Hubris Greed Politics vs. Genius.

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
— Richard Feynman, “Report to Congress on Challenger Investigation 1986.”

Indepth chronicle of Dr. Richard Feynman’s investigation into the Space Shuttle Challenger’s 1986 explosion.

When I first heard about the TV movie, THE CHALLENGER DISASTER, I shrugged it off, thinking it would be a shallow, politically-correct tribute to the people who died in the Space Shuttle Challenger’s 1984 post-liftoff explosion. Surely it would not be about the ensuing investigation into the disaster and surely it would go nowhere near one of my heroes, physicist Richard Feynman’s integral role in unveiling the mystery behind the explosion, and there wouldn’t be a chance in hell it would mention O-ring failures…

I was beautifully wrong. As it happens, this movie is all about my hero Richard Feynman, based on a section of his entertaining and informative book, What Do You Care What Other People Think? (1988), and delves deep into how Feynman alternately intuited and was fed cryptic info to unlock the mystery behind the Shuttle explosion due to O-ring failure! Movie portrays him as quite the hero – to which he himself would have reacted with utmost chagrin – as he doggedly pursues the truth against a political juggernaut where the word failure was not an option.

On January 28, 1986 (the 25th shuttle mission), Space Shuttle Challenger did not liftoff from Kennedy Space Center on just another routine mission, but on a public relations circus, crowing to the world the munificence of the American government and the progressiveness of the U.S. space program by including civilian schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe among its seven astronaut crew. 73 seconds after liftoff, the shuttle exploded, killing all onboard.

A Presidential Commission was quickly assembled to investigate, made up of bureaucrats, lawyers, astronauts (Neil Armstrong, first man on the Moon, and Sally Ride, first American woman in space), and for technical credibility, called on 1965 Nobel Prize winner for Physics, Richard P. Feynman.

The incomparable William Hurt stars as the iconoclastic Feynman, immersing himself in the role with his unkempt hair, earthy attitude and quirky dignity. (Feynman was an atheist – but his soul defiantly surfaces in Hurt.) Joanne Whalley is supportive wife, Gweneth. Feynman is hesitant at first to involve himself with Washington in any way for all its “political” obstruction – fears which are realized almost immediately when he arrives ready to work and the investigation committee seem committed to stagnating in bureaucratic quicksand. Feynman becomes the most outspoken and seems to be getting the most work done because he is the only true “independent” on the committee, as everyone else has affiliations with the institutions they are investigating.

Bruce Greenwood is General Kutyna, who is sympathetic to Feynman charging forward against difficult odds, who cannot reveal incriminating information himself due to his allegiance to the military and other astronauts, but who feeds Feynman clues without Feynman even realizing it, banking on Feynman’s brilliance to unravel his clues.

Brian Dennehy is Mr. Rogers, head of the commission and a born bureaucrat; at first, almost an opposing force to the truth, seemingly grinding the investigation into gravel when it wants to move forward. Later, he would verbalize the paradox the commission faced: “We have a major difficulty – the people who best understand the shuttle are the people giving evidence – but they have the most to lose by explaining it clearly.”

No one – not NASA, not the numerous contractors, not the government – wants to take any blame, yet no one wants to rat out their colleagues either. It makes everyone look bad, and not just to grieving Americans; to “enemies” of the United States who have a vested interest in the space program vis a vis the weapons program failing, and to those who simply wish to laugh in the face of the self-proclaimed greatest superpower on Earth.

…either the guys at the top didn’t know, in which case they should have known, or they did know, in which case, they’re lying to us.
— Richard Feynman, from “What Do You Care What Other People Think?”

At the time of the inquiry, Feynman was also battling liver cancer, spreading throughout his body and occasionally incapacitating him. There was nothing his doctor could do except stopgap dialysis.

Ultimately, cause of the Shuttle explosion was whittled down to the compromised “O-rings” – rubber seals that were supposed to expand to stop the outflow of gasses from the Solid Rocket Boosters, but which were affected adversely by extremely low temperatures on launch day. Due to the politics of NASA being forced to launch another Shuttle to retain their funding, they barged ahead with what they knew to be an unsafe condition. It was not a unanimous decision, and many techs gave evidence that they advised against the launch. Feynman was instrumental in pinpointing these factors during hearings, culminating in his now-infamous practical real-time experiment – performed while cameras were rolling and while sitting at his place on the panel – of putting an O-ring in his ice water to prove it was not resilient at cold temperatures.

I am so glad this movie was made. Up to now, scientists like Hawking, Sagan, Michio Kaku, have had their deserved time in the sun. But Feynman has been one of my heroes for years (unfortunately dying in 1988 before I really got to know him through his books), and he’s never really received his due from mainstream media. Now we see how respected and loved he truly was. There is even a new 2013 documentary, FEYNMAN: THE CHALLENGER, which breezes through Feynman’s life, work and philosophies, featuring many interviews with Feynman himself, narrated by none other than Bruce Greenwood. They keep calling Feynman “America’s most respected physicist.” Well then, give him a little more sugar, Hollywood bastards!

The tragic dichotomy here is that I have utmost respect and sympathy for NASA also. The organization is constantly misunderstood, maligned and defunded by the public and the government. After proving their utility in rocket science (i.e. weaponry), the United States didn’t have much use for them after the Apollo program. To avoid being discarded, they’ve had to prove time and again their credibility, even though sometimes they have nothing to offer the budget hawks except pure research. They even had to come up with a slogan, which they KNEW was unworkable in any real-world environment, to placate the whining government red-tapers: “Faster Cheaper Better.” (The rejoinder to that credo is as famous as the credo itself: That only two of those conditions can be achieved at the expense of the third; i.e. you can have it faster and cheaper, but it won’t be better, you can have it cheaper and better, but it won’t be faster, and so on.) After promising an unattainable quantity of Shuttle launches and under threat of their funds being siphoned to the military, they had to launch that cold day in 1986. With fingers crossed instead of 100% safety guarantees.

The deaths of the seven astronauts is as much to blame on the mouse-minded government as the officials at NASA who greenlighted the launch. May those responsible – you know who you are – take that burden to your venal graves.

As the credits roll, we see real footage of Feynman giving his O-ring testimony over his ice water. Giving a new meaning to super cool.

Sadly, this would be Feynman’s last adventure. Two years later, he would die of cancer.

After President Reagan is presented with the official Challenger report, with Dr. Feynman’s notes included as an Appendix, General Kutyna walks with Feynman. He laments and apologizes for the time Feynman had to spend away from his family, knowing he had so little time left, “This took your time…” Feynman, the atheist, the pioneer in quantum electro-dynamics (QED), philosophically replies, “I guess there is a kind of afterlife. The few bits and pieces that we do… might get remembered.”

END

Yo ho ho and a bottle of Rum Diary.

Here we are now! Entertain us!
— Nirvana, “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

So I’m sitting there wondering how another PIRATES movie could have the audacity to rear its skull and crossbones, let alone Johnny Depp reprising his transvestite role yet again with any shred of interest from either him or the moviegoing public. Aren’t three PIRATES movies enough to keep our buckles swashed and our timbers shivered?

I imagined PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES would be a lowdown dirty shame, with nowhere to go on the story, nowhere to take the characters and no one to watch it go nowhere, but I was wrong – it’s actually quite mediocre!

Ironic that the story in this aged and worn PIRATES is – the quest for the fountain of youth.

Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) is pulled into a quest inadvertently by an ex-flame, Angelica (Penelope Cruz, doing her Salma Hayek with B’s instead of D’s, push-up bra working overtime to keep those puppies bouncy-bouncy). Constant nemesis and simultaneous unwilling ally to Jack, crusty Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush, whose mode of acting here has devolved to scrunching up his eyes when he starts a line and then opening them wide mid-delivery) is commissioned by the British government (Richard Griffiths, trying to out-overact Geoffrey Rush) to go on the same quest – to locate the mystical waters of the fountain of youth.

Jack is advised by his father (Keith Richards in a three-minute cameo of pure zombie) to embark on the quest. Depp has always maintained that Richards was the inspiration behind Jack Sparrow, but maybe a subconscious inspiration is Depp’s admitted idolizing of Hunter S. Thompson, as we pick that influence too in Sparrow’s inebriated mumbling. So Jack/Hunter/Keith ends up onboard a dark ship captained by the legendary Blackbeard (gravel-throated Ian McShane, perfectly cast, death-blackened eyes and glorious facial hair worthy of a balrog) and proceeds doing what Jack/Hunter/Keith does best – get himself into drunken political rock and roll trouble…

Jack’s first mate Gibbs (Kevin McNally) is once again along for the ride, as is Stephen Graham (SNATCH) as a swab, Sam Claflin as a sexy priest, and Astrid Bergès-Frisbey as an innocent mermaid. (But can anyone who goes around topless all day really be considered innocent? Dont worry, parents: all the mermaids suffer Disney-toplessness, which means their hair is their bra. Sorry, 17-year-old boys, frustrating but true.) Blackbeard captures this mermaid, whom the priest fawns over as if she was a 12-year-old altar boy, even though she has no lady parts that might fit his holy man-parts; although when she falls out of the water onto dry land, she inexplicably grows feet and – we presume – lady parts. (Who made up those rules? Good thing we all saw SPLASH.)

This PIRATES is missing many of the main characters that created the dynamic in the previous movies – gone are those two comic relief pirate swabs (featuring Mackenzie Crook and his eyeball), gone are the British stiff-lips Jack Davenport and Jonathan Pryce, as is the octopus-head of Bill Nighy, gone is the tragic crustiness of Stellan Skarsgård, and the imperious ineffectualness of Tom Hollander (after seeing him in the brilliant bollocking of IN THE LOOP, I was really hoping he would be here); gone is Orlando Bloom and his square-jawed manliness and gone is Keira Knightley and her square-jawed manliness.

And gone is the director of those movies, Gore Verbinski. There is slightly less cheekiness in the tone of Rob Marshall’s direction (from a script by PIRATES veterans Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio), yet he captures the action and lavishness of the previous productions. Yet all that lavishness lands with a thud when events just happen arbitrarily and characters turn up here and there with no logical purposes or throughlines.

While Blackbeard seems intent on his goal, Barbossa is intent on revenge on Blackbeard for stealing his precious Black Pearl. Jack seems caught somewhere in between, like the opportunist he is, and is involved in myriad cartoonish adventures on both sides, still running like a girl, lisping like a drunk and wearing mascara like a prostitute. He doesn’t seem to have any motivation, except maybe touching Penelope Cruz’s eternally forward-thrust push-up bra.

I guess that’s motivation enough for a tranny pirate.

END

Slaving for Freedom.

If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
–Obi-Wan to Darth Vader in STAR WARS.

Another man of peace killed by men of ignorance.

CRY FREEDOM stars Denzel Washington as Steve Biko, the black South African anti-apartheid insurrectionist of the 1960s and 70s (a contemporary of Mandela’s, imprisoned on Robben Island during Biko’s time), who advocated against blacks being treated as second-class citizens – killed, as usual, by white men with small-penis insecurities.

But – like Obi-Wan before him – his murder achieved exactly the opposite effect that the ignorant men desired. His death was another nail in apartheid’s coffin. Amandla!

Kevin Kline is Donald Woods, a white South African reporter who misunderstands Biko (as all whites did) as a black supremacist inciting riots. Woods is challenged by a Biko supporter, “If you are the journalist you say you are, you will visit him!” Woods does! And falls under Biko’s spell, discerning the nuance in Biko’s message of equality in his own stolen land.

But how does one NOT fall prey to the charms of Bantu Denzel? Magnetic, sexual panther, with a locution like butter dripping from warm croissants… CRY FREEDOM is truly where Denzel honed his silver-tongued smoothness for his role as that other black insurrectionist who cried freedom, MALCOLM X (1992).

The apartheid regime deemed Biko a “banned person” from February 1973, which meant he was not allowed to speak to more than one person at a time, publish his writings or speak in public. All of which he continued to do, with the aid of his network of underground supporters.

Biko brings Woods into his inner circle and Woods truly begins to see through others’ eyes, eventually becoming such close friends with Biko that he would risk his life to bring Biko’s message to the world.

CRY FREEDOM is two very good movies cobbled together at the expense of one great movie. From Donald Woods’s 1978 book Biko, screenplayed by Jack Briley, director Richard Attenborough’s cry of freedom becomes diluted in its second half to a cry of chase-movie.

Filmed in Zimbabwe, the first half of the movie is rife with suspense and frustration as Biko is sought by the white authorities, and his family and community terrorized by no less than the Minister of Police, Kruger (John Thaw); it is also showcase for Biko’s philosophies. And – not least – Denzel! Dominating with his “black is beautiful” renaissance.

Nice to hear Biko’s speeches thrum with honesty, rather than stale rehash from Movie Speech handbooks: “…As angry as we have every right to be, we are here to kill the idea that one kind of man is superior to another kind of man. And killing that idea is not dependent on the white man. We must stop looking to him to give us something. We have to fill the black community with our own pride….”

Equal rights in his own country – too much to ask? The white regime thought so. Oppressors are always threatened by the conquered rising above their oppressed state in any way, even psychologically.

Biko: “We’ll stand up to him any way he chooses, conflict if he likes, but with an open hand too; to say that we can all build a South Africa worth living in; a South Africa for equals, black or white; a South Africa as beautiful as this land is, as beautiful as we are.”

Biko did not advocate violence – he was the black Gandhi (but wasn’t Gandhi the black Gandhi? Uh, let’s move on…) – but unlike the frail little Indian, he had no qualms in fighting back against it. When a cowardly detective strikes Biko while two police hold him, as soon as they think he has cowed and release their hold on him, Biko hauls off a backhand that sends the detective sprawling. Reminds us of Poitier IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT – unthinkable for black to strike white, even in self defense. “…conflict if he likes…” To top it off, that measured voice, reminding them in buttery croissant, “I just expect to be treated like you expect to be treated.” How very Christian of him – Old and New Testaments!

August 1977, Biko is arrested as he tries to make his way through roadblocks to deliver a speech in Capetown. This is the jarring transitional stage of CRY FREEDOM, as we next see Biko naked and comatose on a cell floor after police have tortured him to the point that an independent doctor is examining Biko and advising them to get him medical attention NOW. Which they don’t, opting to throw Biko in the back of a Land Rover to transport him to a hospital 700 miles away in Pretoria. Steve Biko dies on September 12, 1977 in custody. The police lie it was a hunger strike.

Donald Woods’s escape from South Africa is an amazing story itself. Authoring a book about Biko’s life, Woods must get the manuscript across the border for publication, to reveal sordid truths and spark change. By then, Woods was a “banned person” himself, so the book’s very existence was cause for imprisonment. His clandestine writings and physical struggles seem almost comical in this age of pdfs and e-mail, in this technociety where our pathetic little rantings are published on a world wide web with the effort of a few pushed buttons – and here is Woods neck deep in a river, a single copy of a paper manuscript held desperately above his head in a satchel…

We are suddenly introduced to the complete Woods family (Penelope Wilton as wife Wendy, and five kids, including stunning, shapely Kate Hardie as daughter Jane, who would unfortunately grow up to be boxy Bella in CROUPIER). Interspersed with the Woods family’s flight, Attenborough throws in flashbacks of Biko, to remind us why we’re here and (probably) still interested in a middle-aged woman and five brats. Strangely, those Biko flashbacks now seem to intrude on this suspenseful escape movie. Attenborough can’t win!

While it may seem on the surface like the movie has derailed, CRY FREEDOM is about Biko’s message – and Woods, through the direst adversity, is continuing Biko’s message, taking his cry of freedom to the world. It had to be shown that this life-risking trek is what Biko’s message is worth. And the continuing solidarity of Biko’s underground supporters who help Woods along the way is touching, and proves Obi-Wan correct, “A friend of Steve Biko’s is a friend of ours.”

When Woods boards a small plane with his family safe at last, when we think the great journey has ended, Attenborough reminds us it has just begun, with a final flashback to June 1976, the Soweto Uprising, a euphemism for its original name, the Soweto Massacre.

All his life, Attenborough has had an iconic picture on his desk of a little boy named Hector Pieterson (1964-1976), one of the first children shot by police during a demonstration by students protesting being taught the white Afrikaans language in schools. The picture is to remind Attenborough of the injustices of the world – and in the last few minutes of the movie he recreates the scene (albeit a mirror image, as Hector’s head is facing the other way) – to remind us that 700 children were killed, 4000 wounded; to remind us why Biko had to fight; to remind us why Woods had to flee; why that manuscript had to make it out of South Africa; to remind us why CRY FREEDOM had to be made.

END

Shiver me fey timbers.

Captain Poffy Sparrow

Johnny Depp as some kind of transvestite, in a swinging, swordfighting fey-quest over the high seas of The Caribbean, with Orlando Bloom as his blacksmith girlfriend, and Geoffrey Rush as a grumpy old man in a Halloween pirate costume. Keira Knightley’s square man-jaw causes untold distraction; Jonathan Pryce gads about in a wig slightly smaller than Dee Snider’s hair during the Stay Hungry tour, and Jack Davenport tries to take it all seriously, for which I’m sure everyone laughed at him behind his back.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL is as entertaining as it is ambitious, as rollicking as it is ridiculous, as boyish-action-movie as it is gender-bendingly-ambiguous.

Supposedly based on the boring Disneyland boat ride of the same name – that doesn’t have nearly this much gender bending – if anyone ever has this much fun on that dank, irritating boat ride, I’ll eat my triangular hat. Somehow, Disney’s accursed homogenizing hand could not stultify this film’s pure adrenalin bumrush.

Depp is Captain Jack Sparrow, who rockets out of left field with his mascara on overdrive and his personality on sideways; he alone imbues this movie with its unique charm. For some reason, his aggressive effeteness lends an authenticity to the swashbuckling that none of the other “Halloween pirate” performances can. His drunken, insouciant braggadocio drives the film like a 1st rate Ship-of-the-line, beating to windward, guns blazing (and I do mean ‘blazing’).

Matter of fact, there were secret talks held with the Oxford English Dictionary on whether to replace Anthony Hopkins’s picture with Depp’s, next to the meaning of the word “fey.”

Filmed in the Caribbean (St. Vincent and the Windward Islands of the Grenadines), PIRATES somehow avoids looking anything like the Caribbean. Must be that homogenizing Disney touch.

Geoffrey Rush is aye-me-hearties Captain Barbossa who stole Sparrow’s ship, the Black Pearl, which Sparrow spends the whole movie trying to steal back.

Keira Knightley is Elizabeth Swann, daughter to the Governor (Jonathan Pryce), betrothed to a stoic British Commodore (Jack Davenport), but in love with Jack’s girlfriend, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom).

Director Gore Verbinski frames Knightley’s opening shot from an angle that makes her look busty, rather than her sad reality of being flatter than the Earth Before Columbus.

Her pancake ironing board pecs are probably the reason that with all the kidnapping she undergoes by pirates, not one of them thinks to drag her into the hold and rape her – they must think she’s a skinny boy. And since none of them are Catholic priests, she’s not considered sexual property.

It looks very eerie cinematically, but with all those holes in the sails, how does the Black Pearl ever sail? Oh, that’s right, she’s supernatural. Then why does she “sail” at all? Why engage in a “chase” to “catch up” to the Commodore’s ship? Why not just appear alongside in one fell swoop?

For once, the work of four writers looks justified (Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio, Stuart Beattie, Jay Wolpert) with the wealth of ideas onscreen. Bold, brash, criminal adventure, involving Aztec blood amulets, hidden treasure, lots of yo-ho-ho barrels of rum, double-crosses and triple-crosses (Sparrow: “Me? I’m dishonest. And a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly”) and fencing the likes of which we haven’t seen since Basil Rathbone and Errol Flynn (which does get tiresome when everyone is fencing for no reason, i.e. if you can’t kill each other by fencing – due to being supernatural beings – why bother?)

Bouncy-bouncy music by Klaus Badelt (with music editing and production by Hans Zimmer), moving us like the shifting deck of a schooner: coy, ominous, frolicsome, and rope-swinging-across-chasms epic, transporting us out into the salty breeze and briny seas – or at least to a water tank in San Francisco.

I’m sure the PIRATES movie has made the Disney ride infinitely more popular – though no less boring.

END

Plight of the Valkyries.

When I heard Tom Cruise was to play a World War II Nazi, I laughed my LMAO off. Tough sell for a non-actor. And by non-actor, I mean movie star. And by movie star, I mean he can’t act.But then it all comes clear. The role was Colonel von Stauffenberg, who was involved in one of the more famous assassination plots against Hitler – so Cruise was not really being asked to extend his acting bone; he was a disenfranchised Nazi, a veritable “liberal” in America’s eyes. He was a traitor to the Germans, but you know what they say: One man’s traitor is another man’s Cruise.

Colonel Cuken von Poffenberg

And, ludicrous as it may sound, Cruise and director Bryan Singer (X-MEN) actually boast of the “risk” for Cruise in taking such a role. What risk? His character is the Hero, with a beautiful wife (Carice van Houten) and four loving, blond kids (cos he’s German, see); he’s principled, a born leader, and hates the Nazis so much he’s practically American. He doesn’t even speak German in the film! Associated Press actually published this stupid article: Tom Cruise taking risk with Nazi film `Valkyrie’.

In VALKYRIE, it is 1944 and Chancellor Adolf Hitler, whom many on both sides regard as an “insane genius,” is not only losing the war that he started, he is committing atrocities and driving Germany’s credibility with the rest of the world straight into the toilet. Kinda like George W. Bush – without the “genius” bit. We meet Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (Mr. Cruise, proudly pretending he is “taking a risk”) as a young rebel, displeased with Hitler’s management of the war, his mission impossible: “to serve Germany – or the Fuehrer – not both.”

Then the Allies bomb him. Stauffenberg loses his right hand, half his left hand, and his left eye. If that doesn’t make you wanna blow up your Chancellor, well…

Stauffenberg is recruited by a cast of “Chermans,” so upper-crust British they make your butler feel like an illegal Latino: Kenneth Branagh (as Major-General Tresckow), Bill Nighy (as General Olbricht), Tom Wilkinson (as General Fromm), Terence Stamp (as Ludwig Beck), Eddie Izzard (as General Fellgiebel), Kevin McNally (as Dr. Goerdeler). The German names won’t mean a thing unless you know the story – the joke is in the casting. It is why VALKYRIE stumbles conceptually, because it is always in the back of our minds, “No wonder they’re trying to assassinate Hitler – they’re BRITISH!”

Bad Guys are British, right? Staple of Hollywood. So casting them as Germans was no stretch, but director Singer ensures that the “good” Bad Guys (i.e. traitors) are all British actors and the “bad” Bad Guys (i.e. Nazis) are actual German actors.

Then there’s Tom. Fruiting about the authentic-looking WWII backdrop, in no way trying to inhabit the role of a one-handed, eye-patched, high-ranking German Chief of Staff. Just Being Cruise. The American accent is bad enough. (We give the filmmakers credit here for the artful way they suspended our disbelief in everyone speaking English: the opening titles are written in German, and morph into English, then we hear Cruise speaking German with English subtitles, cross-faded into him speaking English.) We get the point of the translation for our lazy Western ears, but there is more to a role than an accent; Cruise gives it nothing more than Cruise. We do not lose ourselves in this “German’s” conflict – committing the highest crimes known to man since Judas Iscariot. It’s Tom Cruise, eat your popcorn.

The two things foremost in my mind were Cruise’s ingenious bluescreen glove he’s obviously wearing, and how hard the Shakespearean vets on set must be laughing at his babyboy acting chops over lunch.

As a political thriller, VALKYRIE succeeds, though. Even with Tom just Being Cruise. Writers Christopher McQuarrie (THE USUAL SUSPECTS) and Nathan Alexander compress events and often just falsify events to keep it popcorn-friendly – this is not a historical document – but they do not lose too much in their streamlining because the story itself is just so entertaining. (To understand the extent of the operation, and its many complications that are not shown in VALKYRIE for brevity, one of the most authoritative sources is still William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.)

“Valkyrie” was the code-name for a plan that called for Germany’s Home Army (led by Thomas Kretschmann – he was the Euro boat captain in KONG 2005) to hold major German cities in case of a revolt from the millions of foreign laborers. Stauffenberg says, “I’ve rewritten Valkyrie” (which is ironic, considering the filmmakers re-wrote the events of Hitler’s assassination in VALKYRIE as well) – an idea which comes to Stauffenberg while listening to Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries (somehow Singer squeezed it in).

The plan: to kill Hitler – with a good old-fashioned time-bomb (with no Roger Ebert Red Digital Readout!) – then report that SS radicals were trying to take over the cities, which would allow the conspirators to mobilize the Home Army to arrest all SS officials. This would nullify Hitler’s main Gestapo bulldog, Himmler.

It is a pleasure to see a modern movie that doesn’t use holo-computers, laser fields, cell phones or cockamamy technology so outlandish it might as well be magic. (I refrain from dropping the classic Arthur C. Clarke aphorism on you. Congratulate me. It’s harder than you think.)

Stauffenberg plants the bomb in a briefcase near Hitler during a staff meeting. It detonates, seemingly killing everyone in the room. The Home Army started its takeover of major cities, but just as Germany was about to become the United States of Tom Cruise – Hitler was discovered alive and made a public radio announcement to proclaim his survival was divine.

The conspirators failed by not controlling the flow of information. This was in a time when mass communications were in the form of telegrams sent to a central communications switchboard, then forwarded on. Though the conspirators had hundreds of high-ranking officers onboard Valkyrie, they failed to recruit the low-ranking message personnel. The telegram of Hitler’s death stunned these indoctrinated Nazis, but the following one about his survival made them smell that rotten something in Denmark (on accounta it’s so close to Germany…)

Just as the conspirators were saying, “I love it when a plan comes together,” the Home Army is re-claimed by the Nazis. As Stauffenberg’s orders go out over the wire to arrest SS officers, orders issue from the Wolf’s Lair (Hitler’s HQ) to arrest Stauffenberg. The wire operators chose to send on The Fuehrer’s orders and ignore Stauffenberg’s.

Stauffenberg’s plan had to work, so he made no effort to hide his tracks. He was discovered and executed within the 24-hour period when Valkyrie was launched on 20 July 1944. He was executed 21 July 1944.

Somewhere in Germany, there is a monument to Tom Cruise for his brave sacrifice. Or is it in Britain in the Risky Business Untrained Actor’s museum?…

END

Jack-ing the Sparrow.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END: a whole lotta something that ends up a whole lotta nothing.

Yo Ho Hum

Director Gore Verbinski puts so much effort into this summer blockbuster that it boggles the rational part of the brain – look at that cinematography, look at that set dressing, look at that costuming and attention to detail on every starboard bow and odd bodkin and shivered timber. But pull back and the fault lines appear quickly: once again, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley play star-crossed lovers; once again Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush play ham and cheese with lots of dressing, once again Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack beats you to a bloody pulp – in PIRATES 2 (2006) these elements walked the edge of the tolerable plank, but mish-mash them amongst a wretchedly convoluted storyline and unnecessary, eye-straining, computer-graphicking spectacle and what started as a good idea back in 2003’s PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL is now an epileptic nightmare.

Written by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, AT WORLD’S END opens with the British government repressing civil liberties in the quest to eradicate piracy, not realizing that they become as villainous as the factions they are trying to overcome in the process – quashing the right to assemble, denying the right to habeas corpus – yes, exactly like modern America…

We never really “meet” the characters; more like “catch up” with them in the middle of a fine mess – why exposit when there’s so much action to get to? From the press junkets, we learn that Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) can only repel the British forces by convening nine Pirate Lords, one of them being Jack Sparrow, who is dead, which presents a problem.

Verbinski has been taking film-making lessons from George Lucas. And his film fails in exactly the same ways that Lucas’s do.

no more rules…

Firstly, there are no rules that this Caribbean universe adheres to: people die but can’t seem to stay dead; “dead souls” abandoned by Davy Jones float by in the water, then are suddenly floating by on little touristy boats (in or out, people – make up your minds!); Davy Jones himself (Bill Nighy, once again with a ‘pus on his face) suddenly gains the ability to walk through walls; Chow Yun-Fat is Pirate Lord Sao Feng – until he bequeaths his title to Elizabeth (it’s that easy to become a Pirate Lord? No wonder Jack is one).

And there is nothing at stake if you swordfight someone who can’t be killed with a sword. How stupid must the British be to threaten someone with death if they’re already dead? But being dead, what are they doing hanging around on OUR plane of existence? Who knew the dead still harbored ambitions to live like the living throughout their death?

And I guess marriage performed by a dead sea captain, mouthing unintelligible vows whilst slicing out undead people’s spleens is recognized as legal.

no more sense of wonder…

Making that age-old movie marketing mistake, Verbinski identifies his “selling point” (any layperson could tell you it is Johnny Depp as madly fey Jack Sparrow) and follows the fallacious market research on summer blockbuster sequels that informs him to then glut the screen with his selling point. After waiting twenty minutes for Depp’s Sparrow, suddenly we’re wishing he would Go Away, as we find him in Davy Jones’ Locker (i.e. Death – which is apparently an actual “place” rather than a condition), talking to himself – literally. Whereas in CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL Depp exploded out of left field with the half-drunk, half-transvestite, Keith Richards-inspired Jack Sparrow, now the joke has worn thin. And putting hundreds of him onscreen – each one feyer than the last – only makes one person happy: George (More Is Better) Lucas.

A rock turns into a CG crab. But why stop at one – when you can have a million? Why should the British armada stop at a hundred ships when you can populate the horizon with a thousand (which all might as well be a matte painting, for all the sitting there and doing nothing that they do)? A five-foot woman grows into a fifty-foot woman – for no reason, other than to explode into a million crabs (yes, “She’s got crabs” is kinda obvious – except to the screenwriters); and why stop at “inspired by” Keith Richards – when you can HAVE Keith Richards?! Keef cameos for twelve eyeblinks as Jack’s wayward pirate pater, the irony being that Richards really IS a zombie and wears enough makeup on Stones Tours to make him look alive, yet here, with his long black tresses and prostitute mascara, he actually looks alive – and he’s MEANT to be a zombie.

no more chemistry…

The PIRATES franchise started as a filthy romance between a statesman’s daughter, Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley, still flatter than an ironed pancake with a face that never gets dirty, hardened features so enamel-coated you could cut bread on them), and blacksmith Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), while a soldier, Norrington (Jack Davenport), wooed her with “proper” British etiquette.

Then came Jack. And though the film-makers held a semblance of love quadrangle through PIRATES 2, here there is just too much bluster for the flimsy chemistry to hold. Elizabeth’s twat aches for Jack; Will is her obsolete brother and Norrington somehow pulls off the only “romantic” parlay of the film, a scant poignant moment where two people actually act like they have human feelings for each other.

The unmitigated stupidity of Will and Elizabeth’s “marriage scene whilst dueling” holds not one shred of emotion. And Will becomes the New Davy Jones, who must stay seabound and only come ashore once every ten years to spend filthy time with Elizabeth… but hang on! – Why can he only conjugate with her on land? Who made the rule that there’s no screwing onboard The Flying Dutchman? So is it because of her marriage vows that we are meant to believe Elizabeth will be faithful to Will over TEN YEARS of celibacy? Let’s see – she’s about 24 now, she could have as many as four filthy meetings with him before she also dies and then gets resurrected for no reason. That’s about the modern frequency for marriage anyway, isn’t it? And it’s quite plausible for her to remain celibate for ten year stretches hanging around pirates.

Once or twice, when Depp effects that effete run, it’s funny. Once or twice. With a sinking feeling, we ask ourselves what makes this movie so bad – but Verbinski just keeps throwing money at the problem. At one point, I wanted to succumb to my inner child and just write, “This movie sucks!”

Yes, we know we’re meant to take it all like a ripping yarn, but there’s just too much yarn and not enough ripping; how many times can people double-cross each other before we stop caring who’s on whose side and whether Orlando Bloom will ever get to touch Keira Knightley there? It’s not “fun” anymore – the rascally diversion of the PIRATES series has turned into a must-earn overblown bombast of money-raking white noise consumerism.

Lord Beckett (Tom Hollander), channeling Corleone, constantly qualifies his quest to wipe out piracy by sneering, “It’s not personal. It’s just business”.

And that, swashbucklers, is why AT WORLD’S END fails.

END

Captain Jack will get you high tonight…

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST is pure ham and cheese. Lots of sauce. Lots of dressing. Hold the onions.

Pegleg Poff

Director Gore Verbinski‘s sequel to his PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL (2003) is a spectacle to behold, a hedonistic bombast of swashbuckling high-sea hijinks, sun-seared tropical environs, intricately-designed ocean-creature monsters and eyeliner enough to embarrass a prostitute.

Speaking of prostitutes, Johnny Depp, renowned for not bowing to Hollywood ethos, bows to Hollywood ethos and returns as Captain Jack Sparrow, an amalgam of Dudley Moore’s ARTHUR, a stoned transvestite and some kind of idiot savant. Orlando Bloom, whose diverse roles involve sword fighting, fighting with swords and sword fighting, is again the amorous Will Turner, whose gay blade is once more victim to coitus interruptus with his square-jawed man-bride of the support-bra bosoms, Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley).

There’s treachery afoot in Olde England, and Turner is blackmailed into retrieving Jack Sparrow’s magic compass in return for his jailed bride-to-be.

Using the compass, Jack seeks the hidden Key and buried Chest of ghoulish scourge of the seas, Davy Jones (whose second mistake – after letting an octopus camp on his face – was hiding his beating heart in the chest and burying it on land; land which the screenwriter forbids him from stepping on but once every ten years).

After the plodding first hour – riddled with slapstick only a thirteen-year-old could possibly find marginally original, let alone nominally amusing – the film at last finds its sea legs (accompanied by a highly intrusive Hans Zimmer score) in the race between Sparrow, Davy Jones, Turner and Norrington (Jack Davenport) to locate the Dead Man’s Chest.

Elizabeth spends some disguised time as a boy-sailor onboard an all-male ship – the fact that the crew cannot peg her as female, or the fact that any boy that smooth-faced and round-buttocked is not raped continuously reminds us woefully of Disney’s role as production company.

Sailing an ocean eternally chlorine blue, Davy Jones (played ostentatiously by Bill Nighy, relishing the ‘pus on his face) enslaves Will Turner, through Jack’s treachery. It is while Will is onboard Davy’s Flying Dutchman that the movie offers us what meager character poignancy a summer blockbuster can afford to waste precious minutes on, when Will reunites with his father, a barnacle-encrusted Bootstrap Bill (Stellan Skarsgård), who sacrifices his eternal soul for Will’s freedom.

As Will steals the Key from the sleeping Davy Jones (whose tentacled face is quite the organist), we ask ourselves, “Would a supernatural creature really need to sleep? What energy resources is he replenishing?”

The same conundrum faced by people in zombie movies exists here: how do you “kill” something which is already dead? When the running and shouting and loud music starts again, Davy Jones’s crew – all ostensibly zombies, creatively visualized as nightmarish deformations of recognizable sea creatures – are scalloped and diced by everyone within sushi range.

Until the Kraken arrives. Summoned by Davy Jones via a hydrosonic boom, the giant octopoid (which lives on the ocean floor, yet somehow acclimates to our surface air pressure quite comfortably) minces Jack Sparrow’s ship – The Black Pearl – with as much zest as Jack Sparrow minces, and is rewarded with some prime ham in the form of Captain Jack himself.

Captain Jack will get you high tonight
And take you to your special island
Captain Jack will get you by tonight
Just a little push, and you’ll be smilin’…
— Billy Joel, “Captain Jack.”

Though Depp is undoubtedly this movie’s pulling power, Orlando Bloom endows his role with as much leading man bravado as Depp endows his with effeteness, at one point, even pulling the old Errol Flynn maneuver of sliding down a sail while using his knife as a brake. Seems like the wrong thing to do, as Keira’s Elizabeth has skipped from Norrington to Turner and eventually pants after Sparrow like a dog in heat – out with the fey, in with the feyer.

She can afford to. With her perfect features, Keira Knightley mocks every man who will never sweep their palms over her support-bra’d bosoms; whilst Orlando mocks those same heterosexual men, who find him disturbingly attractive. As Depp mocks every she-male who can only yearn for Jack Sparrow’s level of Freddie Mercury camp and waterproof mascara.

Don’t know why DEAD MAN’S CHEST is considered a cliffhanger – the crew quite clearly see Jack Sparrow swash his buckle into the Freudian-vaginal maw of the Kraken, while the Black Pearl is splintered into smithereens. Declaring they will “do anything” to get Jack back (and throwing down a ham-cameo in the eleventh hour) can achieve absolutely nothing if Jack is already abiding on the ocean floor as Kraken scat.

It’s all very silly really – and like heroin, it will kill you if you have too much – and if it weren’t for the fact that the lavish, overwrought production resonates with a Jack Sparrow-like insouciance, it would be entirely unbearable.

END