A Digression: What I Loved About The Vancouver Olympics

Thank your lucky stars I haven't been filling this cinematic blog with Olympian sized and inspired rants for the last two weeks. And I suppose I could join the greek chorus whining about the monstrosity of tape delay or some such thing but to paraphrase Vince Vaughn, I don't feel like taking a turn to negative town. Not in the face of the always-transcendent Olympic Games.

Instead I have been compiling a list of my favorite moments and people and events of the XXI Olympiad and will now share them and/or shove them down your throat. Deal with it. (And then check back all week for a daily festive Countdown To The Most Boring Oscars In History!!!)

1. The pink-haired U.S. moguls skiier who doubles as a coffee mogul. Why can't I meet a pink-haired U.S. moguls skiier who doubles as a coffee mogul? (Never mind the fact the only time I've been skiing I fell down so often - occasionally when not even moving - that my ski instructor openly became angry at me.

2. The fact U.S. figure skater Johnny Weir put a poster of Lady Gaga up in his room in the Olympic Village and said that it would be "watching over us, protecting us." (Note: Johnny Weir never fell in competition. Beware all ye who doubt the power of the Gaga.)

3. The skip of the German women's curling team is also a professor at the University of Munich who continued getting emails from her students while competing in the Olympics. (In a related story, Vince "I've Got A Bunyon, Guys, I Think I'll Sit This Game Out" Carter of the Orlando Magic is set to earn a cool $16 million this season.)

4. The end of the nordic combined. I had no idea cross country skiing could be so thrilling.

5. Golden girl Lindsey Vonn coming within half-a-second of dropping the s-bomb on camera in wake of her historic win in the downhill. "Oh shhhhhhhhh........."

6. The women's curling match between Canada and Denmark in which the valiant Danes nearly pulled an epic upset. It had all the sport's finest hallmarks: remarkable shots, numerous momentum shifts, different strategy employed in every end, and all capped off in the final end, with Denmark down by a point, with back-to-back-to-back unbelievable shots by Denmark and Canada and Denmark wherein each time the respective skip threaded her stone through two stones at the top of the house and directly onto the button. (Need an anaology? Sure! How about this? Remember in "Robin Hood" when the one archer hits the bullseye and then Robin Hood splits the arrow? Well, imagine if then just for kicks Robin Hood split the arrow that had split the arrow. That's what it was like!) And at that point my friend and fellow curling enthusiast Dave - and admittedly we'd each imbibed a few adult beverages - completely freaked out. Sure, the extra end, as Canada finally sealed the deal, was routine but nevertheless....so, so, so much fun to watch.

6(A). Maybe the best part of the whole thing was the moment when the Danes called timeout to consult with their coach and when they were done, Madeleine DuPont, Denmark's courageous third, said: "Thanks." Thanks! She thanked her coach! I mean, can you imagine Randy Moss thanking Bill Belichik when he runs a play for him? I still can't get over the awesome politeness of it! God, I love curling.

7. Norweigans: for celebrating the biathlon competition like this and for wearing curling pants like these.

8. The last three minutes of that U.S./Canada hockey game, and I'm a person who can't stand hockey (and its fourteen-and-a-half month season)! At one point the U.S. goalie - Ryan Miller - stopped (by my count) 153 shots in a 90 second span.

9. NBC's curling color commentators. Bad situations were a "pickle". Poor ice was "fudgy." Starting from scratch in relation to strategy was "re-stringing the hammock." When a heated discussion broke out between the U.S. men regarding a particular shot the commentators hoped there wouldn't be any "fisticuffs". You just don't get that kinda folksy wisdom from the blowhards on ESPN. Did I mention I love curling?

10. Morgan Freeman's Visa ad for the Jamaican bobsled team.

11. Liudmila and the girls' behemothic 10-1 curling beatdown of Sweden. No, Russia didn't make the medal round, but you revel in the joy when you find it.

12. Medal ceremonies. I love 'em. Can't get enough of 'em. If everyone's day started with a bowl of cereal and a medal ceremony I think the world would be a better place.

Movie Fans....Rejoice!!!

Rare are the days anymore when movie fans earn victory. For example, this weekend multiplexes in Chicago are being invaded by films such as "Cop Out" (must miss!) and "The Crazies" (I wouldn't watch it on TBS at 2 in the morning when drunk!) with the theaters right next to them still showing "Valentine's Day" and "The Wolfman" and "Dear John" and so you find yourself staring at the marquee and wanting to weep into the snow and you think, "Is there any hope left?"

And then you read this.

Now maybe the great Amy Ryan won't be under-used in next month's "Green Zone" but as brilliant a filmmaker as I think Paul Greengrass is I won't believe she hasn't been under-used until I see it and, thus, I will just revel in this news.

The next film by Tom McCarthy, the exceptionally-talented writer/director behind "The Visitor" and "The Station Agent", will star Paul Giamatti and, yes, Amy Ryan. I don't even care what it's about! I don't! All I know is that McCarthy creates rich characters and doesn't under-use his actresses.

Blessed are we.

Pitching "Die Hard 5: I'd Rather Not Die, Thank You"

You're sitting in the theater and munching your popcorn, slurping a soda should the mood strike you. The lights go down. The first preview comes up.

We see clips from past "Die Hard" movies, showing Bruce Willis as everyman action hero John McClane tangling with each of the franchise's respective villains, the Trailer Guy telling us all about his previous exploits - saving the Nakatomi Tower, saving Dulles Airport, saving New York City, securing victory in a one-on-one showdown with Maggie Q.

The Trailer Guy then says: "But when the entire world is threatened..." - and here we see standard quick clips of world landmarks blowing up, maybe, something like that - "...and John McClane cannot be found..." - now we see a few shots of Bruce Willis as John McClane being kidnapped and tied up to a chair in some dank, remote room where the film's chief villain taunts him - "...to whom can the world turn? Only one man. John McClane's brother. Jack McClane."

Cue close-up of Kevin James as Jack McClane saying, in that memorable, halting Kevin James-ian speech, "Ooooooh.....yeeeeeeeah.....I don't think so."

I mean, really, let's be honest, where else can you take the "Die Hard" franchise at this point? It's time for John McClane to have a brother and it's time for some high comedy. If Kevin James is playing Jack McClane then you can dial up the insanity as much as you want. In "Live Free Or Die Hard" all of America had to be saved so in "Die Hard 5: I'd Rather Not Die, Thank You" why not have Earth itself be in need of saving?

So Jack McClane wanted to be an astronaut but it never happened and now he gets the chance to redeem himself and/or live out his boyhood dream. Maybe the chief villain has commandeered a space shuttle that he will take into space and use to shoot some sort of laser to blow the planet up? So maybe Jack McClane has to hitch a ride aboard the shuttle (imagine Kevin James bumbling his way aboard the shuttle in those moments right before it takes off) and fend off this attack? I don't know. It doesn't matter. What matters is this: It's Kevin James In Space! Who wouldn't want to see it?! Maybe he never became an astronaut because he so easily succumbs to motion sickness. So not only could you have Kevin James In Space but you could have Barf In Space! This idea is just selling itself!

And then imagine Jack McClane and John McClane together at the controls of the space shuttle having to safely land it at Kennedy Space Center?! Think of all the annoyed frowns Bruce Willis could send Kevin James' way! Think of Bruce Willis chain smoking on descent while Kevin James freaks out! "No, I don't know how to drop the veolocity!"

This idea is so good I can't believe I'm not charging people to read this post! But I would never be that greedy! So take it, Bruce. Please. It's all yours. Free of charge.

In The Loop

Imagine if Christopher Guest and cronies put together a mockumentary on the war in Iraq and you get an initial sense for Armando Iannucci's "In The Loop" which received an Oscar nomination (deservedly) for Best Adapted Screenplay. This film, though, is not truly a mockumentary - no interviews or asides to the camera - despite definitely having that aura. It is less a conventional film narrative than a fast paced tear through the inner workings of both the British and American governments as the potential invasion of an unnamed Middle Eastern country looms. And, in fact, the film isn't so much about that potential invasion - the reasons for it are never referenced - than it is about how that potential invasion affects the livelihood of everyone making decisions about the potential invasion.

As the film starts Britain's minister for international development, Simon Foster (Tom Hollander), is giving a radio interview wherein once the topic of war is broached states, simply, "War is unforseeable." It seems harmless enough but is far from it. He is lambasted by the Prime Minister's Director of Communications, Malcom Tucker (a howlingly funny Peter Capaldi, spewing profanity so frequently and violently he would make guys at the off tracking betting site blush), for this mistake. You can't say the war is unforseeable because the war may very well happen. Of course, you also can't say the war is forseeable since then everyone will assume the war is inevitable. And, for God's sake, don't give those jackals in the media a phrase to latch onto.

This opening fifteen minutes is ingenius in the way it shows how one political h-bomb involving two countries is caused by a minor verbal slip-up and the lengths to which government operatives will go in an attempt to distract the press and general population from the truth. Not that this goes any better when Foster is cornered once again by the cameras. "For the plane in the fog the mountain is unforeseeable, but then it is suddenly very real and inevitable."

Military invasion is, of course, a staggeringly significant issue but "In The Loop" portrays it time and again as mere opportunities for career growth and/or career implosion. It is all a network of leaks and about-faces and unnamed sources and attempts to deflect attention from the reality of the situation and trying to keep those in need of necessary information as far away from that information as possible - Tucker finding himself hilariously racing across scenic Washington D.C. to reach the meeting he was kept out of - and boring constituents with meaningless problems that actually turn out to be more meaningful than anyone could think possible.

Foster and his young aide Toby (Chris Addison) are sent to Washington for a meeting with the "Future Planning Committee" that is, in actuality, a War Committee set up by assistant U.S. press secretary Linton Barwicke (David Rasche) who is desperately attempting to keep the State Department's Karen Clarke (Mimi Kennedy), her trusty aide Liza (Anna Chlumsky), and General Miller (James Gandolfini) out of the loop when considering this trio is trying to quiet the drums being beaten for war and are eager to enlist the unwitting Foster in their cause.

The torrent of information threatens to overwhelm the viewer and for this reason a second viewing is almost mandatory, not simply because you will have more bearing on all that is happening but because you will get the chance to laugh so hard all over again. There are so many splendid lines I took the liberty of writing down a few for you:

"I will marshal all the media forces of darkness to hound you into an assisted suicide."

"It's like a Harry Potter book if Harry Potter made people angry."

"This is a sacred place. Now you may not believe that and I may not believe that but, by God, that is a useful hypocrisy."

In fact, there is only one moment when "In The Loop" actually slows down and it's a doozy. Tucker, Barwicke, Foster and Toby find themselves in a U.N. Meditation Room. Things have not gone well. Barwicke leaves, triumphant. Tucker tells Foster and Toby to get out (not that kindly) and then the camera watches him in a close-up, quietly, for eight seconds (I counted) as you realize how the most monumental of decisions, those decisions that affect not only the people involved but entire countries, entire continents, sometimes get all of eight seconds to be made.

Which is all Malcolm Tucker needs. It speaks volumes of what Peter Capaldi does here to say that in spite the many great performances and moments and dialogue it his turn as some sort of polticized combo of Mark Wahlberg in "The Departed" and Alec Baldwin in "Glengarry Glen Ross" that he emerges as the film's highlight. He is uncouth and teed off but he will protect the Prime Minister and get done all that which must get done by all means necessary. He is as entertaining and abusive an anti-hero as the silver screen has ever produced.

Did I mention you should see this movie?

Cold Souls

"Soullesness has its own peculiarities." - Dr. Flintstein (David Straithairn)

I hate to be the guy that describes a movie as so-and-so meets so-and-so but the so-and-so meets so-and-so description of "Cold Souls" is so spectacular I have no choice and so here it is.

Last year's "Cold Souls" is "Being John Malkovich" Meets "Maria Full Of Grace". Woo hoo! That's a movie you want to see, isn't it? Ah, but do you really want to see "Cold Souls"? Does it live up to it's so-and-so meets so-and-so premise? Therein lies the question.

So imagine Paul Giamatti as an existential action hero. But imagine Paul Giamatti playing Paul Giamatti as an existential action hero. Set to star in a stage performance of "Uncle Vanya" Paul Giamatti is a suffering a severe crisis of, well, possibly everything. A crisis of confidence. A crisis of conscience. Maybe it's mid-life. Maybe it's a nervous breakdown. Maybe it's all of this at once. His agent suggests he check out an article in The New Yorker about soul storage, whereby one Dr. Flintstein can, in a circumstance where perhaps a soul begins to resemble a tumor, remove it and allow you to proceed with your life soulless.

Paul Giamatti is not so much intrigued as desperate. He goes through with it only to immediately experience complications. His symptoms seem to get worse and his already problematic stage performance goes even further off the rails. His wife (Emily Watson) is understandably confused when he admits what he has done. Paul Giamatti returns to Dr. Flintstein who recommends he try out a different soul for size - this one of a Russian poet.

The Russian poet is key as it signals the film's most vital subplot - the hardscrabble blackmarket Russian business of soul trafficking, seen through the eyes of a soul "mule", Nina (Dina Korzun). This is how Paul Giamatti's chickpea sized soul ends up in the body of a Russian soap opera actress (the most mesmeric Katheryn Winnick) and why Paul Giamatti himself will scour the bleak St. Petersburg street in search of his own soul.

Amidst this rather subdued mayhem the real Paul Giamatti gives a tremendous performance as himself. A man who alternately has a soul, doesn't have one, then has someone else's, and who is also required to give a poor stage performance on purpose. Throughout the film his hinges are clearly squeaky - we never doubt for a second something is wrong with him or that he would make the decisions he does - he fields the ongoing developments with a comedic timing that is believable in both its bewilderment and weariness.

For all that goes on here, though, the film never really bubbles over, you never feel a rush watching it like you do in a Charlie Kaufman-written escapade which, like it or not, "Cold Souls" devoutly resembles. It feels so detached.

But the more the film progressed the more I wondered if that was precisely the tone for which writer/director Sophie Barthes was striving. As Dr. Flintstein explains time and again they understand how to remove the soul but that brings no one closer to an understanding of the soul. Soullesness, after all, has its own peculiarities and maybe the weird, unexplainable sensation I had watching "Cold Souls" is what I would get if I chose to store my own soul.

Shutter Island

The opening passage of Martin Scorsese's latest film is extremely telling. U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) is aboard a small boat destined for Shutter Island, a prison in Boston Harbor housing the criminally insane, where apparently a particular patient has gone missing. Daniels and his brand new partner, Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), brand new so Teddy can immediately provide him information to fill in a few blanks for the audience, are on their way to investigate. But listen to the soundtrack. It is packed with loud, ominous tones, whaling away on our eardrums. You think, "What, is King Kong waiting for them on Shutter Island?" Still, the music grows louder, especially when we get the establishing shots of the island itself, skulking alone in the mist, a storm brewing fatefully in the distance.

All movie long, Scorsese, the old master, distracts us from the put-together-the-puzzle mystery/horror of "Shutter Island" by cranking up the soundtrack to inordinate decibels and tossing out every trick contained within his significant bag. Artful flashbacks and dependable character actors up the wazoo. If some exposition has to be delivered make certain the exposition-deliverer is framed by a flickering flame or ensure the two characters are traipsing through a hurricane to heighten the drama.

Once on the island the two marshals, Teddy always with a cynical frown, Chuck always with a bemused, skeptical smirk, meet the prison's medical director, Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley). Apparently the escaped prisoner, Rachel Solando (Emily Mortimer), murdered her own children, and now she has somehow fled her cell, despite the fact the windows are barred and her door was locked, without the aid of shoes, despite the fact the ground all around Shutter Island is most unforgiving. The marshals, of course, don't buy it. Something is up. Someone helped her. But who? Why?

More layers of this haunted house onion will be peeled. Teddy is obviously distrustful of Cawley's colleage, Dr. Naehring (Max von Sydow), once the camera deviously pans around a blood red armchair revealing him to be smoking a pipe and talking in an accent that gives away his German heritage. See, many of the flashbacks show us Teddy in WWII Nazi Germany. He saw horrible things that scarred him for life and it seems his presence on this island is re-triggering those memories.

It seems obvious to Teddy that there is far more at play on Shutter Island than a mere patient disappearance. Why is one block of the asylum housed in an old Civil War fort? What happens in the far-away lighthouse that appears cordoned off? Why does one patient whom the marshals interview scribble a single word in Teddy's notebook...."Run."

The film is based on a novel by Dennis Lehane, who also wrote the novel on which the masteful "Gone Baby Gone" was based. "Shutter Island", despite the arsenal of directorial stunts employed by Scorsese, is nowhere near masterful. Instead it is massively disappointing. But what's the difference? Both films, of course, involve deception and twists but the sake of surprise is never "Gone Baby Gone's" sole intent. That's the difference. When the most crucial reveal of all turns up in "Gone Baby Gone" the audience thinks about how they might react in a similar situation and if the right choice really was made by the main character. You feel the story's full scope rather than just feeling it's clever chicanery. You leave the theater with some real questions about the world and our place in it. But when you leave "Shutter Island" all the audience thinks is: Did you know in that scene that so and so knew? When you did know that so and so knew? Did you see this clue? Did you see that clue? How did so and so find that out?

Truly there is some difficult, disturbing material at the center of "Shutter Island". But to use that material in the service of nothing more than some gussied up guessing game is the film's real tragedy.

Near Dark

Kathryn Bigelow's third feature film (from 1987) is a deeply atmospheric story of a handsome, young Oklahoman (Adrian Pasdar) who unwittingly falls in with a small gang of vampires that troll the rural, dusty prairies of Americana. But do you know what one word "Near Dark" never employs even a single time during its 90+ minutes?

Vampire.

Re-fresh-ing. No one sits down and chit chats about vampirical lore or causes and reasons and weaknesses. I am fairly certain I never saw a cross. There is nothing ironic or tacky at work here. "Near Dark" is stunningly matter of fact about its outlandish premise even with its striking photography and an evocative score by Tangerine Dream.

The opening fifteen minutes oozes such eerie ambience I watched it a second time before I finished the rest of the movie. Pasdar's Caleb exits a bar, exchanges a few words with his redneck buddies and then glimpses the winsome Mae (Jenny Wright) tantalizingly eating an ice cream cone if for no other reason than it allows her to tantalizingly eat an ice cream cone. Caleb approaches. They get in her truck. She makes him stop. She says something about "feeling the night." It's a moment heightened to just the right degree. He shows her a surprise but this surprise means the night gets late and as the night gets late the sun begins to rise and as the sun begins to rise Mae freaks out because, well, if you're a vampire and the sun begins to rise you know what happens. Caleb says he won't take her home without a kiss - just one, that's all. And he gets it. Boy, does he get it. A kiss and a bite. On his neck. She runs off. He staggers home, turning into that word which is never mentioned, not knowing what's happening to him, and as his father and sister watch him struggle a roughed-up winnebago swoops in and swoops up Caleb.

The winnebago is occupied by our vampire regiment (which, strangely, resembles a regiment of marines from a film called "Aliens"): Lance Henriksen's Jesse is in charge, and has apparently been around since the Civil War. Severen is kinda the nutso one because he's played by Bill Paxton. Jenette Goldstein is Diamondback and Joshua Miller is Homer, an old soul tucked away inside a boy's body. They hide out during the day and roam at night, finding people on which they can feed to keep their existences percolating.

Everyone else in the group is immediately suspicious of Caleb. Perhaps because they are not so much a group as a family (a fact you realize without Bigelow ever making it explicit). They tell him he needs to make a "kill", and soon, or they will kill him. Meanwhile Caleb's father, distrusting of the local police on the case, lights out after his son.

The story of "Near Dark" is beautifully linear. No embellishments, no intellectual musings on "what I've become." The decisions Caleb makes at each point feel entirely realistic within this movie's specific universe. He tries to get home. He can't. He refuses to make the "kill" the others demand. He and Mae grow very sympathetic for one another. His and the others lives are threatened and then, and only then, does he act. Even the moment in which he takes to main street astride a horse does not come across as ludicrous as it does here in print because Bigelow smartly neither downplays nor overdoes it.

I like a film that doesn't forcefeed the message it yearns to send and the resignation that would certainly factor into "Near Dark's" conclusion is not hammered home. It is sensed simply in the way in which the third act events play out. And to contrast that linear storytelling Bigelow revels in Sunkist orange suns slipping to and fro behind the horizon, a trail of dust kicked up behind Caleb as he unsuccessfully attempts to navigate his way home, a slow dance meant to proceed a grisly death, the frightful jangle of the spurs on Severen's boots.

Here is an action/horror movie that shows how it should be done, how you can pay the utmost attention to the image without sacrificing, ruining or overplaying the story.

(I Told You It Was) The Worst Date Movie Ever

Jessica Grose of Slate recently made her follow up post in relation to what could be considered the worst date movie of all time. After her many responses from readers (I sent her one) she listed five (including "Blue Velvet", "Dead Ringers", "Happiness", and "A Clockwork Orange") and the first film listed just happened to be - that's right - "The Shape Of Things", including a quote from yours truly.

"After watching The Shape of Things with a potential significant other, reader Nick asks, 'How could you possibly believe dating has any honorable intentions?'"

See? I may be an idiot, but I know what I'm talking about.

Men With Brooms

So when I said in my curling digression yesterday that "Men With Brooms" was a terribly made movie, well, it felt just a bit unfair. Not because it isn't terribly made but because I had said this without any real hint of explanation or justification. It had been seven years since I'd seen it so I felt I owed it to the film to rewatch it and make certain of my opinions. Well....

It has an inspired opening. Aging Donald Foley (James B. Douglas) is out on some remote Canadian lake with his daughter Amy (Molly Parker) and they are hoisting something from the water and, lo and behold, it's a curling stone! It has just the right amount of amplified ridiculousness. But then, at the instant the stone is retrieved, Donald passes away. The next scene is his funeral. It turns wacky. And things start to go downhill. Fast. His coffin falls open. His body nearly falls out. Ha ha! Then we shift to a scene on the street where our main character, Chris Cutter (Paul Gross who triples as writer and director), formerly a great curler who hasn't touched a stone in years, accidentally walks into a signpost! Ha ha ha ha!!! Soon Cutter's recluse/eccentric father is mentioned and a character remarks, "The last time I saw him he was doing something irregular with a cow." Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!

I cannot stress enough how many points I give Gross and his co-writer John Krizanc for attempting a curling movie but a critic must be honest and "Men With Brooms" simply does not get the job done. It has a serious identity crisis, Gross and Krizanc desperate to make the film a little bit of something for everyone. It veers both constantly and awkwardly from straight comedy to ludicrous poignancy to real poignancy. Pick a genre and go with it, boys!

The story: Donald's will explains to his family that he wants the old curling team - which has not curled together in ten years after an unspeakable tragedy during a bonspiel (i.e. Curling Match) - to re-unite and go after the most storied curling prize of them all...The Golden Broom.

Quickly we are introduced to our motley crew, all of whom are given a personal predicament. Neil Bucyk (James Allodi) is saddled with a wife and life he does not want. Eddie Strombeck (Jed Rees) and his wife are trying, and failing, to conceive a child. Wacky James Lennox (Peter Outerbridge) has a bookie after him. Cutter, meanwhile, is not merely dealing with the repercussions of his curling past, but also with having left Donald's other daughter, Julie (Michelle Nolden), at the altar. Now Julie is the local hero because she is, you see, an astronaut. Yes. An astronaut. Oh, and Cutter might now actually have feelings for Amy who also happens to be an alcoholic. Not to mention Cutter has never reconciled with that recluse/eccentric father of his (Leslie Nielsen, the "name" in the cast, who doesn't even appear to be phoning it in, more like Pony Express-ing it in, as in it's not really even there yet) and will now have a chance to set things right.

Do you see the problems here? This is a curling movie and I've barely mentioned curling so far! There are so many subplots and sidestories and bad lines ("Where did you graduate from? Saddam Hussein's school of physiotherapy?") and pointless efforts to ground things that you are never quite sure what you are watching. Not to mention it often comes off rather amateurish from a filmmaking standpoint. (And, hey, I've been there. My one attempt at a short film is wretchedly amateurish.) A slow motion shot of the quartet diving into a glacier lake is just atrocious and often the logistics of standard shots simply don't feel right or consider the moment a certain character comes storming through a wall while another character offscreen yells, "He's coming through the wall!" Uh, yeah. We can see that.

Occassionally the movie does do a nice job of making something ludicrous quite "poignant". I liked when one character tries to compare curling to shuffleboard and Lennox dismisses this and then says: "You gotta think more like snooker, poker and free face rock climbing. This is dangerous s---." Also nice is a moment when a curling stone is set on fire for reasons I will not reveal and the final sequence at the Big Game with the obligatory Unbelievable Shot is comedically stirring. But far, far too often "Men With Brooms" chooses the tired path of things like cow dung to try and generate laughs.

Of course, it all comes down to the curling. The match scenes are okay, could have been better, but, again, Gross is the first to ever try and capture bonspiels for the cinema and I am fairly certain he was working on a shoestring budget. The trickiest part is the introduction to the game. For anyone watching who does not understand the particulars you have to explain it so they can follow along. You don't want this to be contrived but that can be nigh impossible, so if it's going to be contrived at least make it creative. "Men With Brooms" fails on both counts. Lennox has a girlfriend who knows nothing about curling and it all gets explained to her via voiceover. Really? Voiceover? That was your best idea? Open up your imagination!!!

And that's where "Men With Brooms" fails....just as it failed seven years ago. In a world where sportsmanship is dying a swift death curling still adheres to it strictly (as "Men With Brooms" teaches us) so embrace the fact that it's unique. Why try to tell a story we've seen so many times before in precisely the same way we always see it? Curling is too magnificent a breath of fresh air to get the stale same-old, same-old.

A Digression: Get Yer Brooms Out!

"It’s not just a rock. It’s forty-two pounds of polished granite with a beveled underbelly and a handle a human being can hold. Okay, so in and of itself it looks like it has no practical purpose. But it’s a repository of possibility. And when it's handled just right, it exacts a kind of poetry. As close to poetry as I ever want to get." - Men With Brooms

"Men With Brooms" (review coming tomorrow!) is a terribly made movie but it is the only movie ever made about curling (until my own curling screenplay finally gets optioned - which it never will) and that quote up above is sparkling in its accuracy.

The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver have begun and for those not in the know our second favorite sport here at Cinema Romantico, after, of course, college football, is curling. Yes! I do not jest! Curling! Curling, as famed columnist Dave Barry once wrote, "dates back to 16th century Scotland, where somebody - and I am guessing that this person had consumed at least two quarts of Scotch - came up with the idea of sliding heavy rocks (or 'stones') along the ice (or 'frozen water')." It is a dazzling game of serious strategy and special skill and people peppering their language with phrases like "hog lines" and "heavy ice" and the potential terror of "dumping the handle" (ye gods! no!).

To prep for my script I taped at least a dozen curling matches from the Salt Lake City Olympics of 2002 and watched them over and over, learning as much as I could, studying the sport's nuances. Often you will hear someone describe it as being akin to "Shuffleboard on ice" but such a description is an affront to curling. That would be the same as your story-embellishing uncle in the backyard playing a few points of badminton by swatting at the shuttlecock with a spatula in the other hand claiming he's essentially playing the same game as Roger Federer. No, no, curling is its own sport, and a fine one she is.

The basics: two teams take turns sliding smooth, granite stones along a sheet of pebbled ice in an attempt to land the most in the House (i.e. Target). A curling match consists of ten ends (i.e. innings). Typically they run 2-3 hours. The infamous brooms are used to assist in guiding the stones into their proper position. Of course, this doesn't even begin to describe how it all works. Curling also gets compared to chess and billiards and bowling but I think it shares a lot in common with baseball. In baseball the goal is obvious - advance a runner to homeplate. Ah, but there is a myriad of ways this can be accomplished and the joy rests in watching what various strategies managers will employ inning to inning. No two are alike. The same can be said of curling.

What some may see as a glacial pace I see as gentle. Curling is never in a rush. If the moguls are a shot-gunned PBR and ski jumping is Jager and Red Bull and figure skating is a glass of Château Belair then curling is a crisp Sleeman Ale drank at a most relaxed pace. And, maybe most refreshingly, no one gives referees death stares or whines incessantly if they fail to execute. They nut up and take responsibility. To self-indulgently quote my own unmade screenplay: "Curlers are a different breed."

In fact, the sport's code of conduct, to this day, calls for the winners to buy their opponents a round of lager (and the opponents should then reciprocate) after the match. I mean, shouldn't all Americans dig such a sport? (Note: Did you know the San Francisco 49er's Vernon Davis loves the sport so much he was named an Honorary Captain of the U.S. Curling Team? It's true! I knew that dude was on my fantasy football team - and he really was! - for a reason!)

The United States of America will be represented on the women's side of the bracket by Team McCormick (curling teams are named for their Skip - or, in layman's terms, their Captain), a Gold Medal favorite, and their namesake, Debbie McCormick, marking her third Olympiad, has been dubbed a "curling rock star". Yes, no, maybe so, but if McCormick is a rock star then she's Brenda Lee.

Liudmila Privivkova, on the other hand, skip of the Russian National Curling Team, is Debbie Harry 1979.

Yeah, that's right, my fellow Americans, this February fortnight Cinema Romantico is turning coat and rooting for the Russians. For the next two weeks I side with the Red October, openly support Ivan Drago and I'm drinking buddies with Ned Isakoff. Look, I'm not one of those Toby Keith lovin' Yanks who only pays attention to the medal count and blindly roots for every single athlete wearing the stars & stripes. I watch the Olympics for the athletes themselves.

I can hear you groaning. I can hear you telling me I'm only rooting for her because she's the Anna Kournikova Of Curling. (She's better than Anna. She's won something - a whole lotta something, actually - namely, the 2006 European Curling Championships. So there.) And to that I say, well, what do you expect? I can't negate my male instincts simply because the Olympic Torch has been lit. But that's not the only reason I root for her. Get one thing straight - this girl can curl.

Liudmila is curling's Captain Clutch, play rising in proportion to the stakes. For instance, in the recent 2009 European Championships twice in tie matches Liudmila, despite not having the crucial advantage of "the hammer", outdueled her rival Swede and Swiss skips, respectively, to score in the final end and advance to the playoff round. (This is like two NFL playoff games in a row where a team didn't win the coin flip in overtime yet still won on each occasion.) Liudmila cackles in the face of adversity and roasts pressure on a spit.

She is the Moscow Monolith, the Czarina Of The Steal. You tell her it can't be done and she'll just go right ahead and do it. She directs the flow of a match like an air traffic controller at O'Hare the day before Thanksgiving. And she is ably backed up by Ekaterina Galkina ("lead"), "You're Damn Right I'll Have Salt Around The Glass Of My" Margarita Fomina ("second") and Anna "Svelznik" Sidorova ("third").

I know, I know, the Winter Olympics aren't that big a deal in America anymore. As Sports Illustrated's Mike McAllister noted before the Turin Games: "Maybe it's a passive-aggressive form of isolationism as we simply ignore a competition we can't dominate." (Who? Us? Americans? Naaaaaaah.) Ice dancing is dinner theater. The biathlon is dudes combining skiing with the shooting of live moose (as far as I know). The nordic combined is, well, the nordic combined, which is to say no one knows what the hell it is. U.S. Speed Skating would have gone the way of skijoring if not for Colbert Nation. And curling is just a bunch of schmoes on ice with brooms.

Au contraire, mon frère, but I dig the time every four years when athletes who train in obscurity for their one shot are granted the spotlight. If the Vancouver Olympics aren't for you because you prefer sports where jackalopes pull guns on each other, hey, have it, but don't mind me if I choose to trade the locker room glock for a broom. (Sure, the U.S. Snowboarding Team's suite at the Olympic Village will be stocked to the rafters with brownies containing certain, shall we say, ingredients but come on, man, they don't wanna hurt nobody. It's just the Olympic Spirit.)

Curling will be televised at varying times, starting today, during the two weeks on MSNBC, CSNBC & USA and this Friday, February 19, on USA from 11 AM - 2 PM, you can watch Liudmila and her sterling counterparts tangle with the punk American women. My DVR is already set!

So join me, please, in pouring a nice Stoli on the rocks and saluting the sublime Ms. Privivkova, Russia's patron saint of sliding granite. No woman on a sheet of ice has ever looked so seductive. And if you're tuning in, well, maybe, just maybe, the sport itself will seduce you too.

Saint John Of Las Vegas

Yeah, Las Vegas is filled to the brim with those luxurious, cavernous casinos resembling resorts more than gambling facilities - the MGM Grand and the Bellagio and so on and so forth - but Las Vegas is also packed with the grubby, off-the-beaten path casinos that still have the shag carpeting from the 70's and the fake wood wallpaper and a dealer who may or may not be drunk. But the end result is pretty much always the same, right? You sit down at the roulette table and lose all your chips and leave feeling busted.

Hue Rodes' (writer & director) film takes all your chips and leaves you feeling busted but does it in such a lackluster, uninteresting way. Steve Buscemi, always dependable, is John Alighieri, a guy with, as he tells us in a rather insipid voiceover, bad luck who used to live in Vegas, and now has a "good" job as an insurance claims adjuster. His cubicle is parked next to the voluptuous Jill (Sarah Silverman) who dresses like a trashy astronaut's wife and is obsessed with smiley faces. She's kinda having a fling, though, with their boss, Mr. Townsend (Peter Dinklage), a subplot arisen and then forgotten, who calls John into his office and advises he is going to get a try-out in the fraud investigation division with the glowering Virgil (Romany Malco). It seems a stripper (Emmanuelle Chriqui) is claiming her car was rear ended in the desert and she was injured. Mr. Townsend isn't buying it.

It becomes a road movie with two guys who aren't really buddies as they travel through the desert and, finally, to Sin City, the place from which John fled so many years ago. But to what point and purpose? "Saint John Of Las Vegas" is a classic case of a film failing to pay attention to its whole self while obsessing over its perceived quirkiness.

Sarah Silverman and her bounds of smiley faces (on her desk, on the walls, on her fingernails) and Smitty The Flame Lord (John Cho, which I didn't realize during the movie) whose protective suit has gone haywire and shoots flames every 20 seconds and a bunch of naked guys in the desert led by Tim Blake Nelson and on and on and on. "Hey, Romany, wouldn't it be funny if you sat naked in bed watching TV and eating chips so that the chip bag is blocking your junk?" "Uh....would it?" How does all this factor into our main character's plight? You do remember our main character?

The film purports to being based on "Dante's Inferno". Oh, please. Not that it isn't "based on" that story, per se, but get yourself a gaggle of Cliffs Notes and you can pretty much "base" anything on whatever you want, can't you? The idea itself does not automatically generate cleverness.

Occasionally, Buscemi manages to put those infamous bug eyes of his to good use and he induces us into wondering if perhaps this weary claims adjuster really is descending into some soutwestern American hell but those moments are few and far between. Never ever has a last line of a film felt so unearned nor rung so apallingly hollow.

Music and Lyrics: Romantic Comedy Done Right

I have a serious soft spot for 2007's "Music and Lyrics". Maybe it's just because I have recurring daydreams where I'm the guy in The Ting Tings and Katie White and I fall madly in love and make dozens of hit songs and tour the world together (I'd be totally cool with just chilling in the background and playing drums while Katie reaps all the glory) and, well, "Music and Lyrics" is probably as close as I'm ever gonna get.

Certainly all the basic elements of your typical rom com are in place. Two leads (Hugh Grant & Drew Barrymore) riffing on screen personas they have played many times before, a stable of supporting characters do that which their name implies while highlighting certain characteristics of the leads. (Kristen Johnson as Barrymore's sister does a marvelous job, throwing herself into every line and bit of body language, but let's also take special note of the man who plays her husband - Adam Grupper. He doesn't get anything to do but just watch him - he is a husband of sixteen years with two kids. He always appears a little tired. Not beaten down but just a little worn, yet still content. No more need to show off to anyone. It's a pitch perfect under-the-radar performance.) There is the Meet Cute and a First Kiss and Swooning Scenes and the Break Up and the moment they Come Back Together and so on and so forth and, no, "Music and Lyrics" isn't revolutionary but damn, man, I don't always want to listen to "Highway Patrolman". Sometimes "Shut Up And Let Me Go" will do just fine.

The as ever amiable, stuttering, squinty/wounded eyed Hugh Grant is Alex Fletcher, once a member of the huge 80's band Pop! before things went sour and Alex became such a has-been he is now being pitched to star in a reality show where he and other 80's has-beens literally box for the right to sing a song. Yuck. But good things are on the horizon. Alex's loyal manager (Brad Garrett) advises that the biggest music superstar in the world, Cora Corman (Haley Bennett, playing her vapidity to the hilt), is an Alex Fletcher fan and wants him to write a song for her new album which they can sing as a duet. She already knows the title - "A Way Back Into Love".

Alex is desperate to do it except for the persnickety problem that he only writes music, not lyrics. Cue Drew Barrymore's tic-infested (she is a hypochondriac who talks to herself and constantly clackety-clacks her pen) Sophie Fisher!

One Issue: The Meet Cute. The Meet Cute in "Music and Lyrics" isn't very good. Sophie is substituting for Alex's regular Plant-Waterer and as she carries out her duties (not very well, I might add) she suggests better lines than those of Alex's hired lyricist and....bam! Alex wants to give her the job!

That? That's our Meet Cute? A Plant Waterer? That's the best you've got? You've got all of Manhattan at your disposal and you give us an apartment and a Plant Waterer? Couldn't Marc Lawrence (writer & director) have brainstormed just a bit more? I know, I know, the Meet Cute is integral to the rom com, yet "Music and Lyrics" does not really suffer too much from this momentary scratch on the record. Perhaps because the film is less interested in how they get together then what they do once they are together, and I can live with that.

First, of course, Sophie doesn't want anything to do with this lyric-authoring gig but, of course, Alex will persist and eventually she will give in and they will reveal bits and pieces of their past and, of course, they will soon realize they have more in common than would ever seem possible.

Both are paralyzed by the past. Alex, whose solo album in the wake of Pop!'s breakup was admittedly terrible, has not recorded anything new in 10 years, relegating himself to re-hashing his old hits at high school reunions and a yearly show at Busch Gardens. It's interesting, though, how Grant plays this. One might expect a boozed-up guy filled with rage and resentment but he seems almost at peace with the decision, even if his skittishness gives himself away a time or two.

Sophie, meanwhile, was a promising writer until an affair with her older college professor (Campbell Scott) who promptly broke up with her, got married and then a wrote book in which the main character was not-so-thinly-veiled as Sofie. To this day she can't get past him and when she and Alex encounter him at a posh restaurant she nearly shuts down. Alex tries to get her to confront him. She can't. So Alex confronts him for her and, well, swimmingly it does not go. But it doesn't matter because he fought for her! Her knight in very tight pants!

So why, when Cora wants to turn their song into an overproduced, Nose-Ring-Christina-Aguliera era romp, won't Alex fight for it, wonders Sophie? But why, wonders Alex, is Sophie is so quick to tuck and run when the song is threatened? It's tempting to say "Music and Lyrics" is without much conflict - always considered a key in the rom com - and while it's true there isn't much external conflict between our two leads there is internal conflict and the movie shows us how one helps the other with their respective problems. I happen to think that is a nice change of pace.

Two people struggling to communicate how they really feel communicating those feelings through music and lyrics and if you think that's just a bunch of cinematic balderdash please direct yourselves to the following words spoken - or, more accurately, screamed in a deposition room - in relation to "Born To Run" by Bruce Springsteen: "I lived every f---ing line of that song. Do you understand that? I lived every f---ing line of that." Or consider "Rumours" and how basically the entire album is one elongated post-breakup rumpus between Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks.

"Music and Lyrics" is a celebration of the pop song - the creation of it, how often it isn't romantic at all even though sometimes is and how we, the audience, the listeners, can have romances with them.

My Great Movies: All The Real Girls

I'm tempted to call this the most poetic film I've ever seen but as I attempt to decide whether to succumb to said temptation I wonder why people tend to give certain films that label. Meriam Webster online defines poetic this way: "Of, relating to, or characteristic of poets or poetry." Oh. Okay. So what does poetry mean, exactly? Again we travel to Meriam Webster: "Writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm."

Meaning. Sound. Rhythm. Three qualities abundant in "All the Real Girls", I think. Poetry possesses a kind of a dreamlike quality, yes? And "All the Real Girls" has that too.

Set in a tiny un-Hollywood-ized mill town in North Carolina, the second feature film of David Gordon Green is content to move at its own pace - a leisurely one, if you will. But don't mistake its leisure for being meaningless. In tiny towns (whether they have a mill or a grain elevator or a VFW or a whatever) lives much like these are being lived a million times over, and in these lives moments of real, unadorned beauty can emerge. They emerge through sound, whether music or the rippling of a lazy river. And rhythm - the rhythm of an ordinary life in an ordinary town.

I want you to take special note of the scene that opens the film once the credits have concluded rolling detailing the first kiss of our two primary characters, Paul (Paul Schneider, one of my absolute favorite character actors) and Noel (Zooey Deschanel). The initial kiss of any relationship is monumental and placing it at the start is a bold move, even if the scene itself seems deceptively simple. (Also note how Gordon shoots it in a single take. Such a moment is far too intimate for a cut-away.)

Perhaps the most noteworthy of element of Green's screenplay is in the way he provides each character his or her own distinct voice. After the opening scene we move to Paul and three of his friends ambling through town and to a little diner and discussing nothing of particular importance. Tip (Shea Wiggham) talks like, shall we say, a Cool Guy, and even his mannerisms all seem staged, planned out ahead of time to ensure people notice them. The first time we see Bo (Danny McBride) he's droning on about the Butterfly Effect and later, after proudly declaring himself a lap steel player, Noel tells him she plays the trombone and how long she's played and Bo declares, "I've been playing the lap steel a lot longer than that." You know the sort - he's gotta one-up everybody at every turn.

Patricia Clarkson is Paul's mother and she talks almost as if she's still a kid (maybe she is - her day job is playing a clown at birthday parties and hospitals). Uncle Leland (Benjamin Mouton) at first glance seems to talk in a way existing outside of real life but then I hold the opinion this was Green's intent. His words are the words you often find yourself thinking but don't commit to saying out loud.

Paul seems intent on saying what he feels and what he means, except when he's with Noel in which case he seems more unsure of himself. And that brings us to Deschanel. The words she speaks don't noticeably stand out but her delivery is refreshingly unique. So often in life we start to speak and only then realize we don't know precisely what words we yearn to use and so we struggle to locate them as we talk at the same time. Deschanel talks just like that in almost every scene. The critic David Edelstein says she possesses "bizarre cadences—a sort of sing-song iambic pentameter that somehow suggests ungovernable feeling." That may come across as absurd in print but to to your ears Mr. Edelstein's words will ring true.

Paul and Noel have a conversation late at night that feels so overwhelmingly like real life it makes me smile to write about it. I would regret giving too much away but will say it involves, among other things, bad poetry and working at the mill. It flows just like an actual conversation would, the way each sentence leads into the other character's reply. This dialogue is on the level of "Before Sunrise", but with two people not quite as in love with language.

The story concerns their budding romance. She has been in a boarding school for girls since age 13 and, thus, has little to no experience with boys. He, on the other hand, has - as Tip puts is - "been with every girl in town." He tells them he loves them. He doesn't mean it. He moves on. But he feels something different for Noel and this is why - as we establish in the opening scene - it takes him so long to kiss her. The eventual scene of Paul and Noel in bed doesn't (gasp!) lead straight to sex. She makes a declaration - a declaration I will not reveal but you can probably figure out fairly easily - but it feels authentic. His reaction, when considering the direction he wants their relationship to go, feels authentic too.

The arc the two characters take is probably inevitable when considering the change Paul has undergone and the fact Noel is still so young, but life is rife with the inevitable. You tell someone you're in love and he or she immediately says, "I don't believe you." You tell your friend how much you like a girl and he instantly wonders if you've slept with her yet. And so you find yourself discussing the mysteries of romance with an 8 year old since she's the only one who will truly listen.

The esteemed Roger Ebert is a critic who thinks fondly of Green and can see why some do not. Green's films, he writes, "leave some audiences unsettled, because they do not proceed predictably according to the rules....but they are immediately available to our emotions." We all have been consumed at one time or another by emotions we do not understand and that can leave us almost paralyzed.

It would be wrong to say that "All The Real Girls" does not possess arc because it most certainly does. It's not swift, straight-ahead, hells-bells, Screenwriting-Class arc. It's fragmented. It stops and starts. But that's the arc of real life. Why would someone do this or say that, you may find yourself wondering, and an answer isn't always needed because sometimes in real life you don't have any idea what the hell you're doing. You ponder making decision which you know you will probably regret if you make it and then you make it anyway and then, well, you regret it.

Paul knows he will regret making a certain decision and so he fights off making it for as long as possible and once he does it feels horrible, more an act of concession, or of surrender, then desire, and people, as they must, gather themselves and move on. Hence this most poetic of films always reminds me of some poetry from the pen of the incomparable Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis on their song "Portions for Foxes".

The talking leads to touching
and the touching leads to sex
and then there is no mystery left.

The Worst Date Movie Ever

Jessica Grose at Slate posted a query today in relation to the Worst Date Movie Ever, what when you consider Valentine's Day is right around the corner. She suggested "Closer" as the answer to her own query. A solid choice, no doubt, but I beg whole-heartedly to differ. To me this contest begins and ends, decidedly, with one movie, and such a movie could only come from the Neil LaBute, the man who gave us "In The Company Of Men" (about two guys who manipulate a deaf woman) and "Your Friends and Neighbors" (which is sort of like the "Apocalypse Now" of the bedroom).

"The Shape Of Things."

Worst.Date.Movie.Ever. Not even close. Not in my book. No other contenders would ever be considered. The basics: Paul Ruud is Adam, employed at an art museum, where one day he encounters the vivacious Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), a graduate student, hard at work on some sort of art project she only vaguely discusses, and the two begin a relationship. Now Adam's a bit of nerdy guy, okay? Cool and hip would not be words used to describe his personality or exterior. But with Evelyn now in the mix he displays change. Change in his hair, change in his clothes, change in his behavior. The dude he even gets a nose job. Is this Evelyn at the controls?

His friends, an engaged couple, Jenny (Gretchen Mol) and Phillip (Fred Weller), notice these changes and with them they are not, shall we say, enamored. Jenny seems suspicious of Evelyn. Evelyn seems suspicious of Jenny, perhaps because Jenny likes Adam more than she lets on and vice-versa.

To say more would be dangerous. This movie, based on LaBute's own play, went places - horrifying places, in fact - I did not expect and that unexpectedness is always a great ally of the wicked LaBute pen. There is a moment near the end - which I, of course, will not give away - but I vividly recall thinking to myself about fifteen seconds before it happened, "Oh my God, if that happens, I....I....I...." And then it happened. And I'm fairly certain I died a little inside. Thinking about this movie right now makes it feel as if I have dead skin falling off my body. Or something.

It is well made, well acted, and well written. It is also an unspeakably ferocious shot to the solar plexus. So this Valentine's Day, blissful couples of the world, once you've finished dining on your tiramisu and sipping your wine and smelling your roses and what-have-you, snuggle together on the sofa and rev up "The Shape Of Things". After all, you two are happy, aren't you? Your relationship's secure....right?

So go ahead. Watch it. I dare you.

Big Fan

This was not an easy movie to watch. Not for me. When you are someone who openly admitted, not more than two months ago, on his blog, for God's sake, that you had a mini nervous breakdown in the wake of the Nebraska/Texas Big 12 Championship Game, a game from which you did not emotionally recover for at least 96 hours, well, "Big Fan" is not going to wash over you like a summer's breeze. Not that you should assume I'm an exact replica of "Big Fan's" Paul Aufiero. Please don't assume that!

Paul Aufiero (Patton Oswalt) is an emotionally stunted 36 year old living at home with his mom and toiling away in as a ticket taker in a parking garage. His only friend seems to be Sal (Kevin Corrigan, who always makes me happy when he turns up in a movie and in a movie world where I ran things would be Brad Pitt - which actually sounds a little disturbing when I say it out loud). They are both beyond die hard New York Giants' fans. They watch the games in the parking lot of Giants Stadium, a TV rigged up to Paul's car. Good plays cause euphoria, bad plays cause physical illness.

We wonder if Paul has anything in his life other than the Giants. Perhaps he does? We see him scribbling in a notebook on the job but, alas, he is only prepping what he plans to say when he calls into a nightly sports radio show to rave about his beloved team and heckle the dastardly Philadelphia Phil (Michael Rapaport, perfectly cast), a rival Eagles fan. Of course, his mother (Marcia Jean Kurtz), constantly interrupts these diatribes. She fears he has no life. He claims he does. He claims he doesn't want the married, settled-down existence of his brother and sister.

The movie takes a turn into dementia when one night Paul and Sal, by chance, happen to spot their favorite Giants player, Quantrell Bishop (Jonathan Hamm), in their homeland of Staten Island. Like any nutso fan, they decide to follow Bishop and his posse. They follow him through Staten Island and then into Manhattan where the football star holds court at a posh strip club where a Bud Light costs $9. Paul and Sal are far less interested in the ladies then they are in devising a way to meet their hero. Eventually, they do. It goes haywire. Paul lets it slip that they followed Bishop all the way from Staten Island. Naturally, Bishop takes offense. Maybe not so naturally (or maybe so considering those wacky NFL players anymore), Bishop pummels him into such submission that Paul is shacked up in the hospital for a week.

Detectives want Paul to press charges. Paul's greasy lawyer brother wants him to file a suit. Bishop is suspended and can't play and, thus, the Giants' once promising season begins to suffer. Can you guess which of the three affects Paul the most?

"Big Fan" was written and directed by Robert Siegel who also wrote "The Wrestler" and who also used to be editor-in-chief of The Onion. I thought of that because I thought of a quote from The Onion that opened "Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer", Warren St. John's wonderful book about his "journey into the heart of fan mania", specifically into the heart of Alabama Crimson Tide fans. The quote:

"You will suffer shame and humiliation when the team from my area defeats the team from your area."

As St. John asked over and over in his book, why do we root? It's a legitimate question but not easy to answer. Here is another passage from St. John's book, a passage he wrote in regards to himself after Alabama's loss to their bitter enemy Auburn in 1989, that ran through my mind as I watched "Big Fan" (and that ran through my mind in the days after Nebraska lost to Texas):

"Crying one’s self to sleep over the failure of a group of people you’ve never met to defeat another group of people against whom you have no legitimate quarrel — in a game you don’t play, no less — is not rational."

Touché. Now books are different from films. In books you have plenty of time, pages and pages, in fact, to philosophically pour over these questions. In a film, however, a character's behavior must do the speaking and one thing I loved about Siegel's work here was his unwillingness to try and psychologically probe Paul. Sure, you can sense his mother trying to psychologically probe him but you can also tell it's of no use. Paul's actions do all the speaking for him. This is truly a journey into the heart of fan mania.

I want to discuss the end but don't want to give it away and so I will tread carefully from here on out. As the film progresses Paul seems to be losing his marbles and starts to chart one of those inevitable cinematic paths. But what I thought was going to happen doesn't exactly happen while, at the same time, it does. I apologize if that makes no sense but I don't wish to spoil the surprises.

I still think the notion that "it's just a game" is stupid, simplistic and archaic. I always will. But, that said, perspective is important. Did my happiness hinge on that one fateful second hanging so dramatically in the air when Colt McCoy heaved the ball out of bounds when my boy Ndamukong was about to knock the snot out of him again? Of course not. Not my eternal happiness. A game can bring us comfort. It can. But since it can comfort us the automatic flip side is that it can also sadden us. The trouble territory is when it begins to define us. I think if you looked up Paul Aufiero in the People Of Staten Island Dictionary it would say "Giants Fan" and....nothing else.

Point Break

With more people voting for me to not see either "The Blind Side" or "Edge of Darkness" on Super Bowl Sunday I decided to stay at home and watch one of director Kathryn Bigelow's (recent Oscar nominee for "The Hurt Locker") earliest efforts, "Near Dark", which I had never seen but always wanted to. But, of course, even though Netflix promised me the movie would arrive in the mail by Thursday, it still had not shown up in my mailbox by Saturday. (In a related story, I was so incensed by this turn of events I pondered on Saturday afternoon switching to Blockbuster online except - and I'm not making any of this up - on Saturday night I sat down to watch "District 9" with my friends John and Kristin who had received it from Blockbuster Online except when John pulled the disc out of the envelope, an envelope that clearly stated "District 9", he found a disc instead for...."9"! Yay! We could have lit out for the closest Blockbuster, of course, to exchange it except - oh, right! - Blockbuster Online and Netflix have driven every video rental store within a 2 mile radius of my apartment out of business! Now I hate you both.)

But fear not, loyal readers, for Cinema Romantico would not be deterred. So to on-demand I went and within seconds had tracked down "Point Break", Kathryn Bigelow's action feature from the summer of '91 and rewatched it for the first time in, God, I don't know, 15 years, maybe, making Super Bowl Sunday, as it should be, all about TESTESTERONE!!!!! (Plus, I watched the movie in soft pants while indulging in a few pre-Super Bowl brewskies.)

In "Point Break" our main character is the sparklingly named Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves), a once great quarterback at Ohio State who flamed out with after an injury in the Rose Bowl. (For you college football geeks reading along this means that Reeves has played characters whose key Incident In The Past has taken place in both the Rose Bowl and the Sugar Bowl - in "The Replacements". He's had a better career than most actual college quarterbacks!) Now he is a hotshot rookie FBI agent in L.A. We first see him getting grilled by his superior, played by John C. McGinley in an early pre-cursor to his role on "Scrubs". He gets to holler lines like "I guess we must have ourselves an a--hole shortage" and "This is not some job flipping burgers at the local drive-in!"

Johnny Utah gets saddled with a hawing partner named Pappas (who is introduced to Utah for the first time through the most ancient of devices - badmouthing Utah directly to his face when he doesn't realize it). He is played by Gary Busey. Pappas, you see, is on the trail of a quartet of bank robbers nicknamed The Ex Presidents since, as you "Point Break" fans no doubt know, they all wear masks of Ex Presidents - Reagan, Carter, Nixon, LBJ - when executing their flawless heists. Ah, but Pappas has a theory. A tan line and just a hint of surfboard wax left at the scene has led him to suspect The Ex Presidents double as surfers. Busey, of course, in recent years has become synonomous with CRAZY!!! At the time of "Point Break" this wasn't the case. Yet watching "Point Break" with Busey's well known craziness in the back of your mind actually assists in enhancing this theory of Pappas. You believe even more that he would believe these bank robbers are surfers. Funny how time works.

Everyone else at the FBI, of course, thinks this theory is nuts which, of course, means it is 100% correct. But how to take down surfing bank robbers? Send Johnny Utah out into the wild waters of the Pacific with a pink surfboard, that's how, where within moments his life will be saved by a comely young woman named Tyler (Lori Petty). He convinces her to teach him how to surf, bringing to mind those lilting lyrics of The Beach Boys: "We could ride the surf together / While our love would grow." (One funny thing to note is a scene where Keanu Reeves is supposed to "act" like a stoned surfer to get information and you realize he is not "acting" any differently than he does at any other point in the movie. Ah, Keanu.)

Oh, their love will grow. Fast. But Utah will also find himself developing just a bit of a man crush on a mystical surfer friend of Tyler's named Bodhi. Bodhi calls people "compadre", laments surfers who don't "get the spiritual side of it", and occassionally talks like some sort of California-cated Sphinx: "Fear causes hesitation and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true." And did I mention he was played by Patrick Swayze? How could you not have a man crush on this guy!

Too bad he also happens to be the leader of the Ex Presidents. Ain't that just how the cookie crumbles? So knowing that we also know that eventually Utah and Bodhi will come face to face (perhaps more than once) with weapons drawn. But then golly gee! I've spent four paragraphs discussing the plot of "Point Break"! And this is a movie of action! Heart stopping, pulse pounding action that involves automatic weapons, fisticuffs, karate, sky diving, a raid on the wrong house that ends with a tete-a-tete in front of a whirring lawn mower (why did that neighbor keep mowing his lawn when a gunfight broke out one house over?!) and Anthony Keidis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers accidentally shooting himself in the foot, and references to the mythical "Fifty Year Storm" which, as it must, is where the movie will end.

The most staggering setpiece of the film is a footchase through a heavily populated neighborhood that will go through houses, over fences, past unwieldy dogs, on and on, and all done with handheld camera. You could probably make a valid argument this scene was an inspiration for some of the endless walking and running handheld work of the Greengrass-made "Bourne" films - the finest action work of the 00's in my book which means I'm really saying something here.

One thing to note about the film nearly twenty years later is its lack of conventional action sequences. Sure, there are few times when the bullets fly and so on and so forth but I am fairly certain nary a thing blew up. When something catches Bigelow's fancy - like the first skydiving scene in the film - she really stays with it and revels in it. I always find those choices by action directors to be refreshing. As ludicrous as the movie is she remains very patient with the material.

Until the third act, that is, when the story really gets ludicrous (I mean if Utah knows that Bodhi knows he's an FBI agent why in the hell would he get into that plane?) and then to sugarcoat it Bigelow just ramps it up and goes and goes. In the last thirty minutes the film headbangs from the first skydiving sequence to a bank robbery gone awry to another skydiving sequence (which finds Utah leaping out of a plane sans parachute) to the final showdown in the midst of "The Fifty Year Storm".

Could anyone have possibly guessed "Point Break" would ever have such a legacy? Could anyone have possibly guessed one of the great film spoofs in film history would come via "Point Break" when 2007's "Hot Fuzz" took one more of its more "poignant" moments to task? Could anyone have possibly guessed that a concept play based on "Point Break" (which I was going to see in Minneapolis with my friend Ashley until a brutal snowstorm prevented my making it) would ever become both a reality and a force of nature? Could anyone have possibly guessed that nearly twenty years after the summer of "Terminator 2" and "Point Break" James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow would be going head to head, not at the box office but at the Academy Awards? Could anyone have possibly guessed Lori Petty, who in the wake of this and 1992's "A League Of Their Own" seemed to have such a promising career, would one day star in "The Karate Dog"? Could I have possibly guessed sitting in the backseat of my father's car that summer afternoon that the same actor who played a character named Roach in "Point Break" (James Legros) would one day also star in my third favorite movie?

Could anyone have possibly guessed that Ping Wu, who turns up for the briefest of moments as an unnamed police dispatcher, would go on to play Ping, the Chinese delivery guy Elaine Benes accidentally hits when she jaywalks leading to a lawsuit from Cheryl "The Terminator" Fong? I mention it because like Jerry walked in on George to find him getting emotional over the end of "Home Alone" ("The old man got to me"), well, I felt the slightest of pulls on the ol' heartstrings when Bodhi paddles out into the mega-surf at the end to meet his fate, to go on "the ultimate ride", and I really, really shouldn't have.

No, no, no, I didn't cry. But I felt the tiniest bit of something. I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm older and over the years have become a devout romantic. Maybe it's because Patrick Swayze passed away last year. Maybe it's because I was drinking in the afternoon. Who knows? But I dug it. It's like Bodhi says so mystically, "It's not tragic to die doing what you love." I only hope, compadre, that when my time comes I can recognize it, crank "The Fame Monster" and go out shaking my ass.

A Digression: The Boss Hasn't Retired Yet

The most recent Springsteen album, "Working On A Dream", was the nightmare I had long feared, wherein as each song passes the realization becomes more and more clear: "Oh no, this isn't good. This is disappointing. This is not enjoyable. This is a Springsteen album and I want to force myself to like it but....I can't. I can't and there is nothing I can do about it." I still listen to it every now and then with the misbegotten hope it will somehow reveal everything it did not on the first 107 painful listens, that "Queen of the Supermarket" will stop being the worst Springsteen song since "Real Man" (a song which makes me want to pour gasoline over myself in the presence of a pyromaniac) and come into focus as a pop oriented Brahms' Symphony but....then the album finishes and I realize I still don't like it. And then I curl up in a ball under my coffee table, certain Bruce's days of decent album making are firmly in the past.

Thus, when I heard Bruce had performed a new song called "Wrecking Ball" to open each show of his Giants Stadium stand last fall I stayed away from it, fearing the worst. But recently I found myself on ITunes and saw "Wrecking Ball" dangling itself in front of me for a mere 99 cents and thought "Well, hey, it's Bruce, I suppose I could give it a chance" and then I bought it and hit play and breathed deeply and closed my eyes, ready for another nightmare, but....a most funny thing happened. I found myself believing in the Church of Bruce again, believing like I haven't for several years.

Now make no mistake, this is not a great Bruce song. Goodness, no. We're still a long, long way from the lo fi perfection of "Nebraska" and the awesome overwrought romanticism of "Born To Run" and the incomprehensibly brilliant introspection of "Tunnel Of Love". The lyrics are terribly clunky. I mean, for crying out loud, Bruce rhymes "balls" with "ball" and "rust" with "dust". (But, frankly, I don't think Bruce has it in himself anymore to write great lyrics. I think he's exhausted all his ammo. I always envision him sitting around his sprawling Jersey mansion with a notepad and pen and he's writing a new song and he's written this little bit he thinks is great - just great - and he calls in Patti and tells her and then he reads her the line: "You can leave me tonight but just don't leave me alone." And then Patti gets this look and Bruce realizes it instantly and says, "Oh no, I already wrote that line, didn't I?" And Patti says "Yup. Thirty five years ago." And Bruce rips up the page and sighs "Oh well, I guess I'll just rhyme lips with kiss and rust with dust again.") But for once you don't hear him trying to be great. All those lyrics on "Working On A Dream" make it sound like a struggling English major pouring over them again and again, adjusting, changing, re-working, and failing miserably. ("He who waits for the day's riches will be lost / In the whispering tide." I mean, the whispering tide? Is he collaborating with Sheryl Crow now?) "Wrecking Ball" just sounds like he came up with something he wanted to say backstage, wrote it down on a cocktail napkin, read it, said to himself "who gives a crap if its cornball?", rehearsed it at sound check, and then played it. And the song benefits so much because of it.

The shows Bruce and The E Street Band played at Giants Stadium were the last prior to its scheduled tearing-down this year for the new palace next door. So the song is sung from the stadium's point of view, in a sense, daring the powers-that-be to "bring on your wrecking ball". It's packed wall-to-wall with little football references. "Your game's been decided and you're burning the clock down." But his voice! It's urgent! It's fierce! And I do love the line "All our hopes and victories turn into parking lots." It makes me think of Julie Delpy in "Before Sunrise" talking about her father turning her "fanciful ambitions into some practical moneymaking venture." (Or is that just me?)

What I really love about the song, though, is the band. That's The E Street Band, people. Rockin' out. Like they're supposed to. It starts out acoustic and then the synth comes in with one of those familiar wistful riffs you so often find in the Springsteen canon, that only a Springsteen song knows how to employ, and then the Roy Bittan piano. Oh, the Roy Bittan piano. God help me, I do love it so. In the hands of Springsteen's 00's producer Brendan O'Brien the Roy Bittan piano so often gets the shaft in favor of a guitar-driven troika with loads of overdubs. He overproduces everything. This is okay on the Spector-ish pop songs like "Girls In Their Summer Clothes" but, say, "Radio Nowhere" sounds so much better live when it doesn't have 28 unnecessary layers added to it. It's The E Street Band, man. Just let them be. (It's like trying to Auto Tune Neko Case's voice. Uh....sorta not necessary.)

So many of my favorite Springsteen songs have the Bittan piano at the forefront. Can't we ever get that again? His piano is so beautiful and, most especially, so elegiac. You can hear the ode to Giants Stadium in that piano on "Wrecking Ball". More than that, you can see it. You can see Lawrence Taylor coming off the edge and you can see Curtis Martin dragging a tackler for a few extra yards (I didn't forget you, Jets fans) and, why, you can even see Elaine Benes and Joel Rifkin ("He's not the murderer") if you look really close. And then when the whole band kicks in and rocks it and Clarence's sax is calling out like a North Atlantic lighthouse and O'Brien isn't there to add god-knows-what and, well, if you're an E Street Disciple you're just in high heaven, even if the lyrics are clunky. "Wrecking Ball" trades that studio-made meticulousness for indomitable spirit. God, there's just so much....so much....so much....feeling.

Then about three-fourths of the way in the song does a curious thing. Bruce sings the line from the chorus: "Bring on your wrecking ball." But then Little Stevie Van Zandt (in that voice of his, the most beautiful out-of-tune voice there ever was) sings it, too. And then Bruce sings it again. And then Little Stevie sings it again. And now you realize the point-of-view is shifting from the stadium to these two. And it gives me chills. Bruce and Little Stevie, one sixty, one fifty-nine, best friends for life. And you realize that finally, finally, Bruce isn't singing about 9/11 or about the Iraq war or about the Bush Administration or migrant workers, no, he's singing for himself. He's singing, by God, out of defiance.

You think I'm over the hill, he seems to be saying. You think I'm past my prime? You think that "guacamole dip" line from the Super Bowl was terrible? You think I'm Old Man River just because I got one of them Kennedy Center Honors they only give to dudes whose relevancy is long done gone? Is that what you think? Yeah? Screw you. Bring on your wrecking ball.

And I listen and I smile and I wonder if maybe, just maybe, Bruce Springsteen has one great album left him in yet.

Help! What Should I See?!

As tradition stipulates, I like to see a movie in the afternoon prior to the Super Bowl. So while I really want to see "Fish Tank", opening this weeekend in Chicago, and plan to, that is not a film for Super Bowl Sunday. I want to see something that does not demand as much attention. The problem? There really is nothing else out I want to see. I mean, nothing. Hey, I'm as big a sucker for crappy romantic comedies as the next guy but even the comely Kristen Bell doesn't make me want to go see "When In Rome". Denzel Washington is essentially the definition of charismatic and yet I still have no desire to plunk down $11 (matinee price!) for "Book of Eli".

So I've narrowed the contenders to two: "The Blind Side" and "Edge of Darkness". Why these? Well, "The Blind Side" is obviously due to Sandra Bullock's leading role that seems destined to bring her an Oscar (while Kelly Macdonald sits at home eating chunky monkey). "Edge of Darkness" is due to...I'm honestly not sure. I guess I've always kinda liked Mel Gibson as an actor. I love "Signs". He may be a complete a--hole in real life, and it seems more and more likely that's the case, but that is 100% irrelevant to what he does onscreen. And even though many of the lines in the "Edge of Darkness" preview made me cringe I guess...I don't know! I just want to see a movie on Super Bowl Sunday! Is that so wrong?! STOP JUDGING ME!!!

So I need some help. Anyone who wanders onto my blog over the next couple days please feel free to cast a vote for either "The Blind Side" or "Edge of Darkness" and, if you want, tell me why.

I'm not saying 100% I'll take your advice. I may wake up on Sunday and just not have it in me to deal with the schmaltz of "The Blind Side" but I'll strongly consider anything anyone has to say. Desperate times call for...well, you know.

A Scene To Go Home With You: Fightin' In A Basement

I cannot stress enough the length of Quentin Tarantino's scenes in his WWII epic "Inglorious Basterds." He is breaking all the rules of modern-day filmmaking. Only a specific few directors in this day and age could get away with such audacious length. The Scene in particular goes on for what must be 25 minutes and it is so old-fashioned (classically shot, no shaky camera at any point). 98% other directors show this scene to the studio moguls and the studio moguls start pissing and moaning and demanding Jump Cuts and Changes In Film Stock For No Discernible Reason and Flashbacks and Violence Appearing Out Of Thin Air. "People will fall asleep!" they'd yell. "This scene calls for patience and, well, for God's sake, we're Americans!" But Tarantino can tell them all where to go and leave The Scene unchanged. That's his power. Bless him.
(Wait, have I offered the Spoiler Alert yet? No? Okay. Spoiler Alert!)

The Scene, in a sense, gets rolling in the scene before The Scene. Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender), a film critic in England before the war, is sent to France for "Operation Kino", the aim to infiltrate a Parisian cinema which will be showing the premiere of a new German film titled "Nation's Pride" at which will be present many high ranking Nazi officers, including Joseph Goebbels himself. His contacts in France are the famed German actress Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger), a spy working for the Allies, and the basterds themselves, a Jewish American military unit headed up by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt).

Hicox, along with Sgt. Hugo Sitglitz (Til Schweiger) and Cpl. Wilhelm Wicki (Gedeon Burkhard), will pose as Nazi officers meeting the beguiling von Hammersmark, their "old friend". Hicox makes it clear that should anything go wrong and they are unable to make it out that any Germans present at their rendezvous point not make it out alive. This is crucial to "Operation Kino's" success.

Lt. Raine is not so taken with the chosen site of this rendezvous - a basement tavern, chosen by von Hammersmark herself. "She's an actress," explains Hicox, "not a military strategist." "You don't gotta be Stonewall Jackson to know you don't wanna fight in a basement," Raine declares. But Hicox advises the basement tavern was chosen as it was isolated and typically unpopluated by Nazis.

The Scene then begins in earnest inside that cinematically wonderful basement tavern with the shot of, yes, a Nazi. Thus, The Scene essentially opens with a Reversal, which is key as there are more Reversals ahead. The Nazi is drunk and he is joined by several other drunk Nazis since Master Sgt. Wilhelm (Alexander Fehling) is celebrating the birth of his son, Maximilian. Sure enough, Bridget von Hammersmark herself has joined them at their table where they play a card game in which you write the name of some famous person on the card, pass the card to your right, at which point the person places the card on his or her forehead and then has to guess the name on that card.

Hicox and the basterds, masquerading as the Nazi officers, then enter (a sublime shot, the table of von Hammersmark and her new "pals" in a long shot with the stairs showing the boots of the entering trio framed in the upper right hand corner). They take a different table. Eventually von Hammersmark makes her way over to them where they all agree they must stay for one drink as to not appear suspicious. In hushed tones she explains the movie premiere has been changed to a smaller theater. But more than that there is "colossal" news. "Try not to overreact," she says. And then begins "The Fuhrer" at which point, of course, the drunken Wilhelm stumbles up and wonders if von Hammersmark will sign her autograph for his newborn son which she does.

"He may not know who you are now," explains Wilhelm, "but he will." Wilhelm stumbles away, von Hammersmark gets set to explain this "colossal" news again but, again, Wilhelm re-enters the picture. Now Hicox grows impatient. Speaking in German he lectures Wilhelm, telling him this is an officer's table and he is an enlisted man. Perhaps emboldened from all the schnapps, Wilhelm mentions the oddity of this Nazi captain's accent and wonders "Where are you from?" Now Stiglitz grabs hold of Wilhelm and, in his own German voice, yells at Wilhelm for questioning his superior and sends him back to his table. They're in the clear. Or are they? A German voice calls out: "Might I inquire?!"

Now the camera finds Major Hellstrom (August Diehl), isolated at a corner table, reading, smoking, drinking a boot of beer. Another Reversal. The scene begins anew. He approaches this officer's table and notes the oddity of the accent of this Captain he doesn't know.

Hicox cooly explains the location of his German village and how there they all speak in this way. Employing his film knowledge he goes on to advise if Major Hellstrom has scene a particular German film - which he has - he would have seen himself and his family. Von Hammersmark confirms this information. Hellstrom seems to be satisfied (or is he?) and joins them at their table. (Perhaps the funniest moments in the entire sequence involve the glowering looks Stiglitz gives to Hellstrom throughout. He just cannot wait to unleash hell on this guy.) Hellstrom suggests they play the same card game as the other German soldiers and they do. After Hellstrom correctly guesses the name on his card Hicox advises the Major that, as they are old friends, they wish to spend their time alone and without disruption and that he is intruding. Hellstrom asks von Hammersmark if he is intruding. Obliged, she says no. Hellstrom then laughs, affirms he is, in fact, intruding, and agrees to leave them be after be buys them one last drink in the form of some special scotch. He will not have any, though, nor will the fraulein, but the other three will, and so three glasses are requested.

At this instant something is given away. What, the movie never explicitly says (until later) but you can see from the expression of Hellstrom and then from von Hammersmark that something irreversible just took place and, sure enough, under the table, Hellstrom points his gun at Hicox's, shall we say, groinal region. Ah, but then Hicox reveals he had his gun pointed at Hellstrom's groinal region since he sat down. Oh, boy. Hicox finishes his scotch since - in a wonderful line - he explains there are special circles in hell for people who waste good scotch. (Amen.) And then....

Violence erupts. The real Nazis, the fake Nazis, the tavern owner, everyone. Guns are fired, bullets fly, blood is spilled, and all of it lasts no more than 14 seconds. (I know because I watched it a second time and counted out loud.) A scene that has gone for 20 minutes, tension mounting, and mounting, and mounting, and mounting, and then all hell breaks loose for 14 seconds and then it's over.

In a way Tarantino himself was building to this all along. In "True Romance" (which he wrote) and in "Reservoir Dogs" (which he wrote and directed) there are scenes like this but they are more concerned with the explosion of violence. At this point in his career Q.T. has learned the buildup is always the best part and the better and longer the buildup the more shocking the violence, especially if the violence is breathlessly short.

Only one man still stands. The new father, Wilhelm. But then we hear footsteps up above of Lt. Raine and his men. He wants to know if anyone from "his side" has survived. They haven't. No, wait! They have! Von Hammersmark, though injured, is still alive. Raine needs her alive to keep "Operation Kino" a go. But to get to von Hammersmark he has to strike a deal with Wilhelm that neither of them will kill the other which, going back to the scene before The Scene, is no good since no opposing Germans can be left alive. Will Raine have to go back on his word? Will Wilhelm get out alive? And then Wilhelm says disgustedly of von Hammersmark, "Take this f---ing traitor away." And then he gets shot dead. Not by Raine. But by von Hammersmark. The last Reversal. And you realize, Wow, poor ol' Wilhelm was right. His son may not know her now but he will.