Night Shift: Part I

At seventeen, I was convinced I could make it as an independent filmmaker. No matter what, I told myself, I'll do it; it won't be easy, maybe I'll put myself into debt for a while, but I'll do it... was anyone so naive?

About midway through the senior year of my undergraduate film degree, I started to realize something: I'll never do this for a job. It would be nice, but let's be realistic - to make it in film (as in to make a living), you need at least two of three independent conditions, though most successful filmmakers get all three: (a) extreme dedication; (b) a modicum of talent; and (c) an extreme amount of luck. I had a little talent, but no luck, and no hard dedication. I loved movies and had a lot of fun making them in school, but filmmaking didn't define me; I didn't have to do it, I just liked doing it. I finished up the bachelor's anyway, assuming it was better to have a degree than no degree.

So then I had to ask myself, Well, what do I want to do? That question has taken nearly four years to answer. For a while I just put it off, thinking I could still make a living somehow with my little film degree. Then, like all uncertain liberal arts majors, I thought, Ah ha! I'll go to grad school! ... Thankfully, though, this idea was squelched almost as soon as it occurred because - let's be honest - what do you do with a graduate degree in film, other than teach film? Not much. So after all that I finally realized I had to look outside my area of study... but where should I look? I bounced around to several possibilities: MBA, MFA, move away and start over completely - for a long time I thought of being a cop. It was ill-advised (looking back, I convinced myself it was a good idea because it didn't require any additional schooling, paid decently, and provided job security, but I'm not suited for it personality-wise and was most interested in detective work, which would have taken years), but it did motivate other areas of my life. For instance, until I started applying to be a police officer, I was a 6', 125 lb. weakling who could barely run a mile; after months of dedicated exercise and a complete diet change, I became a 6', 155 lb. weakling who could barely run two miles.

 It took me a while, but I finally bit the bullet to get back into school. Basically a matter of priorities. One of the first things I told myself when I was figuring out what I wanted to do was that I didn't want anything to do with business. I'd worked in retail/customer service-type areas for over a decade, and the one thing I firmly decided was that I didn't want any job or career where the sole purpose was how much money I made for a company that already had too much money. I took a detour in law enforcement before finally settling on health care, a much better fit. The chance to help people, really help people is the biggest draw, but also I get to learn new things, challenge myself physically and mentally, and there is always something different and interesting going on. Just the other day I observed a tracheostomy. An immensely positive atmosphere.

All of which brings me to where I am now. Engaged, living in a Chicago suburb, working 40+ hours a week all while studying to become a Physician Assistant. If you told me five years ago that I would be working the night shift at a hospital in Illinois while taking classes like Anatomy/Physiology and Organic Chemistry, I would have said you were crazy. But that's what happened. And you know something? It's better that way.

Just don't hold it against me if I look like I belong on the set of a George A. Romero movie.

Seriously... does Zooey Deschanel have Asperger's?

She's an almost ubiquitous figure in the indie movie and indie music scene, but it's hard to believe Zooey Deschanel has really only been pop culturally relevant for the past few years. Her breakout performance (and her best work to date) in the amazing Almost Famous came in 2000, but it's only been with recent movies like (500) Days of Summer and her sudden musical activity in She & Him that she's suddenly a major figure. With the trademark Deschanel eyes (just look at this family pic - creepy intense eyes are a family trait), she's always been recognizable, it's just now that the fame is kicking in.

I don't know much about Deschanel's music, but my assumption is it would be kind of folksy, indie, and emo all rolled into one. I've heard her sing a song here and there in a few of her movies - not bad, but not great. Not exactly soothing, dulcet tones.

What I do know is that her acting hasn't been all that great. She's somewhat interesting to watch, but her presence is kind of mousy, and her range is pretty poor. Especially now that she's gotten popular. Now she doesn't even act - she just brands her persona. "Here is Zooey in a movie; here is Zooey singing a song; now Zooey is dancing, isn't she cute in an awkward way? That's Zooey for ya!"

Persona brands have been around for decades, of course (from the Marx Brothers to Cary Grant to Woody Allen, everybody has their shtick), but after watching an episode of her new TV show New Girl, I genuinely think that Zooey Deschanel has a legit mental issue. Just watch her. Her pacing is all wrong, the way she carries herself is awkward and clumsy, she always has a kind of vacant look in her eyes... Seriously, does Zooey Deschanel have Asperger's? I've never met anyone with Asperger's, but I've heard plenty about it, and she seems to match it pretty well. As the credits rolled, I turned to my fiancee to ask this very question, and I didn't even have to finish - she thought the same thing. I'm telling you, we're on to something.

That, or she's taking this awkward indie persona to a whole new level.

Cinematic Smackdown: Drive

Drive - 3.5/5
(dir. Nicolas Winding Refn)

What a wonderful enigma of a movie we have here. The story and storytelling are so straightforward and simplistic, so sleek and muscled (after the high-performance machines in the film, no doubt), and yet the characters are full of contradictions, hidden intentions and motives, emotions which often lie just beneath the surface, sometimes peeking through, though more often than not simply remain wrapped in a furtive glance or telling smile; a film which teeters on the edge of zen-like meditation and focus, only to be shattered by shocking, often excessive violence; a film which takes place in the modern world but harkens back to the tight, succinct action of Michael Mann or William Friedkin. Drive is fast, terse, soft, loud, plaintive, and liberating all at once. It is a film which often achieves greatness, but unfortunately cannot sustain it; but then, it is such a welcome respite that you almost forgive it for this, too.

Drive features quite a few great actors, young and old, yet it plays almost like a one-man show. Ryan Gosling simply commands the film and demands to be watched; everyone else is just passing through. As the nameless Driver, he (like the film) seems to simply exist. We are never given a backstory - even his mentor, the father figure (played by the great Bryan Cranston), says he simply appeared one day, "out of the blue," looking for work. A horrific past is hinted at - horribly violent demons sometimes break through his placid exterior, dispatching enemies with startling efficiency, as though he's done this before - though never explained. He grows attached to a vulnerable neighbor, becoming a surrogate father to her child, but his intentions seem more practical and protective than romantic: it's as though she can take him if she wants, but he'd rather just provide for and protect them. This is the film's emotional linchpin - informing the action, as well as his motivation - and it is beautifully underwritten.

What makes Drive so good is that it refuses to indulge in what so often makes films of this sort so bad. Action movies these days, almost without exception, are an exercise in technology: an unnecessarily convoluted plot wrapped in loud, "gee-whiz!" effects, all set to a trite, pounding score. The film simply turns every cliche on its head. Others are loud, aggressive, convoluted, expository; Drive is quiet, furtive, understated. It's banal to cite Michael Bay, but also fitting. Michael Bay could never make anything like this. He wishes he could, but he doesn't have the patience or the restraint. Despite a number of scenes of shocking violence, which occur almost exclusively in the second half of the film, Drive really only has two extended action sequences, one of which opens the film. For the most part, this is a peaceful, quiet, meditative exercise, substituting 80s-inspired girl pop and telling glances for exposition and dialogue.

While this platitudinal subversion is the film's greatest strength, it is simultaneously the film's greatest weakness. The plot, though minimally treated (even cursory, one could say), feels predetermined. Things happen a certain way not because of free-flowing choices that have been made, but because they have to; Drive is more Sophocles than Shakespeare. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the third act, where murder and mayhem become almost pedestrian. It is clear from the characters, the plot devices, and the overall tone of the picture that things will not end nicely, but after a certain point the violence becomes rote and the motivation moot.

But do not take this as disdain on my part. Oh, no no no, quite the contrary. I admire the film and what Refn and Gosling have accomplished here immensely. By pulling back the reins and focusing on mood, tone, and character (rather than the "sound and fury" so common in subpar films of a similar ilk), Refn has managed to be stylish without being stylized, fast-paced but comprehensible, and genuinely tense and exciting without being heavy-handed or overbearing. Even its faults remind us what an accomplished film this is. Drive may not be perfect, but it's well worth watching and will retain its value over repeat viewings.

It's Gonna be a Good Day

In a weird way, I've been waiting for this day to come since April.

Number One: Mastodon has a new album! The Hunter. They started on it back in the spring, and after teasing us with a few singles here and there, the album is now out for purchase... if only I had the money. I know, CDs are cheap, but seriously - I have zero dollars. I'll see if I can borrow from someone, may even check the library on a long shot - I have to hear this thing.

For those who may not know, I love music. Love it as in I can't live without it. I may talk about movies more, but if I had to choose a life without movies or a life without music, I'm sorry, but music is going to win. And in the course of about a year and a half Mastodon has become one of my favorite bands. Some may dismiss them off-hand for being too loud, too fast, too "heavy," but they're missing what's behind the sound.

Mastodon is a band which has followed a development similar to Tool, albeit in a heavier vein: they start off with extremely aggressive, straightforward albums, and then gradually move into areas which are more ethereal, soulful. I refer to their music as "mystical metal." The music does kick your ass first and foremost, so keep that in mind, but what you should also remember is how incredibly smart these guys are. Seriously. Their last album, Crack the Skye, was about astral projection, reincarnation, past lives intruding on present time - all very heady stuff... and for Leviathan, they adapted Moby Dick! So come on! If you don't like the music, surely you can respect the ambition.

Cinematic Smackdown: X-Men: First Class & Your Highness

If you know me, you know I know movies. I used to watch at least one per day; and while that pace has slowed over the years, I still see quite a few. I can assure you there will be many, many movie-centric posts and references in this blog. That said, generally I would prefer one movie per post so as to dedicate an appropriate amount of discussion, but I'm cheating a bit here for the sake of convenience. Sue me.

X-Men: First Class - 2.5/5
dir. Matthew Vaughn
Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake) redeems himself a bit from the overstylized, carnographic mess of Kick-Ass and proves that while he may be a competent director of big-budget action and effects, he is still not a very good storyteller. As such, X-Men: First Class is a mixed bag: strong performances overall with a few good action scenes, but underneath lie structural problems in the script and far too much "busy-ness" in the plot. This latest installment then is most appropriately ranked ahead of the disastrous X-Men: Last Stand but behind both X-Men and the vastly superior X2: X-Men United.

Breaking a bit from tradition, this film follows a series of mostly unknown mutants throughout their burgeoning discovery of not only their own abilities, but their comforting acceptance among other mutants, and perhaps even among the rest of humanity. While we meet the likes of Banshee, Havok, Darwin, and others, however, the film is still centered mostly around the budding friendship and subsequent falling out of Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr. This is the core of the film, and thankfully these are the scenes which work best.

Actors James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender do a very nice job of not only inhabiting such well-known comic creations but making them their own. While Patrick Stewart is perhaps the perfect choice for Professor X as we know him, McAvoy brings a cockiness and arrogance to the younger version of the character which adds some nice dimension. Xavier may be brilliant, but he also will manipulate if he believes it to be for the greater good (which, in the early scenes of the film, means scoring with girls in a bar). Fassbender's Magneto is a little less well-developed. The Holocaust backstory is still there (the character introduction is basically shot for shot from the first X-Men), but whereas his goals were much grander and more complex in the earlier films, here they are much more straightforward: simply, vengeance. Vengeance for what? For the murder of his mother by a sociopathic "doctor" from that most storied of cinematic villains - the Nazis. Played with appropriate campiness by Kevin Bacon, Sebastian Shaw is charming but simplistic: he likes mutants, but wants to kill everyone else... and he'll kill mutants, too, if they get in his way.

So those are the basic motivations, and these characters are really the best part of an otherwise mediocre film. What struck me again and again during the movie is just how "busy" it is. This is already a prequel which takes place decades before the other three films, full of flashbacks to the principals' childhoods. Then we have romances, love triangles, political machinations of a seedy nature, all with about four A-story elements, a handful of B elements, and then countless Cs and Ds. Oh, and there's the Cuban missile crisis. Just too much.

The other films were big and convoluted, too (something like this has to be, considering how many characters there are in the X-Men universe), but comparing the previous three to this current one easily reveals the strengths and weaknesses of all four, and that is perhaps why I gave the film the rating I did. Not that 2.5 is all that bad, but I was perfectly fine with the film. It told the story adequately, gave some nice shading and dimension to characters already present in the first three films, and was generally well-made... I just kept thinking of X2, though, which is still by far the best of the series. Even X-Men is much better than this film, and I thought that one was a little lacking.

What it boils down to, basically, is that Bryan Singer is a better director than Matthew Vaughn. Singer can juggle all of these storylines, direct exciting action, and hint at drama, whereas Vaughn spells it out all too clearly. Take Magneto's backstory. A good deal of this movie is spent either in concentration camps or following Fassbender enact his revenge; in X-Men, there was one scene at the beginning and then one glance down at the numbers on Magneto's arm - far more effective. Overall, X-Men: First Class is a decent distraction if you're struggling for something to watch, but even in the ballooning realm of comic book movies, it falls toward the middle of the pack.

Strange Addiction: Fantasy Football

I didn't really like football when I was a kid. I would watch occasionally, but my family and I always felt it was a little too dull - "too much standing around," my mother would say. Couple this with the fact that I didn't play any sports in high school, focusing instead on more artistic extracurricular activities, and it shouldn't seem all that surprising that I was in my twenties when I discovered my love of the game.

I grew up around Kansas City, so this was actually a good time to start paying attention: for a few years there in the 2000s, the Chiefs were actually pretty good. Dante Hall, Priest Holmes - a lot of talent and excitement on that team... that said, I still regarded football at arm's length. I didn't warm to it until I heard of a little guy named Donovan McNabb.

Ever since I first saw McNabb play, I was an Eagles fan. He wasn't up there with Tom Brady or Peyton Manning (at least not consistently), and he could make some silly mistakes, but he was just fun to watch. You never knew what to expect. Great speed, incredible arm strength, and tough - that was what impressed me most. You knew that if McNabb was out, then it was bad. This was a guy who played on a broken ankle, who played most of a playoff season with a hernia - that just commands respect.

Shortly after that came fantasy football, now a yearly ritual. Some say fantasy football ruins the "heart" of the sport: i.e., because you're rooting for specific players, you're not really a "team" fan, but I disagree. You'll find people who genuinely love the game; there are far more die-hard fans than fair-weather fans. One of the funniest things is watching people try to justify picking a weak player from their favorite team or purposely not picking a player from a hated rival.

The last few years I've been in a keeper league, which has been an interesting challenge. For the uninitiated, that just means you can keep a few players on your roster from one year to the next. In our league, you can keep three. I have a pretty strong core of players, but my Achilles heel has always been the lack of production at RB. Check out my roster:

QB- Matt Stafford, Det / BENCH- Matt Ryan, Atl

RB- Adrian Peterson, Min / BENCH - Marshawn Lynch, Sea

RB- CJ Spiller, Buf / BENCH- Jacquizz Rodgers, Atl / LaRod Stephens-Howling, Ari

WR- DeSean Jackson, Phi, Vincent Jackson, SD / BENCH- Jacoby Ford, Oak, Danny Amendola, StL

Flex (RB/WR)- Dexter McCluster, KC, Reggie Wayne, Ind / BENCH- Steve Smith, Phi

TE- Jermaine Gresham, Cin / BENCH- Jared Cook, Ten

DEF- Ravens

K- Ryan Longwell, Min

So you see the dilemma: Really great core of young, talented players, but the back-up players are iffy at best, and the biggest problem is that No. 2 RB. Marshawn Lynch was supposed to be a stud, that never happened; and while CJ Spiller has a great skill set, he just doesn't get enough chances because Fred Jackson is running all over the place. My hope this week is that New England will be so focused on stopping Jackson and Fitzpatrick that they let Spiller do some damage, kind of like how they contained Antonio Gates last week but let Vincent Jackson do whatever he wanted. We'll see, though.

Wish me luck!

Holy Neutrino, Batman!

Preface: savor it now - this is probably the only time you'll have more than one post in a day. Normally I would wait, but

This Is Huge.

If proved right (and they've spent months verifying), this could change everything. Seriously.

Could neutrinos have broken the light barrier?

One of the pillars of modern scientific thought is Einstein's theory of general relativity, one of the central tenets of which is the claim that nothing can go faster than light. Nothing. That has been the bedrock of the scientific community for decades. So consistent that it's all but a given.

We may be in the midst of a paradigm shift. Hold on to your hats.

It's messy and untested, but it may be all we have. Bring on quantum gravity!

Not that I get it, but more info on general relativity.

WHY Are We Here?

I used to be a good writer. Throughout childhood and adolescence, writing was one of my primary hobbies. I consider this primarily a product of geography more than anything else... I grew up in the middle of nowhere. One of those ranch-style homes on a gravel road surrounded by trees and open fields - idyllic to some, isolated to others. Not to say I had a bad childhood. Quite the contrary! I had two wonderful parents, a little sister, dogs, cows, and all the room to roam I could want. I could climb trees, play outside, explore the wilderness. I'm just saying, after a while, you run out of things to do. So I began to write.

Short stories, poems, novels, plays, screenplays - everything I could think to write, I would write. Funny, serious, it didn't matter. It was a way to pass the time, and it was very... I don't want to say "relaxing" because my life wasn't exactly stressful... how about "peaceful"? It felt good to get things out. And I got pretty good at it. Not great, but good.

I've noticed something, though: I'm not as good a writer as I used to be. I consider this primarily a product of the times more than anything else. There is little reason to refine writing skills in everyday life. No one really writes letters or messages any more. I've never had to write essays for work. Most inquiries require only a few brief sentences, if any, in response. Even now, going back to school for a master's, I'm finding that most professors are happy enough with a "bare-bones" response:

     "How does A affect B?"
     "A affects B by..."

That's so rote and banal! And I actually find myself crafting those types of responses!

Like all skills, to be a good writer, you need a lot of practice. So consider this blog a practice field. I'll be throwing out lots of content. Ideas, opinions, questions, answers - I even have an occasional essay planned. I can't guarantee greatness, even mediocrity, but I welcome your responses, your feedback, anything. I hope you like what you see here; and if you don't, hopefully you will. And to those rare few who remember my last venture onto the information superhighway, welcome back! Thanks for giving me another chance. The content this time will be much more general and far-reaching, but I can guarantee there will still be plenty of opportunity for movie discussion.

Oh, also, for the curious...

I'm a big Woody Allen fan. If you're not, please stick around - we'll have lots to talk about!