The Couch Potato Report - March 24th, 2007
This week The Couch Potato Report shines the spotlight on a Genie nominee, an Oscar nominee and the fifth sequel to the Best Picture of 1976.
First up this week is a film you might not have heard of, but a few weeks ago it stood as one of the best Canadian films of last year at The Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television's Genie Awards.
The film is called CHEECH.
It is a film from Quebec about six people living through the worst day of their lives.
The less than respectable people in the film - the lead character runs an escort service - keep making bad decisions as their day goes on, and each one seems to make things worse.
One of the female escorts would like to join a new agency, so as a sign of good faith, she has told them the best way to rob her current employer.
Meanwhile, her current boss is trying to increase his business, and he has an assistant who is in love with one of the women who works with them.
Nothing seems to go right for these people...nothing...and that is a credit to CHEECH as just when you think you might know what is going to happen, it takes a twist or turn and you are back at square one, guessing what is going to happen again.
CHEECH is not an unfamiliar film, in fact most of it will seem very familiar, especially if you saw last year's Academy Award winning film CRASH...but what is unique about it, is that fact that it takes place in Quebec, and the sights and sounds are all pure Canadian!
Something else that is unique is the fact that the main character stops whatever he is doing several times during the film for a daily affirmation, in hopes of getting out of his depression.
And when he stops, the people around him stop, and the action in the film stops.
CHEECH is not a perfect film, and it's subject matter, language and violence prevent me from recommending it to everyone, but if you are interested in seeing how the lives of six less than perfect people collide, then perhaps you should look for it.
It isn't superb, or all that unfamiliar, but CHEECH does have it's unique moments.
Up next this week is the Academy Award nominated film BLOOD DIAMOND.
Leonardo DiCaprio was nominated in the Best Actor category and Djimon Hounsou from the movies GLADIATOR and IN AMERICA was nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category for their superb work in this thought provoking film about the diamond trade in Africa.
In BLOOD DIAMOND DiCaprio plays an ex Mercenary and Hounsou a fisherman.
Both men are African, but their histories as different as any can be, until their fates become joined in a common quest to recover a rare pink diamond that can transform their lives.
Jennifer Connelly from A BEAUTIFUL MIND also stars in the film as a journalist who is looking to tell the true story of Africa's diamond trade.
BLOOD DIAMOND features great acting and an engaging story and group of actors, and it also depicts the savagry and barbarism that people in Africa will go through to get their hands on diamonds.
At times it is a tough film to sit through, but at all times it is honest.
If you are thinking of buying a diamond for someone you love, I sugest that you see this film first AND you should also watch the documentary on the DVD called BLOOD ON THE STONE.
In will open your eyes, I guarantee it!
Our final film this week is the very satisfying ROCKY BALBOA.
At the Academy Awards in 1976 the original ROCKY, about an underdog boxer from Philadelphia who was given a chance to succeed, was named best picture.
While it's sequels 2 through 4 didn't win Oscars, they did win the hearts of movie goers as The Italian Stallion became a worldwide sensation...on screen and off.
After ROCKY 5 came out and flopped in 1990 it looked like we would never get another one...but now ROCKY BALBOA is available and in this sixth and reportedly final chapter Rocky comes out of retirement to step into the ring for the last time.
I am am fan of the ROCKY films. I grew up with them, I watch them today, and I love them. But when I heard that Stallone was making another one I was very, very skeptical.
But the film is very satisfying, both to me as a fan o fthe series and characters, to me as a fan of films, and to me, as someone who is getting older, and isn't always all that happy about that fact.
ROCKY BALBOA is a very entertaining film, even if you have never seen any of the others.
ROCKY BALBOA, and all of the ROCKY films for that matter, are now available on DVD. So is the entertaining and informative BLOOD DIAMOND and the not that unfamiliar, but unique in it's own right film CHEECH.
Coming up in two weeks on the next Couch Potato Report
We'll look back at the life and career of the late great film director Robert Altman with his eight film box set THE ROBERT ALTMAN BOX; a naive barber is the main character in the new-to-DVD classic Canadian film HIGHWAY 61; the great Ashley Judd is a woman searching for love in COME EARLY MORNING; and the animated film HAPPY FEET tap dances it's way onto DVD.
I'm Dan Reynish. I'll have more on those, and some other releases, in fourteen days.
For now, that's this week's COUCH POTATO REPORT.
Enjoy the movies and I'll see you back here next time on The Couch!
Gibson, professor trade barbs over film
LOS ANGELES - Mel Gibson exchanged angry words with a university professor who challenged the accuracy of his film "Apocalypto" at an on-campus screening. Gibson was answering questions from the crowd at California State University, Northridge, Thursday night when Alicia Estrada, an assistant professor of Central American studies, accused the actor-director of misrepresenting the Mayan culture in the movie. Gibson directed an expletive at the woman, who was removed from the crowd.
"In no way was my question aggressive in the way that he responded to it," Estrada said. "These are questions that my peers, my colleagues, ask me every time I make a presentation. These are questions I pose to my students in the classroom."
Gibson's publicist, Alan Nierob, characterized the professor as "a heckler."
"The woman ... was rude and disruptive inasmuch as the event organizers had to escort her out," Nierob said.
Lauren Robeson, editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper, the Daily Sundial, said Gibson denounced Estrada as a troublemaker.
"It was a brief disruption to an otherwise interesting, stimulating event from our students' perspectives," said university spokesman John Chandler. "The students were very appreciative of Mr. Gibson being there. He spent a lot of time answering questioernational headlines. The R-rated epic about the decline of Mayan civilization shows Mayan rulers slitting throats and beheading and ripping the beating hearts from the chests of their enemies.
Human sacrifice among the Mayans has been well-documented in recent years and is accepted as fact by most anthropologists, knocking down a previous theory that the culture did not take part in such bloody rituals.
However, there are some scholars and Indian activists who still believe the human sacrifice accounts are false or overblown, and an attempt by racist scientists to paint the culture as violent.
"This isn't the Mayan culture," Juan Tiney, leader of the National Indian and Farmer Committee, Guatemala's biggest Mayan organization, told the AP. "Although it might be part of it, there was also culture, economics, astronomical wealth and language. ... It discredits a people to present them in this manner."
Gibson "did his homework and consulted with world authorities on this matter," Nierob said.
"Apocalypto" has grossed more than $100 million worldwide, and it earned three Academy Award nominations.
"Titanic" stars DiCaprio, Winslet reuniting
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, who played ill-fated lovers in the 1997 smash hit "Titanic," are reuniting for a drama about postwar disillusionment, the DreamWorks movie studio said on Friday.
"Revolutionary Road" will be directed by Winslet's husband, British filmmaker Sam Mendes, who won an Oscar for directing 1999's dysfunctional family drama "American Beauty."
The DreamWorks project, based on the 1961 novel by Richard Yates, revolves around a suburban couple caught between their hopes for a life of art, culture and sophistication and the everyday drudgery of boring jobs and domesticity.
"Revolutionary Road" is considered a master work of modern American literature, and was named one of the top 100 novels of all time by Time magazine.
In "Titanic," DiCaprio's working-class character fell in love with a wealthy socialite played by Winslet aboard the doomed ocean liner that sank in the icy North Atlantic in 1912.
It became the highest-grossing movie of all time, raking in more than $1.8 billion in global ticket sales, and made DiCaprio and Winslet household names.
Both DiCaprio and Winslet were nominated for Oscars this year, for thriller "Blood Diamond" and drama "Little Children," respectively. DiCaprio has earned three Oscar nominations and Winslet five.
Discord in Boston after Delp suicide
CONCORD, N.H. - The band Boston spoke to people's souls during the 1970s with smash hits like "More Than a Feeling" and "Peace of Mind." But two weeks after lead singer Brad Delp's suicide at his New Hampshire home, bad feelings abound.
Current members of the band, including the chief songwriter and founder, Tom Scholz, were not informed about or invited to Delp's funeral, which was attended by early band members who opposed Scholz in a 1980s legal battle.
Last week, Delp's ex-wife Micki was quoted on a radio station saying Delp was distressed about the conflicts in his professional life and became despondent after a longtime friend, Fran Cosmo, was cut from Boston's summer concert lineup. The story spread online, where fans trying to figure out the reason for Delp's suicide took up the cudgels.
Scholz, who called Delp his "closest friend and collaborator in music for over 35 years," said he was crushed by Delp's suicide and his exclusion from the funeral. Now he feels he is being unfairly blamed for Delp's death.
"It went from devastating on the initial phone call to an absolute nightmare," Scholz told The Associated Press on Friday in a tearful telephone interview, his first since Delp's death on March 9. (An interview conducted by e-mail was published earlier in Rolling Stone.)
"We had been told it would only be his immediate family (at the funeral), and of course it wasn't," he said.
A lawyer for Scholz sent a letter to Micki Delp on Friday demanding a retraction. She did not immediately respond Friday to an e-mail message from The Associated Press via the publicist who has handled statements for the family.
Boston has canceled its summer engagements, and Scholz said he still hopes the rift can be mended and the band can be part of a public memorial service that Delp's children and fiancee, Pamela Sullivan, said last week was in the works.
Tensions between Scholz and some of the early band members date from the early 1980s, when CBS Inc. sued the band over delays in recording new albums. The company's Epic Records label recorded the band's first two releases: "Boston," in 1976, and "Don't Look Back," in 1978.
Scholz countersued for the rights to the band's name and music. Three members of the original band — Barry Goudreau, Sid Hashian and Fran Sheehan — testified for the record company, which lost. Goudreau is Micki Delp's brother-in-law, and she reportedly remains close to the ousted band members.
Delp, the only band member besides Scholz whose name was on the CBS recording contract, remained friends with everyone, touring and recording with Scholz and the others over the decades. He also started a Beatles tribute band, Beatle Juice.
Scholz wrote, engineered, and laid down nearly all the instrumental tracks on the first album, but he said Delp helped him refine the songs and brought his music to life.
"It went from a guitar lick that didn't mean a thing to a real song as soon as he opened his mouth. That was always the case," Scholz said. "We had a very, very close working relationship. I swear it was like we were hooked up by a cable. We didn't even have to talk most of the time."
Scholz and Delp were both vegetarians and pacifists, both dedicated their money and talents to causes they believed in, and both proposed to their longtime girlfriends on Christmas Day 2006 by putting rings in their stockings — only learning about the coincidence in a conversation afterward.
The band's first album was wildly successful, and remains one of the best-selling debut albums of all time, according to Billboard, selling more than 16 million copies. Boston's early music also remains a staple on classic rock stations, especially in New England.
96.5 FM ("The Mill") in Manchester plans a two-hour tribute to Boston on Sunday featuring excerpts from the station's interviews with Delp over the years. Program Director J.C. Haze said he remembers hearing the first album.
"Tom and Brad, they made such a unique sound it just took the world by storm," Haze said. "Nothing ever sounded like it, and nothing ever did since."