been known to play for hours at a stretch, and I can tell you all about strategies, what kind of mouse is best, etc. I can play Minesweeper while talking on the phone and retain full concentration on both the game and the conversation. I've probably done that very thing with several of the readers here. It's much less frequent that I'll beat a high score, but I keep striving, every day.
2. Movies. Can't get enough of 'em. I love going to the theater, even if there's nothing that I particularly want to see. I saw The Island this weekend, just because my buddies were going and it was something to see. I didn't particularly want to see it, but I did. Now that Blockbuster has started its MoviePass deal, and we've got On Demand cable, I've got more movies to watch than ever. Sometimes I'll put one on even when I know I'm going to fall asleep. Sometimes I'll put on a movie that I've already seen a thousand times, and I'll enjoy it as much as the first time (for example, High Fidelity, The Big Lebowski, The Princess Bride, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Fight Club, The Shawshank Redemption, etc.). The more movies I've seen, the more movies I want to see. I've seen about three quarters of AFI's 100 Greatest Films list, and I believe that anyone who claims to be a fan of American cinema would do well to use that list as a starting point.
3. Stephen King. I think the first King book I read was probably sometime in 1991, though I don't remember specifically. I do remember borrowing It from the library while I was in middle school (and needing to renew it twice to finish it), and I remember starting to read the Dark Tower series with the paperback publication of The Waste Lands in 1992. King's books have always been exciting and engaging for me, no matter how many times I've read them. I must have read the first three books of the Dark Tower series about 5 times, if not more, between 1992 and 1997, when the fourth book came out. And I must have read the first four books of the Dark Tower series about 6 or 7 times between 1997 and 2003, when the fifth book came out. And still, over all of those readings, all that familiarity, my ability to recall the most trivial details of the books from memory, they never got old. They're still arresting and urgent and a pleasure to read. I'm sure I'll keep on reading them into old age.

Those are the big ones, the ones that I feel belong at the top of this list. Most of my other interests have faded in and out, some more quickly than others, but these ones have stayed, and will likely continue to do so.

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Movies: A Question

Here's a question I like to pose to people every once in a while: If there were a movie being made about your life, which actor would play you? Age is no consideration, and neither is whether or not the actor is alive or dead. It is, I think, the spirit of the thing that matters with this question.

Sub-question (and this is one I've never asked before): Who would direct the movie? Whose directorial style do you think fits your life the best, at least as you see it? This can be quite different from your favorite director, by the way.

For me? My answer for the first question has always been John Cusack. Whenever I say that, most people say, "Huh, yeah, I can see that." After Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind there's a case to be made for Jim Carrey, but he doesn't have the track record yet, I don't think. So I'm gonna stick with Cusack.

As for a director, I may have stumped myself with that one. The Coen Brothers do some of my favorite movies, but I don't think that their tone quite fits my life, per se. Maybe Spielberg, circa E.T. Again, with Eternal Sunshine (can you tell how much I love this movie?) I'd be tempted to say Michel Gondry, but the track record just isn't there yet. So I guess I'd have to say Spielberg. God, that feels so obvious. I'll think about it.

This is a post where I want you to comment away, so y'all had better.

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The Matrix

Here's something that I guess would fall into the "musing" category. A lot of people will have heard this one before, but it's something that always bugs me.

In The Matrix, the names that they adopt outside the Matrix correspond to what would be their screen names in the Matrix. There's Neo, Morpheus, Trinity, Cypher, etc. They're all cool names. But here's what bugs me: there's only so many cool names to go around. So how come, in the sequels to The Matrix, we never meet up with somebody named "pokemonluvr80," or "RedSoxsRool"?

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The Life Aquatic

Yesterday I promised that I'd put up a couple of movie posts; one about The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and one about I (Heart) Huckabees. This will be the first.

First of all, I'd like to say that I can understand how some people didn't like The Life Aquatic. It's got an exceedingly dry sense of humor, and it's quite detached most of the time. We rarely see much by way of real emotion from the characters. That having been said, I loved it.

Bill Murray is a joy to watch (I just watched Rushmore last night, and now I've got a hankerin' for Ghostbusters). He delivers his performance with a deadpan charm that doesn't let us doubt for a minute that he's the disillusioned, past-his-prime documentarian Steve Zissou. In fact, aside from Owen Wilson's disappointing performance (seemingly more due to a weakly written part rather than Wilson's ability), the acting was uniformly excellent.

The plot is almost secondary. Zissou is a documentarian in the mold of Jacques Cousteau, out to kill the shark that ate his friend. He has all of Team Zissou along with him, including his recently-discovered illegitimate son, Ned (Owen Wilson). During the course of their expedition, they weather a pirate attack and a daring rescue mission, among other things.

But what's really astounding to me about the film, aside from its brilliantly dry wit, are the cinematography and the music. In watching Wes Anderson's films (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and I haven't yet seen Bottle Rocket), it occurs to me in watching the framing of his shots, the lighting, the slow motion, etc., that he's truly an artist among mere filmmakers. He does a lot to make his movies have a distinctly visually appealing quality that I love.

The soundtrack of The Life Aquatic consists mostly of David Bowie songs, performed beautifully by a lone man with an acoustic guitar. In Portuguese. "Changes," "Ziggy Stardust," "Space Oddity," and more, and all beautifully rendered. It helps to define the unique feel of the movie, to have such unique music. And more than that, the film's music is nearly omnipresent. Louder than most film music (a trademark of Anderson's), we come away with the impression that Anderson is trying to say more with the music than, "It was too quiet at this point and I like this song."

All in all, a fantastic movie, from my point of view.

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Kingdom of Heaven

I saw Kingdom of Heaven this weekend, along with Crash. The better of the movies, by far, was Crash. You should really do yourselves a favor and go see it. Well-written, well-directed, well-acted; just an all-around good movie.

But Kingdom of Heaven was quite interesting. You'd expect a movie about the Crusades to generate rumblings from the Islamic crowd, but in this case, you'd be wrong. The movie's generating ire from the religious right. And why? Well, because it portrays Muslims too well and Christians not well enough, of course.

I often check out sites like NewsMax and WorldNetDaily just to see what they're all pissed off about. This time, I knew that they'd be pissed about Kingdom of Heaven. The movie, as you'd imagine, makes all sorts of parallels with the current world situation. But the author of the article I linked above is pretty upset that the Crusades are not depicted as a defensive effort by Christians. He's upset that Christians don't get handled with kid gloves in the movie, and that some of them are as bloodthirsty as the current crop of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. He's upset that the heroes of the movie wanted to live in peace, rather than to eradicate one another.

So I reserve my final review of this movie until I see how much more pissed off the religious right gets about it. Immediately afterwards, I'd give it a six out of ten. After this article, it's up to six and a half.

Let's see how much higher it can get! Of to Focus on the Family!

UPDATE: Focus on the Family's actually got a link to a pretty tolerant review of Kingdom of Heaven. It's got its gripes with the film, but in general it respects its historical accuracy along with the fact that it vilified neither Christians or Muslims in the extreme. I might have to bring my review back down to a six out of ten after reading that.

And here's a link with a little bit of history about the time period during which the film takes place. Evidently, contrary to what Johan said, Orlando Bloom's character, Balian of Ibelin, was a real guy who led the defense of Jerusalem.

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