Atonement

Many times an excellent book becomes an average film because a reader’s mind visualizes the setting, interacts with the characters, participates in the unfolding conflict, becomes entangled in the emotional engagement in a way that simply cannot be captured on film. Some stories have to be enjoyed intimately, one reader at a time, stories that can be seen only with one’s imagination. Atonement is such a story.

The film is not the story told by the author, it’s the interpretation of the story told by a screenwriter who accommodated the vision of the company that put up the money for the film. Atonement is an intensely personal story that does not translate well to the big screen, but it is too “big budget” to fit the small screen. The lush setting, the costumes, the massive war scenes have to be larger than life to work well for the film, but the intimacy of the story is lost in the process.

I know I’m not buying the finished product when my mind is more focused on not only how unhealthily thin the female lead (Keira Knightley) is, but also how incredibly flat-chested she is for being such a major “hot” movie star. The costumes she wore were meant to be sexy, but I found them odd choices for her body type, especially the green “sex” gown worn in the library. I was distracted by the male lead’s (James McAvoy) huge nose and wondered if the old wives' tale about nose size and male genitalia is true in his case. He also looked short in some scenes and taller in other scenes, which I found disquieting. The eyes of many of the actors were a startlingly blue color, which finally led me to consider whether they were true blue, contacts, or a process I could access through Adobe PhotoShop. The cigarettes had a major role in the film and stole some scenes from the actors who pretended to smoke them. I saw the overgrown fields of the country estate and wondered why someone didn’t either mow them or groom them. And each time the film cut between past and present, I contemplated turning off the DVD player and picking up a good book, rather than watching to the bitter end a film I was not enjoying.

Conversely, when I read the book, I stayed awake long past my bedtime because I didn’t want to close the covers until I finished reading. It was hard to find a good place to stop for the night, and my mind continued to live the story as I slept and dreamed about what would happen. I had high expectations for the film interpretation of the novel, but it appears that the filmmakers’ expectations were confined to big names, big budget, and big film.

Needless to say, Atonement goes on the “skipit” list.

Gone Baby Gone

Allowing a movie to end on a thought-provoking note is an unusual way to finish a film; however, in Gone Baby Gone, it’s what makes the movie better than it could have been.

The storyline involves the abduction of a beautiful young girl being parented by a drug-addicted negligent single mother who enjoys the company of a long string of one-night stands. The cops are not totally engaged in the search process, but the media is hyping the situation thanks to the child’s aunt, who also contacts two private detectives and begs them to locate the girl. As the police tell the detectives, there isn’t much hope as it’s Day 3, and everyone knows how critical it is to find a lead—or the missing child—well before that much time elapses.

The story takes place in Boston and uses many neighborhood residents as extras in the film, an unusual casting decision that works. The actors look, act, and talk like real people because they are! The pace is slow as the two detectives work the neighborhood, talking to old high school classmates, neighborhood hookers and pimps, and familiar criminals as they try to find out who took the child, but the film constantly moves toward whatever is coming. Without realizing it, suspense builds, and it’s not just will they find the little girl or is she already dead, but something else that remains just below the surface of the story.

When the film finishes, it leaves a question for the viewer to resolve: is it better to do the right thing for all the wrong reasons, or to do the wrong thing for all the right reasons? I watched the film a week ago and plan to watch it again because now that I know how the film ends, I want to wrestle with that question from within the storyline.

Casey Afflect underplays his leading role, which is surprising as his older brother, Ben, who is the writer/director of this film, often overplays his parts and distracts from the storyline, rather than becoming one with it. Casey is totally believable as the neighborhood guy who’s sort of making it in the adult world, but living on the fringes of being successful. Amy Ryan is the washed-up high school has-been whose daughter goes missing, and she plays the role as if she were born to it, understanding how to look skanky and cry an addict’s tears as she promises God that she will give up drugs if she gets her daughter back alive. Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman are cast in supporting actor roles, but Ed Harris’s performance sells the storyline and adds credibility to the premise of the movie.

The cover promises that “this edge-of-your-seat crime drama … will have you talking long after it’s over,” and, for once, I agree! Although the story is not “edge of your seat,” it will warrant a second look and a serious discussion.

Travel Time-Out

The good news is that this time the flight was canceled before I arrived at the airport. The bad news is that there are (allegedly) no other flights to my destination until the day after tomorrow, so I lose a vacation day to the vagaries of the travel gods.

I made the mistake of checking in on-line, a mistake I will NEVER repeat. First, the prompt led me to “sign up here” to facilitate the process, and I ended up becoming a member of the mileage plus club. I’m not sure how that happened, but it did. However, when I tried to use the new number to actually check in on line, it didn’t work at all because … I got the number after booking the flight two months ago. Once I back-pedaled to the original sign-in page, I used the confirmation number to access my itinerary and that’s when I discovered that my flight is canceled.

Guess I’m glad I checked on it tonight as I would have been totally pissed to find this out tomorrow when I arrived at the airport with luggage in tow! In the course of accessing other flight options, I pressed the “continue” button—and was arbitrarily confirmed on a flight leaving from the airport tonight—in an hour! There was no way to make that connection, so I called customer service, waded through the damned friendly sky’s voice guiding me through the options menu, waited on hold for 20 minutes of endlessly recycling Rhapsody in Blue musak, and then was greeted by a foreign-speaking man who tried to pack as many words into 10 seconds as he possible could.

Whoa, big fella: slow down or we don’t have a chance in hell of getting through the tough stuff!

I explained what had happened, but he happily assured me that I was confirmed on the flight leaving … now … in about 25 minutes. Nope, not going to happen, I explained, and went back through how this happened again. The third time through the explanation, he found it in his heart to stop assuring me I was leaving in minutes, and decided that what I really needed was to rebook the originally canceled flight—tomorrow.

Of course, that wasn’t going to happen, even after being offered a variety of other airports for departure so I could be at my destination by tomorrow night. I finally caved in and asked about Saturday, and there is a flight that gets me there a day late and probably another dollar short. The good news is I wasn’t charged to change my flight, which I suspected was going to be the next discussion with the airline rep. As a matter of fact, for the inconvenience of waiting an extra day to depart, I am upgraded to economy plus for the longest leg of the flight. It isn’t much, but it’s the best offer I’ve had recently, so I graciously accepted the extra 4”.

I’ve finished rearranging all the little details associated with travel and will figure out tomorrow what I’m going to do to celebrate this unexpected change in my vacation plans. Perhaps there is a movie in my future?

Tennis Anyone?

Sometimes it is good to step out of one’s comfort zone, which I did last night. A friend is friends with the daughter of a famous, famous movie star, and the woman has box tickets to the PacLife that she couldn't use last night. The courtside seats are always available and offer an incredible view of the action on the main stadium court at The Tennis Gardens, a world-renown venue that will also host an outdoor NBA game this October.

This time when she asked, I agreed to go with my friend to the men’s match, Baker versus Cinquel. It was a fairly evenly matched game until the Frenchman gave up and let Baker win. Prior to that fold, each man fought for and won points, some of which were actually exciting to watch. Baker is ranked 9th in the world, but Cinquel could probably hold his own against him if he displayed more disciplined play. When he missed a shot, he reacted with temper, rather than determination, and it cost him his focus. To be fair, Baker missed a few that clearly irked his ire, but he came back stronger after the misses and made some incredible shots.

I think the match ended so quickly because it was so darned cold! The wind was howling yesterday and blew a massive storm front into the desert, which lowered the temps significantly once the sun set. I had on layers, so should have been warm inside the stadium, but the wind crept over the top of the seats and affected not just the comfort level, but the ability of the player whose back was to my seat to return the ball accurately to his opponent. The wind inside the stadium was so strong that many, many of the shots went long! And had I been the one wearing the shorts and the sleeveless top, I might have been tempted to get the game over quickly.

I wrapped up in the blanket I brought, which helped, but my asthma does not like cold wind and I started coughing (a big no-no at tennis!). I used the inhaler and sat through the men’s match, but asked my friend if we could leave before the women’s match began—unfortunately, a plan shared with thousands of other very cold tennis fans. At least half the audience streamed out of the stadium to head for home, leaving the women to deal with not just the cold weather and wind, but an empty stadium.

On the ride home the winds continued to buffet my car, and when I headed to my little piece of the valley, I drove through rain that continued throughout the night. The good news is that the air is clear today, the winds have died down significantly, and it should be a great day for tennis in the desert.

Addendum: I headed to the post office this morning--and saw that the surrounding mountains are smothered in snow! It's apparent that the snow encompasses the aerial tramway, the ski resorts, the small community at the top of the grade, and then passes through the national park. Wow. It's beautiful and such a contrast to the summery weather a week ago, when we were all basking the in high 70s and low 80s.

"I'm Just Sayin'"

Whoopi Goldberg offended me with her warning to the white folks: you white folks have to watch what you say when Obama becomes President because what you say is often taken differently by black people. She clarified for both the panel on The View and the audience, using her favorite phrase, "I'm just sayin'," that there is no way we white folks can understand because … we’re white.

Of course, there is no rebuttal opportunity because she’s based her conclusion strictly on her personal perception that color is the definitive quality in judging a person's character, motive, and intent. If anyone challenges her premise, we're back to the racism argument: if a white person disagrees with a black person's perception, the white person is a racist.

Whoopi took offense because a white person used the word “articulate” in referring to Whoopi's informed discourse on a topic they were discussing. Whoopi believes that the compliment implied that blacks are usually not articulate and that the white person who made the comment was surprised that Whoopi is articulate! "Articulate” is not a secret white code for ignorant, it’s a function of clarity of thought and syntactical construction in expressing one's self in written or spoken communication.

The way Whoopi explained the incident, one would think that calling a black person "articulate" is tantamount to a racial epithet!

Whoopi's inference is a huge leap of the alleged racist chasm that exists and will be widened and deepened if all blacks share Whoopi’s characteristic of inferring meaning from innocuous comments made during social conversation. An articulate person is simply well-spoken, regardless of the color of the person's skin.

I am appalled by the condemnation and the threats of black people who seem to have forgotten Martin Luther King, Jr’s articulated philosophy of judging people on the content of their character, not on the color of their skin. That philosophy goes both ways, and as a white woman, I’m not liking the content of some of the black characters in the media these days.

I am no longer considering voting for the first black president. Oprah’s overtly racial “this man, this time” speech, in my opinion, sold Obama solely as a black man, not as the most well-qualified person for the job. The tapes of Obama's minister condeming all white people for hundreds of years of alleged racism, followed by Whoopi’s “you white folks” warning that once a black man occupies the White House, we white folks better watch what we say or deal with the consequences, leads me to believe that the country--and we white folks--are better off passing on this historic opportunity.