THE WRITINGS OF DENNIS EARL

She lingers like an unpleasant smell

Emotional fascist in the body of a bombshell

Don't be deceived by her kindly manner

She'll inject her disease until it spreads like cancer

Salivating at the prospect of your demise

She lures you in with the sexiest of lies

Warning other targets of her scandalous affairs

Is met with an indifferent, "Nobody cares."

 

The demon's well hidden in her ample frame

A friendly beauty on top of her game

It's far too easy how she suckers them in

A bedazzled victim always brings out her grin

She initiates by teasing and gentle touch

Their permanent arousal an emotional crutch

All that remains are the scarring and tears

When you're abandoned like refuse, nobody cares

 

Brain of a tyrant, heart like a cactus

She wasn't born evil, it came with practice

As she narrows the distance between pleasure and pain

The screams of the innocent an enjoyable refrain

Scraping their skin with her nails of steel

Oozing fluid her nourishing meal

Sounding the alarm about her shady wares

Is countered with a disbelieving, "Nobody cares."

 

Traversing the world in search of the new

But the numbers are dwindling to a stubborn few

The less she feeds, the more she rapidly ages

Her epic story is running out of pages

Bereft of feeling and almost spent

Hard to believe she once passed for "heaven sent"

Reduced to offering unappetizing shares

Such a shame that nobody cares

 

Dennis Earl

Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Friday, July 3, 2009

6:41 p.m.

It's 2003.  A cancer-stricken scientist is trying to convince a death row inmate to sign away the rights to his vital organs on the day of his execution.  On the surface, this bald visitor appears to be making a reasonable request.  But in reality, she has a hidden agenda. 

 

Helena Bonham Carter plays the scientist and the perpetually scowling Sam Worthington is the multiple murderer facing lethal injection in this opening scene from Terminator Salvation.  He ultimately gives his blessing but not before kissing Carter and noting in the warmest of voices, "So that's what death tastes like.".  Little does Worthington know, however, that by signing that request form he's unwittingly given himself a chance at redemption.

 

Fifteen years later, global survivors of a nuclear holocaust have formed a human resistance to a relentless onslaught of attack by a variety of technological killing machines better known as terminators.  There are human-sized ones (minus the skin tissue), giant ones that look like they walked off the set of Transformers, flying tracking devices that identify targets and there are even some who ride motorcycles.  In one scene, our heroes encounter yet another type, a water-based enemy.  These ones look like stand-alone mechanical arms that swim like giant sperm and attack like pirhanas.

 

Why has the human race been greatly reduced?  Blame The Skynet Corporation.  Their scientists have unwittingly set in motion a chain of events that have lead to an unnecessary war of survival between man and machine, a war that shows no signs of ending any time soon (much like this worn out franchise). 

 

However, there is still hope in the form of John Connor (Christian Bale), the unofficial leader of the resistence.  When he's not listening faithfully to his mother's taped messages for inspiration and insight, he's frequently rallying the troops spread out in pockets all over the world by delivering brief, unexciting radio speeches.  Barack Obama, he isn't.

 

Early on, he leads his unit to an underground Skynet facility where they find a group of imprisoned humans.  A quick computer scan reveals why the machines have been busy rounding them up.  

 

After a number of the troops get wacked, Sam Worthington resurfaces.  He has no clue what's happened to him but the audience knows.  (When you have exactly one facial expression, it doesn't take a genius.)  During an encounter with an unfriendly terminator, he's rescued by Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), a teenager vitally important to John Connor who's desperate to locate him and protect him.  (As you may recall from The Terminator, an adult Reese is sent back in time to 1984 to protect Sarah Connor who he ultimately impregnates.)  Reese has a cute companion, Star (Jadagrace), a little, mute black girl with funky hair whose history remains a permanent mystery.

 

Meanwhile, Connor is given an important assignment by his superior (Michael Ironside) which may end the war sooner than expected.  Later on, they butt heads over the issue of saving civilians.  Connor wants to rescue the captured before blowing up another Skynet facility.  Ironside believes they are expendable which doesn't make a lot of sense.  (Dude, don't you care about preserving humanity?  What other reason do you have to fight murderous machines day in and day out?)

 

In fact, the most puzzling aspect of Terminator Salvation is its own utter disinterest in the characters, particularly their histories.  Consider the Sam Worthington character.  When he tells Helena Bonham Carter who he killed, he offers no motive for his actions nor how he committed the murders.  In fact, at no point does the movie pause long enough for him to detail what actually happened.  Also, we have no idea why Star, the mute kid, doesn't talk or how she first encountered Reese.

 

Also baffling is how Connor, busy lad that he is, managed to get his beautiful girlfriend (the sadly wasted Bryce Dallas Howard) pregnant.  When you're constantly being bombarded by all those terminators, where do you find the time?

 

With the exception of the first two Mad Max films, I've not been a big fan of post-apocalyptic thrillers.  Like any genre, without strong characters to care about and truly thrilling scenes to showcase them in, it's difficult to enjoy them.  The bad ones tend to be indistinguishable from one another, thanks to their formulaic nature.  Terminator Salvation cares not a lick for its heroes, its villains, not even its story, a dragged out affair that didn't really need to be made in the first place (neither did Terminator 3, for that matter).  It is far more interested in bombarding the viewer with relentless action and intense noise. 

 

It's too bad because the film looks great, as long as the camera doesn't overly shake (a technique that's too dizzying for the big screen).  Watching Sam Worthington walking through sand from a distance is a spectacular image, albeit a brief one.  A number of exterior sequences are well photographed, as well.  Ditto the interior Skynet scenes.  All the terminator effects are well done, too, especially the one that had me absolutely convinced I was watching the Governor of California kicking some serious ass.  Some of the other action sequences have their moments, as well.  But with inconsequential performances and a lacklustre storyline, it's all for naught.

 

Like the Alien franchise, the Terminator series stopped being entertaining after the first sequel.  When James Cameron declined to make Rise Of The Machines, his absence was clearly felt in the finished film, most especially in that horribly pessimistic ending.  Cameron cared deeply about his characters, infusing them with hope, determination and wit.  His idea that global calamities were not inevitable and, in fact, preventable was most welcome, particularly in the astonishing T2.  Terminator Salvation, like its predecessor, makes a mockery of Cameron's contributions.  It has no heart, no wit and no artistic ambitions beyond its expensive look and sound.

 

The film's most irritating quality, however, is its ending.  There is no resolution, no finality to this series.  Just a promise of more mindless violence and empty storytelling to come.

 

Count me out.

 

(Special thanks to Dave Scacchi.)

 

Dennis Earl

Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Friday, June 12, 2009

1:45 a.m.

It's terribly unfunny.  The leads have no chemistry whatsoever.  The story is painfully thin.  And there's really no one to care about.

 

Look Who's Talking Too wasn't nearly this bad the first time I screened it at a local multiplex in December 1990.  What a difference 19 years makes.

 

In the original Look Who's Talking, Kirstie Alley plays a second generation accountant with an extremely messy personal life.  We learn early on that she's in a dead-end relationship with her married boss (George Segal).  That's not all.  She's carrying his unborn baby.  He's not terribly pleased.  Long story short, she ends up in a cab driven by John Travolta who hauls ass to get his very pregnant passenger to the hospital on time so the doctor can safely bring her son into the world.  The smitten cabbie grows fond of both the baby and the mama and starts hanging around them more and more as the film progresses.  Despite not always getting along, not to mention the lingering presence of Segal, the couple find their way by the third act.  (Too bad the movie wasn't all that funny.)

 

We learn in the second film that Alley and Travolta have married.  Mikey, Alley's son, is now a toddler and for some strange reason, he still hears the voice of Bruce Willis in his head whenever he has a thought, a gimmick needlessly and unpersuasively carried over from the first film.  Recycling the sexual biology sequence from Look Who's Talking's opening credits at the start, the movie immediately transitions into the newlyweds making out.  After a brief interruption (Mikey becomes terrified of a couple of his seemingly life-like toys), and a little persuading (not to mention a creepy comment on their sex life), they pick up where they left off.  Despite being reassured that his wife is wearing her diaphragm, one of Travolta's talking sperm (must everything have a point of view in this movie?) manages to find a small opening behind the poorly applied birth control.  Soon after, Mikey is joined by an unwelcoming Julie, his new baby stepsister whose inner most thoughts are voiced by a sadly misused Roseanne Barr.  (She's given exactly one funny line to say.)  Before her birth, he welcomes the idea of being her protector.  Afterwards, they rarely get along.

 

This is supposed to be a family-friendly, romantic comedy but Travolta and Alley spend far more time arguing and fighting than expressing affection towards one another.  In one scene, Mikey and his stepdad are watching a weird cartoon on TV involving imprisoned ghosts on the verge of execution while Cab Calloway's Minnie The Moocher plays in the background.  Alley wants her son to go to bed.  Travolta wants him to see the cartoon first.  They exit the apartment and intensify their dispute to the point where a neighbour in their building tells them to pipe down not once, but twice.  Travolta feels that when Alley overrules him in front of Mikey he feels emasculated.  (What a wuss.)  Alley simply wants him well rested for his trip to a Baby Gym the next day.  (Would you believe Gilbert Gottfried runs it?)  After her son handed her a used crack pipe when they went to the park in an earlier scene, she felt a change of scenery was necessary.

 

After we learn that Travolta only earns less than $10,000 a year as a cabbie (which he's proud of, believe it or not), his mother-in-law Olympia Dukakis (who does nothing but shit on him the entire picture), through her connections in the accounting world, gets him an interview for a private airline (Travolta would rather fly than put up with grumbling backseat drivers like Paul Shaffer every day; the new job turns out to be just as bad).  Somehow, this causes another fight between Mikey and Julie's parents.  Just as they're about to make up in bed, Alley's paranoid brother (Robert DeNiro doppelganger Elias Koteas) shows up unannounced and uninvited and proceeds to add to the tension already simmering between the troubled young couple.  When Travolta repeatedly fails to convince his wife to throw out her brother (who just won't leave) and when she refuses to choose between these two men, he bolts.  Did I mention this was a comedy?

 

In the meantime, the tiresome gimmick of hearing what Mikey and Julie, among other little ones in the picture, are thinking is rarely funny here.  Part of the problem is that we see their lips moving while Willis, Moore and Damon Wayans (who voices Mikey's best friend, Eddie) supply their dialogue.  That greatly confuses the effect and is extremely distracting.  Why are their lips moving when they're just thinking?  This leads to other pertinent questions:  how is it that the kids can hear other kids' thoughts, but not the adults?   Why do we hear adult voices and not kid voices when they think?  How come they can have all these articulate thoughts internally yet they can't put a sentence together out loud?  It's enough to make you go nuts. 

 

When I saw this film in the theatre almost 20 years ago, I thought it was so-so.  There were a number of laughs but the film just wasn't funny enough or terribly surprising to recommend to anybody.  Today, the film is much worse.  I laughed far less than I did in 1990.  Gilbert Gottfried's spaz dancing is probably the funniest moment in the movie even though it's a throwaway gag, something that has absolutely nothing to do with the plot.  Travolta makes an inside joke about Koteas being like Travis Bickle which made me snort but most of the material is either too creepy, gross, lame or just plain juvenile to be humourous.

 

Even more embarrassing than the flat humour is the overuse of music to cover up the fact that the screenwriters ran out of material.  In the second half, Alley's attempt to glam herself up for a reconciliation with her husband (far easier than changing one's dumb, inconsistent personality, of course) is set to I Enjoy Being A Girl (from Rodgers and Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song).  During their split, Are You Lonesome Tonight is heard while a weeping Alley watches old, black & white, romantic movies.  The last Baby Gym sequence features a gyrating Travolta (does he have to dance in every movie?) leading Gottfried's young customers around the room while All Shook Up plays on the soundtrack.  Mikey's memories of regret over how he treated Julie is accompanied by John Lennon's Jealous Guy.  The opening love scene is set to Phil Phillips' Sea Of Love.  In one instance, a song is heard for no legitimate reason.  Living Colour's Glamour Boys pops up briefly during the park scene.  Why, exactly?

 

You feel for the actors here.  When you have to do take after take of wearing a child's toilet seat on your head and sing songs that substitute the lyric "party" with "potty", when you have to hit yourself in the head with a toy and pretend it's a "flying turd", and when you have to dance around a Baby Gym like it's a scene from Grease, it's hard to maintain your dignity.  It also doesn't help that the characters aren't worth caring about in the first place.  How can they be when they're so meanspirited and joyless. 

 

Before rescreening this movie, I tried to remember certain scenes.  I could only think of one.  Travolta takes the kids to the movies but for some unknown reason he scams his way in without paying for tickets.  In 1990, I thought it was rather clever how he was able to get away with that.  Today, I'm puzzled as to why he felt the need to do it at all.  The guy isn't unemployed and ticket prices were rather reasonable back then.  Quite frankly, he looks like a douchebag doing that with his kids present.

 

Even more irresponsible is how Alley decides to leave her young ones in the care of Koteas late in the picture.  His complete lack of judgment leads to a chase sequence and an unnecessary fire.  There was probably no serious danger posed during the filming of that sequence but why put little child actors through something so inappropriate for a comedy?

 

Look Who's Talking Too has aged so poorly it's hard to believe I only disliked it in 1990.  Its only redeeming factor?  Look Who's Talking Now is even worse.

 

Dennis Earl

Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

9:59 p.m.

The fourth host of The Tonight Show has officially retired from the job.  Jay Leno, Johnny Carson's successor, concluded his 17-year run on the oldest American late night program by offering a formulaic mixture of clip montages, big time guests, personal tributes and mostly stale monologue jokes.  Not even close to being as respected as Carson (and with good reason), Leno's final Tonight Show perfectly summed up his era on the show:  forgettable and safe.

 

At one point during his typically overlong, uninspired monologue, he started riffing like Rodney Dangerfield, as a personal tribute.   Then, he threw to a montage of the late, great comedian during his many appearances on Tonight.  There were more laughs in that brief segment than Leno offered in the entire hour.  When a dead man on videotape is far funnier than the live guy hosting the same show, you're in sad shape.  While it was nice to see Rodney get acknowledged for his brilliant stand-up work, it made Leno's comedy look even weaker than it normally is.  It was a mistake to run it.

 

I hope Howard Stern wasn't watching this final show because he would've been livid over the Jaywalking clips.  (Stern has long maintained that Leno and his writers stole the man-on-the-street-asking-stupid-people-basic-trivia-questions bit from his long running radio program.  He wasn't happy about how Stuttering John was lured away, either.)  After showing some of the "best" moments from that segment over the years, Leno threw to a follow-up package where the dumbest of the dumb competed right on the show in a game called Battle Of The Jaywalking All-Stars.  Quite frankly, it was routine stuff and not very funny.

 

Much better was Conan O'Brien, the only guest Leno interviewed.  Looking relaxed and slipping easily into his Edward G. Robinson impression, he was as loose and funny as he's ever been in recent years unlike the interesting clip that Leno showed of him making his first appearance on Tonight in early 1993 after receiving the Late Night gig.  (What a difference 16 years makes!)  He is definitely ready to take over the show June 1st.  I wish him well.

 

After reflecting on a particular song he heard at some point during his long drive from hometown Boston to Hollywood in the early 1970s in order to pursue a career in comedy, Leno introduced James Taylor who played that very same track, Sweet Baby James.  Low-key balladry is really not my bag and so the song, unfortunately, left me unmoved.  Leno, however, was appreciative and hugged Taylor after the performance.

 

By the end, Leno thanked his wife, Mavis, who was in the audience and the current members of his staff, including longtime bandleader Kevin Eubanks and announcer Stuttering John Melendez.  More interesting were the people he didn't thank like original (and controversial) executive producer Helen Kushnick (who discovered the comedian, managed and championed him for years but later died of cancer in 1996, four years after being fired from NBC), Edd Hall who preceded Stuttering John in the announcer's chair, and Branford Marsalis, his first bandleader who, upon leaving the show in 1995, went on to publicly criticize him.

 

Worst of all was the moment when he proclaimed with a straight face that he was a union guy.  This from the man who went ahead and wrote his own monologue jokes during that needless writer's strike not too long ago (a Writer's Guild Of America no-no that led to absolutely no consequences) and only started paying his out-of-work staff after the press reported Letterman doing it first.

 

Although it was cute to see all the Tonight Show staff kids that were born and raised during his tenure (an astounding 68 in all), the fact that it was his response to the overasked "what's your legacy?" question was a blatantly transparent attempt to avoid confronting the reality of his run.  Aside from a few memorable guests and some genuinely funny moments, Letterman's Late Show has always been better, hence all those Emmys.

 

It's too bad Billy Crystal's hilarious appearance on the previous Tonight Show didn't happen on this one.  It would've at least ended this critically unloved program with a bang.  Instead, Leno's lacklustreness was all too painfully on display.  We've seen this once brilliantly acidic stand-up water his act down so severely that it's hard to reconcile the bold, funny guy that used to crack up former friend Dave Letterman with the phony asskisser who refused to put fools like Ann Coulter and Mel Gibson in their place.  "What the hell were you thinking?" remains the only tough question he ever asked a guest.  That's not much of a legacy.

 

Dennis Earl

Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Saturday, May 30, 2009

2:06 a.m.

There's a moment in the fifth season premiere of Jon & Kate Plus 8 where actual reality is captured.  Kate Gosselin, the cold, bossy, control-freak matriarch, has been exhaustingly preparing for her sextuplets' fifth birthday party with the assistance of her 7-year-old twin daughters.  Her husband, the long suffering, passive-aggressive Jon, is estranged from her, thanks to the remarkable revelation that he's been unfaithful (more on that shortly).  After going back home a couple of times to pick up items his wife forgot to bring with her to this outdoor area where the party is taking place, he returns to enjoy the day.  On a chilly, bug-filled afternoon, he stands for a moment while Kate is lingering nearby.  They don't look at each other.  Not a word is spoken.  The tension is palpable.

 

Over the past several days, TLC has been bombarding viewers with endless episodes of this long running reality series in order to publicize the new season.  I had never seen a single second of it until this past week.  At first glance, it's rather unremarkable, the only real hook being the adorable eight kids.  But if you stick with it (I caught several episodes here and there), little slithers of truth gradually and increasingly slip through the blatantly artificial surface.

 

Kate constantly treats Jon like he's her ninth child.  Even though they interrupt each other from time to time during interviews that are edited together with footage of the kids, on one memorable occasion, she scolds him for it.  A stunned Jon zips it shut while she starts over again.  (And no, her remarks were not terribly important.)

 

When she's not ordering him around to carry out her whims, she's critical of his taste and abilities.  She also has this rather sexist attitude toward men in general which, for a supposedly "family friendly" TV show, is rather unfair and rude.  In one episode, the couple are looking for floor tiles for their new home.  For some bizarre reason, Kate is fixated on this dark grey pattern which Jon hates.  He prefers brown which ultimately makes sense because of the similiar look of the interior of their new home.  Before Kate begrudgingly agrees that his selection is better than hers, there's the obligatory putdown of guys not knowing anything about decorating.  Meanwhile, she thinks grey goes with brown!  I mean, come on!

 

And then, there's the affair.  According to US Weekly, Jon has been secretly seeing a younger woman since January.  If you watch the show, this truly boggles the mind.  The man has eight kids, all under the age of 10.  Every episode involves some kind of road trip.  He quit his job two years ago to be with them more often.  Where does he find the time?  Furthermore, he's not very discreet.  US offered not only details of how he met the woman and how intimately involved they are (her brother truly is an unhelpful blabbermouth), but also displays pictures of them being seen together.  US also alleges that Kate is involved with her bodyguard (who's also married) but she's denied that. 

 

The more you watch Jon & Kate Plus 8, the more you realize what a nightmare this whole situation is.  From the shameless exploitation of the kids (besides the TV show, there are the DVD box sets of the original episodes, the official website, merchandise and three books) to Kate's meanspirited detachment to Jon's terminally weary demeanour to the absolutely phony premise, there is much to loath.

 

In the fifth season premiere, there's much tiptoeing and dancing around Jon's infidelity which is more than a little insulting to the adults watching.  (If you didn't follow the media coverage, you'd have no clue what was being discussed.)  With relentless insinuation in the promos for the show, to not even be honest and real about what happened and to shift the focus onto the dreaded paparazzi shows an astounding lack of maturity and courage, not to mention respect for the growing audience.  But then again, we shouldn't know about any of this nonsense in the first place.  In fact, we would never know a thing about this family had the couple adopted instead of going back to that goddamned fertility clinic.

 

To hear them complain about all the attention their crumbling marriage is getting is truly annoying.  No one forced them to have affairs.  No one forced them to have six kids at once.  No one forced them to exploit the hell out of their cuteness.  And no one forced them to quit their jobs in order to keep the gravy train rolling.  If you can't take the bad with the good when you become famous, why are you on TV in the first place?   As Jon's outspoken sister, Julie, reportedly revealed on the Gosselins Without Pity Blog, the family gets a ton of free stuff just for being on the show and episodes are crafted around "themes" planned out in advance.  Honestly, there's no sense of normalcy when everything is paid for and documented by TLC.  How can there be? 

 

Back to the paparazzi for a minute.  Kate hates them so much that when one of her kids utters the word "paparazzi" out loud, she refuses to allow him to say it again.  The photographers pop up outside a store and near the outdoor setting of the birthday party during the fifth season premiere, further eroding the idea of the "reality" this show is trying to convey.  (You know, that this is a "normal" family of 10.)   When Kate and Jon complain about them, it's hard to feel sympathetic when they're shooting their TV show in their presence.  It would be one thing if they were just shopping off the air or just having a private party but they're doing these things with a camera crew present.  My question is, who tipped off the photographers about their whereabouts?  If I were Kate and Jon, and thank God I'm not, that's who I would be pissed at.

 

Looking at some of these old episodes for the first time, it's hard not to notice the lack of love and affection between these two people.  Kate is prone to hitting, to scolding, to being hypercritical and Jon alternates from just taking her cruelty to standing up for himself.  (It's astounding that he never truly loses his cool.)   I don't remember there being a single kiss on the lips nor a sincere "I love you".  Where's the hand holding?  The cuddling?  The caressing?  Almost all the romantic gestures you can think of are strangely absent.  Were these two ever happy together?

 

You really feel for the kids here (none of whom, oddly, look like Kate).  As they get older and begin to understand what's really going on, you wonder how will this affect their personal development and their futures.  Will they grow resentful?  And if Kate and Jon can't work out their problems, what will the emotional fallout be from a possible separation and/or divorce?  The more you delve into this, the sadder the situation becomes.

 

If these people had any sense, they'd split amicably, stop exploiting their kids for free stuff and profit, and stay out of the spotlight for good.  Maintaining the status quo is the worst option.

 

Dennis Earl

Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

2:17 a.m.

Quintessential aggravation

Pulling from within

Forcing a decision

Fight it or give in

 

Wrestling with doubt

Plagued with worry

Thoughts tumbling out

The truth is blurry

 

Crippling torment

Ripping the seams

No longer dormant

Haunting my dreams

 

Static erosion

Nirvana out of reach

Puzzling corrosion

Protocol breach

 

Fearful inexperience

Flooding through every pore

Mental indifference

Burning at the core

 

Frozen statue

Obsessively torn

Elusive breakthrough

Yet to be born 

 

In need of saving

Transparent visage

Desperately craving

A mental massage

 

 

Dennis Earl

Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

9:52 p.m. 

Ask me, I might say yes

Then again, I might say no

If you're unwilling to wager a guess

How will you ever know?

 

The question is compelling

Worthy of serious thought

But your doubts are overwhelming

Your nerves are fucking shot

 

Charmingly hesitant

There's no mistaking your fear

Uncomfortable resident

In a suffocating atmosphere

 

What do you have to lose?

Would you prefer not to know?

Ask me, I might say yes...

 

 

Forget it, the answer is no

 

 

Dennis Earl

Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

8:47 p.m. 

Is Pierce Brosnan resistible to any woman?  Is there anything about him that ever screams "turn-off"?  Everyone's personal preferences aside, is it at all believable that his physical presence and personality could provoke feelings of anger rather than lust?

 

In Laws Of Attraction, Brosnan plays a TV-friendly divorce lawyer who absolutely flusters colleague Julianne Moore.  Early on in the film, she's representing the sex-addicted trophy wife of an infomercial tycoon and looks to be on the road to victory.  But Brosnan, a surprise substitute for the tycoon's previous attorney, despite being asleep in the courtroom the first time they meet, totally deflates her confidence by offering evidence her client neglected to share with her.

 

Furious in her humbled state, the undefeated, junk food binging, Weather Channel addicted, defiantly single Moore is not only determined not to lose the case but to also remain permanently indifferent to her opponent's charms.  It's a foolhardy plan of stubborn oneupmanship that leads to one dumb mistake after another. 

 

From the moment they lay eyes on each other, you know how this dreadful romantic comedy will end.  Long before that predictable moment happens, however, Moore has to pretend for an hour that Brosnan is more worthy of being on the receiving end of her childish diatribes and antics than a possible romantic partner.  Her state of denial is so obvious even her hip, many-times-divorced mother (the lovely Frances Farmer) can see what she really feels.

 

Brosnan doesn't buy her act, either, and goes out of his way time and time again to win her over.  But Moore is so impossible to deal with, always uptight and argumentative, one wonders why he even bothers.  As they find themselves battling it out in case after case, her formulaic stubbornness never fails to be unfunny.

 

Brosnan has a sly, soft-spoken charm about him that makes Moore's wall of resistance completely preposterous.  He oozes confidence and decency but those qualities only fire up her competitive spirit and her deep insecurities.  Despite a remarkably unsexy and drunken one-night-stand early on, her well of sexuality is always empty. When the movie shifts to the heavenly vistas of Ireland, there's a nighttime scene where Moore reveals she grew up feeling second best to her mother's beauty.  It is a brief moment of vulnerability that the character could've uttered much sooner.  By this point, we're so tired of her immaturity (she finished at the top of her Yale law class?) that not too long after it passes, we're back to wondering why Brosnan is so tolerant of her.

 

Without question, this is Julianne Moore's worst screen performance but, in truth, the real blame belongs to the film's writers.  Despite a couple of laughs, the screenplay doesn't possess the kind of sharp writing that would jolt this cinematic corpse to life.  The jokes they do offer are extremely weak.  It's hard to imagine that Brosnan, one of the film's ten executive producers, would not demand better material to work with here.  Furthermore, the lack of onscreen chemistry is so apparent immediately that by the time Moore has her unsurprising change of heart in the film's third act, it's sadly anticlimactic.

 

The film's lameness can't even be saved by the appearances of Nora Dunn (who plays a tough-talking divorced judge), Michael Sheen (as a dimwitted, uninspired rock star) and Parker Posey (the rock star's pissed off missus who wants to divorce him).  Everybody deserved better than to be stuck in this forgettable mess.

 

The idea of a woman needing to be drunk in order to enjoy sex with Pierce Brosnan is pretty insulting.  Just ask my mom.  She'll do him sober in five seconds.

 

Dennis Earl

Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

2:28 a.m.

It begins right where the last one left off.  A naked woman in a running shower awakens in a crouched position to find she is all alone.  And naked.

 

That lovely, naked woman is Milla Jovovich, once again playing Alice, the Tomb Raider wannabe in Resident Evil: Extinction, the third, but sadly, not-quite-last installment in this increasingly needless franchise.  (A fourth one is in the works.)  In the original Resident Evil (based on the video game which has also spawned sequels), a nasty virus is accidentally released in a science lab.  Because this science lab is within the confines of a building owned by The Umbrella Corporation (get it?), the place is locked down and no one can escape.  (What brutes!)  Alice, along with some military types, are assigned the delightful task of finding possible survivors.  All they discover are zombies.

 

In Resident Evil: Apocalypse, the threat spreads.  And now, we have Extinction which, you think, based on its title alone, would indicate the final chapter in this unoriginal, unscary saga.  The ending completely takes away your hope.

 

Through the always helpful narration provided by Alice, we learn that the world is now riddled with those pesky, ravenous undead despite the best efforts of The Umbrella Corporation in the second movie to contain them in Raccoon City, the site of the original infection.  There are very few healthy survivors left in the world, supplies are exceedingly limited and it's only a matter of time before the entire human race is wiped out.  Zombies gotta eat, you know?

 

When we catch up with Alice, she's in biker chick mode enlightening the audience on how a badass like her carefully navigates the dead zones of America.  When she hears a distress call from an abandoned radio station, however, she walks into a huge trap.  Thankfully, her captors/rapists are incredibly stupid.  Their ultimate plan to have their bloody, skinless dogs finish her off in a room below them while they watch in a large hole from above has failure written all over it.

 

Meanwhile, evil scientist Dr. Issacs (Iain Glen) is under strict orders by an Umbrella bigwig to drop everything in order to quickly find a cure for the virus responsible for all this worldwide carnage.  (A little late for that, isn't it?)  The best he can do is attempt to "domesticate" a test subject, a zombie plucked from the multitudes pushing against a steel fence that surrounds a shack that has a secret elevator to the company's underground facility below the desert wastelands of Nevada.  (And no, zombies can't climb, for some reason.)  After demonstrating his versatility with a cell phone and a camera, the zombie goes apeshit over a children's toy (don't they always?) and Dr. Issacs is down a couple more scientists.  Thanks to the blood sample he acquired from the elusive Alice (who he's desperately trying to relocate via satellite) in Apocalypse, he's been cloning her sweet ass dozens of times but something always goes wrong.  Hard to top the original, eh?

 

Speaking of Alice, she isn't the only survivor left in America.  Claire (Ali Larter) leads a group of adults and kids, some of them carryovers from the last movie, through the desert in a small parade of vehicles in search of fuel, food and permanent isolation, all elusive items.  They rest at a seemingly abandoned hotel where L.J. (Mike Epps) gets bitten by a hidden zombie he's woefully unprepared to fight (he's rescued by Carlos (Oded Fehr) almost in time) but he neglects to tell his friends, especially his unconvincing love interest, Betty (Ashanti).  Subsisting on canned goods, which they're running low on, they set up a surveillance perimeter around the area to keep an eye out.  When hundreds of black crowes (no, not the band, unfortunately), infected by the dead zombies they've been munching on, swoop down on them one fateful afternoon, a nearby Alice, now reduced to travelling by foot (awfully ridiculous how her bike gets busted), channels her inner Drew Barrymore and restores a temporary peace.

 

In an earlier scene, she discovers a diary directly under a hanged, fly-covered corpse in another abandoned business.  (And you thought our economy was bad.)  It offers the faint hope of safety somewhere in Alaska.

 

Like the Underworld movies, the Resident Evil franchise has stretched a very thin premise (hot action babe and company fighting zombies) to the point of snapping.  Extinction never allows us to know anything interesting about the heroes nor does it welcome any emotional investment.  Late in the film, when one character decides to become a suicide bomber, there are plenty of teary eyeducts amongst the good guys.  I felt nothing.

 

Despite making the most of its beautifully barren locations, the plot is more boring than exhilarating.  The violence is repetitively gruesome and routine, never scary.  (Too many zombies jumping in the frame.  Lazy.)  Honestly, how interesting can it possibly be to observe the neverending cycle of slash, punch, kick, stab and shoot?  For that matter, how interesting can it possibly be to watch one tediously long room sweep after another?

 

The villains aren't much better.  Iain Glen does what he can with a standard mad scientist role but like all the actors in this mess, he gets swallowed up in a cinematic sea of mediocrity.  We don't hate him as much as we should.  As for the zombies themselves, beyond the "domestication" scene, they're up to their usual tricks.  The make-up is fine, especially when we see that emaciated fella on the highway, but when you've seen one movie zombie, you've seen them all.  (Speaking of skinny zombies, how come they haven't thought of cannibalism?  It would cut down on starvation time.)

 

Watching charismatic actors like Jovovich and Larter waste their talents in a been there, done that action flick is especially depressing.  They are more than capable of playing smarter characters than this (check out He Got Game and Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back for the proof) and both are well suited for the genre.  They can convincingly kick ass without losing an ounce of their femininity.  Hollywood needs to take them more seriously.

 

By the time we reach the comic book third act, the movie and the series have more than worn out their welcome.  Too bad the filmmakers still haven't gotten the hint.

 

Dennis Earl

Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Monday, April 27, 2009

2:44 a.m.

Should women serve in the military?  Michael Coren doesn't think so.  The Sun Media columnist made the argument last week in his column about Karine Blais, the second Canadian female soldier to die serving her country in Afghanistan.  (A third, Major Michelle Mendes, was discovered deceased the day before the funeral.)

 

It's a belief he's been foolishly espousing in print for years.  Unfortunately, no matter how many times he dusts it off for unwanted public consumption, it remains archaic, unpersuasive, unproven and most importantly, deeply sexist and not just against women, either.

 

Blais was a 21-year-old Trooper who joined the military in 2006 and was only two weeks into her first tour of duty when she was killed by an unexpected roadside bomb while driving on a routine patrol.  According to The Toronto Star, it was her dream to drive big army tanks but ultimately become a mechanic in the civilian world.  (Her godfather told The National Post she only planned on serving one mission there.) 

 

Coren doesn't understand why this young woman decided to serve.  ("...what on earth was she doing in such a place and in such a job?")  As The Star reported, it was her desire to do so.  Have you ever had a desire to put your life on the line because of a deep commitment to the military and to your country, Michael?

 

Throughout the misguided piece, he pretends "to articulate the views of the silent majority" (without providing any polling data that backs up his assertion, which explains the silence) and yet, by his own admission in this week's inevitably whiny follow-up column, reaction to his horribly disrespectful piece was decidedly mixed.  (More on that later.)

 

Despite "mean[ing] no disrespect to Karine Blais or to her family" while also claiming to "grieve for her and them", he betrays his own words by focusing almost entirely on her size ("[she] probably weighed a little over 100 pounds") and looks ("Look at the photograph of this beautiful girl. Look at the innocence, the gentleness, the grace."), but never her contributions to the military.  In fact, very early on, he calls her "a young girl dressed up as a soldier".  (Yeah, that's not condescending.)  Incredibly, he later claims, "I mean it as a compliment.".  Really?  If we were talking about a man here would you refer to him as "a young boy dressed up as a soldier" after he died on the job?  Talk about pissing on one's grave.

 

Immediately afterwards, he opines, "I've known soldiers all of my life and I have an invincible respect for them. I've seen their courage, integrity and sheer decency."   If he really believes that, where's the respect for the courageous Trooper Blais and all the women who put their lives on the line for Canada?   Or do their sacrifices not count in any meaningful way since Coren clearly considers them the weaker sex?

 

If that weren't bad enough, Coren offers this simply bizarre section:

 

"Can we really imagine for a moment that if a group of Taliban tribesmen rushed a trench or an encampment this poor young woman could fight them off, could deal with the thrusts of their long knives and heavy clubs? Do we seriously think that the men in the unit would not risk their own lives to protect a pretty young girl who was inevitably being beaten to the ground by salivating killers?

 

The very reason we have various weight categories for all forms of organized fighting is that whatever the training, a pugilist's weight and muscle bulk give an advantage to the heavier combatant."

 

Firstly, Canada isn't boxing The Taliban with their fists like Rocky Balboa.  They are fighting them with tanks, automatic rifles and grenades, which makes his weight argument irrelevant.  Secondly, The Taliban uses "long knives and heavy clubs"?  I thought they used IEDs, mines and automatic weaponry.  And what's with the damsel-in-distress imagery?  Trooper Blais was a professionally trained volunteer of the Canadian army.  Why would she have been deployed if her superiors didn't believe she would serve her country with honour?   Besides, she was a tank driver, not some helpless princess forever dependent on big, strong men in her "trench" or "encampment".

 

But remember, he "mean[s] no disrespect."

 

As for the very real threat of female soldiers being captured and abused, how come there's no concern for their male counterparts who face the very same threats?  Furthermore, as one astute reader noted in The Toronto Sun (second letter), "So sending our daughters into war is not appropriate, but sending our sons is? It is not OK to send anyone to war. We are supposed to be a civilized society, we should be using every effort to avoid war."

 

Thankfully, reaction to this literary garbage has been mostly and reassuringly negative.  A Calgary Sun reader (the first letter) remarked:

 

"I have a feeling that Karine Blais, rest her soul, would be able to knock Michael Coren on his back and have him on the wrong end of a deathly situation very quickly...I find it disrespectful to this fallen soldier to question her ability. She endured the same trials as the men she served with and deserves no less respect."

 

A male soldier (the fourth letter) noted in his stingingly succinct rebuttal to Coren in The Toronto Sun:

 

"Michael Coren's piece about Karine Blais is offensive. If Trooper Blais was unable to do her job to the same standard as her male counterparts, she would never, ever have been deployed. The suggestion that few women have the capacity to serve in combat roles is horsefeathers. I've met and worked with plenty of female soldiers who have excelled in their job. I have also met plenty of male soldiers who were not half as good. When, exactly, was the last time the Taliban "rushed a trench or an encampment"? And what would she have done? Probably raised her rifle and shot them, because being deployed she would have met the standard of the Canadian Force's reasonably demanding marksmanship program. Of course the men in her unit would risk their lives to save her. But not because she was a "pretty young girl," because she was a soldier, and soldiers will risk their lives for their brothers and sisters without hesitation. Gender is irrelevant in that situation. Trooper Blais decided to join the Canadian Forces for any of a number of reasons. She knew the risks and she went anyway. She was no different than any other of our 116 fatalities and to suggest otherwise smears the sacrifice of them all."

 

Blais' commander in Afghanistan, Lt.-Col. Jocelyn Paul, told The National Post, "Yes, when we think of Karine she was a woman, but first and above all, she was a member of the troop, no matter what her gender, her origin or what language she spoke...It is obvious that when you lose a soldier everyone is under shock. Some people can make the comment that yes, she was a female. What I would like to say is that the Canadian army has come a long way over the last 15 years. Right now, you can see women serving in every type of environment.

 

These women show a lot of courage. They are here standing shoulder to shoulder with all the men in the battle group. Very often, especially with the younger ones, we don't make much difference now in terms of sex."

 

Only the cowardly Michael Coren does.  (For more criticism, click here, here, here, here, here and here.  Type "Michael Coren" "Karine Blais" into Google for more.)

 

That brings us to his follow-up column.  As expected, he considers the reaction to his poorly argued opinion proof of it being "a success".  (You gotta love how he still considers himself a "journalist".)  And, as always, those who are critical of him get no respect.  They're bad spellers, "the vast majority" offer "the usual nonsense" like "'You're a dinosaur'" (amusingly, this was also the headline) and "'I hate you.'"  (As Frank Barone would say, "Suck it up, Nancy.".)  Most absurdly, he claims, "Most of the critical ones seemed obsessed with the fact that the poor girl indeed should have been able to die. A rather perverse way to support her and her family."  (Unlike your previous column?)

 

Really?  That's what people said?  I'm willing to guess they felt her sacrifice shouldn't have been considered so insignificant by a heartless, immature writer too clueless and classless to understand how paper-thin and utterly sexist his argument against her deployment truly was, but that's just a guess.  No one wanted this woman or any of our soldiers to die.  (To claim otherwise is evil and dishonest.)  But everybody knows the risks involved and accepts them, no matter how unfair and heartbreaking they are.  Coren should be more of a man and admit this instead of misrepresenting the opinions of his critics who have once again nailed him on his chronic stupidity.

 

The sad thing about all of this is that Coren is absolutely right about one thing.  The ongoing Afghanistan invasion is "pointless".  However, where was his opposition to this needless colonial war eight years ago?  Hell, where was he five years ago?  The only Sun columnist to be consistently right on this matter is the incomparable Eric Margolis who condemned Bush's bellicosity from 2001 onward.  And that goes for Iraq in 2002 and 2003, as well.  Coren claims he was against invading Iraq but he once wrote a column comparing the situation to the American Civil War and he hasn't come close to writing the amount of words decrying the outrage like Margolis has done this decade.  Coren now opposes bombing Iran's civilian nuclear facilities although he once argued vehemently the other way.  When the latter opinion was roundly criticized, he whined in the former and claimed with a straight face that he changed his mind despite their criticism. 

 

Right.  And my name's Clay Aiken.

 

At any rate, for Coren to continually react defensively whenever he's called out on his routine bullshit by saying that his critics offer "insults" rather than "cogent arguments", well, boo hoo, little girl.  When you demean Trooper Blais' sacrifice in not one but two columns (he called her "intensely inexperienced" in the most recent one), don't expect people to be respectful and polite when you inflame their passions for our military.  You're no better than Greg Gutfeld, the unfunny douchebag from Fox News' Red Eye, who went so far as to bash the entire Canadian military.  Neither of you dicktrees have any respect, any class, any talent, any brains, any heart, any wit and any business working for the media.  The sooner you quit, the better.

 

Dennis Earl

Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Saturday, April 25, 2009

8:41 p.m.