De Niro
Pacino
They are considered to be two of the greatest actors of all time and coming soon to a theater near you, they will be on screen together. Righteous Kill will not force on screen sparks by creating an improbably coffee shop scene the way Heat did, this time the top billed actors will be paired throughout the movie…emoting together for the first time.
Pardon me if I don’t rush right out and watch it. Personally I find De Niro and Pacino to be more than a little irritating. Many believe that Pacino’s best work was in Scarface and since then he has been consistently praised and rewarded for delivering more over-the-top performances. It’s almost as is he suffers from some strange form of Tourette’s syndrome that causes him to bark out lines and place heavy emphasis on stray words throughout his dialogue.
De Niro has been an insufferable ass for a long time. He’s seems so wrapped up in his Mafioso persona that every role comes of as an homage to Alec Baldwin’s famous parody of De Niro on Saturday Night Live. De Niro has become a clown. He’s an old guy who just doesn’t get it anymore. It’s too bad nobody has the guts to tell him.
I can predict exactly how this movie is going to work. De Niro will sneer at the camera while Pacino yells. They’ll both flex muscles in the movie and intimidate characters played by actors who are younger and much tougher than either of them. Donnie Wahlberg and 50 Cent will collaborate on the sound track which will be available on iTunes in time for Christmas.
Critics will be careful not to lambaste De Niro or Pacino. If they ruin the movie with their incessant hamming the blame will fall on the director, Jon Avnet. Supporting players will take criticism for not being strong enough to off set the intensity of the two headliners.
Hollywood seems to have this ridiculous fascination with older actors. Not actresses, mind you, but actors. Old guys like De Niro and Pacino never seem to find themselves marginalized by their age even though it’s unlikely that two cops pushing 70 would be doing anything other than planning a golf outing from behind a desk. What’s worse is that geezers like De Niro and Pacino end up having 35 year-old actresses cast as their love interests. Honestly, I think porn is a more admirable pursuit than being caught in a love scene with one of these over-the-hill hacks.
It’s sad because there are a number of phenomenal actors who are in their late 40s and early 50s \who would be more convincing as crusty old cops. The best part about it is these actors aren’t has high on themselves as guys like De Niro and Pacino are. You might end up with a good movie on your hands if you took a leap and cast more realistic actors.
The fact that De Niro and Pacino are in this movies convinces me that it’s not a very good script. When actors of this magnitude are cast the studio is usually trying to blind us with star power so we don’t realize that the plot was flawed and that the dialogue was clunky. Most fans are so enthralled by the audacity of the leading actors that they don’t really stop to consider the fact that the movie stunk.
Well I’m not buying it. I’ve seen enough of De Niro and Pacino over the past 10-15 years to know that their best work is well behind them. Maybe I’ll catch this flick in about four years when it works its way down to basic cable but I won’t be counting the days until that happens.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Luck has nothing to do with it
When people ask me what Columbus is like I usually tell them that it's a great place to live but you wouldn't want to visit here. It's not exactly the slogan our city's tourism department endorses but it's painfully accurate.
Don't get me wrong, Columbus has plenty to offer. We have a great arts community that coordinates plenty of activities to promote local artists and performers. We have interesting restaurants, bars and night clubs. Columbus actually sponsors festivals and activities throughout the year to engage the public and stimulate economic development. Sadly, none of those things are worth booking a trip to Columbus for. If you live here or have to be in town for something else it's great, but if you book a weekend getaway to Columbus you're going to be disappointed.
We've got minor league baseball and major league soccer, neither of which is worth watching but it's there. Ohio State has a football team people either love or love to hate and the State Fair sets up shop every August providing a great opportunity for people to eat unimaginable deep-fried concoctions or for other people to watch those people eat unimaginable deep-fried concoctions. Again, interesting stuff if you live in the area....not so much if you have to book a flight.
We don't have a great waterfront. Two beige rivers meander through the city and converge downtown but very little has been developed on these shallow waterways. There are no sandy beaches, no towering mountains, no lush forests. Columbus is surrounding by housing developments and farmland. To put it bluntly, Columbus is boring.
And that's OK. The cost of living is manageable, the job market is solid and traffic is generally easy to deal with. It's a great place to live. There's usually not much excitement and that's the way we like it. Excitement can be overrated.
Today is a significant day for Columbus as it marks the first time in 10 days that the entire city has electricity. Back on September 14th the remnants of Hurricane Ike hooked up with a sexy Canadian cold front and enjoyed a blustery romp right on top of Central Ohio. Sustained winds maxed out over 50 miles per hour with gusts exceeding 80. Trees were toppled, power lines were downed and by the end of the day 400,000 people were in the dark. Most of those people were without power for the better part of a week.
The effort to restore power quickly was hampered by how prolific and wide spread the damage was as well as the fact that utility crews were dispatched to Texas to help get people back online after Ike made landfall. Nobody expected Columbus to sustain damage in hurricane force winds.
Most people in Columbus were surprisingly calm about the whole ordeal. Normally weather-related inconveniences are turned into crimes against humanity. Check the reaction later this year when snow isn't removed quickly enough and you'll see what I mean. I really expected more whining when I heard that power would be out for a week.
Some people were upset. Generators were quickly sold out, gas prices stayed high even though none of the Texas refineries were damaged and people couldn't find ice. People weren't happy about pitching thousands of dollars worth of food in some cases but the bitching never got out of line.
Still, there were people who wandered around reminding everybody how fortunate we were to not live on the Gulf Coast. Our misery was trivial when compared with the suffering people endured when Katrina hit New Orleans and the residents of Galveston would be inconvenienced long after Columbus got back to normal. We got off easy. We were lucky.
Bullshit.
Look, I took the storm in stride, I always do. Nature holds all the cards. Sometimes we overcome, sometimes we get the crap kicked out of us. That's just the way it is. But lucky? No. I live in boring-ass, white bread, corn pone Columbus, Ohio because we're not supposed to get hit by hurricanes. That's the sacrifice. If you live close to the beautiful beaches of the Gulf of Mexico you choose to do so knowing that a hurricane could come along and blow your house down. If you live in Southern California you realize that the mother of all quakes could come along and smash your entire existence. If you live in St. Louis you recognize that the Mississippi River will pour over its banks every few years. You accept those risks. You live with them.
You want to know what risks I accept in Columbus? Tornadoes. And not those big trailer park eaters they get in Kansas. Central Ohio sees the occasional F2 or F3 tornado. If my house ever gets nailed by one I'll just grin and bear it because that's the chance I take living here but when the winds swirl at 50 miles an hour or more for six hours I'm not going to smile and count myself lucky. I chose to live in Columbus. I could have taken jobs in Miami, New Orleans or even Galveston. I stayed here because I wasn't willing to accept the risks of living on the volatile Gulf Coast. I chose boring.
I don't blame the people of Galveston and New Orleans for living there. I don't trivialize their plight but once they clean up their mess and repair the damage they go back to the joys of living on the ocean. Those places are major tourist destinations and the people who live there enjoy it. When people in Columbus clean up the mess and fix the damage they go back to that mundane Wonder bread existence nobody else in the world cares about. It's not a fair trade.
I'm not whining. There's a sick side of me that really enjoyed the storm and I was actually disappointed that I was one of the few people to have his power restored within 24 hours. I saw a sustained power outage as a challenge. I was going to build fires and eat neighborhood pets and/or wayward children. I relished the post-apocalyptic existence I was going to be required to eek out for a few days and I was ready. I was ready to fend off needy neighbors and loot grocery stores for the provisions I desperately required. It was going to be fun. I was going to be the king of Clintonville. So I actually welcomed the storm.
Most people didn't. Most people like electricity and cable TV and a general sense of order. I don't begrudge them that. The people of Columbus did a great job handling the adversity this freak storm blew into their lives. I'm actually proud of the way people responded. But don't tell me we were lucky. That's just insulting.
Don't get me wrong, Columbus has plenty to offer. We have a great arts community that coordinates plenty of activities to promote local artists and performers. We have interesting restaurants, bars and night clubs. Columbus actually sponsors festivals and activities throughout the year to engage the public and stimulate economic development. Sadly, none of those things are worth booking a trip to Columbus for. If you live here or have to be in town for something else it's great, but if you book a weekend getaway to Columbus you're going to be disappointed.
We've got minor league baseball and major league soccer, neither of which is worth watching but it's there. Ohio State has a football team people either love or love to hate and the State Fair sets up shop every August providing a great opportunity for people to eat unimaginable deep-fried concoctions or for other people to watch those people eat unimaginable deep-fried concoctions. Again, interesting stuff if you live in the area....not so much if you have to book a flight.
We don't have a great waterfront. Two beige rivers meander through the city and converge downtown but very little has been developed on these shallow waterways. There are no sandy beaches, no towering mountains, no lush forests. Columbus is surrounding by housing developments and farmland. To put it bluntly, Columbus is boring.
And that's OK. The cost of living is manageable, the job market is solid and traffic is generally easy to deal with. It's a great place to live. There's usually not much excitement and that's the way we like it. Excitement can be overrated.
Today is a significant day for Columbus as it marks the first time in 10 days that the entire city has electricity. Back on September 14th the remnants of Hurricane Ike hooked up with a sexy Canadian cold front and enjoyed a blustery romp right on top of Central Ohio. Sustained winds maxed out over 50 miles per hour with gusts exceeding 80. Trees were toppled, power lines were downed and by the end of the day 400,000 people were in the dark. Most of those people were without power for the better part of a week.
The effort to restore power quickly was hampered by how prolific and wide spread the damage was as well as the fact that utility crews were dispatched to Texas to help get people back online after Ike made landfall. Nobody expected Columbus to sustain damage in hurricane force winds.
Most people in Columbus were surprisingly calm about the whole ordeal. Normally weather-related inconveniences are turned into crimes against humanity. Check the reaction later this year when snow isn't removed quickly enough and you'll see what I mean. I really expected more whining when I heard that power would be out for a week.
Some people were upset. Generators were quickly sold out, gas prices stayed high even though none of the Texas refineries were damaged and people couldn't find ice. People weren't happy about pitching thousands of dollars worth of food in some cases but the bitching never got out of line.
Still, there were people who wandered around reminding everybody how fortunate we were to not live on the Gulf Coast. Our misery was trivial when compared with the suffering people endured when Katrina hit New Orleans and the residents of Galveston would be inconvenienced long after Columbus got back to normal. We got off easy. We were lucky.
Bullshit.
Look, I took the storm in stride, I always do. Nature holds all the cards. Sometimes we overcome, sometimes we get the crap kicked out of us. That's just the way it is. But lucky? No. I live in boring-ass, white bread, corn pone Columbus, Ohio because we're not supposed to get hit by hurricanes. That's the sacrifice. If you live close to the beautiful beaches of the Gulf of Mexico you choose to do so knowing that a hurricane could come along and blow your house down. If you live in Southern California you realize that the mother of all quakes could come along and smash your entire existence. If you live in St. Louis you recognize that the Mississippi River will pour over its banks every few years. You accept those risks. You live with them.
You want to know what risks I accept in Columbus? Tornadoes. And not those big trailer park eaters they get in Kansas. Central Ohio sees the occasional F2 or F3 tornado. If my house ever gets nailed by one I'll just grin and bear it because that's the chance I take living here but when the winds swirl at 50 miles an hour or more for six hours I'm not going to smile and count myself lucky. I chose to live in Columbus. I could have taken jobs in Miami, New Orleans or even Galveston. I stayed here because I wasn't willing to accept the risks of living on the volatile Gulf Coast. I chose boring.
I don't blame the people of Galveston and New Orleans for living there. I don't trivialize their plight but once they clean up their mess and repair the damage they go back to the joys of living on the ocean. Those places are major tourist destinations and the people who live there enjoy it. When people in Columbus clean up the mess and fix the damage they go back to that mundane Wonder bread existence nobody else in the world cares about. It's not a fair trade.
I'm not whining. There's a sick side of me that really enjoyed the storm and I was actually disappointed that I was one of the few people to have his power restored within 24 hours. I saw a sustained power outage as a challenge. I was going to build fires and eat neighborhood pets and/or wayward children. I relished the post-apocalyptic existence I was going to be required to eek out for a few days and I was ready. I was ready to fend off needy neighbors and loot grocery stores for the provisions I desperately required. It was going to be fun. I was going to be the king of Clintonville. So I actually welcomed the storm.
Most people didn't. Most people like electricity and cable TV and a general sense of order. I don't begrudge them that. The people of Columbus did a great job handling the adversity this freak storm blew into their lives. I'm actually proud of the way people responded. But don't tell me we were lucky. That's just insulting.
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