One of my favorite movies is Cast Away.  early Aughts tale of an executive who survives a jetliner crash and has to live on a desert island for four years.  Some people hate the movie because of it’s FedEx advertisement nature — FedEx is everywhere in this film and it gets to the point where the product placement is unbearable.  Even though it’s not true product-placement as-so-much brand name use on props.  It gives a little more realizsm than if Chuck Noland had been an employee of the fictional Pacific Courier shipping company.

At any rate, I enjoy the film.  the emotional stuff and the open “Where do I go from here?” end to the film.

I got bored the other day and started tooling around IMDB.com.  I’ve looked at their “Trivia” section for Cast Away in years previous and just wanted to see things again.  Some of the facts seemed to have been changed, some of them seemed to be deleted (I do recall hearing that there was a different ending, originally, to the film that did not test well and as replaced.  Hearsay and speculation on my part because I cannot find reference to this on the web).

One piece of cynical trivia that was on that page, however, caught my eye, and spoilers are ahead for those who have not seen the movie.

Chuck keeps, and never opens, a FedEx box with an Angel art print on it.  The box had washed ashore from his crashed jetliner.  He keeps that package the entire time he is on the island and during his escape from the island.  He ultimately delivers it to the place where it was destined.

The package, without ever knowing the contents, drove Chuck Noland to keep on going.  Keep breathing.  He never cited that, but it’s the truth.  The package was a visual reminder of salvation.

But it was also Chuck’s saviour if he opened the damn thing.

Director Robert Zemekis has repeated over and over again what the package’s contents actually were…  And like I say, it’s ultimately cynical when you hear it:  A water proof, solar powered satellite phone.

By not opening the package, Chuck transitioned from a career-orientated, overweight busy-body to a bare bones human, content to just be alive.  The package itself is a salvation device in a figurative sense.  He found himself by getting away from the things of man.  But if he opened it… It would be his salvation as well.

And that’s the what-if:  What if Chuck Noland had opened the Angel package while he had been stuck on the deserted island?

Forget the arty context that I cited about transitions in being and what not.  Wouldn’t it be a huge adventure of a movie just to be rescued from an island?  Not that someone stumbles across you, but that miraculously ftype of escape?

I see it like this:  It might not be in the first week or two, or three that Chuck opens the package.  Or maybe it is…  He finds the product and has the “EUREKA!” moment, knowing he’s saved…  But how the hell do you operate the thing?  Do you have to have a credit card in order to use it/sign up for it for the first time?  This alone could cause a bit of a complication.

And then, the bigger issue:  you get the phone to work, you get it charged up and ready to go and…  who the hell do you call? He’s going to try calling his girlfriend, Kelly Fears, to assure her that he’s alive…  But that brings up another trivial issue that would effect things:  The time difference between his deserted island location and Memphis, Tennessee (where she lives).

That, and the amount of time between the plane crashing and Chuck opening the package.  Kelly moved and married.  It’s not like she keeps her same phone number the entire duration of the film.  But for a time – she will be where she was, and be reachable…

Just what-if?

Even calling his girlfriend doesn’t necessarily get the wheels moving in getting home.  And when those wheels do start moving, there is the story of the entire rescue operation, of Chuck’s return to society and his return home.  Just what happens to Chuck if he were rescued by way of that satellite phone?  It’s a movie all unto itself.  An event like that changes people, and we ultimately saw that in the closing chapters of the film.  But just how much does Chuck change if he wasn’t stuck there the full four years?  Just what happens to him if he opens that damn package?  Does he still ultimately lose Kelly somewhere down the line (divorce)?  Does he fear flying once he returns home and demands a job ont he groudn from that point forward?

Really, what if?

That had nothing to do with the news that has been buzzing around lately. Odd coincidence, though…

I guess it was when a friend on Facebook posted this status that I really woke up to it:

looks like captain tripps does exist!!! awesome!!!

Ah yes, “Captain Tripps” — the nickname for King’s super-flu from The Stand. What’s next? Corin Nemic joining Fox News coverage, staking out the Center for Disease control and trying to insinuate this is all the Democratic Party’s fault? (Corin Nemic, for those who don’t understand the reference, played Harold Lauder: outcast-nerd-turned-turncoat; in the miniseries. He also used to be Parker Lewis. “Not a problem.”)

Anyway, forget The Stand for a minute and lets just go back to the sensationalism of the coverage of the Flu. From what reports would have you believe, death-rates are high (like 10%+) and we’re all screwed. Joe Biden didn’t help things this morning by stating public caution.

But really, I wish people would just stop watching TV coverage of this and just become aware of the facts and just go about their lives. The flu sucks and is known to be deadly… But unless people start showing severe symptoms and start dropping dead in mass in New York instead of showing only mild symptoms… Well, it’s a panic that seems straight out of a work of fiction.

…And to be honest, King’s work of fiction was a lot better than the news coverage we are seeing in reality.

Let me point to it again — read the articles here. If you only want to spend time reading a single article, read the fourth in that series. And calm the hell down!

I won’t go into the geekdom of the what if concept and the different stories that were based on this. Lets just say it as a venerable butterfly effect — the flapping of wings on a different continent were part of the reason why a typhoon formed in the Pacific Ocean.

One small happening causes a huge domino effect and results in something seemingly indirect and different to happen. That kind of thing.

Today I came across (by way of Dave Lowe) a joke observation from the Back To The Future saga and the original movie. It was composed as a (profane) letter from Doc Brown to Marty McFly regarding one of Marty’s choices on the eve of November 12th, 1955. It’s funny as hell but it leaves you wondering just how different the story would have turned out if Marty McFly had done things differently.

So I got me a “What if…?” like this regarding a movie that I love. It’s (the film’s) basis is pretty simple and was the framework for plenty of different action movies from the late 1980′s through the 1990′s.

The movie in this case is Die Hard.

What if…? What if…?

What if Lt. John McClane of the New York Police Department… had shoes on while dealing with the terrorists at Nakatomi Plaza?

Of course there is no definite answer to this with the HOW or WHY. I thought that is part of the magic of the “What If…?” Does John make sure to slip his shoes on instead of doing the stupid fists-with-your-toes thing? Does he grab his shoes when he hears gunshots and ducks out of the room? Shit, does John slip back onto the 30th floor, grab his shoes and socks and slip back out?

How does this change things? Does he employ different tactics, or is the only notable difference in the scene where John is pinned down on the computer floor and the henchman Karl shoots the glass around the office to smithereens?

What if…?

It’s so simple, it’s so stupid but it opens up a huge can of worms. Nothing might change and everything might change in just one minor action. Maybe McClane gets blown away because he has more confidence and takes on the terrorists head on? That’s the most cynical thought I have regarding this every time I think about it — we don’t get John-McClane from the first three Die Hard films, we get the Ah-nuld wanna Be from Die Hard 4 and see him suffer (and die) in the fashion that we saw John proved mortal in the first Die Hard film.

Maybe events fall a certain way so that Ellis doesn’t die — all because John McClane was wearing his stupid shoes instead of making fists with his toes! Maybe Al Powell doesn’t buy Twinkies at the gas station but opts for Ho-Hos instead? Holly doesn’t opt to restrain Joseph Takagi during Hans Gruber’s monologue — resulting in… Takagi giving up the password for the vault and living for another hour or more?

Humor me. What if John McClane tried to save the Nakatomi Hostages while he had shoes on? And would it have been worthy of a feature film?

Happy trails, Hans.

One thing I hated about the Star Wars prequels was the defining of the Force, or the defining of Storm Troopers (they were all clones!) and other rationalizations that killed the mysticism of the original trilogy. Conversely, it’s the pop culture references to Star Wars and inane in-depth discussion that I love. I mean, Clerks? Randall and Dante musing about the construction and destruction of the 2nd Death Star? INSANELY Funny in it’s inanity.

There are other places that don’t immediately come to mind regarding Star Wars and inanities about the how and other side stories that never get to the forefront of the story. One of the classics that I can think of is this image:

…and of course Penny Arcade’s latest comic seems like another great example… Though it goes a bit beyond just Star Wars: It’s the story about henchmen’s families. You see guys getting offed here and there… But we don’t care about them. That doesn’t mean other’s don’t.

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I had one question every time I saw positive reviews this summer for Live Free or Die Hard. It’s a rather basic question that no one would really answer — or would give aloof answers to: Does this film live up to the Die Hard franchise standard? I’ve posed this question directly to professional movie critics without an answer

Die Hard, in general, was built on an ultra simple principle: a situation at a location with a reluctant hero caught in the middle of whatever the hell was going down. It’s part of a generation of action movies where everything was “Die Hard on a…” Die Hard on a Bus, Die Hard on a Plane, Die Hard on a Train, Die Hard on a Battleship…

The original — 1988′s Die Hard — set the standard for the genre and began the franchise with out-of-place NYPD officer John McClane – barefoot, outmanned and outgunned, with the cops outside working against him. The second film (Die Harder) was Die Hard in the Airport: not as good but it was still the story of John McClane in the wrong place at the wrong time… Same character but with some graveness to his dialog which made the movie weird. Instead of a tower, it was Dulles Airport that was under siege.

Die Hard: With a Vengeance elaborated the setting. It wasn’t a fixed location but all of New York. It still worked if you ask me because you had John, you had a semi-fixed setting on Manhattan Island (and around New York)… You had deep links to the first movie with references to the past, and yet this time it wasn’t John out of his element, but thrust into things in his home. Oh and John McTeirnan directed (who filmed the first Die Hard). You can see the resemblance to the original with the cinematography employed, and McTiernan’s trademark directly-behind-the-actor light shots. Bruce Willis and Sam Jackson played well off each other to boot. It’s not as highly regarded as the first but it beats the hell out of the second film.

Then you have this… this… this piece of shit that they pushed on moviegoers this summer.

The balance of good-guy, bad-guy (on screen time) is too even — that’s the first sign this doesn’t stand up. Less is more. It’s also hard to feel intimidated by “ready the video uplink”, “start the download”, etc…

Then you have McClane himself — it’s not the fact he’s older or his head is shaved, he’s a caricature of himself while playing a minimalist role. John McClane is a rambling, sarcastic, insulting, sometimes arrogant, belligerent asshole that isn’t the character portrayed on screen by Bruce Willis this time. Oh, sure, he’s got his moments but this isn’t McClane. This doesn’t feel like McClane. This felt like The Terminator — especially with all the shit John is put through, where he’s tossed around like a rag doll, falling several floors and bouncing off blunt objects and he still gets up and keeps going with seemingly no damage. That’s not John either.

I mean, come on! The every-guy, mortality of John McClane was one of the things that made him great. Who can’t remember John running around barefoot in Nakatomi Tower? And what happened — he got shot, he got tons of glass put through his feet, and you saw him suffer that and doubt he’d survive. You had less of that in “Die Hard 2″, but you had more of it (except the jump-off-a-bridge absurdity near the end) in “With a Vengeance”. This time? No — he’s got some cuts but he’s too much like the energizer bunny (which he mocks in “With a Vengeance”) to be hurt. He wheels around Matt Farrell (the Mac guy, Justin Long) and who do you think of but Ah-nold playing the Terminator, wheeling around Eddie Furlong in Terminator 2: Judgement Day (all of this helped along by that minimalist dialog that I talked about).

Oh, and the location isn’t fixed. If the first three films can be directed at exact settings (“Die Hard. Die Hard at the Airport. Die Hard in New York”) this film can’t. (Die Hard America? Die Hard in Cyberspace with real world consequences? Die Hard avoiding Traffic?)

This might have been a great stand-alone movie but it sucks as part of one of the biggest action movie franchises in US history. It doesn’t fit. It’s odd that the original movie was conceived as a Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle… Because this film plays exactly like one.

There are some things starting to get to me though. I guess I was spoiled rotten during my hospital stay and my recovery and now I feel like I’m socially in a black hole. Limited reach outs from friends, limited shout outs and more, and less.

There’s also a lack of focus I am experiencing right now that un-nerves me. For the past 2 weeks I’ve been spot on with focus. On the ball. I see something that needs to be done, I do it. If someone else has something that needs to be done and isn’t sure of steps, I consult. I consult when not requested (and not in a rude way, it coincides needed productivity for a dormant product). I was all over the friggin’ place. AND I was hitting the ball out of the park on this shit! It was incredible, it was a rush…

…It was temporary?

I’m procrastinating more right now — with incoming emails, with to-do projects and what not — than I have at any time since I went to the hospital. There’s just this… social dread? I dunno… Part of me wants to get it done, knows I gotta get it done, knows I NEED to get it done.

The other part of me wants to chill out and surf the web and wait for someone to distract me. The people I want to distract me get credence while the people I don’t drive me back to work.

How about that? “Test your worth to John! Send him an IM during anti-social/anti-productivity hour and if he drops you for a project, you know your value!”

Newest skill test at the state fair, ya’ll. :-p

Oh, one other thing that is getting to me lately… Why can’t I enjoy movies any more? I feel a horrid pain when I watch Superman Returns (who hasn’t?) due to Bryan Singer’s epic scoping of the film and lack-of-editing to make Superman seem more likable. I saw The Two Towers before surgery and thought it (again) a disaster of editing proportions. That’s what I am seeing everywhere — edit, voice-over, edit, edit, chop, dissolve, blah, blah, blah… And these aren’t action sequences where I see them (most of the time)! Is it just heightened perception or should I burn my DVD Collection, get rid of my cable box and renounce Speilburg?

Especially sad when I’ve tried the competition.

My first replacement player was a Toshiba progressive scan blah-blah-blah that was purchased in 2004. The player was slow, annoying and overheated easily. I started looking for a replacement for that sucker (casually) last fall and mentioned to family how I’d like a new DVD player for Christmas.

My older brother obliged me. I wish he hadn’t.

While I was looking at the new systems and thinking there was a chance I could buy a player from either side of the current format war, my brother went out and bought me a DVD Recorder. Pretty nice, right?

Yeah, it’d be real nice if it wasn’t a bottom-of-the-line Memorex player which cannot even send closed captions to my TV in a timely fashion during standard DVD playback. Movies end up being somewhat like watching dubbed karate movies with captions being displayed well after someone speaks.

Just a little annoying for this hearing impaired movie fan.

Factor in a poor remote control that focused on recording aspects instead of play (as well as additional captioning lag, if not dropped captions, if you paused or fast forwarded through a portion of a DVD) and you have all the makings of a gift that counted for the thought — nothing more.

So for the last several months I’ve been watching movies on my computer instead of on my DVD player which is bothersome as well (17″ monitor replacing a 27″ TV will do that) and I finally decided enough was enough. Twice now, I have had equipment purchased for me by my elder sibling (who’s motto sometimes is “I don’t care” — he’ll get the job done but getting the job done is more important than doing it well sometimes) and both times I was fed a shit sandwich. Enough is enough.

I went shopping on Amazon yesterday.

The only thing that guided me on my search was the quality I had found in my original DVD player. Panasonic had won me over in it’s simplicity and quality (you know, what companies are supposed to do with their products instead of winning you over by being the lowest priced object on the “clearance” rack at Wal-Mart). I didn’t want tons of bells and whistles (no DVD-R this time, no Blu Ray or HD-DVD) and ended up choosing a highly-ranked unit that costs a little more than a fifth of what I paid for my original player back in 1998).

The only down side is having to wait for it to arrive.

A loyal, sweet, athletic and extremely bright breed of dog — Whippet Rescue and Placement focuses on finding homes for Whippets that need them. These are usually rescued animals that either had problems in their former homes or just couldn’t be looked after any more.

The latter film had enough of a hook to make me want to know what was going to happen next… It nagged at me. I didn’t care for the film as much as Prisoner of Azkaban when I first saw it because it ran so long and had so much going on… But it grew on me. Repeated watchings made me appreciate it more and the ending compelled me to return to Potter literature.

Cal it a Wrath of Khan/Empire Strikes Back negative closing and how it makes you ponder where the story goes from there. Goblet of Fire pulled it off (even if the film lacked the multiple side stories that J.K. Rowling worked into the book).

So I picked up Order of the Phoenix and read it through – finding Rowling’s narration exquisite and the story compelling just as I found the first book to be. While I’ve read about the new movie (due out this summer) through Entertainment Weekly and about which side stories are shelved (Ron playing quidditch, Dobby the house-elf making a return, etc) there is enough going on to keep you interested.

And after seeing the International trailer for the film — I’m dying to see this adaption:

So when I read Stephen King lauding the film in Entertainment Weekly late last year, it just refreshed my desire to see this film and it’s “outstanding twist of an ending”.

(EDIT NOTE: King lauded The Illusionist. I suspected this and had rented the movie specifically because of it. It was my brother who made a big deal about The Prestige‘s twist ending)

A few weeks back, I watched The Illusionist with Edward Norton and after my older brother watched it — he told me it wasn’t shit compared to The Prestige. “There is a surprise ending. It’s awesome. I saw it in theaters, you have gotta get it when it comes out on DVD.”

Me and Michael usually can enjoy the same movies so I thought I would be in for a real treat by the time I got to see the film on DVD.

I’m still waiting for that “surprise ending.”

Maybe it was because of the tip offs that the ending had a twist, but more likely it was a failing of craftmanship by Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan (superb filmmakers, I’m just a blogging critic with no credibility) in trying to hide the ending. Hell, maybe they didn’t set out for it to be a surprise at all? Never the less, I wasn’t floored by the “fooling” that took place.

While I loved The Illusionist specifically for it’s cinematography (19th century Vienna done gorgeously), I loved Prestige more for it’s actors as I had said above. Jackman, Caine, Bale — a superb threesome at the top of the bill. Yet as the movie unfolds, the pairing of Caine and Jackman’s characters over and over again don’t seem to properly balance with Bale. In fact, Jackman and Caine came off like antagonists at times, while Bale’s character’s shroud of mystery was both too revealing and too charismatic. You knew things would turn around for him at one point and all you had to do was wait. Wait. Wait.

They didn’t really turn around but lets just say he won in the end, and the fact he did wasn’t a secret or a surprise ending. Anyone watching can deduct what was going to happen by simple banter between Bale and Jackman before the two illusionist trainees had their falling out.

Nolan’s tale is worth checking out even without my little clue listed below. It reaches across two continents and has a grand mixing of characters and incidents. But from the get go you could see enough to know the hook….

***SPOILER WARNING (vague but a Spoiler) ***

A total devotion to ones craft is mentioned early in the film, and like any mystery it’s the line that should stand out. In fact, this is something that should easily be deduced even before the film starts. Any magician has to put on a charade for the public. A grand charade both on and off the stage in order to convince people.

Dual personalities, dual physical characteristics and conditions, dual memories. Dual memories.

While someone forgetting what knot they tied around the hands of an assistant who gets killed tragically makes sense — the grief, the horror, the shock all taking it’s tole on the psyche — it makes more sense if you weren’t there at all when it happened. You need to make an excuse and your other persona needs to employ that excuse in order to keep your character believable.

Yeah, that’s not a clear revealing of the “surprise ending”. The movie is good enough to watch that you should. Just pay attention.

It’s also the birthday of Shawn Ashmore who plays Bobby Drake/Iceman in the X-Men movies.

Coincidentally — the character Bobby Drake and his birthday is also supposed to be October 7th.

But is Universal Studios and Universal Home Videos able to CLOSED CAPTION a single DVD? Noooooooooo.

Instead, what Universal does is SUBTITLE films, thinking this will cover the hearing impaired just fine and dandy. In some cases — things are indeed fine. But white text on a bright or white background (any given movie image) makes Subtitles a pain in the ass and impossible to read. It’s quite possible to entirely miss out on certain scenes from films because the text subtitles blend in to well.

The above is an example image of a CLOSE CAPTIONED broadcast… See how the text is laid against a black screen?

This is an example of a Universal DVD with subtitles. Notice the location of the titles? On the picture with absolutely nothing to contrast the text with. It’s easy for the text to become illegible depending on the scene.

Of course, most computer DVD playing programs let you change the subtitles around a bit — make them different colors, different fonts and so forth… You don’t have that option on stand-alone DVD players…

Universal prefers subtitles to keep things on teh cheap. It doesn’t matter if hearing-impaired fans have a hard time (or can’t access the bonus materials — a common problem from all Home Video companies). It just comes down to their financial bottom line. Cheap bastards.

That being said, I’ve also been trying to grapple with all of the characters and people Nathan Fillion‘s captain Malcom Reynolds reminds me of while I watch.

When you first watch the series and see that it’s a space opera, this is a sarcastic, treacherous scoundrel who is living and flying job-to-job… You think of what any Sci-Fi fan would think and find Reynolds to be Han Solo‘s reincarnations….

But hold the phone, folks… There’s the earth-bound loyalty, no-holds-barred “we gotta get through this situation” type aura to Reynolds as well. He can be witty while relentless, he’s a soldier and a schemer in the same breath… But that loyalty to his crew – however pissed off he is at them or not – reminds me squarely of Tommy Lee Jones portrayal of Deputy Samuel Gerard in The Fugitive and US Marshalls.

Then there is Fillion himself. He’s joked about being given roles time and again to play a man of the cloth but the actor he reminds me most of in his mannerisms is Dennis Quaid — or Captain Tuck Pendelton from Innerspace to be more exact.

Pretty well rounded character if you ask me. Just don’t ask me to comment on “Animal Mother IN Space / Jayne Cobb” played by Adam Baldwin.

The other par happens to be the fact I am not overwhelmed with what I am seeing in the trailers. The fanboys have been oohing and aahhing on Ain’t It Cool, but what I am seeing is the exact reason why I didn’t jump on Van Helsing a few years ago: CGI to the extreme and marketing tie ins galore.

This isn’t wishing ill on Peter Jackson who is awesome, this is saying that Universal may have coughed up another turkey by trying to re-interpert an old piece of their property. I hope I’m wrong for Jackson’s sake though…

Just noticed the date and had the memory of Chris Lloyd talking to Marty about the red letter date in the history of science, “November Fifth, Nineteen Fifty….Five… Yes, of course, November Fifth, Nineteen Fifty Five… Hah!”

One of the greatest movies of all time, and even in fiction – it’s hard to just overlook the day for pop culture sake