Category: movies

best actors of all time?

On By Rick McIn movies1 Comment

These guys have won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice:

Spencer Tracy
Fredric March
Gary Cooper
Marlon Brando
Dustin Hoffman
Tom Hanks
Jack Nicholson
Daniel Day-Lewis
Sean Penn

Laurence Olivier was nominated 9 times, winning once. Peter O’Toole was nominated 8 times, never winning.

In my opinion Johnny Depp is in that league. He was nominated, not winning, in 2004, 2005 and 2008.

Johnny_Depp_(July_2009)_2_cropped

Who else deserves to be on that list?

De Niro? Philip Seymour Hoffman? Gene Hackman? Kevin Spacey? Denzel Washington? Clint Eastwood? Robert Downey, Jr.? Jamie Foxx?

Leave a comment.

Up in the Air starring George Clooney

On By Rick McIn movies, product endorsementsLeave a comment

Two of my favourite movies of recent years:

Thank you for Smoking

Juno

They were the first two feature films of Jason Reitman, son of comedy director and actor Ivan Reitman.

Reitman describes his production company’s goal as being to produce “small subversive comedy that is independent but accessible”.

I’m really looking forward to his third major film, Up in the Air. Clooney is …

… Ryan Bingham, a corporate downsizing expert whose cherished life on the road is threatened just as he is on the cusp of reaching ten million frequent flyer miles and just after hes met the frequent-traveler woman of his dreams. …

Click PLAY or watch the trailer on YouTube.

One knock against Reitman, he’s a Vancouver Canucks fan.

The Painted Veil

On By Rick McIn books, movies, product endorsementsLeave a comment

I finally got around to one of the only W. Somerset Maugham books I had not read:

The Painted Veil (1925)

… Shallow and lost, Kitty marries the intellectual and passionate Walter Fane, a bacteriologist on leave from the Far East who is madly in love with her. She does this purely so that she can be married before her younger sister, Doris, and to get away from her mother. They move to Hong Kong where, bored by the stifling climate and social mores, Kitty quickly starts an affair with the “perfect” Charles Townsend, the handsome assistant colonial secretary.

When Walter finds out about their affair, he gives Kitty an ultimatum. She must either accompany him to the Chinese interior to deal with a cholera epidemic, risking death, or he will divorce her, causing a scandal, unless Townsend will agree to marry her. …

It’s masterful, as always with Maugham.

The guy may have been a jerk, but he could certainly work words.

As I followed the tale I visualized it as the perfect film for Merchant Ivory.

Surprised was I to find out it was made into a movie in 2006, The Painted Veil with Naomi Watts and Edward Norton.

Click PLAY or watch the trailer on YouTube.

… Norton considered The Painted Veil to be in the spirit of films like Out of Africa (1985) and The English Patient …

I’ve got to see that movie.

Nowhere in Africa – great movie

On By Rick McIn movies, product endorsementsLeave a comment

I happened upon the book in Germany.

Nowhere-in-Africa

It’s good. But not great.

Apparently the movie is great.

Click PLAY or watch the trailer on YouTube.

I can’t find a copy online.

Nowhere in Africa (German: Nirgendwo in Afrika) is an epic 2001 German film directed by Caroline Link and based on the autobiographical novel of the same name by Stefanie Zweig. It tells the story of a Jewish family that emigrates to Kenya during World War II to escape the Nazis and run a farm. The film won an 2002 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. …

Wikipedia

have you seen Sicko?

On By Rick McIn books, economics, government, health & fitness, movies1 Comment

I first posted about this movie May 22, 2007.

How could I have missed seeing it until now?

It’s a very important film. Especially with the Health Care debate happening in the USA.

… Sicko is a 2007 documentary … by American film maker Michael Moore. The film investigates the American health care system, focusing on its health insurance and pharmaceutical industry. The film compares the for-profit, non-universal U.S. system with the non-profit universal health care systems of Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Cuba. …

Wikipedia

You can watch it free and legal on Google Video.

It’s not a documentary. It’s Michael Moore’s one sided diatribe against the American Medical system.

But he got the bottom line right. The USA has a crappy medical system, overall. Sure if you have good coverage in the States (working for Cirque du Soleil, for example) … you are better off personally than someone working for, say, Cirque in Canada.

But something like 50 million Americans have no insurance. That is really sick!

sicko_facts_up_front

People are healthier and live longer in pretty much every other developed country, too.

The case studies in Sicko are selective, but still well worth watching. (I want to move to France from Canada after seeing those interviews!)

Under the Obama presidency, something is going to happen in the USA. But what?

It’s complicated.

The best vision I’ve heard is that of George C. Halvorson, CEO of Kaiser Permanente, the largest managed care organization in the United States. A non-profit.

… KP places a strong emphasis on preventative care, reducing costs later on. Second, its doctors are salaried rather than paid per service, which removes any incentive for doctors to perform unnecessary procedures. Thirdly, KP attempts to minimize the time patients spend in high-cost hospitals by carefully planning their stay and by providing cares in clinics. …

His most recent book: Health Care Will Not Reform Itself: A User’s Guide to Refocusing and Reforming American Health Care

Halvorson-book

Halvorson is a realist. Not a utopian like Michael Moore.

Listen to an interview with Halvorson on NPR.

In his movie Michael Moore neglected to mention that current systems in countries like Canada will soon collapse. They are not sustainable financially.

In 10 or 20 years how will the U.S. ranking compare?

That’s being decided right now.

Obama-Health_care

Leave a comment if you have an opinion.

bad book – Wonder Boys

On By Rick McIn books, movies, product complaintsLeave a comment

I read and enjoyed The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon. It won the the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001.

So … expected to enjoy another of his books, Wonder Boys (1995).

1857024052.01.LZZZZZZZ

The writing is skillful, of course. The plot original. The characters quirky.

But ultimately I could not finish the book It had nothing to teach me. I hate books about disfunctional losers and their stupid lives.

Yeesh.

I never saw the film version (2000) starring Michael Douglas. But some say, despite being a box office dog, that it was better than the book.

The Hunt for Gollum

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The Hunt for Gollum is a fan film based on elements of J. R. R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. The film is a prequel to the events of The Fellowship of the Ring, and is based on passages in the novel’s appendices. Its visual style is inspired by Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, but the production is completely unofficial and unauthorized by the Tolkien estate or New Line Cinema, which produced Jackson’s film trilogy. …

The Hunt for Gollum debuted at the Sci-Fi-London film festival and on the internet, free to view, on 3 May 2009.

Click PLAY or watch one of the trailers on Dailymotion.

As a fan film, The Hunt for Gollum exists in a legal grey area. …

It is unclear whether the production violates the rights held by the Tolkien estate and New Line films. Fred von Lohmann, director of the Electronic Freedom Foundation, told NPR that the high quality of the film and its global reach via the internet could potentially create legal issues. However, director Chris Bouchard told BBC News:

We got in touch with Tolkien Enterprises and reached an understanding with them that as long as we are completely non-profit then we’re okay. We have to be careful not to disrespect their ownership of the intellectual property. They are supportive of the way fans wish to express their enthusiasm.

Wikipedia

Surprisingly good. I recommend it. It goes to show that amateurs can make quality cinema with only a few thousands dollars and volunteer labour.

Watch The Hunt for Gollum online. (40min)

Credit Card Bill of Rights passes

On By Rick McIn economics, moviesLeave a comment

Is there a credit card debt problem?

To find out, click PLAY or watch the trailer to Maxed Out on YouTube.

… The main premises of the documentary and book are that banks and other creditors deliberately market to people who are more likely to have problems paying predatory lending and that the creditors benefit from connections to government, the debt collection industry, and from lawmaker apathy. …

New legislation in the USA, the Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights, just passed overwhelmingly.

From what I can see, it looks like rules in the States will be tightened. That’s a good thing.

People hopefully will be better protected from their own stupidity.

I can look down the stupid (at the moment) because I have no credit card debt. Certainly I have been stupid in the past. Once having over double the average credit card debt of Americans today.

credit_card_debt
graphic source

The banks have between 9-12 months to adjust to the new regulations.

A NY Times blog notes that the banks are ratcheting up fees and interest before the Fed’s rules kick in.

Best advice. Pay off your credit card debt.

Earth – the movie

On By Rick McIn movies, product endorsementsLeave a comment

The Walt Disney Studios will celebrate Earth Day 2009 (April 22nd) with the debut of “Earth,” the first feature-length nature documentary from its new production banner, Disneynature. …

Follows the epic migratory journeys of four animal families as well as the earth’s journey around the sun and the massive influence it has on all life on the planet, from the Arctic spring to the Antarctic winter.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

I’m really looking forward to getting outdoors more this summer. … It’s SNOWING now in Calgary.

just finished the Twilight series

On By Rick McIn books, movies, product endorsements2 Comments

All 4 published books are good. It kept me going right to the end. (I’d like to know what happens next to the Cullen clan.)

The writing is not Nobel Prize worthy, but the plot is engaging.

I’m looking forward to the next movie. Rumour is Dakota Fanning will play super vampire Jane.

Book 1
Book 1

Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1)

Twilight is a series of four vampire-based fantasy/romance novels by the American author Stephenie Meyer. It follows the adventures of Isabella “Bella” Swan, a teenager who moves to Forks, Washington, and finds her life turned upside-down when she falls in love with a vampire named Edward Cullen. …

Wikipedia

I immediately started the next Harry Potter book in audio. It’s titled Harry Potter and the Gob of Deathly Phoenix Blood … something like that.