Movie Review: Finding Bliss

Year: 1998
Writer: Julie Davis
Director: Julie Davis
Stars: Leelee Sobiesky
Matt Davis
Denise Richards
Kristen Johnston
Jamie Kennedy

Two notes on this film. 1) If you are easily offended by sexual references, do not watch this film. 2) If you are only watching in the hopes of seeing the lovely and talented Leelee Sobiesky naked (which is, i confess, what got me to watch it initially) don't bother. It doesn't happen. Frankly, i think that she's probably never going to do a nude scene, much to my sorrow.

But i'm glad that i did watch it. This is a very funny and charming film. On one level, it's your typical "girl meets boy" story, but there's a lot more happening here than that.

The basic plot is that a talented young filmmaker (Leelee Sobiesky) graduates film school with a script that everyone loves, but no one is willing to take a chance on. Unable to find work in Hollywood as a director, she takes an editing job at a "small, up and coming" studio called Grind Productions that turns out to be a porno studio. Hilarity ensues.

This is Director Davis' fifth film. Her prior efforts included the critically acclaimed "Amy's Orgasm", which blue-nosed Americans insist on calling "Amy's O". Kind of like Kevin Smith's "Zack and Miri Make a Porno", which ended up being marketed as "Zack and Miri". I think that this is a mistake in every case. I mean, let's face it, for any of us familiar with "The Story of O", "Amy's O" sounds way naughtier than the full title. And my grandmother might go see a film called "Zack and Miri", thinking that it's a nice love story. And it IS a love story. just not a very NICE one.

THE GOOD: This film is brilliant. And the reason that I'm reviewing it three years after its release date is that i had never heard of it. I think that most of America hasn't heard of it because it doesn't star a cartoon character and doesn't have a number or the word REVENGE in the title.

I pride myself on not being too impressed with low humor, but the low humor in this film (and there is quite a bit of it) is handled well and cleverly, mostly because of the performances, especially by Ms. Sobiesky, Kristen Johnston and Jamie Kennedy.

The film also makes trenchant observations about both Hollywood and the adult film industry. For instance, Kennedy (as porn star Dick Harder) says to Sobiesky at one point "You're the best director that i've ever worked with... and i've made 400 films!"

As i mentioned before, the performances are all stellar. Even small parts, like Caroline Aaron and Tim Bagley as Sobiesky's parents are brilliantly written and acted.

THE BAD: There's maybe one too many cliches in the film. I'm not saying that there are a lot, but they're there, and, like Sam Mendes' use of roses to represent sexual frustration and rose petals to represent sexual gratification (WE GET IT ALREADY, SAM!) they're a little hard to miss.

THE UGLY: Jamie Kennedy. And i don't mean his performance. It's flawless. He just consistently looks like such a dumbass in this film that he's hard to look at without laughing. And he's naked WAY too much in the film.

Find this movie on cable. Rent it. Buy it. Get it from Netflix. It shouldn't be overlooked, and, sadly, it has been for far too long.

Peace.

Randal

Two Sacred Duties

I was having a conversation with my nephew over Facebook the other day about our political system. My nephew was talking about what a difficult time he has voting (has never voted, in fact) because of his disillusionment with our political system. As far as I'm concerned if we, as Americans, ever have a chance of getting our political system back from the special interests, we have two sacred duties: one is to vote and the other is to serve jury duty when called.

I voted for Obama in 2008. Like a lot of other people, i was pulled in by his rhetoric, and hoped that i was voting for the first truly liberal president since Jimmy Carter. It turns out that, even if he is a liberal (which i believe) then he has allowed his beliefs to be co-opted by special interests. Like many others, i am disillusioned with the job that he is doing. For the record, i do NOT believe that he is doing anything extra-Constituional. Unlike most Americans, i have actually read the Constitution, studied it in fact, instead of simply allowing someone else to tell me what it says or what it means. The only argument for this is that the requirement for people to buy health insurance (with which i disagree) violates the commerce clause. That may well be, i'll leave that to legal scholars, but if that's the case then every president since the 80's has violated this by requiring us to buy auto insurance. Personally, i've looked at the numbers and i know that if our government provided health care to everyone in the country, we'd be spending less on health care than we do now.

But our political system IS badly messed up. So how do we fix it?

1) VOTE, VOTE, VOTE! If you can't find a candidate who exactly matches your beliefs, then vote for the candidate that most closely matches your beliefs. Small steps. It will take us a long time to fix our system, but it's taken us a long time to mess it up.

2) Think for yourself, don't allow a political party to do your thinking for you. I was talking with someone in 2008 about how the TV manufacturer Vizio has their call center in California instead of India. He said that that he wished that more manufacturers would return jobs to the US. I mentioned that Obama said that he would close the tax loopholes for companies that outsource our jobs. He said "Oh, i'm on the other side." In other words, he was going to vote for McCain, who hadn't even addressed the issue, because his party told him to. THINK FOR YOURSELVES! And if you don't like either of the major candidates, then spend some time researching the "third parties" and see if you like one of them better. I was hoping that the republicans or the third parties would field a candidate that i liked better than the president, but they haven't.

3) THROW THE BUMS OUT! If your representatives do something that you don't agree with, don't reelect them! Years ago in Washington state, i had a supporter of Patty Murray almost in tears because i was supporting a different democratic candidate for her seat in the primary. The reason? Ms. Murray supported the Bush administration's agenda straight down the line and i didn't.

4) Get involved! Be aware of what's happening in your government and get vocal with your friends and your representatives about it. For instance, a few years back the supreme court made a decision on behalf of a company called Citizens United that basically allows special interests to spend unlimited money on behalf of a candidate or proposal. This is a bastardization of our process and needs to be overturned.

5) Protect your rights! I have watched every administration over the last 30 years gradually strip us of our rights, from the right not to wear a seatbelt or a motorcycle helmet to restrictions on where and when we can smoke, and i'm sick of it. I firmly believe in a small government and part of that is not allowing our government to tell us that we can't smoke in certain places, whom we can marry or how we can get high. For the record, i'm a pleasure cigar smoker who despises cigarettes. Smoking legislation started off reasonably enough by trying to keep cigarettes out of the hands of kids and has transmuted so badly that in one town in California you're not allowed to smoke in your own apartment or car! That's insane. When the law was passed in Washington state that banned smoking in ALL indoor public areas, it included at least two restaurants who had segregated cigar rooms, one of which was hermetically sealed! We have to protect our rights or what else are we struggling for?

6) Stop bickering! My best friend is a moderate conservative and i am a moderate liberal. We frequently disagree, but have remained best friends despite that, and frequently wonder to each other why the heck our government officials can't do the same thing. I love to watch the Canadian parliament on TV because they're so darned civil to each other. Respect each other's views people. It's the only way.

Peace.

Randal.

Book Review: Stephen King's "11/22/63"

At first glance, this looks like King is back up to his old trick of replacing quantity with quality. Writing, as one reviewer put it in his review of "Under the Dome", publishing his work by the pound instead of by the word. But, with "11/22/63", that is a false impression.

For those who don't know right off the top of their heads, 11/22/63 is the day that Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed President Kennedy in Dallas, TX.

This book is about a man who discovers a time "rabbit hole" in the storage room in his diner in Lisbon Falls, Maine. Every time that he goes through the hole, it takes him to the exact same time and place: a little before noon on a September day in Lisbon Falls. He also discovers that, no matter how long he stays in the past, only two minutes pass in our time, and no matter what he does there everything with the exception of one hobo is exactly the same as it had been before, what he thought of as a "complete reset". After a few jaunts to the past just as a novelty, he starts thinking that maybe he can do something that makes a difference. In this case, he decides to save President Kennedy. Unfortunately, as he's progressing on this endeavor, he is diagnosed with lung cancer, and has to return to the present. So he engages a young friend of his, our main character, to save the president. I won't say anything further about the story. I don't want to be accused of spoiling it.

THE GOOD: Pretty much everything. This is probably the best book that King has written in decades, at least since "Bag of Bones" and possibly "The Stand". It is well-written and well-paced, with some good shocks and characters that you actually come to care for. By the time 11/22/63 actually comes, you find yourself so drawn in to the world that King has created that you don't want to put the book down.

THE BAD: This book is BIG. Almost 900 pages. Don't get me wrong, they are, for the most part, 900 very enjoyable pages, but still... almost 900 pages. When you read this book (and i cannot recommend strongly enough that you do), you will find it a very rewarding experience.

THE UGLY: King's perpetual self-reference. He can't seem to avoid popping little "Easter Eggs" into his books that link them together. There are two that come immediately to mind here. The first, fairly innocuous and enjoyable, is an occasional sighting of a white over red 1958 Plymouth Fury ("Christine"). The second, much more annoying to me, is a side-trip that our main character takes to Derry, Maine where he encounters Beverly Marsh and Richie Tozier from one of my least-favorite King novels, "It". There is absolutely no reason for these characters to be here, and the side-trip could have really been placed in any small town. Heck, why not give us a look at a much earlier Castle Rock than we've ever seen? I like Castle Rock much more than i do Derry and would love to see what it looked like in 1958.

All in all, well worth a read. If you buy books, buy it. If you're a library patron, check it out of the library, but be prepared to renew it unless you give yourself much more time to read than i do.

Enjoy!

Peace.

Randal