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Reviews
Glenn Beck's Common Sense Tour (2009)
If this is common sense, than Mortel Legendre here wants to be the village idiot
Glenn Beck comes off as a smirking tattle-tell ratting out his fellow third graders! Watched Glenn Beck's Common Sense tour with a possible girlfriend's parents. Her parents are extreme right wingers while I pride myself as a lefty. He does a lot of name calling here and put-downs to the lower-middle class of America. How is that common sense? You know what I was hoping to see in "Common Sense"? Glenn Beck live a month on minimum wage. Yeah, work a $ 8 an hour job, take in $270 a week, and try and live on that. Once, Glenn beck you have experienced that, than you would of had common sense knocked into that annoying smirk of yours. Face it, Beck here is mostly a stand-up comic, and that's what he should be regarded as- an entertainer, not as a voice of the people.
Me and Orson Welles (2008)
Entertaining, but more legend than fact
Richard Linklater's "Me and Orson Welles" reminds us what a young whirlwind Orson Welles was well before Citizen Kane and RKO. His film time travels us to post depression era New York where young upstart Welles was reshaping the face of theater. However, Welles' daughter reportingly enjoyed the film, as did I, but felt at times it lowers the beginning stages of Welles' career to a lackluster episode of "Sex and the City" Here's the man who created the grand-daddy of media hoaxes, directed films that re-directed the path of world cinema, was a fantastic magician, I can go on. Do we really care about a life triangle Welles is in? The actor playing Welles is pre-Citizrn Kane Welles bought to life. It is not a party-time mimic like in "Ed Wood", but a performance that picks up all the facial expressions, mannerisms, large laugh that we all admire in Orson Welles. I can see why Welles' other daughter refuses to see the film. It was also fun to see represented here, other members of Welles' Mercury Theatre- Joseph Cotten, George Coulouris, Norman Lloyd.
A Dr. Phil Primetime Special: Love Smart (2006)
Listen to the advice here, you'll end up really lonely
The people who made "Dr. Phil Primetime Special"- Love Smart must think that nobody really dated properly before 2006. This guy tells so many instructions on what to do when getting to know a guy/girl and going on a first date. He makes simple dating seem as complicated as building an A-Bomb. He has women look for "danger signs" in guys they are dating. These dangers can be any innocent thing, if he twitches, oh, that means he lies, etc. etc. Did you ever think maybe the guy feels nervous or overly shy? And I really can't stand the way Phil, well the film-makers speed up actors walking to rooms, getting out of cars, like we don't have the attention span to handle a seven second establishing shot of somebody walking up to a building.
A Face in the Crowd (1957)
Dr. Phil A Century Ahead of Schedule
Elia Kazan's A Face In The Crowd tells the rise of a Texan sounding TV Personality who "Tells It Like It Is", and the American public, mostly women, swoon for him. We find out that this Texan charmer has some chilling tricks up his sleeves. Sound familiar? Is it a remake of Frankenstein, a monster created by the media that gets out of control? No? Elmer Gantry? Nope. How about Dr. Phil? Both are mid-westerners who have some advice, some of it hard to swallow, and the public follows him like blind lemmings. Dr. Phil teaches school-yard bully tactics to women so they can dominate over their husbands, boyfriends, etc. Andy Griffith's Lonesome Rhodes does the same thing, uses old world snake-oil sales styles to hypnotise women. A must see classic.
The Blind Side (2009)
Wonderful message but bad approach
I managed to catch a preview of the so called inspirational football saga THE BLIND SIDE. Based on a true story, the message tells us, regardless of what horrible background you have in life, what sort of set-backs, you can push yourself to be a winner. This is nice, but what kills the film is the character Sandra Bullock plays. She is very self-righteous defiant (She is photographed too often with a sneer and arms crossed) soccer mom type. She comes across more like "I need to show who is boss, who is tough..." as opposed to "Gee, I want to help this kid." The slum-kid she is helping usually has a sad beaten-puppy expression -like the only way this guy can help himself is if a tough-love spitting python like Ms. Bullock comes along. The film-makers are clearly tiring to win over the soccer-mom crowd, which they may do and help this film gain a profit, but others may be turned off by Sandy's "I'm a B---- because I can be."
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
I was an unbilled extra in this film
Through a chain of connections, somewhere along the line was a casting director for Warner Brothers, I managed to become an extra in Stanley Kubrick's last film, "Eyes Wide Shut" I am a tuxedoed guest in the opening party sequence. I was able to give a nod to Tom Cruise, between takes, and only got a glimpse of Kubrick, who came across as very ordinary. You'd never guess this was a great beacon of world cinema since the 1950's. My review of the film- Weirdly comical, like naughty dialog balloons drawn onto an ordinary newspaper photo. Not to be taken seriously, but viewed as a dark satire of our hangups over that feared and desired hobby of ours- sex.