Mother

by Dennis••0•Posted inJournal

The other day my mother had an appointment with a surgeon to install a small subdermal device that’s going to make it easier to repeatedly hook her up to an IV and as they were discussing things, the surgeon remarked that people with her condition hardly ever survive for longer than a year after diagnosis. Lung cancer that has spread to her head and liver, and she’s still around a doing relatively well. It was quite a shock to her, and it appears that reality has started to penetrate her optimism more and more.

She’s had the two radiation sessions on her head and they’re going to start with the experimental chemo-treatment soon. The radiation has made her hair soft and brittle and it’s finally starting to fall out. Soon she’ll be bald, but still beautiful. That was a big shock to her, too, especially since she’s managed to retain her hair throughout all the treatments, against all odds. It’s almost symbolic to her slowly dawning realisation that’s losing this struggle. Like Samson.

I’m afraid we don’t have much longer to go. If the cancer spreads to her lymphatic system she’s no longer elligible for the experimental treatment, and she’s still dealing with a lot of pain. Regarding that pain, her GP wants her to cut down on the use of morphine, because it causes her to lose weight, and she’s on the light side as it is, and he wants her to make use of other medicine, and the research doctor, the one leading the experimental treatment, wants her to cut down on other medicine (for an as of yet unknown reason). Her GP desperately wants to talk to the researcher to find out the reasoning, because he feels that the research doesn’t really care about the state in which my mother is, but rather her research, and my GP, who doesn’t think it likely the research will amount to anything positive for my mother, wants to put his efforts into making my mother’s last days as painfree as possible.

I need to start coming to terms with the fact that this is really happening, that’s she’s really ill, and that she’s really dying. By all accounts it’s a miracle that she’s still alive, but I can’t keep counting on miracles, and have to prepare for reality.

Jumper

by Dennis••0•Posted inFilms

Jumper [2008]

Director: Doug Liman
Actor: Hayden Christensen, Samuel L. Jackson, Jamie Bell, Rachel Bilson, Michael Rooker

When I saw the trailer for this I knew it was going to be a good idea with bad execution. I can name several films in this category; Johnny Mnemonic, The One, New Rose Hotel, and many, many others, but most of them have a shaky foundation upon which the story is built. Jumper isn’t like that, it has a pretty solid foundation, and a good concept at its core, so it’s a damn shame to see this movie fail.

The story is about David (Christensen), a nerdy kid from a dysfunctional family who gets bullied on at school. One day in the winter he gives a friendly girl at school, Millie (Bilson), a snowglobe. Some jack-off comes along, fucks with him and tosses the snowglobe onto the ice of the river. He goes to retrieve it, fall through the ice, is swept away by the current and is quickly on his way to drowning. Suddenly he finds himself in the local library, wet, freezing and coughing up water but otherwise alright. He has no idea how he got there and decides to go home. His father (Rooker) gives him shit for being late and when that escalates and he’s about to get an ass-whooping, he finds himself in that same library again. He realises that he can teleport himself and what kind of freedom and power that gives him. He immediately takes his savings and runs away from home, developing his powers further. For money he robs banks, and he lives the good life by teleporting all over the globe, visiting exotic and interesting places at will.

Of course, such good fortune doesn’t last and the mysterious and sinister Roland (Jackson) and his associates come looking for him, impersonating various government authorities (FBI, CIA, NSA and even the IRS) trying to further their hunt for “jumpers.” Their intent: murder. Their reasons; spurious. Roland and associates hunt jumpers, apparently because “only God should have the ability to be everywhere all the time.” In his struggle to stay out of the clutches of Roland he meets Griffin (Bell) who has a better grasp of his powers, a better understanding of the possibilities, and seems to be a veteran in the war against Roland, who he calls a “Paladin.” Paladins are apparently cursaders in the war against jumpers, who draw their lineage back to the medievals. Griffin also tells David that they’re not the only ones, and that, while rare, there are other jumpers out there.

Oh yeah, and meanwhile there’s some silly love-interest thing happening with Millie, whom David returns for when he realises Roland is out to hunt for him. Talk about screwed up priorities. Oh, and then there’s the silly thing where David’s mother, who abandoned him and his father when he was five is also a Paladin, but one with a soft spot for old David.

Sam L. does his thing kind of like a I imagine Wild Bill Hickock would do his wild west shows; bored out of his mind, with a double shot of whiskey only so he can accept the dreariness of his existence, but what the hell, it’s good money, right? He is neither bad, nor remarkable. Hayden Christensen is bad but not terrible, like he was in that Star Wars shit, and his acting ability has been likened to that of a half tree/half man. Jamie Bell is very good, and steals every scene he’s in, but it definitely isn’t en par with his Billy Elliot performance, but then again, this movie doesn’t really lend itself for that type of performance, anyway. The best actor of them all is Michael Rooker, David’s father, who, when confronted by Roland, delivers a pretty good performance of a bad but staunchly loyal father.

Someone mentioned that the movie was set up in such a way that it could become a series of films. I agree, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d turn this into a franchise. Hopefully, if they do, the quality will improve, otherwise we’re going to have another example of a franchise not working out, and I happen to like the idea of franchises. I like them because it gives the film-maker the opportunity to take some time with the story, and not try to cram everything into a 90 minute span. If a story is good, I always want to know more. While the story isn’t good in this case, the concept is pretty good, so here’s to hoping they don’t fuck it up.

No Country for Old Men

by Dennis••0•Posted inFilms

No Country for Old Men [2007]

Director: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Actor: Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson, Kelly Macdonald

It’s 1980. Llewelyn (Brolin), a seemingly unemployed Vietnam veteran, lives together with his wife Carla Jean (Macdonald) in a trailer in a little town in West Texas. While out hunting one day he stumbles across a massacre out in the desert; several men dead in and around bullet-ridden cars, one filled to the brim with heroine. He finds the last man standing a couple of miles away, dead underneath a tree still clutching his pistol and a satchel filled with two million dollars. He takes the money and becomes the target for Anton (Bardem), a ruthless and world-class assassin with funny hair. Anton is used to people quickly falling prey to his cunning, but finds Llewelyn a tougher opponent than anticipated. All the while, Sherrif Bell (Lee Jones) is trying to make sense of the massacre in the desert and quickly figures that Llewelyn knows or saw something, and that he’s in grave danger.

There’s very little that I can say to criticise this movie. The direction, cinematography and editing is excellently done. Usually I only notice it when direction is bad because I get annoyed at the movie. This time, however, I noticed how beautifully everything was shot, for instance by a great application of cropped shots and close ups. The acting done by the three main characters is top notch, and I thought that the application of gore was done rather well. It wasn’t over the top, but when it was done, it was realistic and not too gratuitous.

I can see how this film won a trillion oscars.

There Will Be Blood

by Dennis••0•Posted inFilms

There Will Be Blood [2007]

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, Dillon Freasier, Ciarán Hinds, Paul Dano

In the 1890s, Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis), a struggling silver miner, finds his true wealth in oil extraction while taking the orphaned child, H.W. (Freasier), as his own in order to create a family man image. In 1911, Plainview gets a tip on a valuable supply on the struggling Sunday family ranch in the impoverished Little Boston, California. In his quest to acquire the property, Plainview meets the sanctimonious Eli Sunday (Dano), the young reverend of the local church with his own ambitions for his diocese and the profit from the oil. As the oil drilling begin, Daniel struggles with different problems while his savvy ruthlessness gradually sinks into a slowly mounting malevolent madness.

I really liked this movie, even though the story is incredibly simple, and not really very surprising in any way, but it’s beautiful, and the cast is very strong. Even the almost demonic sermons given by Eli, which are bordering on the absurd, didn’t bother me, and actually fitted very well.

The first fifteen minutes are also beautifully shot, and give a really nice foundation of his personality; driven and not below getting his hands dirty in order to get what he wants. And all that without uttering a single word.