I sent this in e-mail format to one of the WXRT DJs (who will give me an honest answer), but I wanted to share this with my readers.

“I went to the Marshall Crenshaw show on Friday night, which was an XRT show, but no one from the station attended (in an official capacity), nor was there any signage. On the latter, perhaps the venue wouldn’t allow it, but it was curious.
More problematic is the question of airplay. To your credit, (the disc jockey) did play “Mary Anne: on Friday to publicize Crenshaw’s appearance as did a couple of the other disc jockeys. But, on “New Releases” Thursday, I didn’t hear any of Mr. Crenshaw’s new CD, and if it weren’t for print ads for the show, I wouldn’t have known he had a new CD at all.
The CD “Jaggedland” is another fine collection of pop rock tunes, but I have to wonder if, like Graham Parker and others, since they aren’t on a major label, they won’t get played, at least in the day time? In the meantime, we get to hear Kings of Leon (“Kings of Boredom” to me) and other “major” label artists. I can understand that there will be a push for CBS/Sony artists since they own the station, but I have to ask if there is a preference to other major labels with more money?
Then, there also comes a matter of artist loyalty. WXRT made its name and reputation on artists such as these, but the station only plays songs from the 1980s for many of these artists. Elvis Costello might as well not have released anything after “Armed Forces” is you listen to the station for any period of time (to be fair, the station did play one song from the Allen Toussant collaboration, but only one song and not very often). The same can be said of Mr. Parker who has done some really fine music in the 1990s and 2000s. Joe Jackson should have quit after “Night and Day” despite fine CDs like “Volume 4” and “Rain.” And you would never know that Mr. Crenshaw ever had an album after his self titled debut.
Since I’ve met and spoken with much of the on-air talent over the years, I know that if (the DJs) had your way, the station would be much different, and that it is “the suits” who stick with the tried and true and boring, and who are driving the medium to extinction. What if anything can be done, other than win the lottery and buy the station and return it to what it used to be?”

I don’t expect to get a serious answer from this, but since I don’t feel like hooking up my iPod everytime I drive, I still listen to WXRT (channel hopping with the other rock stations to find a song that doesn’t suck and to avoid commercials) and continue to be saddened by the state of this once great radio station.

The Milton Bradley era on the North Side of Chicago is over. The controversial outfielder was suspended for the rest of the season after he was quoted in a local newspaper criticizing the organization for “negativity.” And while this is a two week, 12 game suspension, I would bet my house that Bradley will be released as soon as possible. Even his teammates admitted that they had tried to reach out to the troubled outfielder with no success, and now most of the players don’t want him back or don’t care of he comes back.
I wrote when the Cubs signed him that he was a clubhouse cancer and has severe immaturity problems. In the pressure cooker that is Wrigley Field, a player has to maintain an even keel otherwise the fans and media can drive you nuts. It is even worse if you happen to be nuts to begin with.
So, the Cubs just wasted $30 million on a switch-hitting outfielder who didn’t hit; on a selfish player who doesn’t realize it’s a team sport; and an immature man-child who blames everyone else for his shortcomings.
Despite my dislike for the Cubbies, I thought that GM Jim Hendry did a pretty good job building the team. After all, the club posted its first consecutive playoff appearances in history, but two first round defeats made him overreach and think that he and manager Lou Pinella could work miracles. Wrong.
The bigger question is, with the millions Milton Bradley has earned in the majors, will that be enough to sustain him for the rest of his life? Let’s face it, who is going to give him a chance to play? Maybe the Royals or Pirates because no one in their respective towns pay much attention to the revenue challenged baseball franchises. Maybe he can go back to the West Coast. But it is obvious that he cannot play for a contender; any increase in attention, pressure or expectation brings out all of this man’s mental demons.

I spent six days, from September 11th through 16th in Toronto for the Toronto International Film Festival. It was my ninth festival and second straight one without the wife and kids. Last year, the Indignant Wife was pregnant with The Indignant Youngest Daughter and couldn’t travel. This year, it was just too much to bring the kids up. Maybe next year.
Anyway, the weather was perfect all week and there were tons of stars on display. Personally, I saw 12 films in five days: 11 festival films and 1 film in wide release that I wanted to see. Looking at the overall list of attractions, I think that there were more light-hearted movies than in recent years (no more George W. Bush, perhaps), but there were still a lot of serious films, in keeping with TIFF being the unofficial start of Oscar season.
Unfortunately for me, there were quite a few films in which children were threatened, injured and killed. With the two Indignant Daughters, this hit home much harder than it used to, but I should add that this was also heightened by the quality of the film making in those films.
Let’s take them in the order in which I saw them (and I warn you, there are tons of Spoilers)….

Friday, September 11, 2009

1) I always pick at least one documentary each year, and this year, a documentary was the first film I chose as a “must see.” “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers” was a must see; the story of the first modern whistleblower. I knew the story of the Papers and how it lead to the Watergate affair, but I didn’t know much about the man and how he came to turn over 7,000 pages of Top Secret documents to Congress, and then, frustrated with its lack of action on the revelations, turned over the papers to the newspapers.
Filmmakers Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith did a fine job in telling the story of a brilliant young gung-ho Marine made his way to the Rand Corporation, the Pentagon think tank. He helped plan the early stages of the Vietnam War working closely with then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (himself the subject of another great documentary that I saw several years ago at TIFF, “The Fog of War”). A report on the history of the war, ordered by McNamara showed that four U.S. Presidents lied about the country’s involvement in Vietnam, much of those lies occurred long before the Gulf of Tonkin incident that formally started the American war.
The movie was more than that though; it was the story of the relationship between Ellsberg and his girlfriend, later wife Patricia. Patricia was against the war and the relationship ended as a result, but was rekindled as Ellsberg came around to the opinion that more and more people came to (including McNamara) – that the Vietnam War couldn’t be won despite public comments to the contrary.
My biggest joy was, after asking a typically long winded question about whether or not we had really learned anything as a result of the Papers and the Vietnam War and the concept of the “Imperial Presidency,” Dr. Ellsberg thanked me for the question, and he and I had an excellent conversation on the topic.
I strongly recommend the film whether you are old enough to remember the times, or if you never heard of the incident or are too young. Of course, parallels can be drawn between the 1960s and right now in terms of wars started on false pretenses, and whether the US is fighting a war on a philosophical basis, while our enemy is fighting a war against an occupying force? As always, I suggest that if you can, you should see it in a theater, but if not, it was partially financed by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and will be on PBS at some point. Highly recommended!

Saturday, September 12, 2009

2) The best film of the festival for me was also the most harrowing and depressing. “City of Life and Death” is a docudrama filmed in glorious black and white which lends a documentary feel to the film. The story is very controversial because it is the story of the Nanking Massacre of 1937 in which the Japanese army killed some 300,000 people and raped 20,000-80,000 women.
The film, directed by Chinese director Lu Chuan (who was at the screening), focused on several characters, both Chinese and Japanese. The film is controversial because 1) the ongoing argument between the governments of Japan, China and South Korea over whether the slaughter actually happened, and if it did, how many people were involved/effected/raped/killed; 2) has actual Japanese actors playing the Japanese leads; and 3) has one sympathetic Japanese officer not participating in the massacre/rapes.
The film, 2½ hours in length, begins as the city, the capital of China at the time, falls to the Japanese army. The first part of the movie follows a Chinese unit fighting against the Japanese, and the Japanese officer fighting against the Chinese. Eventually, we meet German John Rabe, the “Oskar Schlindler” of the Nanking Free Zone, and his right hand man, who collaborates with the Japanese at first. We also meet his wife, her sister, and their young daughter.
We meet numerous other characters including a Japanese comfort woman, who the sympathetic Japanese officer falls in love with; a young boy who survives the slaughter of Chinese POWs; several of the women, who, after being raped, willing surrender themselves to the Japanese in return for provisions to the children and other refugees. Most of these women were raped to death.
But the film ends with a (relatively) happy ending with a couple of the characters released, then go picking flowers and laughing. As I stated above, it was a truly great film, but not at all for the squeamish.

3) I then went to the only “non-TIFF” film of the week, Quentin Tarantino’s Sergio Leone-influenced World War II film, “Inglorious Basterds.” I had read a number of reviews before seeing the film, and I have to admit that while this was not top level Tarantino, it had many things going for it. First, Brad Pitt’s Aldo Raine was a truly unforgettable character, one with too little screen time. He was hilarious.
The other find was, as mentioned in almost every review, Christoph Waltz as Col. Hans Landa. The way in which he got people to give him information was worthy of Sherlock Holmes, and the verbal interplay in several scenes is pure Tarantino at his best.
But it didn’t have the cohesiveness of “Pulp Fiction” or “Reservoir Dogs,” and personally, I liked Jackie Brown because it was homage to the blacksploitation films that I watched as a kid. But while it wasn’t the best film I saw, it was worthy of inclusion among Mr. Tarantino’s triumphs.

4) The final film of the day was a world premiere, which meant that stars showed up, the director showed, but the man who I hoped would show didn’t. The film is called “Triage,” and stars Colin Farrell as a war photographer who goes to the Middle East with his colleague David, played by Jamie Sives. Once there, after seeing numerous incidents of war, David wants to return to Dublin immediately as his wife is due to give birth within a few weeks. The last we see of David, he is leaving the war zone, with Farrell staying behind.
Farrell’s character, Mark Walsh, spends a lot of time in a hospital unit located in a cave, where Dr. Talzani (played by Branko Djuric, a regular in director Danis Tanovic’s films)
tends to the injured he can save (indicated by placing a yellow scrap of paper on their chests) and those he cannot (who get a blue ribbon, and are eventually taken outside of the cave and shot by the doctor).
Farrell follows the doctor and has a long conversation with him where the doctor explains that in the cave, with little medicine, no anesthesia, and not even a sterile environment, is it worse to kill them quickly or allow them to live in unendurable pain for days before they would die anyway? This discourse would have made for a better film.
Eventually, Farrell ends up in the hospital unable to move his extremities. Fortunately, Farrell gets the yellow ribbon and is nursed back to health. Eventually he makes his way back to Ireland (very easily in my opinion) where his Spanish wife played by Paz Vega awaits, but Walsh is more aloof than usual, and eventually Walsh ends up in a hospital where the wife is told that while he has been injured, he is not getting better on psychological grounds.
In addition, Walsh maintains little contact with David’s wife who is concerned and about to give birth. Attempts to reach Walsh are unsuccessful until Ms. Vega’s character calls in her estranged grandfather played by the venerable Christopher Lee. Lee’s character helped soldier under the Franco regime mentally heal, for which the granddaughter cannot abide.
Eventually, Lee gets to the reason for Farrell’s physical injuries; we discover what happened to David; and how the two are related to Walsh’s mental problems. This should have been the basic for great drama, but Tanovic, who won numerous awards including a Best Foreign Film Academy Award for “No Man’s Land” in 2001, can only generate a modest amount of sparks, perhaps because Farrell’s character is too introverted and perhaps too unlikeable. I loved Lee (despite having a mediocre Spanish accent) but the great “reveal” was too standard and pat to be fully satisfying.
(I do have to give some credit to Mr. Farrell; he was asked in the Q&A session why his character bonded with Mr. Lee whereas he didn’t with another psychologist earlier in the movie. Mr. Farrell related his own relationship with 2 therapists during his rehab stint in answering the question. I thought that it was a very brave move to share so much of himself to 2,000 or so perfect strangers.)

Sunday, September 13, 2009

5) I haven’t seen a very good comedy is some time, and I still haven’t. Grant Heslov (an actor with a long list of credits and screenwriter of “Good Night and Good Luck”) once again teams up with George Clooney for the loopy “The Men Who Stare at Goats.” Ewan McGregor plays a reporter from Ann Arbor, Michigan whose response to his wife leaving him is to get transferred to Iraq during the first Gulf War.
While there he runs into a strange person who happens to have been named in an article the writer penned while in Michigan. The person he interviewed mentions that he used to be in an elite Army group designed to use psychic powers to spy on enemies and other paranormal activity. This led to McGregor coming across one of the most powerful psychics – George Clooney’s Lyn Cassady.
Eventually, the reporter gets Cassady to describe the unit, which was headed by Jeff Bridges, in effect reprising his role as “The Dude” in “The Big Lebowski.” Bridges try to get his unit, now called the Jedi, to effect peace by using their talents to stop fighting.
Much of the first half of the movie in which the unit is formed by Bridges under the direction of General Hopgood (played hilariously by Stephen Lang whom I have loved in various roles since I first noticed his as General Pickett who led the suicide charge in “Gettysburg”) was very funny, especially considering of course that McGregor played young Jedi master Obi Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequel trilogy.
But then the film turned into a rather tedious buddy movie mixed with office politics. Eventually, Bridges’ character was replaced as head of the unit by Kevin Spacey, who has been faking psychic talent, but has used underhanded methods to gain authority. The last act didn’t work and instead of being a very silly satire of the military, I’m not exactly sure what it became?

6) The day continued with another big money “traditional industry” film (as apposed to indie films like “Triage”). This time, the movie worked. It was “The Road,” the big screen adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s post apocalyptic tale, ultimately of the love of a father for his son.
I read the book based on the New York Times review, before Oprah Winfrey made the book one of her “book club” (which meant that I had to hide it by reading it at home to keep random Oprah fans away from me and keep me from unloading my far-less-than-favorable opinion of the talk show monster). I did enjoy the sparse tale but wondered how the film, originally scheduled for last year would convey the oppressive atmosphere of the book.
I needn’t have worried. John Hillcoat directed a film that was just as bleak as the film. As the lead (identified only as “The Man” in the book and film), he cast Viggo Mortensen (the second consecutive year I’ve attended a TIFF film that Mr. Mortensen was in and attended the screening) who was fine in the everyman part; and 13-year-old Australian Kodi Smit-McPhee was his equal as The Boy.
I questioned the use of Charlise Theron as The Wife, who was seen very little in the book, but they expanded her part and she made the character much less of a cipher, and an interesting flip side from Mortensen’s character. Robert Duvall also attended the screening and played a small part as the old man found on the road and befriended by The Man and The Boy.
The movie definitely stuck very closely to the source material, and in the Q&A session, Mr. Hillcoat said that he had Mr. McCormac’s input on the film and overall he had been happy with the adaptation. I was too.

7) If you know anything about me, you know that I love Asian action movies. John Woo, Johnnie To, the original “Infernal Affairs” series (made into Martin Scorsese’s lone Oscar winning Best Picture “The Departed”) are all movies in my DVD collection and usually are among the first movies I request at TIFF.
Johnnie To’s “Vengeance” was the last movie I saw, but first, I saw a film Mr. To Executive Produced, called “Accident.” Directed by Soi Cheung, this had an interesting premise. There is a group of killers who set up elaborate “hits” designed to appear as accidents. But the leader, “Brain” played by Louis Koo is haunted by the memory of the death of his wife in a car crash that may, or may not, have been an accident.
A local pawn broker hires the group to kill his father (father-in-law? Grandfather? It was never clearly spelled out), confined to a wheelchair, but the accident takes many days longer than expected (it involved rain) and goes out of control as a bus in involved in the accident, apparently goes after the Brain (or did the driver lose control innocently), and kills one member of the gang. At this, Brain doesn’t think that the errors were an accident, and the group comes unraveled – someone set them up thinks the Brain.
Eventually, members of the group turn on one another, Brain tails the pawn shop owner and his contact with a local insurance company official whom he secretly tapes.
In this atmosphere of distrust and possible double dealing, the story unfolds with more and more people dying. But were they accidents, or were they more elaborate games? The movie was very well plotted, but the sense of dread was not conveyed well by Mr. Koo’s character, which was the main flaw in the film that kept it from truly being a classic in the genre. Again, it was beautifully shot and very interesting, but emotionally empty.

Monday, September 14, 2009

8) I had a fairly relaxing day, with my first film not until the afternoon. I hoped that the legendary Michael Caine would attend the final TIFF showing of his new film “Harry Brown” but that didn’t happen. Too bad; it would have livened up the afternoon.
The film started amusingly with the old 1960’s credit of “Michael Caine is Harry Brown.” I haven’t seen that since the old James Bond movies.
Unfortunately, the clichés didn’t stop there. They should have called this movie “Dirty Harry Brown.” I could see this film conceived in the pitch meeting: “let’s take Death Wish, move it to England, add a Reservoir Dogs-type ending; add Mr. Caine for quality, and go with it.” It was probably “green lighted” that very moment.
That’s not to say that this was a bad, or unentertaining film, because it wasn’t; it’s just that I felt I had seen the film several times before. See if you agree…
Harry Brown lives in a block of flats that look like an American housing project. Brown visits his hospitalized wife daily in a nearby hospital. It would be faster if he used an underground walkway, but it belongs to the local drug dealers. The only reprieve from his solitary existence is a pint or two at the local pub and a game of chess against his friend Leonard (played by David Bradley, Argus Filch in the Harry Potter movies)
For reasons never explained, the friend is being harassed by the local gangs and he shows his friend a bayonet that he carries in his coat for protection. The gangs place a smoke bomb inside Leonard’s apartment, causing lots of smoke. Leonard escapes, but then goes out in the night after the gang members.
Mr. Caine is at his best showing the sadness in this character early in the film. After Brown’s wife dies (their only child, a “daughter,” died at 13 and is only seen in photos), Caine is excellent in the early scenes. He is also saddened by the death of his friend, which forces him to recall his days in the marines in Northern Ireland. Suddenly, he is a one man geriatric killing machine, blowing up and away several gang kids.
Of course, for this to work, the police have to be completely inept and they are, with only Emile Mortimer’s Detective Frampton trying to solve Leonard’s death, and later believing that Harry Brown is a vigilante. Eventually, there is a shootout in the pub reminiscent of Tarantino’s “Dogs.” Caine is fine, and the film was shot very well in director Daniel Barber’s sophomore effort, but the story is a bit preposterous and, as I said I have seen it before.

9) In 1998, I watched a film that has stayed with me ever since. Todd Solentz’s “Happiness” was one of the most audacious, funny, sad, weird films I’ve ever seen, and like I said, it has stayed with me for over a decade. That movie was the story of three sisters and their problems with life, love and relationships. The oldest sister, then played by Cynthia Stevenson, seemed to have the perfect life, with her husband, a dentist played by Dylan Baker. The only problem was that the dentist was a pedophile. How he is discovered was so riveting, that to this day, if I see Mr. Baker (a terrific character actor) in some other role, I immediately think of Bill Maplewood, his character in “Happiness” (apologies to Mr. Baker).
So, I was looking forward to “Life During Wartime” a sequel to “Happiness” that follows the same characters, although played by different actors. Mr. Solondz is no stranger to changing actors; his “Palindromes,” which I saw at TIFF in 2004, had five different actresses, including an overweight black woman, playing the lead character Aviva. This time, much more screen time is given to the oldest sister, this time played by Alison Janney. She was good as the oldest sister trying to move on – trying to find a “normal” relationship and apparently finds one with a much older man, the veteran character actor Michael Lerner.
Everyone, including her two youngest children, has been told that their father is dead, but Bill is very much alive, gets out of jail, and tries to see his children. The pedophile is played in this film by another actor I really love to watch, Ciarán Hines. But, unlike Mr. Baker, Mr. Hines is a bigger man and a bigger presence on screen. He was very good, but very different and it took me awhile to get used to him.
The middle daughter, played in the earlier film by Lara Flynn Boyle, is played in this film by Ally Sheedy (who was at the screening along with Mr. Lerner). Her character continues to be very successful as a screenwriter, but she only gets a few minutes of screen time. The youngest daughter, Jane Adams in the first film – Shirley Henderson this time, dumped Jon Lovitz in the first film, who later committed suicide. She is haunted in this film by the character, this time played by Paul (Pee Wee Herman) Reubens, who was very good. Joy has always worked with underprivileged people (getting involved with a married Russian man in her English as a second language class in the first film), and in the sequel, she is working with ex-convicts and has married one, an African-American former drug and phone sex addict. When she leaves him, he also commits suicide and haunts her.
“Life During Wartime” has its moments of humor and weirdness, but unlike “Happiness,” you need to have seen the first film to truly understand what’s going on (not just the characters, but similar camera shots and angles as the first film) and the first film told a cohesive story self-contained story; the sequel moves the story along, but when it ended, I was disappointed. There was much more to say.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

10) My friend Stacey had an extra pass, and with his time filled with movies, he gave the pass to me. I ended up watching a film that I didn’t have high hopes for: Derrick Borte’s “The Joneses” starring David Duchovny and Demi Moore. They are the “Mom” and “Dad” of a family with 2 high school age children who move into a swanky big house in an affluent neighborhood. But they are not a real family, they are actually four employees of a conglomerate who show the neighbors the newest, most expensive items and get them to spend lots of money; to get the neighbors to “keep up” if you will.
Ms. Moore plays her usual hard edged, driven career woman, who is in charge of the family “unit,” She monitors sales and acts as a true boss cajoling and pushing Duchovny’s character and the “kids” to sell more, and the plan is going well; people are buying up expensive toys – cars, golf clubs, china, all types. Lauren Hutton plays the company boss in charge of the operation, and sees real potential in Duchovny, but he won’t leave the other three, despite Hutton’s insistence that Demi Moore’s character wouldn’t hesitate in leaving him if given the chance.
Eventually, of course, real life intrudes: the “son” (Ben Hollingsworth) is gay but has been keeping it under wraps which leads to a young woman having an auto accident; the “daughter” (Amber Heard) is having an affair with one of his friend’s parents, and Duchovny and Moore’s characters begin to have a real relationship.
A neighbor (the consistently excellent Gary Cole) goes out of his way to keep up, and is able to lose his house and all of the nice things and can’t face it, which leads Duchovny to confess to the whole scam. The ending could have remained dark, but director Borte (or some studio hack) couldn’t leave the film on a downbeat note.
Satire is always best when timely. This film, which shows upscale people buying beyond their means and losing their houses in foreclosure, filing bankruptcy and all of the misery that is involved, would have been right on the cutting edge two or three years ago, but we have already seen this scenario playing out all over the world, and after seeing real human tragedy, it is harder to laugh at it as satire. But the film was funny, and very well done, even with a happier ending than it should have.

11) Every year, my friends and I, regulars to the film festival, always await “the clunker,” the worst film we see. I was beginning to think that I wouldn’t have a clunker in 2009, with just 2 films left, a Viking drama with lots of violence and an Asian action film by one of the masters of that genre, Johnnie To. Despite warning from my friend Rich that my next film was “a little slow,” I didn’t trade films. “Valhalla Rising” was a Viking film that promised lots of violence. Unfortunately, the violence was interrupted by long periods of navel gazing.
This Finnish film stars Mad Mikkelsen, known best as LaChiffe in 2006’s James Bond re-launch “Casino Royale.” He plays “One Eye” a fighter initially kept like an animal (reminiscent of “Conan The Barbarian”), chained to a stick during fights, kept in a cage the rest of the time.
Eventually, he kills most of his captors, keeping alive the one boy in the group. The boy fed him and was his only human connection. The two are found by a group of Christians travelling to the Holy Land during the Crusades, but the band’s boat is lost in a strange fog and they don’t end up in the Middle East, but in an unknown land where the party is attacked by the indigenous population. One Eye has visions of the future, but they don’t exactly add up to what happens.
There is some fine violence here, but it is broken up by long periods of stillness. There is some interesting ideas about Christians fanaticism and missionary missions to save the local population, but it doesn’t take. The ideas are too fleeting; and there’s no payoff.
Again, this was a film with gorgeous locations, and it was beautifully shot, but it didn’t have enough action to keep me interested and not enough characterization to make me think.

12) As I’ve alluded to earlier, my last film was titled “Vengeance” by the Asian master of violent action movies, director Johnnie To. I had seen “Breaking News” at TIFF in 2004 and The Indignant Wife saw “Election” and “Election 2” in 2005, so I knew what to expect and I got it.
It only took about 2 minutes before a woman and her family were brutally attacked in their home by gunmen. The woman is the only member of the family who survives, causing her father, French music icon Johnny Hallyday, to come to Macau to find the killers. Mr. Hallyday’s character, Costello, is a chef, but knows his way around a gun, and is the only witness to another hit, this time in his hotel. Instead of turning the hit men in to the police, he hires them to find the other killers. As it turns out, both teams worked for the same boss, who had ordered the hit on Hallyday’s daughter and husband.
Again, we see two children killed, but the hit men admit that it was a mistake and only because the kids had seen their faces. Later in the film, when Hallyday’s hit men face the enemies, it is at the enemies’ family picnic. But the gun fight waits until after the wives and kids leave, with the killers thanking Hallyday’s group for not involving their families.
The big twist here is that, as I mentioned earlier, Hallyday was a gun fighter of some type (never explained) and has a bullet lodged in his brain that has been impairing his memory. Eventually, the old injury will remove his memory completely, which of course it does as the accumulation of punishment on Costello’s body increases after the multiple gun battles and chases.
The end of the film features a big gun fight between the boss’ men and Hallyday’s three hit men, reminiscent of Kurosawa films (acknowledged by director To himself during the Q&A after the film) and “The Wild Bunch.” Eventually, Hallyday has to face the boss and his men in a climactic gun battle of his own without a memory. The way in which Hallyday’s character remembers who to shoot is clever and novel.
Entertaining and well shot (as it seems most Asian films are), this is another worthy film in the Asian action genre, one that will probably cross over well, at least in France.

Every year, I list my films in order of preference, and this year is no exception….

List of TIFF Films in Order or Preference

1. City of Life and Death
2. The Most Dangerous Man In America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
3. The Road
4. Vengeance
5. The Joneses
6. Life During Wartime
7. Accident
8. Harry Brown
9. Triage
10. The Men Who Stare At Goats
11. Valhalla Rising

“Out of Competition:” Inglorious Basterds

I got to rest a bit; I saw lots of my wife’s old friends; went back to several locations that my wife and I visited when we were dating. It was a good trip, except I missed The Indignant Wife and Children of course. We’ll be back next year…

While I was away (the annual Toronto International Film Festival trip – which I will recount on this page soon), the Bears opened their season at Lambeau Field. I came back to my friend’s place after a film with 8 minutes left in the fourth quarter. The Bears were down 13-12 with the ball deep in Green Bay territory. The drive stalled and Robbie Gould kicked what should have been the winning field goal.
The Packers drove to near mid-field, but on 3rd and 1, the Packers went deep. This was a play that I liked to do when I was playing Strat-o-matic Football: it’s four down territory – meaning that you are going for it on 4th down no matter what, and you hope you can catch the defenses pants down. The Bears’ defense dropped their pants like 10-cent whores, going for the run fake and Nathan Vasher did his part by stumbling allowing for a 52-yard touchdown.
But, I’m thinking, there’s still over 1 minute left in the game, we have Jay Cutler; salvaging this game is doable despite the fact that the Bears have no time outs left. (Of course, at that time, I hadn’t seen or heard about the three earlier interceptions that Cutler threw.) The drive starts slowly, but then Cutler unleashes his career worst fourth interception of the game and it’s over.
I immediately start what my next door neighbor David Wheeler calls “a F#$k fit,” basically repeating the F-word over and over again at high volume. My friends who I was staying with, both Canadians with little or no interest in sports especially American football looked at me like I had lost my mind (which I had for a moment). It took a glass of scotch to put me to bed and end my ranting.
When I return, I find out that Brian Urlacher is out for the season with a wrist injury. This is important because Urlacher was poised for a big year – back in shape, and reportedly much improved back which has slowed him significantly over the past 2 season.
More than this however, was the public hubbub over Cutler’s press conference. I didn’t see it, but apparently he was relatively nonchalant about his poor performance; may have thrown his receivers under the bus for his inaccuracy; and basically hit on ever Bear fan’s insecurity that Cutler will turn into another Rex Grossman or worse yet, Cade McNown. Both those guys were bad in the press room and never learned. Neither however, have Cutler’s arm or already Pro Bowl caliber track record. Former coaches Mike Martz and Jim Mora Sr. blasted the 26-year-old QB, following on comments made after the trade by former head coach Tony Dungy. And, it should be mentioned, that Bear fans are never happy losing the Green Bay.
But, it all amounts to nothing. What Cutler does on the playing field is much more important than what he says in the press room. And there may be a fair amount of envy on the part of many tearing at this young man’s image. After all, there’s nothing that Americans like more than building up a person, then tearing him down. While Cutler had burned his bridges in Denver, he was hailed as a savior in Chicago (much too high an expectation for anyone), and Cutler’s jersey was the most popular in terms of sales of NFL gear. So, it’s natural for the naysayers to come out. But leave the young man alone. If he stinks up the joint every week until the middle of the season, then everyone can get out their steely knives…

For a very long time, I have marveled at the business acumen of the NBA. Commissioner David Stern has earned his multimillion dollar pay check by avoiding the labor problems that have plagued the NHL and Major League Baseball.
I should amend the previous statement; the NBA has been able to avoid labor strife with the players – the referees are another story. Lamell McMorris, the lead negotiator for the referees, was quoted by SI.com saying his group made another $1 million in concessions in their proposal, but believes it’s evident the league is not interested in further discussions. The officials then headed home after spending the last 24 hours meeting in Chicago. “It’s become evident that the league would not be interested in continuing conversation at this time,” McMorris said. League spokespeople had a similarly pessimistic view, and it appears that a lockout is imminent
The contract between the NBA and its officials expired Sept. 1 and the sides have been trying to reach a new two-year deal. McMorris said they largely agree on salaries, but the union has balked at the league’s attempt to change retirement benefits. Besides the severance and pension disagreements, the officials are resisting a league development plan for young officials.
Without a new deal, replacement officials will be used when preseason play opens Oct. 1. The NBA last began a season without its regular referees in 1995-96, and, as expected, the caliber of officiating was horrible.
In years past, I’ve blasted the officials for favoritism and for acting as though people paid to see them instead of the superstars of the game. The officials themselves have not helped their cause with IRS violations and the big gambling scandal, and of course, no one has to be told that we remain in the midst of a severe economic recession, but that is not an excuse nor should be used as a ruse to screw over the referees. They are professionals who spend much of their lives away from their homes and families.

I did a rant a few months ago about how so many people, especially African-Americans have their feelings hurt, go to their cars or nearby homes, get arms and come back and shoot somebody.
The latest to make the news involved an incident at an adult baseball game. One team had won the first game of a doubleheader, important for the fact that the win clinched the division and a chance to sit out the first round of the playoffs.
One would think that everyone on the team would be pleased, but pitcher Deangelo Williams was reportedly P.O.’d. He hadn’t gotten to hit, and he didn’t get to finish the first game or start the second.
So, instead of being a man and being happy for the win and putting away his disappointment, he approached coach Glynn Hall. This turned into an argument in which, police reports obtained by the Chicago Tribune show Williams threatened the coach. Other members of the team restrained Williams and told him he would be kicked off the team.. At this, Williams reached into his gym bag and produced a small handgun; chased Hall across the baseball field, shooting him four times and stopping only when he ran out of bullets. The volunteer coach, 43, was left writhing on the ground, covered in blood and feeling burning sensations and stings like from a bee according to the newspaper.
Of course, there will be more security and more stringent background checks on players said a spokesman for the league (Williams had a felony gun arrest), but you have to wonder if this man has any brains whatsoever? It’s not like he was playing for tons of money in the major leagues; or even very little money in the minors for that matter.
Let’s put it simply: LIFE’S DISAPPOINTMENTS AND SETBACKS ARE NOT “DISSING” YOU; IT’S NOT AN EXCUSE TO SHOOT SOMEBODY!!! This man wasn’t doing well and got benched which is what happens when someone doesn’t perform well or gets tired. It is one of the world’s greatest sports clichés but there really is no I in TEAM.
Sport is supposed to teach you self sacrifice, teamwork, and ethics, but now it’s an ego boost and there’s hell to pay if you step on my ego in any way. That’s not sport, that’s the sign of colective insanity.
(Just keep the firearms away from Milton Bradley.)

A few years ago, I told some University of Illinois alumni friends of mine that the then-recently-hired head football coach Ron Zook was a bad choice. He had taken a powerhouse program at Florida and ran it into the ground. He was a long shot for any big time coaching vacancy, which I guess explains why Illinois came calling. The popular wisdom was that Zook was an excellent recruiter but a terrible coach.
After 2 bad years (2-9 in 2005; 2-10 in 2006) Zook led the team to a 9-3 record in 2007, finishing 6-2 which was good enough for second place in the Big Ten and a surprising Rose Bowl appearance (lost 49-17 to USC). Last year, with most of the starters returning from the previous year’s squad, the Illini disappointed, finishing 5-7 in a relatively weak year in the conference.
So, with Juice Williams still at quarterback, the Illini were supposed to be back, that is until last week’s 37-9 drubbing against Missouri. In the post-loss aftermath, Zook is already shuffling the deck of athletes. Running back Mikel LeShoure and defensive back Ashante Williams are suspended for the home opener because they violated team rules, but apparently not illegal activity. In addition, Zook announced that he will shuffle some receivers and defensive backs based on lackluster play in the season-opening loss.
The coach said that his personnel changes were not as a result of lack of confidence in the players, just that he needed to make some changes. Such a move in week 5 or 6 of the season would be natural; such changes after the first week makes one think that Zook’s regime may be as disorganized as his Florida stint.