The Hypocrisy of Dealing with Charlie Sheen

This is obviously the face of a cracked-out mess, but I do find it curious that he was allowed to keep his job on a hit family sitcom while:

• Having charges brought against him for beating his wife.
• Trashing a hotel room in a rage after thinking a hooker he was with had stolen his wallet and watch. Said "contractor" looked herself in the bathroom fearing for her life.
• Spending $500,000 on drugs and prostitutes over the past six months.
• Going on a 36-hour drug and porn star spree, which landed him in the hospital.

He's been unrepentant about all this as he has been about his ongoing drug use and regular solicitation of prostitutes (including earning a place in the Heidi Fleis All-Star Club).

All of the above, totally fine if you're on a #1 rated sitcom about two brothers and one of their little boys. That families watch. That makes a ton of money. Need to lay everyone on set off (who make a fraction of what Sheen does, incidentally) so he can go to rehab? No worries. Just dandy. Sheen can even speak to the UCLA college baseball team while he's supposedly in said-rehab and tell them to don't do crack, unless they can handle it.

BUT the minute Sheen insults the show's creator off-set, on the radio? No more show.

I mean admittedly his rants were way over the top and insane (I mean, really, Vatican Assassin Warlocks? Everyone knows the Vatican only employs vampires.). But, after all he's done, why would you expect anything else? This is the man who believes that 9/11 was a controlled explosion.

This all just seems so completely fucked up, doesn't it?

This just in: Charlie Sheen is shopping a book. He wants $10 million.

60 Second Review: Unstoppable (2010)

Directed by Tony Scott
Starring Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, Rosario Dawson
Score: 8 out of 10

The star of Unstoppable is a runaway train that stretches a half-mile and is filled with an explosive, unstable compound that, if detonated, can take out several square miles.

Enter Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) and Denzel Washington to save the day.

Washington plays a 28-year veteran to the railway system and Pine is his cocky, young trainee. The two don't get along at first, but have to put aside their differences to stop the fugitive train from destroying the town in which Pine's character's entire family lives.

Needless to say, Unstoppable is a bit formulaic. Okay. More than a bit.

With action films, I'm okay with "formula" but it has to be good enough to pull me into the story, make me suspend what I know to be true. The logical part of my brain, which has been conditioned from years of watching movies directed by Tony Scott and Jerry Bruckheimer, knows that no one important (to the plot of the film) will die and tragedy will be averted. A good suspense action film will flip on the emotional side of my brain--the part that makes me cringe at house spiders and believes there's an axe murderer in the woods outside my house--causing me to tense up and actually fear for the worse. It's like being on a roller coaster--you know the chances are slim the car will skip the track and you'll go plummeting to your death, but the it's the slightest hint of disaster that makes the ride all the more fun.

That's the best compliment I can pay to a movie like Unstoppable--I knew everything would be fine, but the film's intensity allowed me to, as they say, suspend my disbelief about a runaway train hurling itself like a missile at a sleepy Pennsylvania town.

Unstoppable is now available on DVD and as an iTunes rental. 

60 Second Review: Unknown (2011)

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra
Starring Liam Neeson, January Jones, Diane Kruger
Score: 2 out of 10

I love Liam Neeson.

I hated Unknown.

I'll concede to the potential of its concept: a husband and wife travel to Berlin for a conference. Upon arriving at the hotel, the husband, Dr. Martin Harris (Neeson), realizes he has left his satchel, which contains his wallet and passport, back at the airport. Without telling his wife (January Jones, who is terrible here for the same reasons she's great on 'Mad Men'), Harris hails a cab and heads back to find his lost luggage.

On the way, a refrigerator falls off a truck causing a chain reaction accident that ends with the cab flying into bone-chilling waters. Harris suffers a nasty bump on the noggin that leaves him in a coma for four days. When he regains consciousness, he's understandably worried about his wife, but with her, he also meets the man (Aidan Quinn) who has moved into his life and now claims to be Martin Harris.

For the first hour of Unknown's  entirely-too-long two hour running time, not much happens save for Neeson running around claiming to be the real Dr. Harris. People tell him he's not. He insists he is. Rinse, repeat.

When Neeson's Harris finally enlists the services of a private investigator who was once a member of East Germany's Stasi, things perk up a bit. This is clearly a character with a past, but with the exception of one scene, his presence is squandered--as is Frank Langella, who shows up to give the film its big reveal. I'll give some kudos to the twist, which on first blush is quite ingenious, but by the time you find out who the real Martin Harris is, the film is so flawed, nothing can save it.

Unknown is now in theaters. 

BILM Favorites: The Breakfast Club (1985)

I was 11 the first time I saw The Breakfast Club.

My brother (who was 8 at the time) and I were in the living room. My parents had retreated to their bedroom. I had bribed my brother into watching Showtime--it cost me three dollars to watch The Breakfast Club during the channel's Saturday night premiere.

Before the film, which was introduced by Leonard Maltin, Showtime promoted their weekly trivia contest. That week's question: How much does John Bender bet that Claire is still a virgin? At 11, the question made me blush.

I had wanted to see The Breakfast Club in theaters, but while my parents never cared much about what I saw or did, there was no way they were going to take me, so I bided my time and kept my eye on the movie channels, which were newly minted in our sleepy, suburban neighborhood.

To be honest, I had a bit of a crush on Emilio Estevez. I can't remember what movie this started with or if my infatuation came from The Breakfast Club's iconic poster (which was shot by a young Annie Leibovitz). In any case, I'm sure I'm one of many who flocked to the film that would make its young leads bonafied stars because of teenage (or in my case, pre-teen) lust.

By the end of the film, my crush had switched to Judd Nelson, I knew the answer to Showtime's trivia question (a million dollars), and I fell in love with film.

In some ways, I wish I could say it was Citizen Kane or Gone With the Wind that led me down the path of film appreciation. That would sound more sophisticated, but it wouldn't be true. To this day, while I can appreciate the cinematic merits of both those films and countless other classics, The Breakfast Club still moves me, speaks to me. The Breakfast Club was the first film I had ever seen that felt like it was made for me. While there was a lot my 11-year-old self didn't quite get (When Bender says the seminal line "Calvins in a ball in the back seat past 11 on a school night", I wondered who Calvin was and why he was in a ball.), I recognized its honesty and the raw emotion laid bare by the film's leads. It was the first time I remember appreciating not only film making, but just how powerful great acting can be.

Sure, it's not perfect. There are scenes that feel inauthentic--Andrew Clark's drug induced dance mania (I don't know about you--but pot makes me sleepy) and Allison's make-over. On this last scene, I've always been conflicted--I love when she's finally brave enough to come out from behind her impossible bangs and the if-looks-could-kill glare she gives to Brian when he stares up at her, shocked. When he breaks into a smile, her sharpness fades and she simply says, "Thank you." That's the ultimate for this not-quite-broken girl, long ignored by her parents and society. It's perfect on that emotional level, but the idea that Allison should have a make-over in a film that is, on some level, about accepting who you are feels false.

The Breakfast Club changed cinema. It, along with other films by Hughes and his contemporaries, helped usher in a new day in "teen" cinema. These movies didn't rely on gross-out jokes or tits & ass; instead they spoke honestly to their audiences in a way that not only affected teens but made adults remember what it was like to be young, confused, and often, misunderstood.

I revisit The Breakfast Club once every few months. Usually when I'm sick or have had a tough day. It always welcomes me back and when Bender pumps his fist in the air just as the first beat of Simple Minds' "Don't You Forget About Me" begins the credits, I know it's always going to be okay to be a brain, a jock, a basket case, a princess, or a criminal.

Ever browsed through Blogger?

I just did. What's with all the fitness and "if I post my diet goals here I'll stay honest" blogs? Needless to say a lot of them haven't seen a recent post in years. Guess the diet didn't work out....

Review: The Social Network (2010)

Directed by David Fincher
Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake
Rating 5 out of 10

According to a lot of the rest of the world, The Social Network is the best movie of the year.

I'm having a hard time understanding why.

The Social Network is the story of Facebook or, more to the point, the site's creator Mark Zuckerberg, who, if the movie is to be believed, is a misogynistic, Type A with more work ethic than compassion.

According to the film, Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) isn't good with girls. Frankly, he isn't much good with anyone--male or female. The movie opens with him and his girlfriend (Rooney Mara) sharing a beer at a local bar. He goes to Harvard and, as he points out with contempt, she's a student at Boston University. In other words, to his mind, he's slumming it. Perhaps that's why he doesn't notice her frustration at his self-possessed rant against the Harvard club system. She takes a sip of her beer, comes to her senses and dumps him before the opening credits appear. Like a lot of college guys, Zuckerberg deals with this perceived injustice by drinking. Unlike a lot of guys, he blogs while he drinks. After indelicately comparing women to farm animals (wait...is there a delicate way to do that?) he creates a site called FaceMash, which allows anyone with Internet access to judge the physical assets of Harvard's female co-eds against one another.

This little stunt, which generates so much traffic that it ends up immobilizing Harvard's network, catches the attention of three upperclassmen, including the creepy Winklevoss twins, who ask Zuckerberg to help build a campus social networking site called HarvardConnect.

Zuckerberg takes the idea and runs with it...as his own. Several weeks later, he launches called The Facebook.

Dashed hopes, failed expectations, multi-million dollar lawsuits, and a manic Sean Parker (played with glee by Justin Timberlake) follow. Just another day in the life of Facebook. Here's the rub though: I hated every single person in this movie and I'm pretty sure that wasn't an accident. The Social Network is like a drama that might play out in wall posts on Facebook. The betrayal! The deceit! The backstabbing!

The movie does do a good job of showing these kids as a part of a generation that has been conditioned to believe in how special, unique and deserving they are. A little like Facebook I suppose. You have to be a little arrogant to believe that your "friends" actually care about what you ate for lunch. Of course, arrogance is often a personality trait in great leaders, but I would be shocked to find that Zuckerberg is as atrocious a communicator as this film makes him out to be.

And that leads me to the biggest problem with The Social Network: a lot of it simply isn't true. Of course, a nugget of the truth exists--Zuckerberg was sued by the Winklevoss twins as well as his business partner Eduardo Saverin after Zuckerberg creatively and cruelly pushed Saverin out of the company. Many facts though, such as the opening break-up scene that supposedly inspired Zuckerberg's social media creationist ways, are patently false.

Based off the book The Accidental Millionaires, so many liberties are taken with the real story of Facebook's founding that it can hardly even be labeled as "based on a true story" and interestingly, it's not. Sorkin has admitted in a number of interviews while promoting the film that he took a fair amount of license for dramatic flair. Yet, he still chose to use Zuckerberg's name...and Saverin's and Parker's. Of course, all this subterfuge didn't hurt anyone: The Social Network was a huge hit and made Zuckerberg TIME's Man of the Year. The last time I checked Facebook was continuing to grow on 500 million users. And, maybe, I have to wonder--was that the whole point of The Social Network?

At the end of The Social Network, I felt like I had just watched a magic trick. An aptly directed (though I don't agree this is David Fincher's best film--Zodiac is far better in every way), well-written one, but a magic trick nonetheless. The Social Network isn't much more than a two-hour behind-the-scenes infomercial for Facebook. Sure, the Eisenberg version of Zuckerberg may come off as abrasive, but he's hard working and earnest. The lie that begins the entire charade (remember the girlfriend in the bar?) comes around in the end to give Zuckerberg a shot at redemption--through the power of Facebook.

I didn't hate The Social Network, but I didn't much like it either. It feels like a ruse; a movie that was supposed to expose the dirty underbelly of Facebook but instead had all the bite of a gossip website--albeit one that helped with brand recognition.

I would hate to see The Social Network win Best Picture at this year's Academy Awards. People may try and use words like "scathing" to describe Zuckerberg's portrayal, but I would argue that it and a lot else about The Social Network are shallow. The film is less about Facebook and more about the mythology of Zuckerberg. The Social Network is like a page on Facebook--it's all about personal promotion making it hard to figure out what exactly is the truth.