FILM REVIEW

The Day After and The Day After Tomorrow

Roland Emmerich, the director of doomsday movies, gave us two epic adventures about global catastrophes – The Day After Tomorrow in 2004 and 2012 in 2009. While one is about the devastating impact of global warming where everything freezes to subzero and the earth is threatened by a second ice age, the other is about the cataclysmic solar storms that trigger volcanoes and earthquakes, wreaking terrible havoc on the planet. Big blockbusters, bombastic words. The only way to describe Emmerich’s mega-scale films that also include The Independence Day (1996), Godzilla (1998) and 10,000 BC (2008).

Emmerich has probably envisioned the destruction of earth and humankind by aliens, man, monster and nature more than any other director and at the pace he is churning out apocalyptic films, we will have a few more by 2020. I hope he does, so far they have been exciting and nerve wracking.

However, long before climatologist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) tried in vain to convince a stubborn US vice president of an unprecedented climate change and the coming of a new ice age in The Day After Tomorrow, university science professor Dr. Russell Oakes (Jason Robards) walked the lone and barren path through the death streets of Kansas City in the aftermath of a devastating Soviet nuclear missile strike in The Day After (1983). The catastrophes pictured in both the films were manmade and, in spite of the twenty-one year timeline between the two, continue to pose a real threat even today.

The Day After, an American television film directed by Nicholas Meyer, was shot on a small budget and more like a reality biopic in the backdrop of the Cold War between the US and the USSR. I’d like to think that, at some point, the film brought the nuclear posturing Americans and the Soviets to the negotiating table. 

The film, with its frightening portrayal of a nuclear bomb-hit city and the trail of radioactive destruction in its wake, did well at the global box office, including India. I saw the film alone in a theatre called Eros, one of the finest in south Bombay at the time, and recall being awed by the mushroom cloud on 70 mm.

The final scene in The Day After will forever stay with me: Dr. Oakes making his way through the burning and dying city, to see his home one last time, and Joe Huxley (John Lithgow) talking to a radio without hope, “Hello? This is Lawrence, Lawrence, Kansas. Is anybody there? Anybody? Anybody at all…” This is just about all I can remember about The Day After. How terrifying can that be!

For Tuesday's Forgotten and Overlooked films, go to Todd Mason's blog at www.socialistjazz.blogspot.com

JUKE BOX

I Dreamed a Dream by Susan Boyle

In April 2009, Susan Boyle, as a 47-year old unmarried and unemployed Scottish woman, took Britain's Got Talent, Simon Cowell, and the music industry by storm when she sang I Dreamed a Dream from Les Miserables to global applause. If you want to know what instant success and glory is, watch this video. You'll give her a standing ovation too.

A poser for the weekend

Here’s a tricky question to end the day, at least in my part of the world: if you had free access to copyrighted books and ebooks on the internet, what would you do? Would you be tempted to download them on to your e-reader or desktop computer or would you take the moral high ground and desist from doing such a thing? Music I have downloaded, movies never, and books not yet. Millions are downloading music and movies without a shred of guilt. I don’t know the download scene for books still under copyright. So far the only books I’m reading online and occasionally downloading are the classics, other fiction, and short stories no longer under copyright. But what is your view?

One novel, one film, one comic

All Quiet on the Western Front is one novel, film and comic-book I'd like to read, watch and read. The title suddenly sprang up today while I was looking for some images on the internet. I haven't read the book by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War I, which is what the story is all about. Neither have I seen the black-and-white film directed by Lewis Milestone and starring Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim, John Wray and Arnold Lucy, all new to me. Classics Illustrated did a fine job of bringing it out in comic-book which I read many years ago, though, unfortunately, it's not a part of my small collection of CI. 

According to an interesting Study Guide by The Glencoe Literature Library, "In 1933, All Quiet on the Western Front was one of the first books that the Nazis burned in public, declaring it a 'betrayal of the soldiers of the First World War'. The successful American film of the novel, made in 1930, was also banned by the Nazis. Had Remarque remained in Germany, he would have faced certain persecution. The Nazi government later revoked his German citizenship in 1938."

At this point of time there's very little I can say about All Quiet on the Western Front except that I've been told it is one of the greatest war movies on the Great War. You might have difficulty acquiring the rare comic-book but not the ebook or the film, the former is freely available online.

Don't forget to check out Friday's Forgotten Books at Todd Mason's blog www.socialistjazz.blogspot.com

Laughing with Laurel

"Well, I couldn't help it, I was dreaming I was awake,
then I woke up and found myself asleep!"

Some lines are meant to be delivered only by some actors. Like this classic line Stan Laurel utters in the 1934 short film Oliver The Eighth directed by Lloyd French and produced by Hal Roach. I can't think of anyone other than Laurel saying it. It's not just funny, it's uproariously funny. Psychologists should prescribe a liberal dose of Laurel and Hardy films instead of antidepressants. It will do wonders for mental health.

Photo: MGM

The Lottery Ticket and A Nincompoop by Anton Chekhov

“Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress.”

Anton Chekhov, one of the greatest writers of short stories, was very popular during my school days, popping out of our English text books and regaling us with stories of despair and hope. The Russian physician and author often shared the 35-minute English period with other acclaimed writers and poets like Dickens, Shaw, Milton and Byron. He was the odd-man out but he didn’t seem to mind because he had the attention of the class.

Chekhov wrote about ordinary people who lived even less ordinary lives. The human life was central to his stories which revolved around the working class, the wage-earning proletariat, and their seemingly insurmountable problems and their unfulfilled dreams and aspirations. Through his writings, he advocated just and equitable treatment of the less fortunate and strived to raise their lot. He captured the pathos of their situation like few did.

To give you a feel of Chekhov’s humane writing, in A Nincompoop, the master of the house says to himself in the end, “How easy it is to crush the weak in this world!” The “weak” in the story is Julia Vassilyevna, his children’s governess, who quietly walks out of the room with her monthly wage of eighty rubles—shortly after her master has played a cruel joke on her.

A few moments before, the man had summoned the governess to his room in order to settle her account and had proceeded to deduct a considerable amount from her wages on account of various reasons. A teary-eyed Vassilyevna accepts the final sum of eleven rubles with trembling fingers and whispers “Merci” to the visible anger of her master.

“For what, this ‘merci’?” he asks.

“For the money.”

“But you know I have cheated you, for God’s sake, robbed you! I have actually stolen from you! Why this ‘merci’?”

“In my other places, they did not give me anything at all.”

“They did not give you anything? No wonder! I played a little joke on you, a cruel lesson, just to teach you... I am going to give you the entire eighty rubles! Here they are in an envelope all ready for you... Is it really possible to be so spineless? Why don't you protest? Why be silent? Is it possible in this world to be without teeth and claws, to be such a nincompoop?”

A Nincompoop stands on its own and requires no further explanation, as does Chekhov’s other popular story The Lottery Ticket. If you’ve read Chekhov before then you might guess what this one is all about. I’ll tell you a bit about it.

This story is about a middle-class family, Ivan Dmitritch and his wife Masha, who are quite happy with their lot which includes a tidy income of 1,200 rubles a year. Then one day, after supper, Masha asks her husband to check her lottery ticket in the day’s newspaper. He does so and finds that the series number tallies. But does the ticket number tally too? If it does, then Masha stands to win the prize of 75,000 rubles!

The harsh reality of the story lies somewhere between the two numbers, as Ivan and Masha, married for several years and suffering one another, visibly so, dream about what each would do if they win it. I won’t spoil it for you any more. You have to read the story.

FILM REVIEW

Whiteout and The Back-up Plan

Tom Skerritt and Kate Beckinsale in Whiteout.

Last Tuesday, as part of Todd Mason's weekly meme about Overlooked/Forgotten Films at his blog Sweet Freedom, I wrote about the James Franco starrer Annapolis which, in my opinion, deserved to be overlooked and forgotten, in a different sense than what this entertaining meme is really about. Over the weekend I saw Whiteout (2009) and The Back-up Plan (2010), two more films I had no hesitation in placing in the watch-and-forget category. And to think I've been cribbing about not having enough time to read books or play chess. 

By some coincidence, Whiteout and The Back-up Plan tell the stories of two women who are unsure of the men in their lives (actually, in their midst), though, in vastly different circumstances.

In Whiteout, directed by Dominic Sena, US Marshal Carrie Stetko (Kate Beckinsale) is stranded at a deserted research station in Antarctica, for six months of a fierce winter storm, as she tries to hunt down a serial killer responsible for the murders of his associates, all of them involved in diamond smuggling. Stetko eventually nails the killer and also discovers the role of her close friend and ageing station medic Dr. John Fury (Tom Skerritt) in the diamond smuggling. The marshal gives Stetko, a harmless bloke who meant no harm, a grim choice: either she turns him in or he goes out into the whiteout where nothing is visible and only death waits. Dr. Fury chooses the latter, but not before a final drink and one last look at the aurora.

The man in the film, or in Stetko's life, is Robert Pryce (Gabriel Macht), a UN security agent who mysteriously lands up at the station to assist in the investigation. Stetko suspects his motives but these prove unfounded as the UN agent comes to her rescue during a particularly intense struggle with the killer in the middle of a deadly snowstorm.

Whiteout is supposed to be a thriller but I failed to see the suspense. It has its moments, though. For instance, much of the film is shot outdoors, in the frozen climes of Antarctica, a white-and-grey landscape that looks like the last place god made. Beckinsale does well as Marshal Stetko though she could do with more expression on her face. She could have been a part of the evacuation of the cold continent but decides to stay back for up to six months and investigate the murders—a tense period during which she discovers a trail of blood and dead bodies, a crashed Russian plane, and unexplained cargo, gets trapped in a tunnel, loses a finger, and nearly lose her life more than once.

There's plenty of action in Whiteout, no doubt, but it's all still white and grey and visibility is near zero—a blizzard of a movie that you might see on a cold and wet day. If I were you, I'd go for that unsolved jigsaw puzzle on the table.

The Back-up Plan, directed by Alan Poul, is arguably one of the silliest movies I've seen in recent months. It's meant to be a romantic comedy but, just as I failed to see the suspense in Whiteout, I didn't see the romance in this one. Zoe (Jennifer Lopez) realises she's getting on in life with no sign of settling down with a husband and children. With no man in her life, Zoe decides to have a baby through artificial insemination, prepares for the role of a single mother, and promptly falls for Stan (Alex O'Loughlin).

Alex O'Loughlin and Jennifer Lopez in The Back-up Plan.

 
The reason Zoe is in no-man-in-my-life situation is because she doesn't let anyone get too close to her. Not even Stan who sticks by her even after she shocks him with news that she's pregnant, with twins she later discovers. A case of two very cold feet.

At one point, Stan, who hides his own misgivings about instant fatherhood and tries hard to make Zoe feel secure and wanted, tells her "I love you" and a pregnant Zoe responds by throwing up in the sink. "Not the answer I was looking for," Stan murmurs.

In the end Zoe overcomes her fear of commitment, with a little help from her "just married" grandmother, her only blood relation, and runs back to Stan in case she loses him too. You can't help wondering to yourself, "Why is he still around? Come on, Stan, go get a life."

Photo courtesy: Warner Bros. Pictures for Whiteout and CBS Films for The Back-up Plan