The Killing Fields

Year 4, Day 299 - 10/25/12 - Movie #1,286

WORLD TOUR Day 50 - Cambodia

BEFORE:  I know it seems like I'm bouncing between comedy and tragedy here, but the two are not so far off when you think about it.  The point of "The Hangover Part II" was that Thailand can be a very dangerous place, and isn't that probably the same point that this film makes about Cambodia?  Just putting that out there.

Linking from "The Hangover Part II", somehow Ken Jeong was in "Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon" with John Malkovich (last seen in "Secretariat").  Yeah, that's a head-scratcher.

THE PLOT:  A photographer is trapped in Cambodia during tyrant Pol Pot's bloody "Year Zero" cleansing campaign, which claimed the lives of two million "undesirable" civilians.

AFTER:  I almost did a tirade yesterday about how Hollywood should stop making movies that people "want" to see (which leads to making the same "Hangover" movie again and again) and instead focus on movies that people "need" to see.  This is clearly one of those films that needs to be seen.  Unfortunately it won't do well on my scale, which measures how entertained I feel afterwards, and there wasn't much here I found entertaining.

Important?  Sure.  Powerful?  Definitely.  But entertaining?  Nope, nope.  Not in the way that a war movie like "Windtalkers" or "Platoon" can be.  I'll probably get a lot of heat for rating this one lower than a piece of Hollywood pablum like "The Hangover Part II" though.  This film made it into the countdown based on its reputation and significance.

Let me be clear - I'm against communist regimes, genocide, and war in general.  In case you were wondering.  But like a lot of folks, I turn to movies as a form of escapism and fantasy, and this is just way too real.  Maybe this would have been better as a documentary of some fashion, since it's not what I look for in a dramatic film. I could get into the finer points of story arcs and character development, which happen to be absent here - instead there's just the action, and mostly it's bombs going off and people getting shot in the streets. 

I agree the story should be told, but, man, what a way to bring the room down.

Also starring Sam Waterston (last seen in "Capricorn One"), Haing S. Ngor, Julian Sands (last seen in "A Room With a View"), Spalding Gray (last seen in "Kate & Leopold"), Craig T. Nelson (last seen in "Silkwood").

DISTANCE TRAVELED TODAY:  333 miles / 536 km  (Bangkok, Thailand to Phnom Penh, Cambodia)

DISTANCE TRAVELED SO FAR:   23,734 miles / 38,199 km

RATING: 3 out of 10 passport photos

The Hangover Part II

 Year 4, Day 298 - 10/24/12 - Movie #1,285

WORLD TOUR Day 49 - Thailand

BEFORE: I realize I'm all over the place thematically, but that's because most everything's organized by geography, and creating the path leading around the world is still working solidly.  Linking actors from "Kung Fu Panda 2", Seth Rogen was also in Monsters vs. Aliens" with Ed Helms (last seen in "Cedar Rapids").

THE PLOT: Two years after the bachelor party in Las Vegas, Phil, Stu, Alan, and Doug jet to Thailand for Stu's wedding. Stu's plan for a subdued pre-wedding brunch, however, goes seriously awry.

AFTER:  Much like the first film in this series, things go wrong.  Which is an understatement, because nearly everything goes wrong.  And as in the first film, they have to travel around town and retrace their steps from the night before, only the difficulty is amped up by moving the locale from Las Vegas to Bangkok, Thailand.  In addition to the language barrier (though everyone here seems to speak at least broken English), they've got to deal with a much rougher city - Vegas is so family-friendly these days anyway. 

The only other difference is which character's wedding is getting disrupted, and which character the "wolfpack" is looking for, but aside from that, this is almost a re-tread of the first film.  Don't say I didn't warn you.  People paid to see the same storyline again, so they've only got themselves to blame when "The Hangover Part III" hits theaters, and they wake up in a tenement building in the Bronx after a drug-fueled night that weaved through Times Square, Spanish Harlem and the Meatpacking District (whose name has another meaning after dark - oh yeah, I went there).

If you can believe that the same far-fetched scenario happened AGAIN without calculating the odds against it, you may enjoy this one - I mostly did, but I'm giving it the exact same score as the first film, though I probably should deduct a point for repetition.  Watch through the entire end credits, which explain a lot, and show you probably more than you ever thought you'd see on film.

If you find that you have a set of friends that cause you to have several occasions where you wake up in a room with no knowledge of the obviously dangerous activies of the night before, I do implore you to find yourself some better (and safer) friends.  I freely admit that I have attended a few beer events where I'm not quite sure how I got home afterwards, but I'm pretty sure nothing akin to the events in this film happened to me.

There's a school of thought that says that you won't engage in any behavior when drunk or high that you wouldn't do when sober, and I tend to agree with that.  One's moral code doesn't necessarily go out the window when intoxicated, but of course the movie sets out to portray an extreme example in the name of comedy.  Still, what does it say about this trio of adventurers, that the alcohol + drugs bring out their inner demons, who seem to have agendas of their own?

NITPICK POINT: Let's get real for a second here.  These guys fly to Thailand and are tired and jet-lagged.  (OK, maybe they slept for the entire 15-hour plane trip, but still...)  Am I to believe they hit upon the magical combination of alcohol and drugs that would not only give them superhuman energy AND endurance, lower their inhibitions, and keep them relatively cognizant BUT also completely wipe their memories of the night's events?  And that the effects would be identical on three or four different people with different body-types? 

Also starring Bradley Cooper (last seen in "The A-Team"), Zach Galifianakis (last seen in "It's Kind of a Funny Story"), Justin Bartha (last seen in "New York, I Love You"), Ken Jeong (last heard in "Despicable Me"), Paul Giamatti (last seen in "Win Win"), with cameos from Jeffrey Tambor (last seen in "Paul"), and Mike Tyson (again?)

DISTANCE TRAVELED TODAY:  1,191 miles / 1,917 km  (Chengdu, China to Bangkok, Thailand)

DISTANCE TRAVELED SO FAR:   23,401 miles / 37,663 km

RATING: 6 out of 10 marshmallows

Kung Fu Panda 2

 Year 4, Day 297 - 10/23/12 - Movie #1,284

WORLD TOUR Day 48 - China

BEFORE:  This would have been a good time to insert a film like "Seven Years in Tibet", but I don't happen to have a copy.  Instead I'll move on to China, and the 2nd of 3 animated films in the World Tour.  Ahh, a direct link from "A Passage to India" finally presented itself - Judy Davis was also in "Absolute Power" with Dennis Haysbert (last seen in "Heat").

THE PLOT:  Po and his friends fight to stop a peacock villain from conquering China with a deadly new weapon, but first the Dragon Warrior must come to terms with his past.

AFTER:  I'm thinking I must be pretty burned out on movies for the year, if a thrill-ride of an animated film like this didn't really thrill me, it just felt like a ride.  In my defense, the film is pretty fast-paced and frenetic, which works well for the fight scenes, but not so much in the other parts.  This is entertainment for the A.D.D. generation, which needs a fight or an explosion, or at least somebody dropping something, every 30 seconds or so. 

Still, I can't fault the animation, which is gorgeous, and the characters and voice actors, which are darn nice too.  The story - eh, I don't know.  It definitely advanced Po's character arc, but also set him up for ANOTHER sequel, so you have to wonder about the motivation, I think.  Do the filmmakers care about the character, or do they just see him as a money machine?

Po and his cohorts continue to dazzle with their martial arts techniques - here they even combine panda-style and, say, tiger-style, for even more complex stunts.  You really have to pay attention, or watch the sequences several times, to really pick up on everything they did with the different animals' bodies in the fight scenes.  I'm sure there's a lot of innovative stuff that I missed.

This film presents me with a problem where the mileage is concerned - I'm guessing there's no real Gongmen City in China - but Wikipedia tells me that Dreamworks staffers visited Chengdu, China, which is known as the "panda hometown", and worked many visual elements of Chengdu into the film.  Good enough for me.

Also starring the voices of Jack Black (last seen in "The Fan"), Dustin Hoffman (last seen in "Little Fockers"), Angelina Jolie (last seen in "Life or Something Like It"), Gary Oldman (last seen in "The Scarlet Letter"), Jackie Chan (last seen in "Shanghai Knights"), Seth Rogen (last heard in "Paul"), Lucy Liu ("Shanghai Noon"), David Cross, James Hong, Danny McBride (last seen in "Due Date"), Michelle Yeoh, Victor Garber (last seen in "The Town") and Jean-Claude Van Damme.

DISTANCE TRAVELED TODAY:  2,084 miles / 3,354 km  (Bangalore, India to Chengdu, China)

DISTANCE TRAVELED SO FAR:   22,210 miles / 35,746 km

RATING: 6 out of 10 peacock feathers

A Passage to India

 Year 4, Day 296 - 10/22/12 - Movie #1,283

WORLD TOUR Day 47 - India

BEFORE: Teams must now fly to India and ride an elephant to receive their next clue.  (Sorry, I was channeling "The Amazing Race" there for a second...)  I've gone on to Asia, since I don't have access to the latest film in the "Madagascar" series.   This is sort of the follow-up to "A Room With a View", which was also based on a novel written by E.M. Forster.  Linking from "Born Free", Geoffrey Keen was also in a film called "Cromwell" with Alec Guinness (last seen in "The Ladykillers").

THE PLOT:  Cultural mistrust and false accusations doom a friendship in British colonial India between an Indian doctor, an Englishwoman engaged to marry a city magistrate, and an English educator.

AFTER: Well, it was either watch this film or "Gandhi", and I'm still not ready for that one.  This film was 2 hours and 45 minutes long, which was long enough.  Geez, I have to go to work in the morning!

The unintended theme developing this week seems to be the influence European colonialism - we had the French controlling things in Morocco in "Casablanca", the European gorilla poaching trade in Rwanda, and the British game warden managing the animal population in Kenya.  Tonight's setting, India, is the classic example of British Imperialism, and this film explores some of the differences between the Brits and the natives.  I must have been out sick when this was covered in school, because it's all new to me.

I can't say if it's all right or wrong, but it sure seems like the Brits treated the Indians as second-class citizens.   There are obvious resemblances here to the trial that's central to the plot of "To Kill a Mockingbird" - and here a British prosecutor makes some rather racist remarks about Hindu men preferring white women, but the reverse not being true.

As with other recently watched adaptations of novels, I've gone to the modern-day Cliff Notes, Wikipedia, to familiarize myself with the novel.  According to that, the ending of the novel was intentionally ambiguous with regard to Aziz's guilt or innocence.  So we're still left with the question about what exactly happened in the Marabar Caves, and what the deal is with Adela Quested. According to the IMDB, since E.M. Forster was homosexual, he was ambivalent towards women (not sure I follow the logic...) so therefore she can't be deluded, evil, malicious or stupid (again, not sure I follow the logic).

Alec Guinness appears here in dark-skin make-up (I thought that sort of thing was frowned upon) though he does lend some Hindu wisdom in a Kenobi-like fashion.  Basically, if things are meant to be, they're meant to be, and nothing we can do will change the outcome.  Seems more like an excuse to be lazy, if you ask me.

Also starring Judy Davis (last seen in "The Break-Up"), Victor Banerjee, Peggy Ashcroft, James Fox (last seen in "Sherlock Holmes").

DISTANCE TRAVELED TODAY:  2,965 miles / 4,772 km  (Nairobi, Kenya to Bangalore, India)

DISTANCE TRAVELED SO FAR:   20,126 miles / 32,392 km

RATING: 4 out of 10 tea parties

Born Free

 Year 4, Day 295 - 10/21/12 - Movie #1,282

WORLD TOUR Day 46 - Kenya

BEFORE:  I might have been shown this film as a small boy, but I don't remember a thing about it, so I'm counting it as unseen, until now.  This is my final stop in Africa, this time I made it across a continent in just three days/movies.  Linking from "Gorillas in the Mist", Bryan Brown was also in a film called "Parker" with Ingrid Pitt, who was also in "Octopussy" with Geoffrey Keen.

THE PLOT:  Joy Adamson and her husband, Kenya game warden George Adamson, raise Elsa, a lion cub. When Elsa approaches maturity, Joy determines she must re-educate Elsa to living in the wild so that the lioness can return to a free life.

AFTER:  Well, this reinforces some of the things I said last night about animals, and animal activists.  I maintain that some animals are perfect for domestication, and others aren't - case in point, lions.  The Adamsons raise three lion cubs essentially as pets, then have to re-train one of them to live in the wild.  Seems to me they could have saved some time just by raising the lion to be, you know, a lion.

But of course they gain joy by having such a majestic lion live with them, and that's where I start to question their motives.  Who's to say which animals are majestic and which aren't?  The lions are perceived to be attractive - but isn't beauty arbitrary or subjective?  They train Elsa to kill her own food, starting with warthogs.  Well, who speaks up for the warthogs of the world?  Why does a lion deserve to survive and a warthog doesn't?  Are we paying respect to the natural food chain here, or are we giving favoritism to the "beautiful" animals? 

When the Adamsons cannot care for Elsa any more, they train her to live in the wild, since they can't bear the thought of sending her to live in a zoo.  Why?  Wasn't that good enough for her two siblings?   Instead of training her to be a killer, it seems the zoo would be a good fit for her, because the zookeepers would feed her every day, no re-training required.  Plus, what zoo wouldn't want a nearly-domesticated lion, to cut down on the dangers of dealing with a savage one?

Plus, if Elsa were in a zoo, the Adamsons could at least visit her regularly, as opposed to releasing her into the wild, and possibly never seeing her again.  So, I don't really follow the logic here, except that I've taken in stray cats, and after they learn to live indoors, I can't really see releasing them outside again, especially after I've become attached to them.  But those cats aren't lions, though they may think of themselves as such.

This is based on a true story, but obviously events were recreated for the film, and I'm pretty wary of this sort of thing where animals are concerned.  The old Disney nature documentaries from the 1950's are notorious for faking footage - to get the shot of a mountain goat stumbling and falling from a great height, they didn't film for days to get that footage - the goat was likely pushed by an off-screen helper.  The quite untrue urban legend about lemmings mindlessly jumping off cliffs came from the 1958 Disney film "White Wilderness", so I don't even want to think about how many innocent lemmings died from being needlessly hurled from a cliff to get that footage.

So, logically, they probably used domesticated lions to make this film, for the safety of the actors, and the whole point of the film is that domesticating lions is not really what's best for them.  I can't get past that irony.  And to get footage of lions fighting each other, they probably didn't find that occuring naturally, I bet they took tame lions and taught them to fight, which seems pretty low.  The film probably did a lot to advance the cause of conservationism, but does the end justify the means?

My major complaint against the film is the theme song - it's fine on its own (though WAY too likely to get stuck in one's head) but was completely overused for instrumentals throughout the whole film.  Every single piece of incidental music was based on that same tune, which was stale after about 10 minutes.

Also starring Virginia McKenna, Bill Travers.

DISTANCE TRAVELED TODAY:  504 miles / 812 km  (Mt. Karisimbi, Rwanda to Nairobi, Kenya)

DISTANCE TRAVELED SO FAR:   17,161 miles / 27,620 km

RATING: 4 out of 10 zebra carcasses

Gorillas in the Mist

 Year 4, Day 294 - 10/20/12 - Movie #1,281

WORLD TOUR Day 45 - Congo + Rwanda

BEFORE: As promised, headed deep into the jungles of Africa tonight.  Linking from "Casablanca", Humphrey Bogart was in "The Big Sleep" with Lauren Bacall, who was also in "Harper" with Julie Harris (last seen in "Requiem for a Heavyweight").

THE PLOT:  The story of Dian Fossey, a scientist who came to Africa to study the vanishing mountain gorillas, and later fought to protect them.

AFTER:  Not much to report tonight, since the film is based on actual events, my rating can't be seen as a judgment of the story, merely a judgment of whether it constitutes an interesting one.  I'm torn on that issue.

Edit: After further reflection, I suppose I should weigh in here with some added opinion - if not, then why should anyone read my postings?  I agree with this film in principle, but it does seem a little overly simplistic in its leanings.  Dian Fossey = always right, everyone else = wrong, plus poaching = very, very wrong.   I'm with you on that last part, since nobody needs a gorilla-paw ashtray or some untested medical cure made from ground rhino horn.

But there are times that I don't agree with the extremist views on animal rights, such as those put forth by PETA, which is against all animal consumption, and even house-pets.  I love my cats, most of them over the years have been strays taken off the streets, and how can that be wrong?  They've probably lived longer under my care than they would in the wild.  And as for consuming animals, well, I'm an omnivore through and through.  Some animals are pets, and some are food.  I didn't make the rules. 

Gorillas obviously don't fall into either category, and I'm sort of iffy on the concept of zoos, but I'd at least like to think that the animals in a well-maintained zoo have pretty good lives.  Sure, it's not their natural environment, but it's three hots and a cot, right?  If I were offered the chance to be the human exhibit in an alien zoo, I'd certainly consider it.

Also starring Sigourney Weaver (last seen in "Cedar Rapids"), Bryan Brown.

DISTANCE TRAVELED TODAY:  3,440 miles / 5,537 km  (Casablanca, Morocco to Goma, Congo and then Mt. Karisimbi, Rwanda)

DISTANCE TRAVELED SO FAR:   16,657 miles / 26,808 km

RATING: 5 out of 10 college interns

Casablanca

Year 4, Day 293 - 10/19/12 - Movie #1,280

WORLD TOUR Day 44 - Casablanca, Morocco

BEFORE: Two continents down, and just 4 to go.  I've left Europe behind and I'm in Africa for a few days - but I've time-traveled from one war zone to another.  How is it possible that I've never seen "Casablanca", one of the (allegedly) world's greatest films?  Well, I'm not proud of it, but every time I've tried to watch this, I've lost interest or fallen asleep.  There's something about Bogart's monotone voice that I find soporific, plus he has that manly disinterest in everything - if he's not interested in the plot points, why should I be?

Tonight I've got a big glass of "go-go juice" (Diet Mt. Dew) and I'm determined to cross it off my life list.  This whole World Tour might in fact have been designed to get me here, to force me to watch this.

Direct actor linking tonight is impossible, due to the 60-year time-span between films, but at least Geoffrey Rush from "Les Miserables" was also in "Shine" with Sir John Gielgud, who was also in "Murder on the Orient Express" with Ingrid Bergman.

THE PLOT:  Set in unoccupied Africa during the early days of World War II: An American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.

AFTER: Well, I made it through, and I only dozed off once or twice.  I rewound though (or rescanned, whatever you say with a DVD since it doesn't actually "wind") and soldiered on.

The opening of the film describes the mass exodus out of occupied France in the early days of World War II - apparently people traveled from Paris to Marseilles to Casablanca to get to the U.S.  That's almost the exact same path my movie tour has taken!  Geez, sometimes it's almost like I know exactly what I'm doing.  But then people tried to get OUT of Casablanca to Lisbon, and I'm going further into Africa tomorrow. 

I finally GET this film, at least a bit below the surface details.  In my defense, it's a very "talkie" film.  Oh, there are brief scuffles and a shootout in the bar, but 99% of the time, someone forgot the cardinal rule of filmmaking, which is "Show, don't tell."  Nearly everything here is "tell" - plus they repeat the same plot points two or three times, to the point of ridiculousness.  Quit reminding me how things work in Casablanca, I haven't forgot where the movie is set, it's in the damn title even!

Still, there are the classic lines - "Here's looking at you, kid", "I'll round up the usual suspects", and "The Germans wore gray.  You wore blue."  (NOTE: Bogart never actually says "Play it again, Sam." That's a common Hollywood misquote.)  Most of these are so often quoted that they're now hackneyed, however.  I did like some of the lesser known bits, like Renault saying "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" just before he's handed his roulette winnings.

I didn't find the story very complex, except there is an undercurrent of wrongdoing - it's implied that Renault is trading exit visas for sex with young women, for example.  I guess they couldn't just come out and say that in the 1940's.

I'm still not a fan, but at least I have some appreciation for the film now.  It did win the Best Picture Oscar, after all.  

Also starring Humphrey Bogart (last seen in "The Big Sleep"), Claude Rains (last seen in "The Adventures of Robin Hood"), Paul Henreid, Sydney Greenstreet (last seen in "The Maltese Falcon"), Peter Lorre (last seen in "The Patsy"), Dooley Wilson.

DISTANCE TRAVELED TODAY:  1,173 miles / 1,888 km  (Paris, France to Casablanca, Morocco)

DISTANCE TRAVELED SO FAR:   13,217 miles / 21,271 km

RATING: 4 out of 10 exit visas