My Thoughts On the End of LOST

Journey’s End

Six years ago I sat down to watch the pilot episode of LOST. I didn’t know what to expect. The ads for it looked pretty good, exciting and full of adventure. Little did I know that I was about to embark on a six year journey. A journey that took me to a mysterious island, the desert of Tunisia and other points around the world… Shoot the journey even took me and even back and forth through time.

LOST was an epic adventure. One that was full of intrigue, action, suspense, shock, twists and mystery. It posed grand questions about faith, science, destiny, good vs. evil and what is the nature of man? It also dug deep into how we search for meaning in ourselves and how we often find those answers through the relationships we have with the people who come in and out of our lives.

As big as a sic-fi geek as I am, it’s the characters and their journeys through the LOSTverse that mattered most to me. I enjoyed the debates over the years about the nature of the island and all of it’s mysterious qualities, but I never really felt like those questions about electromagnetic pockets or the time travel had to be answered. I always accepted that these things were large ideas that were made more interesting by being unanswerable. Let’s face it, a flashback to an ancient Egyptian civilization building their giant beach front statue and creating the below ground light temple would have come across as super cheesy in the end. As it was the light temple at the base of the waterfall nearly sent me over the edge when we first learned about the light. I thought, really? A light in a tunnel is the answer to all of this? But the reveal of the temple down below turned out to be a nice reveal of a deeper mythology that we as viewers are left to ponder and fill in ourselves. I find that infinitely more satisfying than any thin answer the writers and producers of LOST could have ever produced for us. I mean, really… A strange room with a cork that’s full of skeletons is just enough to really set your imagination wild on what those earlier stories might have been. And personally, I’m really getting off telling those stories to myself.

Let’s remind ourselves of the biggest “give us an answer to the great mystery” error in sic-fi. A great reason to remind ourselves that some magic is best left mysterious and grandiose in it’s concept. MIDICHLORIANS anyone? Let’s face it, it’s better to leave a little magic in the world.

Now, that said let’s talk about the finale a bit. Did it answer all of the questions of LOST? No. Did it have to? I think I’ve already made it clear that in my mind it didnt have to. What the finale did deliver on was a very powerful conclusion to the characters of the show. An emotional, spiritual (not religious mind you) conclusion. One that required you pay attention. One that left a lot of room for discussion after. Discussion about the nature of life, love and what comes after this life. It did what all great storytelling should do, it pushed the viewer to think. To ponder great mysteries and it left the answers to those mysteries up to interpretation. This wasn’t about going to heaven, it was about the process of living life, seeing ourselves to the finish line, and then letting go and embarking on the next journey… Content in knowing that we truly LIVED in this life.
This is my thoughts on the show, and by no means is my interpretation of it the only way to see it. But it’s mine, and I want to share it. Maybe you agree with me, maybe you don’t… But that’s what’s great about this. It’s a springboard for wonderful discussions.

In the end the story was all about Jack and the people who meant the most to him in his life.

That’s a key thought here. That the story is about Jack and the people important to him, from HIS LIFE. His father said the following to him in the church;

Christian: Hey Kiddo.

Jack: Dad?

C: Hello Jack.

J: I don’t understand. You died.

C: Yeah. Yes I did.

J: Then how are you here right now?

C: How are you here?

Pause, then gradual realization.

J: I died too.

C: It’s ok. It’s ok. It’s ok son.

Father and son embrace.

J: I love you.

C: I love you too son.

This is a moment the two men had trouble expressing in their lives.

Jack pulls away and asks…

J: Are you real?

C: I sure hope so. You’re real. Everything that’s ever happened to you is real. All those people in the church, they’re all real too.

J: They are all, they are all dead?
C: Everyone dies sometime kiddo. Some of them before you. Some, long after you.

J: Well why are they all here now?

C: Well there is no now… Here.

J: Where are we Dad?

C: This is the place that you all made together so that you could find one another. The most important part of your life was the time that you spent with these people. That’s why all of you are here. Nobody does it alone Jack. You needed all of them, and they needed you.

J: For what?

C: To remember. And to let go.

J: Kate, she said that we were leaving.

C: Not leaving. No. Moving on.

J: Where are we going?

C: Lets go find out.

This scene is the key to understanding a lot of things about the show. First off, it was all real. These people lived together. Their time on the island actually happened. Some of them died there, some didn’t. But in the end, they all shared the most important part of their lives together. And in the end their souls would move on from this life together. It doesn’t matter when they died. In the flash sideways time has no meaning. It’s a metaphysical reality. One they constructed for themselves to reconnect and take that final step together from. Now, it should be noted that not everyone moved on in this group. Ben, Alex, Rousseau, Walt and many others did not take this trip to the hereafter. I’ll touch more on that later. But think about why they didn’t and we’ll see if our thoughts match up.

In the end Jack was reunited with the people he loved, the people he gave everything of himself for to save, to honor and to protect.

And each of them had to come to their own realizations about their death. And their own awakening to their life, and how they lived and loved.

Love seems to have played a large role in these after life equations. They were also some of the most emotional moments of the night. Jin and Sun seeing their reunions, James and Juliet feeling their love and her untimely death, Charlie and Claire… It was a roller coaster ride of emotions… I have to admit to weeping a bit myself through the night.

Jack said to all of them early on that they needed to work together or they would die alone, and in the end they truly weren’t alone.

What about Jughead you ask? What the hell was that all about? Didn’t it work?

Yes and no. Jughead went off. But the effect as we now know wasn’t what Daniel had thought. No, the detonation of Jughead was the “Incident” that lead to the departure of Dharma from the Island. And apparently the explosion finally knocked our out of time adventurers back to the future. Juliet said to James that “it worked.” I think she meant that the bomb went off and somehow she found herself still alive (at least momentarily) and she was able to see the man she loved was still alive so she assumed it worked. As one of many cool homages to earlier LOST moments, that’s also the same thing she says to him as she hands him the candy bar and they experience their awakening and reunion with each other.

Christian told Jack that some died before him… Ok that explains Boone and Shannon easily enough. But Kate said to him that she’d been waiting for him a long time. He had no idea what she meant by that, but I take it to mean that she’d left the island as we’d seen and she spent the rest of her days missing him and was very happy to know that she was about to be truly reunited with him.

Hurley of course had his awakening with Libby who died very early on. It was great to see them together. But Hurley’s story was longer than that. It i s my belief that Christian’s comment that some died long after really applied to Hurley and Ben.

Jack left Hurley as the Protector. Hurley enlisted Ben as his advisor. They became the new Jacob/Richard team, and I feel they spent a good deal of time in those roles. Jacob held the post for 2000 years.

Ben didn’t go with them, but he used this time as a chance to get some redemption from Locke. His apology to him was so heartfelt and touching. He seemed so small, like he didn’t expect John to actually forgive him. I will truly miss watching those two interacting with one another. Ben didn’t go with them… Why do you ask? He wasn’t done with his awakening because he hadn’t made that love connection with the only person he truly loved in his life… Alex. He still had to go sort his stuff out with her and Rousseau.

This brings me to Daniel Faraday and Eloise Hawking. It is clear to me now that Eloise’s conversations with Desmond in the flash sideways were of one awakened person talking to another. Both knew the endgame, but neither were quite ready to leave. Eloise begged Desmond not to take Daniel with him. To which Desmond replied that he wouldn’t betaking him with him. Of course he wouldn’t. Daniel was in love with Charlotte. That’s who his soul is searching for. And as we saw in the backstage “delivery room” he and Charlotte were on the path to that discovery. Poor Eloise though… She murdered Daniel. She never gave him what he wanted in life… She pushed him away from his music and forced him into the path of the island. But here in Limbo, she’d been giving him everything she hadn’t in life. She was, like Ben trying to find her redemption before she could let go and move on.

Some characters it seems are going to remain forever doomed, unable to move on. We saw this with Michael on the Island a couple of episodes back. Troubled souls who died on the Island become the whispers and are left to roam the Island for all eternity. I feel like dirty cop Anna Lucia is destined for a similar fate in Limbo. Forced to live out her mistakes forever, unable to move on because she’d never cared for anyone but herself.

I love LOST. I love how it ended. It wasn’t preaching to us. It was asking us to think, to ponder the big questions of what this life is all about. The church, it should be noted, represented many religions. The stained glass behind Christian Sheppard contained symbols for many different faiths. Reminded me of those, COEXSIST bumper stickers. I love that. We each bring our own experiences with us. Those individual experiences along with our own beliefs, our own faith leads us all to different conclusions to this final chapter of the story. And I think that’s awesome.

I welcome the diverse opinions, the radically different viewpoints on it all. I even welcome the idea that it didn’t work for some people. In the end the show was about engaging the viewership in one another and I think the finale did that very well.

Maybe I’ll write more later… If anyone is interested in hearing more of my thoughts on LOST. Maybe my take on each character’s conclusion?

Hot Tub Time Machine

Well, it’s been two days since I sat down for the silliness that is “Hot Tub Time Machine.” I was planning on writing about the film immediately upon returning home, but I thought I should wait a day or two and let the experience sort of settle in my mind before I wrote it up.

It’s just short of 48 hours since I went into the theater. And here, nearly two full days later I can tell you that I LOVED “Hot Tub Time Machine.”

It’s true. I found myself laughing out loud quite a bit and genuinely enjoying this completely silly movie. The performances are great. Cusack brings a sort of grounding realism to the film allowing the other actors the freedom to go bigger than real. Somehow, it works. Now, this isn’t an overly sentimental ro-com or a terribly high-brow film. No it’s a classic shock humor, repulsive behavior type film… the kind of movie that’s usually given to younger actors to play in. But for this unique movie, it’s a bunch of middle aged men running around in a younger mans playground… and the results are quite funny.

The gags about them being in the 80′s are actually some of the weaker points of the film. The real comedy comes from the exploration of these characters as young men. We get enough of the 80′s to laugh at the hair, and the weird clothes… even the large cell phones. But it’s nothing over the top funny, and the filmmakers seemed to move as quickly away from making fun of the 80′s as they could and got into telling their story. This, I think, was a wise choice and actually made the movie funnier than it might have been. It’s easy to make fun of the 80′s, but I don’t think we could do it in any sort of entertainingly sustainable way for an entire film. The trip back to the 80′s was more a necessity of story telling, of getting these old men back to their youth. If this film had been made 10 years sooner it would have been just as well told in the 70′s. Seriously. The era in which they travel to does not matter. It’s the journey of these older men into their youth that is the main point here, and it plays very well.

Of particular note I’d like to mention Crispin Glover. He has a small role in this film but it’s one that will have you laughing hysterically every time he comes into a scene. It’s a simple gag, but it’s executed very well.

I don’t want to spoil the movie, so this review is just a review about my feelings for the film. I strongly recommend you go and watch this when it comes out and allow yourself to just go with the flow of it all. Don’t take it seriously or you’ll be disappointed. Go in expecting it to be ridiculous and over the top and you’ll really enjoy it.

I mean, really, how else should you go into a movie about a Hot Tub Time Machine?

Here’s “The Dude” on “The Dude”

In the linked article is a very nicely written review of Jeff Bridges’ career by the man who inspired the Cohen brothers character “The Dude” from “The Big Lebowski.”

Go on, have a read… this may just be Jeff Bridges year to take home Oscar:

Jeff Dowd on Jeff Bridges: A unique American icon | The Big Picture | Los Angeles Times.

Cop Out : Looking Better with the Red Band Trailer

70-Minute Video Review of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace

Watch This: 70-Minute Video Review of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace | /Film.

This is, quite possibly, the single greatest review of “The Phantom Menace” that I have ever seen. It’s pretty long, but it’s very irreverent and quite entertaining throughout. Some might even argue that it’s more entertaining than the film it is reviewing!

Have a look, really think about the substance of the review. It’s quite compelling. And a little weird in it’s presentation, but that’s where the fun lies!

Enjoy and share your thoughts about “The Phantom Menace” below. I’ve been thinking about kicking off my “Movie a Week Blog” again… time to put my Netflix account to good use. (And make it an expense for work! Hahahahaha!)

Richard Dreyfuss is a Normal Person

So I took my mother to Broken Yolk in La Costa yesterday. She’d never eaten there before. It’s a great place for breakfast and lunch. If you’ve never been there I highly recommend it.

Well as we are walking up to the restaurant my Mother blurts out, “Hey isn’t that? It is! Look David! It’s him!”

Obviously I had no idea what she was talking about. So I spun about and looked into the window next to me. Sure enough, sitting there on the other side of the glass was none other than Richard Dreyfuss. There was no mistaking it. Right there, in front of me, was one of the men who I grew up watching on the silver screen. A legend in my life. I mean really, this is the guy from Jaws, Close Encounters and Mr. Holland’s Opus!

For me, that was cool enough. We went in and we were seated. About two booths down from Mr. Dreyfuss.

Naturally I started doing some googling of the man on my iPhone. Turns out he lives in Olivenhain. Crazy.

Well, I gave my phone to Mom so that she could quietly take a photo of him sitting in his booth since she was seated facing him. I’ve worked with enough celebrities to know that no matter what we think of their profession and the “price of fame,” the reality is they are just normal people who are trying to live their lives. I didn’t want to pester the man, even though part of me would have done anything to get an autograph if I could!

So there I was content knowing that I was even close enough to the man to hear his voice as he spoke. And to know that we were eating in the same restaurant. Everything was good. Cool story. Right?

Not for Mom. She wanted a close up photo. So she charged over to his table. Not in a mean or malicious way, no. She went over there as a grey haired old lady armed with an iPhone she could barely use and very sweetly asked him if it would be ok if she took a photo of him. He reluctantly agreed to it and she very shyly snapped a photo and thanked him and came back to the booth.

She handed me the phone and asked me how the picture came out.

As you can see, Mom was a little excited. That, coupled with her inability to hold still while taking a photo really worked against her this time. Mom was, to say the least, not happy with that.

She immediately began insisting that I go over there and take another photo of the man.

I really didn’t want to. I didn’t want to be that guy. You know, the guy who just totally ruins a celebrity’s day by not letting them just eat their breakfast in peace? That guy. Mom wanted me to be that guy.

I politely told her I didn’t think it was a good idea. That he should be left alone. He was gracious enough to let her take one photo, but his fame didn’t give us a free pass to pester the man. Well, Mom didn’t really want to hear that and she started giving me the evil eye. We hadn’t even been given our food yet, and I knew very quickly that this was going to be a long meal if I didn’t do as she wanted.

Right about this time Mr. Dreyfuss’ companion got up and walked away from the table. He was now alone in his booth reading the paper. Reluctantly I got up and made my way to the table.

“Mr. Dreyfuss, I’m very sorry to interrupt you sir. I know you are having breakfast, or whatever…”

At this point he puts his paper down and looks over at me. He’s obviously annoyed, but holding it back. He’s been doing this for 30+ years and it shows.

“Sir, my Mom already asked you for a photo. Thank you for that. But she was so excited it came out all blurry and well, she… next week is her birthday, and she’s insisted that I come over and ask you if she can take it again. Maybe one together with you sir?”

I knew from the look on his face as soon as he turned and looked at me that this wasn’t going to end with a new photo. But I was all-in. I had to ask, just to be able to tell my Mom that I’d tried.

“I’m sorry, I just can’t,” said Mr. Dreyfuss.

“I understand sir. Thank you,” I said.

“Thank you for asking politely like you did,” he said.

With that I got up and walked back to my table. Mom was shocked. And as I walked past Mr. Dreyfuss’ returning companion I heard her say, rather unhappily, “Ok, it’s really time to go now.”

The two of them were up and out of the restaurant very shortly after. I felt like a total heel.

Except for when I looked at my Mom. She was so happy to know that I was willing to go forward and ask the question for her. Sure, she didn’t get the picture. But she got something better, perhaps? She knows her son is willing to go out on a limb for her. To do something he’d really rather not, just for her. That her needs are important to me.

That was worth it, in the end.

I’m sorry Mr. Dreyfuss, as much as I respect your work and your personal space, my Mother’s happiness had to come first for me. I hope you understand.

What’s The Vig? now available for purchase online!

Our feature film, What’s The Vig? is now available as a Special Edition DVD for purchase online!

The Special Edition DVD includes two audio commentary tracks and two deleted scenes with introductions by the director and assistant director. This is a must have for your DVD collection!

Purchase at Amazon.com

Purchase at CreateSpace.com (To receive a 15% discount use code: 2WGMQ8TA)

What’s The Vig? – Special Edition DVD

The wait is almost over!

“What’s The Vig?” will be coming to Amazon.com and CreateSpace for sale online in the next week or so!

Some details on the Special Edition DVD:

• Director/Producer Commentary Track
• Director/Producer/Actors Commentary Track
• Deleted Scenes
  • The Doctor’s Office
  • Damien Ledger

Please spread the word and buy a copy of the film for your movie library!

Rest In Peace John Hughes

This is so sad. One of my favorite filmmakers has now passed.

You can read my review of “The Breakfast Club” to get a sense of how much I enjoyed John Hughes and his films.

And follow the link below to read what Quint at “Ain’t It Cool News” has to say about the departed Mr. Hughes.

Rest In Peace John Hughes — Aint It Cool News: The best in movie, TV, DVD, and comic book news..

Year One – Or How I Found Myself in Jack Black Overload…

Stripes, Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, even Analyze This… such iconic, memorable films. Such wonderful humor. So much joy I’ve watched them all over and over and over again.

Harold Ramis is resposible for those films, and many more including The Ice Harvest.

Fantastic movies that have stood the test of time.

What happened?

Year One is the first truly disappointing film I’ve seen from Mr. Ramis. Sure, he’s not been firing on all cylinders in his later years like he did when he was younger and running wild with Murray and Akroyd and Belushi. But he’s been a very solid comedic source for decades. Even Bedazzled had its own charms.

But Year One has left me feeling befuddled. Written and directed by Mr. Ramis this film feels so incredibly cheap it made me want to laugh at how low-budget it felt. Except the laughter barely came because the film is so woefully pathetic.

I think the problem lies firmly in the two leads. Jack Black and Michael Cera. Individually I find both of these actors very talented and quite funny. In their schtick they are very good. And they both do their schtick in this film. The problem for me, however, was that the schtick seemed woefully out of place. Their schtick is rooted in the now. The insecurities of today’s virginal nerd, the over the top-ness of a coked out comedian. In some ways they played off each other like the older Billy Crystal and Robin Williams pairing. But this film is, as the title implies, a period piece. And their more modern acting styles (or lack there of) seemed distant and out of place to the surroundings they were given.

Cheap as the film seemed, the set design was quite good, as were the costumes. But there’s something weird about Jack Black spouting off profanities in American English while dressed in a caveman’s attire. The rest of the men in their village spoke strangely and with some degree of “characterization.” Why couldn’t Jack Black and Cera do that? They didn’t even try coming up with any character at all. Well, maybe Cera did. But honestly, he didn’t do anything he hasn’t already done on Arrested Development.

Both of the leads are surrounded by a virtual Who’s Who of strong character actors playing everyone from Caine and Abel to the High Priest of Sodom and Gomorra. David Cross, Hank Azaria, Oliver Platt, even Mr. Ramis himself all give us a taste of truly funny character performances. My favorite aspect of this film is the tremendous work of the supporting cast. The problem is that this is Black and Cera’s film and we are faced with a film that only gives us a taste of the funny in the few minutes that each of these supporting players are on screen.

I found myself realizing that the amazing work Hank Azaria did on this film only served to enhance how out of place Jack Black seemed to be in this film. And with each supporting character’s appearance I felt more and more like the film needed to focus on them, not the two leads. It was very unsettling.

I don’t know… Mr. Ramis was obviously trying to make some true statements in this film about making your own choices in life and questioning authority and analyzing the difference between spirituality and blind religion. I think I heard a good script being performed on the screen in front of me. The problem I think is that the casting of the two leads in this film was very poor.

Have you seen this film? Let me know what you thought about it.

The Unforgettable: Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Wow.

This movie caught me completely by surprise.

I loved it.

The premise of the film is as old as any… boy loses girl. Boy tries to win girl back (sort of), boy meets new girl, new girl and boy fall in love, boy tries one last go at original girl only to realize it’s new girl he really wants. Boy finally grows up and becomes all that he can be to win new girl.

Ok, maybe that’s a little more complicated than the traditional boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back scenario… but that’s what works with this film.

On many levels the film feels like a story you’ve heard before. But it does a tremendous job of changing up its delivery on you. Read more

Thoughts on Star Trek

I haven’t said much on the blogs regarding my love of Star Trek. And I do love me some Star Trek! I don’t wander around wearing the costumes, and I’ve never made it to a Trek Convention. But I loved visiting Star Trek the Experience in Vegas, I’ve seen every hour of TOS, TNG, DS9 and Enterprise… and most of Voyager.

I love what Star Trek represents, a positive future for mankind. One where we’ve settled our own differences, while learning to respect each other’s cultural diversity. It’s a hopeful view of what we can become.

TOS was what I remember watching as a very small kid. Shatner’s bravado and swagger, Nimoy’s nuanced, but never bland portrayal of Spock and DeForest Kelly’s irascible Dr. McCoy was always good for a laugh. (Damn it Jim! I’m a Doctor not a brick layer!)

TNG was my first big series. The first drama I actually looked forward to every week. It was event TV for me and my entire family. Dad, Theresa, Laura and I made a weekly habit of watching TNG together. And in the later years, when I was in High School that weekly viewing included our good friend Fletcher McBeth and the post-show discussions between my father, Fletcher and I were some of the best memories I have from High School. (For those of you who know Fletcher you’ll understand just how “geeked out” those discussions must have been!) Read more

ER

Guess it’s just that time of year… series are ending and that seems to be what I want to write about.

This morning, thanks to the glory of HULU.com (yes, we’re aliens and that’s how we roll) I was able to catch the 2 hour series finale of ER.

This show was a phenomenon in the mid – late 90′s. And it was still extremely popular in the early 00′s. But it’s popularity has waned a lot the last few years. My thoughts on that later.

I guess this is really a review of my impressions of ER’s entire run. Not just a review of it’s finale.

ER fascinated me when it first came on the air. It’s portrayal of the activity in the trauma rooms, the O.R.’s and the rest of the hospital were fascinating. And it seemed, early on that the audience was getting the story, or rather the perspective on what it’s like to work in an ER through the interns’ eyes. This made ER very watchable for a young 20′s lad, such as myself. I could relate to the characters that were struggling to cope, manage and survive their start in the ER. Noah Wyle’s, Dr. John Carter, was like a hero to me. He was competent but unsure, strong but not hardened… he was young and everything was new to him. For me, he was the person telling the story. Or at least he was the vessel through which the stories of ER were wrapped around.

That early cast was outstanding. Read more

An old “review” revisited

Ok, so I recently uploaded my old “Blogger.com” archive to davidsdawson.com. In it I found this piece I wrote in 2004 on “Eyes Wide Shut,” or more accurately on Stanley Kubrick.

Have a look and let me know in the comments below what you think of “Eyes Wide Shut” or any of Kubrick’s other amazing films!

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“A film is – or should be – more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.”

–Stanley Kubrick

That quote was uttered by one of my favorite directors. And in it, you can hear and personally begin to visualize every film he ever made. It’s amazing how gifted a director he was, and it’s amazing to see him sum up his own directing style in so tiny a description. He was often criticized for becoming too technical in his work, that his later films lacked a soul. I disagree. His latter films didn’t lack soul, it was there in every frame of the films. The soul of a Kubrick film wasn’t in the characters or events of the piece, but it was rather the piece itself.

It was there in every minute detail he spent hours getting perfect. It was there in the radical attention devoted to color and depth in every single image in the scenes. Kubrick’s latter films didn’t lack soul, if anything they screamed of it. His very essence was imprinted into everything he did in “Eyes Wide Shut“.

That movie, is more like a concert piece, conducted by the composer himself. If you watch the movie and pay attention to the rythm of it, the poetic fluidity of it, you will find Stanley Kubrick.

No one in recent history has managed to so thoroughly imprint themselves into their films the way he did. And whether you like the films or not, you can’t deny the power of an artist to express himself through his art. Which is what Stanley Kubrick ultimately did. He expressed himself, in his art.

Battlestar Galactica – Farewell

Ok, this isn’t a movie per se…. but the finale was an hour and 35 minutes long (without commercials) and quite honestly it was better than a great deal of the features in the theaters today.

For 5 years I have tuned in to this amazing show with excitement and wonder at how Ronald Moore and David Eick had managed to turn a campy, pop-sci-fi “classic” from my childhood into one of the most amazingly rich and relevant pieces of modern storytelling.

If you haven’t followed Battlestar Galactica since its mini-series 5 years ago you’d be very well served to go out and BUY or rent the mini-series and Season 1 RIGHT NOW. The scale of this monumental piece of storytelling is stunning. Especially when you realize it was done for  TV, on a TV show’s budget. (And not on the traditional networks mind you… it was done on Sci-Fi! Sci-Fi! Home of crapfest, campy TV movies and low-budget garbage series like “Ghost Hunters.”) Read more

Sometimes Dreams Won’t Come

I thought I could write about “What Dreams May Come” for this past weekend’s film review. I’m sorry to say, that just isn’t going to happen.

Please! Don’t think for one second it’s because I don’t love this film (I do!) or because I’ve grown lazy about the reviews (I have not.) or anything like that.

No, I just can’t bring myself to sit down and watch what was my father’s favorite film about the afterlife yet. His death is a year and a half past, but I’m still not quite there for some things. This, apparently, is one of them. I stared at the DVD over and over again for the past so many days and just couldn’t get up the courage to watch this film. Not yet.

I probably won’t be able to watch “Big Fish” for a while either. We’ll see.

In the meantime, if you’ve already watched “What Dreams May Come” please feel free to share your own review of the film in the comments section! I’d love to hear what some of you thought of this very unique and stunningly beautiful movie.

Sorry for the delay…

I’m a day or two behind getting to my movie review this weekend.

I promise I’ll have it up as soon as I can get to it! PROMISE!

It’s kind of a busy time for me right now. Serious. Cut me some slack!

Thoughts on the Afterlife…

This week’s movie will be:

What Dreams May Come

This Robin Williams film boasts some of the most innovative use of special visual effects ever put on film. It’s a tear jerker, and often very depressing… but stick with it folks! It ends well.

This was also one of my Dad’s absolute favorite films of all time and this will be the first time I’ve seen it since he passed.

And seeing how Mr. Williams is heading in for heart surgery soon, watching this film about life and death seems somewhat… timely.

Look for the review to drop by the end of this weekend!

Love! True Love…

The Princess Bride

Directed by Rob Reiner

Written by William Goldman – based on his 1973 novel of the same name

This film is number 50 on Bravo‘s “100 Funniest Movies” and number 88 on The American Film Institute‘s (AFI) “AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Passions” listing the 100 greatest film love stories of all time.

I think, one of the greatest testaments to how wonderful a movie this is can be found in the fact that it is so recognized now, 22 years after it’s release, and it was virtually unheard of when it was in theaters. The studio, 20^th Century Fox, didn’t know how to market this delightfully warm hearted comedy adventure film to audiences in 1987 and it barely made a blip on the box office radar. It was well reviewed by the likes of Siskel and Ebert who gave it a “two thumbs up” and Time listed the film as one of the best of ’87.

Now, I was only 12 in 1987. But movies were my life already. I went to them constantly. But this movie was one that didn’t find me watching it in a dark theater. No, it was a VHS discovery for me. Much as it was for most of us who’ve come to know and love this film over the years.

Upon re-watching the film for this review (quite possibly my 100^th viewing of the film, really) I tried to think as I watched it, “What makes this movie so long lasting?”

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The Week 3 movie a week review is…

The Princess Bride

Insanely quotable, infinitely enjoyable. Look for the review to drop this weekend!

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