James Piper, Author

Thursday, June 4, 2009 The Love Song of Bobby Long. Feature film. (2004, 120 mins) IMDB ... interesting characters in an unusual setting ... P ursy lives in a trailer park with a deadbeat guy in Panama City, Florida. She sits on a couch watching TV, and, with a spoon covered in peanut butter, dips it into a bag of M&Ms. The place is a mess. He tells her she received a phone call a few days ago from Bobby Long. Bad news. Her mother died. Furious, she packs up and makes a trip to New Orleans where her mother lived in a beat-up old home she owned. The front lawn is dirt. The paint long pealed away to expose boards. Not much in the way of furniture. Old appliances. It's a mess as well. When Pursy arrives she finds out her mother was buried the day before. Dead a the age of forty. We never meet or see her mother. We don't know what she died from. We learn she sang, but obviously not that well given her living conditions. She never married, but ...

Wednesday, June 3, 2009 Disturbia. Feature film. (2007, 105 mins) IMDB ... it could have been far worse ... I t's not officially a remake but it is. This is modern take on REAR WINDOW. Instead of a photographer (Jimmy Steward) locked up in his apartment in NYC because of a broken leg, this film has a teenaged boy under house arrest with an ankle alarm. If he leaves the property, an alarm goes off and the police come right away and they do. In the opening sequence he drives the family car on a highway. His father is in the passenger seat. Out of nowhere, the car collides with another and another. The father is dead. The son is quilt ridden. The three months of house arrest (punishment for something that happened a year later) coincides with the summer months away from school. But his mother cuts the cable, internet, video games. With nothing to do, he becomes a voyeur and there's plenty of things to watch from his bedroom. Note: the family lives in ...

Tuesday, June 2, 2009 Once Upon a Time in Mexico. Feature film. (2003, 102 mins) IMDB ... do you like lots of gunfire? ... T he guitar player is back at it. This time there's no mistaken identity. He's wanted by the CIA to help with a coup or to stop a coup. It's never very clear to me, but it doesn't matter. The plot is oh so involved with many players. There's the president and his back-stabbing advisor. There's the CIA. The FBI. The drug cartel and fractions within it. There's also the Mexican army and a certain General. And of course there's El Mariachi and his men. The plot doesn't matter. It's an excuse to put action sequences on screen. In this case it's scenes where our hero is attacked and out numbered and he has to shot his way out of every situation. Bullets fly like rice on a wedding day. It's guns and guns and more guns. The most interesting aspect of this film? The making of it. Many of ...

Tuesday, June 2, 2009 Edison Force. Feature film. (2005, 97 mins) IMDB ... banal, trite, nothing new here, move along ... I t's not surprising this film was released straight to DVD. While there are top notch performers involved in making this film, the story is weak. It's weak because it's been done before and before. It's been in films and novels; it's been on TV dramas and TV news documentaries and of courses it's filed the news. What am I talking about? Police corruption. There's a wet-behind-the-ears "journalist" (Timberlake) who stumbles on possible police corruption when he covers a court case. He's eager to win prizes and fame and goes after it, but he has no idea what he is doing. His boss (Freeman), a veteran journalist, tells him so. We know what has happened because we saw what happened and saw the faked court evidence. The task for the journalist is get evidence to support his hypothesis. The cops beat...

Monday, June 1, 2009 Nothing Sacred. Feature film. (1937, 77 mins) IMDB ... Carole Lombard was tops in my books ... C arole Lombard would be near the top of my list of favourite actresses. Charming. Enchanting. Endearing. Funny. What is probably not known about her is the fact she could act. She wasn't limited to comedy. She had range, but wasn't able to use it. Sadly she died too young. What did we miss out on? A great deal I would say. NOTHING SACRED is a romantic comedy with an emphasis on comedy. Physical comedy. Pratfalls and fist fights and slapstick. It was fun to watch because we don't see a film loaded with it as in this film. Any of today's film that try to do it fail because they take it too far or maybe the actors can't pull it off. It looks easy, but like dancing on ice skates, it's far from easy. Lombard is a young woman living in a small Vermont town. Word reaches NYC she is dying from barium or radium poisoning...

Monday, June 1, 2009 In The Bedroom. Feature film. (2001, 130 mins) IMDB ... two stories written independently but similar--spooky ... T here are many similarities between this story and my novel MY DEARBORN. It's scary. I wrote my novel without any knowledge of this film or story and likewise with the people involved in this film. Parallel development. It's spooky, yet, given the nature of storytelling, there are only so many characters and ideas and it's difficult to be truly original. The story takes place in a sleepy village on the east coast of Maine. People aren't in a hurry. There's time to take a boat out on the water, pull up lobster cages and harvest the catch. You'd expect that from fisherman, but a local family doctor does it with his son. It's a different sort of place. The doctor's son is looking at what universities to go to or even if he should go to school. He saw his father get educated and feels it didn...

Saturday, May 30, 2009 The Treatment. Feature film. (2006, 86 mins) IMDB ... a realistic look at romance ... F or some reason I liked this movie. I liked the actors and I wanted them to get together even though there doesn't appear to be all that many original elements to it. She's a widow, a wealthy widow, living in Manhattan with two young children. One is a young boy going to a private school where our hero works as an English teacher. He's screwed up because his mother died when he was young, his father is distant and his true love left him for someone else and is getting married. The story focuses on how the screwed up English teacher gets together with the widow even though everyone around them says no. It wouldn't be a good move. Ian Holm plays a belligerent shrink for our hero. There are the requisite shrink sessions where our hero is sprawled out on a couch, but here's the twist. Like a ghost, the shrink also appears from closets...

Friday, May 29, 2009 Jumper. Feature film. (2008, 88 mins) IMDB ... oh for the chance at a new screenplay ... A teenaged boy discovers he can jump through space, dematerialize from say New York City and in a flash rematerialize in Egypt next to the Giza pyramids. It's a neat trick and a neat premise, but it doesn't make for much of a story. It's not a story because where's the trouble in being able to jump around the world? There is none. Life is good for our hero. To create a story, Paladins are created. There's regular humans, Jumpers and Paladins. The later two have been fighting a private war for centuries. Paladins are out to track down and kill the Jumpers. Not much is ever explained and therefore the resulting action has little meaning. That's the point of the movie--create action sequence after action sequence. It's effective and good looking, lots of CGI that isn't obvious, but since there's little underlying st...

Thursday, May 28, 2009 Good Luck Chuck. Feature film. (2007, 96 mins) IMDB ... what a sad, pathetic movie ... T he film is billed as a romantic comedy. There is nothing romantic or comic about it. It is crude, rude, boorish, lame, stupid, idiotic, pathetic, hideous, gross and a handful of other negative words I can throw into the list. How anyone can think this film was a good idea, that it should be made and people would like it, is beyond me. It's a terrible film. The premise has some interest but it the execution of it is sucked dry with boorish attempts at humour. It's shallow. We don't like the characters and in fact I'd rather see them tortured then gain any sort of romantic resolution. This is particularly true for the hero's sidekick--a fellow medical practitioner who will say anything provided it's crude. I'm sure people like him exist. If you meet them you want to run the other way and putting them in a film, aiming to b...

Thursday, May 28, 2009 Bolt. Feature film. (2008, 96 mins) IMDB ... a fun animation film ... B olt, a puppy, sits in a cage in a pet store when Penny, a young girl, picks him out of the batch. She adores her new puppy. Her father, a scientist, applies his knowledge to the dog to create a superdog whose job is to protect Penny from the evil Green-Eyed man and his henchmen. It's a story within a story where Penny and Bolt and the rest are actors for an action TV series except for one thing. Bolt doesn't know he's a character on a TV show. To stay in character, the production is designed so he doesn't know what is truly happening. He thinks he has a superbark. He thinks he has laser visions and can cut metal with it. He thinks he can ram a speeding car and stop it dead. He believes it because the production team makes him believe it. That's the setup and it was a fun setup because it's filled with animated action as if Ridley Scott was ...

Wednesday, May 27, 2009 Mamma Mia!. Feature film. (2008, 108 mins) IMDB ... I love the colours of the Greek Islands ... I have to admit when I heard the first song of this musical playing, I cringed and pressed fast forward. I hadn't heard it before and I didn't want to. That wasn't the case with the songs that followed. They were oh so familiar and having lived in Sweden, I know it dangerous to attack ABBA--the songwriters for the music. Since it's a musical, it must be about love story and I suppose that's the case. A young woman is getting married to a young man on a Greek island. She lives there with her mother who runs a beat-up vacation hotel. Not much of a story so far until you realize, the mother had flings with three different men some twenty-one years ago and either one these men could be the father. No one knows the entire secret. The daughter secretly invites the three men to her wedding in the hopes of finding out who her fa...

Wednesday, May 27, 2009 Frost/Nixon. Feature film. (2008, 122 mins) IMDB ... thankfully a 70s-period movie with no avocado appliances ... D isgraced president Nixon lives in seclusion in his West Coast mansion. It's the period after his resignation. Ford pardoned him but he continues to deny any wrongdoing. He wants to be in the action, making the calls and asked his opinion. David Frost, a cad, interviews pop stars and magicians. He's a performer, not a serious journalist. When he sees the worldwide broadcast of Nixon's resignation speech, he sees big numbers and gets an idea. Interview Nixon. He's a schemer and dreamer. His TV producer won't back him, his TV broadcaster won't back him but he won't give up. He negotiates a deal to interview Nixon for the incredible sum of $600,000. It's money he doesn't have, but that's only part of the total cost. The sum total of the investment is over $2 million. Hugh dollars f...

Tuesday, May 26, 2009 The Eye. Feature film. (2008, 98 mins) IMDB ... at there was an plausible explanation for what happens ... A young woman lives a normal life as a blind person. She has an operation where she receives donor eyes. The operation is a success as far as the doctors are concerned, but to her it becomes a nightmare. Not only can she see the world near as a sighted person, but she begins to see ghosts and the grim reaper and fire and smoke. She's living in a hell. It appears real to her and maybe it is real. THE EYE is not my kind of film. I'm not into horror films, not into films about the paranormal or supernatural. I was intrigued by the concept and decided to give it a try. It's far too bizarre for my liking. It just doesn't make any sense to me. I don't get it and never will. I suppose you have to believe in events that can never possibly happen and that's impossible for me to do. Part of Act II is the battle wi...

Tuesday, May 26, 2009 Swing Vote. Feature film. (2008, 120 mins) IMDB ... a silly that is mildly enjoyable but you won't want to see it a second time ... S WING VOTE takes an impossible plot situation and pokes fun at the US presidential election. Costner plays a single dad who is completely irresponsible. Lives in a trailer. Drinks too much. Can't keep a low-paying job. If it wasn't for his daughter who plays the parent, he'd probably be in jail or dead. He simply wants to have a good time and doesn't care about tomorrow and he certainly doesn't care about anything going on beyond him including the presidential election. If you asked him the names of the candidates, he wouldn't know. Now the unlikely plot. He's not registered to vote because he fears jury duty and besides he believes his vote doesn't count. His daughter registered him to vote. She's the responsible one; she's interested in politics and making a d...

Monday, May 25, 2009 Prime. Feature film. (2005, 105 mins) IMDB ... enough with Jewish characters in movies ... S he's a Jewish mother and a therapist. Her patient is a successful career woman in NYC, 37, and definitely not Jewish. Then there's the 23 year old son who is finding his way. The son and love interest meet. They hit it off. The problem is the three haven't put it together. The mother hears her patient tell about her son not knowing it's him. The patient doesn't know her therapist is her lover's mother. This coincidence continues until the therapist realizes it has to be her son she's been talking about and eventually they all know what is going on. The film has the usual boy meets girl, they split back together and split again and the last time for good. That's not the happy ending of a romantic comedy we want to see. The film is really an excuse to have all this Jewish non-sense and for the patient to say thin...

Thursday, May 21, 2009 Blindness. Feature film. (2008, 121 mins) IMDB ... adapting a novel is never easy ... A simple premise: what if an entire population of a city all went blind? It formed the basis for a novel by a Portuguese writer, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and eventually this film. I haven't read the novel but the film has inspired me to do so in part because the film, despite lots of talented people involved in the production, is a failure. Adapting a novel is never easy and sometimes impossible. I want to understand why the novel is a success and the film a failure. Why the break? There's no answer unless I read the novel. The film takes place in non-descript large city in a non-descript country. It was purposely meant to be non-descript. A young man sits in the driver seat of his car waiting for the red light to turn green when in a flash he goes blind. Stuck, a stranger offers to drive him home and does and promptly steals ...

Wednesday, May 20, 2009 My Blueberry Nights. Feature film. (2007, 93 mins) IMDB ... sometimes singers break through as actors, sometimes ... I t's a road movie. It's a love story for several characters. It's about life. Jude Law runs a café in NYC. There's coffee and cakes and pork chops. There's also Norah Jones harassing him in her search for some man who may or may not have been at the café. He's rather obliging with his time with her perhaps because he's got a hard on for her. The opening third of the movie deals with these two characters in his café. She's searching for someone and he's obliging until she gives up on the search and the relationship goes to another level. It's where we learn it's NIGHTS because she has trouble sleeping and BLUEBERRY because at the end of the day, blueberry pie is about all that is left in the café. In fact it's a metaphor on life. People buy the cheese cake and chocolate c...

Saturday, May 16, 2009 Mission: Impossible III. Feature film. (2006, 120 mins) IMDB ... action-packed action film--no surprise there ... T he best part of the Mission: Impossible franchise is the theme song but you don't need to see the film to enjoy the music. M:I 3 is an action film structured just for that--to give people lots and lots of action. I suppose you could say it delivers on it except after a while, the film becomes a blur of action and you probably want something more, something different. I'd describe the plot but there'd be no point to it. It's simply a device to create big action set-pieces and the film does that. The film includes a MacGuffin called the rabbit's foot. Both sides want it and as a result it creates conflict between the two sides. It's a MacGuffin because it drives the plot but we never learn what it is or what importance it has because it doesn't matter. It's a plot device. In a number of movie...

Friday, May 15, 2009 Factotum. Feature film. (2005, 94 mins) IMDB ... a slice of life movie free of plot complications ... I decided to read a brief bio on the author whose novel serves as the basis for this film. In it, the bio claimed the author disliked plot but provided no reasons for his predilection. In watching this film I can see the filmmakers took it to heart in crafting this film because there isn't much of a plot. We meet a writer living his life and he lives it some more and by the end of the film he's still living his life the same way he had at the beginning. Not much of a plot but instead a slice of life. Matt Dillon plays a writer living in a seedy part of a small mid-west city. He hasn't earned a dime from his writing but he keeps at it just as he keeps at drinking, smoking, losing jobs as quickly as he gets them and screwing women. Everything he owns seems to fit easily into a black carry-on bag. When he's kicked out of his ...

Thursday, May 14, 2009 Home Alone 2. Feature film. (1992, 120 mins) IMDB ... sequels never live up to the first--here's an example ... D umb for the holiday. Dumb for the masses. A predictable sequel with a great number of slow, boring sequences. The best sequence happens when the little bugger lures the two criminals into a brownstone under renovation. He's set all sorts of traps and the result is pratfalls and sight gags that are amusing. That was the movie for me--one reel. The rest is entirely forgettable and lame. Consider this scene. The little bugger is in Central Park where he becomes friendly with the pigeon lady. She appears to be an ogre and doesn't talk to anyone. He manages to get her to talk, to open up and explain her heart was broken and she doesn't want to go through that again. We then get to hear him give her life advice which she buys into it without hesitation. Please. How pathetic. How simplistic. How terrible. If...