Steven M. Finkelstein

Everyone who follows the trajectory of major Hollywood studio releases over the course of the year knows that there are down times, when not a whole lot of interest is coming out. Most of the intended blockbusters come out during the summer season, which starts roughly around the beginning of May, and runs through the end of August. Then there’s the second run of blockbusters that comes out around the holiday season, starting usually the second half of October and running until the end of December. At the same time, they usually release the “serious movies,” the Oscar contenders, dramas, tear jerkers, and anything topical. The other times of the year, January through April, September and the first half of October, you’re not going to get very much. Comedies and romantic comedies, mostly. So bearing that in mind, this is the time of year, approaching the holiday season, when there should be a few flicks coming out that are worth seeing. Yet so far, at least, this year, that hasn’t been the case.

For me, there’s something you have to factor in that has never been true before. This year, I find myself living in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It’s got a few nice features, the beach, for one, but one thing it doesn’t have is an abundance of transportation. It’s nonexistent. The nearest movie theater is in a mall five miles south along Highway 17, and the only way to get there, short of taking a cab, is walking or biking. Biking, it’s about forty-five minutes to an hour each way. You’re going along the shoulder of the highway, as most of the way there are no sidewalks, so at any given time you are in very real danger from passing cars, especially if you’re trying to make the trip at night. Then, there’s these things called sand burs. Essentially, they’re little hard balls covered with sharp spines, any one of them can puncture a bike tire, and they’re everywhere. That’s in addition to glass, tacks, nails, and anything else that can pop a tire that’s already out there. The first and only time me and my girlfriend tried the trip, last month, to see Burn After Reading, one of her tires went flat right by the theater, and we had to walk the bikes back, which took somewhat more than two hours. So that’s another consideration. I don’t mind seeing less than great movies. I’ll admit it, I like bad movies, sometimes, just as much as good. But to brave circumstances like that, seeing bad movies is no longer even a possibility for me. How much must one want to see a movie, before they’re willing to undertake what I’ve begun to refer to as the Two Hour Factor, two hours transit, in other words, to see whatever it is? You’d better make damn sure it’s something you can’t afford to miss, to go through all that.

That being said, there just hasn’t been much coming out lately that I’m interested in. Over the past couple of years, I’ve really begun to rely on the site Rotten Tomatoes as a barometer for whether I might want to see a movie or not. For the uninitiated, Rotten Tomatoes collects movie reviews from credible sources, sees whether the review is positive or negative (fresh or rotten), and then assigns a numerical percentage based on the total number of fresh to rotten. Sixty-something percent fresh, and the consensus is, the movie is doing well, more than that, so much the better. This past summer, The Dark Knight was at 94%, while Saw V, at the moment, is at 15%. Is Rotten Tomatoes the end all, be all, of movie reviews? Only if you always agree with the critics, and I, for one, don’t. But it’s as good of a place as any to start, if you’re unsure about something, and when you’re taking into account the Two Hour Factor, and all of the annoyance and inconvenience that goes along with it. 

But even if there was a closer theater, so far, most of the movies that I had at least a passing interest in over the past month have gotten poor reviews. City of Ember looked interesting but the critics called it lackluster, Max Payne looked fun but it’s at 17% on Rotten Tomatoes. Usually, if a movie is that poorly reviewed, there’s got to be something to it, whether you normally agree with the critics or not. I’m an Oliver Stone fan, but W. also has gotten mixed reviews at best. None of them made me want to tackle the Two Hour Factor, so I’ve seen only one movie in the past three months, way down from my average. Of course, these are tough times, economically, if you haven’t noticed. Everyone’s feeling the crunch, so as far as that goes, the fact that we’re in a bad patch for movies works in my favor, since there isn’t very much to tempt me to spend my money on entertainment rather than food and bills. Myrtle Beach lives and dies by the tourist industry, and the tourists won’t be back till April, so the next few months look to be a struggle, with my eating a lot of starch and getting creative with the food budget. It’s not like it’s the first time. It’s just the continuation of the theme that’s gone on since I finished my undergrad four and a half years ago.

November and December look better for movies. On Nov. 14th, the new Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, comes out, and unless the critics rip it apart, that one I might be willing to bike ten miles round trip for. There’s a lot more coming out in December, and it might just make the rest of this sub-par movie season worth it. We’ll see. There’s the Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the Brad Pitt vehicle directed by David Fincher. There’s The Spirit, directed by Frank Miller and based on the Will Eisner comic book, looking as cool as monochromatic can, and featuring some of the worst dialogue in a preview that I’ve ever seen. There’s the Brian Singer directed and much pushed-back Valkyrie, staring everyone’s favorite Scientologist and all around couch-hopping nut-job, Tom Cruise. If the sweeping epic is more your scene, there’s Australia, staring Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman (the teamup you demanded), or, if you want the story of a gay rights crusader that’s guaranteed to land another Oscar nomination for Sean Penn, there’s the unfortunately titled Milk, about the first openly homosexual man to be voted into public office in America. I’m not interested in either, personally. If you’re a completely brain-dead idiot, there’s Four Christmases, starring Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn…no more, really, needs to be said there. I’ll be back in Cincinnati from the 17th through the 22nd of December, visiting the family, so maybe I can see three or four of these in one fell swoop. In Cincinnati they have transportation. Novel concept.

Maybe the holiday season will yield a decent bounty of cinematic goodness. Maybe not. Whatever I end up seeing, I’ll be posting reviews here on the site, so stay tuned. In the meantime, if none of those previously mentioned sound like just what you’re looking for, how about Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, about sassy, anthropomorphic animated animals, voiced by David Schwimmer, Chris Rock, and Jada Pinkett Smith? Sounds like a sure-fire winner to me! Yeesh.    

Several weeks ago, I reported that three of my stories would be featured in the quarterly publication A Written Portrait. The first of the three was supposedly going to be published last month. I received an email from their administrators informing me that I would be mailed two free copies of the publication featuring the first of the three stories in late September. I never got them, so earlier today I tried to send an inquiry so as to get a status update. My email didn’t go through. I was informed that the address is no longer valid, a disturbing discovery, especially coupled with the fact that I tried to go on their website, www.awrittenportrait.com, and found that it is no longer in existence. I tried to google them, thinking the site may have been changed, and got nothing. So as of right now, it seems like those stories of mine will not be appearing in this phantom publication…a definite disappointment. Oh well, life goes on, I suppose. If nothing else, I can now look for other places to feature these stories, as I consider them some of my better efforts of the past few years, worthy of placement somewhere. I will keep you updated, readers, if there are any further developments in this business. And if anyone knows anything about A Written Portrait or what happened to them…whether their staff was kidnapped by aliens, or what…it would be nice if you’d let me know. Cheers.    

I love baseball. I know there are a lot of people who don’t…the most common reasons I hear are “it’s boring,” or “it’s slow.” Granted, baseball can be meticulous sometimes, but that’s part of what I like about it. It’s like chess; it’s the manager’s job to move the proper pieces into place, play the percentages, and occasionally take a risk, with leaving a tiring pitcher in to face one more batter, trying a suicide squeeze in a close game, or an unexpected double steal. There’s a tremendous amount of strategy involved, and all the minor details, the stats, averages, subtle nuances, all the other minutia that some people say makes it boring…is precisely what I love about it.

I don’t watch basketball, or hockey, or soccer. None of them can hold my attention. I won’t call them “boring,” I’ll just say that they’re not my thing. I like football, but I haven’t followed it for as long as I have baseball, and I don’t know nearly as much about it, down to the more obscure rules and references, like the infield fly rule, the Mendoza line, and all of Babe Ruth’s many nicknames. I came up watching guys like Mike Schmidt, Dave Winfield, Cal Ripken, Tony Gwynn, Barry Larkin, and Barry Bonds, I mean the lean, quick Barry Bonds, not the Incredible Bulk, watermelon headed freak of later years, and yes, for the record, Bonds took steroids. That’s not an opinion. Just look at the man. My favorite player of all time was Ozzie Smith, a guy who played the game right, was a great teammate and athlete, and did it all with class and style, right down to his trademark back flip. I’ll watch any game that’s on, regardless of the teams, National League or American, April or October, crucial standings contest or meaningless. I love baseball, and that’s not an overstatement at all. I get goosebumps when I hear the crack of the good wood on the bat, and I have to think of new things to say to express how hard the ball was hit. (Man, he scalded that one, he smoked, it, he crushed it, man, that ball was mashed. How far do you think it went, five hundred feet, at least!)

This past year, I worked for Levy Restaurants at P.N.C. Park in Pittsburgh, catering to the luxury boxes. It was a fun job, the work itself not much better than most other food service jobs I’ve had, but I was working with a good crew, and the best part, hands down, was coming into the ballpark to work every day, being that close to the field, passing by the visiting teams’ locker rooms, knowing the array of talent that would be on display that night. Unfortunately for the city of Pittsburgh, the Pirates have stunk for the past fifteen years, and that’s a shame, because a slump like that can really get you down. Hell, though, at least they aren’t the Cubs. Who would have thought the team with the best record in the National League would get swept out of the playoffs for the second year in a row, and on the hundredth anniversary of their last World Series title, too? Embarrassing.

Last night the Rays, no longer the Devil Rays, clenched their first American League Pennant, and my congratulations to them, especially for their doing it in dramatic fashion, topping the Boston Red Sox, last year’s champs, in seven. I’m a Yankee fan, and I hate the Sox, once again, no exaggeration. I would be pleased to hear that David Ortiz is dying of rectal cancer. I used to hate Manny Ramirez, a killer of Yankee pitching in the playoffs. Now that he’s in Los Angeles, at least temporarily, I love the guy. Here’s to Manny being Manny! We need to see more of that! Now that Boston has been taken care of, and their hopes and dreams destroyed till next year, I don’t really care who wins between the Phillies and the Rays. My relatives in Philly doubtless are excited by the prospect of a World Title, as well they should be. It should be a good series, in any case. I don’t foresee a sweep like Boston over the Rockies last year, a team that got hot at the right moment, but anyone with sense could see didn’t have a chance in the Fall Classic. Since I don’t have any affiliation with either of these teams, when game one kicks off Wednesday night, I won’t have anything to do but lie back, crack open a beer, if I can afford one, and spend some time in the company of the sport I love, the national past time. Then, when it’s all said and done, and a new champion has been crowned, I’ll have nothing but football and wrestling to occupy my time, until next April when my favorite sport is reserected like the first robbin of spring. Good luck to both teams. I hope it goes seven, and we all get our money’s worth.      

Just wanted to mention that the inaugural issue of Marsh Hawk Review, a new poetry website, is now up and running at http://marshhawkreview.blogspot.com/. It was edited by my father, the poet Norman Finkelstein, and his poetry is also featured there, along with pieces by Tyrone Williams, Don Revell, Bob Murphy, Nathaniel Mackey, Peter O’Leary, Mike Heller, and others…a very diverse and talented lineup. Check it out.  

So. It’s a time of turmoil here in these United States, for a number of reasons. The presidential race has reached its final four weeks. The mudslinging is in full swing, particularly from the McCain camp. We are in the grips of an economic crisis the likes of which has never been seen before, even counting the Depression. Some parts of the country don’t have gasoline. More jobs are being lost every day. Banks are failing. It’s the apocalypse, it’s Armageddon, it’s the end of the world as we know it…and I couldn’t possibly care less.

Here’s the thing. When you don’t own a car, you don’t care about the price of gas, and when you’re struggling to pay rent and bills every month and aren’t making much more than minimum wage to begin with, then the problems that a great many Americans are grappling with just aren’t really a concern. When you’ve been impoverished for the past five years, struggling to get by, the rest is just details. It’s meaningless to me, particularly when I turn the T.V. on and see pundits talking about I.R.A’s, and what the best investments are right now, and how to diversify your funds, etc, etc. I am, I will freely admit, completely clueless about these things. They might as well be speaking Chinese, and if things keep up the way they are, then it seems like a lot more of the world probably will be. As for myself, I’m already about as poor as I’m going to get, which, ironically enough, makes me recession proof. It’s just funny to me, seeing the panic stricken expressions of the Wall Street brokers that they keep on showing on CNN, (which is not to say that I watch CNN, except maybe for a few seconds as I’m flipping through the channels). I get my news from the Daily Show and The Colbert Report, like just about all the people in my age group, young, liberal, non-God fearing Democrats…you know, good people. The people who should rightly be the future of America. Bill Maher was on The Daily Show the other day, and he was talking about the split in this country, the polarization that is taking place in my lifetime, more than ever before. It’s the two Americas that make up the uneasy whole- the one that I’m a part of, Democratic, pro-choice, end the war, reform the drug policies, sink our money into alternative fuel sources…sensible people. A kind of European American nation within a nation, as Maher put it. Then there’s the other one, the other side. The stupid, Republican, redneck, red state, bomb-them-brown-people, country music listening, racist, classless, overfed, sedentary, big truck driving…hell, you get the picture. I know I do. I’m living in South Carolina right now, and sorry to say, they’re all around me.

I don’t care about the economic “crisis,” that much is true. The stock market dropped 9000 points today! So what? It’s just numbers to me. I don’t know what they actually mean, and I’m proud of that ignorance. But I can’t help but care about the presidential race…I have to, because it’s the most important one of my life. George W Bush, in the past eight years, has destroyed this countries’ credibility on the world stage. For how long, I wonder? The next decade? Permanently? That’s certainly what some people are saying, so called “experts” in these matters. America will no longer be the economic and global superpower. It’ll be China, probably…what will that mean for the rest of the world? Speaking from a purely selfish standpoint, what will that mean for me? Hell if I know. Much like the economic crisis itself, when all I have to worry about are the immediate necessities, the rent, the gas bill, what I’m concocting for dinner tonight, the rest just doesn’t seem as important. I know this much, though. Obama had better win. If he doesn’t, I can’t help but think that it really is the beginning of the end, and I’ll begin to think about expatriation. I don’t want to do it. I love this country, or at least I used to. But I’m just so ashamed, now. The missteps that those in power have taken, because of their greed, their puritanism, their blindness, their irrational fear mongering, their lust for power…they’ve screwed us over so bad, I don’t know if and when we’ll ever be able to climb out of it. But with Obama in the White House, a man who strikes me as intelligent, sensible, and informed, we at least have a chance. If McCain wins…God, I don’t even want to think about it. And the man’s seventy-something years old, think if he has a heart attack the first day he’s in office, and Sara Palin takes over the reigns! Nightmare. Absolute nightmare. I was only introduced to this woman two months ago, but now I know what the face of evil truly is, dontcha know. Cute as a button, dumber than a bag of hammers, and completely opposed to each and every thing that I stand for and care about. We’re polar opposites, all the way down the line.

But I digress. If I’ve sounded conflicted in this rant, it’s because I am. I do, in fact, care about everything that’s happening, even if I sometimes deny it, because it’s happening in my time, and it’s happening around me. But at the same time, my own fight just to keep my head above water, to support myself with my writing, is a convenient excuse, as I’m able to busy myself with thinking about and doing other things. Like I said before, it’s necessity. I need to take care of myself before I worry about the rest of the world, or even the rest of the country. I guess at this point what I’m most worried about is this. What if, while I get my own life right, the world I’ve known burns away around me? What if the meaningless stock market numbers and the price of gas and who the country elects as its next president starts to have an impact on me as direct and immediate as whether I manage to get my bills paid on time? I don’t know what will happen then, and it weighs heavily on my mind, even as I keep struggling through day by day. Will there be some coherence, meaning, clarity to it eventually? Will I be able to reconcile what’s happening to my country with what’s happening in my life? Will we both be okay in the end? I honestly don’t know which one I feel more optimistic about.          

I know it’s been five months since Speed Racer came out in theaters, but I didn’t have a chance to see it then, and I just rented it on dvd, so I thought I’d go ahead and review it now. I remember seeing trailers for this movie and thinking something along the lines of “wow, looks pretty crazy visually and even if I never saw the show, I should probably check this out.” Then the reviews came along and killed it for me, and I figured I’d pass on it and check it out on dvd, especially in light of the fact that it was the start of the summer season and Hollywood was already going to be getting enough of my money. When I rented it last night, though, I was expecting the worst. The reviewers had said the plot was cluttered and several of them claimed to have either gotten headaches or gone into epileptic fits from the visuals/sounds/lights/ general spectacle. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised.

This isn’t a great movie, any way you slice it. But it is entertaining, and I liked and was impressed by the visual effects very much. What you have to understand is that a lot of these critics have no choice but to review every movie that comes out, and by the time they put their bifocals on and crank up their hearing aids, they’re just about ready for their naps anyway, so it’s understandable that something like this might agitate them. But this is intended mostly as a kids movie, as I understand it…it’s rated PG, at any rate…so they might have wanted to keep that in mind as well. I honestly don’t know what I would have thought if I’d seen this movie as a child, but as an adult, I found it to be a pleasant enough way to spend a couple of hours, though I could see how this was something that would have been much more eye popping on the big screen. A very, very strange cast. I liked John Goodman as Speed’s dad; he’s the only reason I ever used to watch Roseanne, and it’s always good to see him get work. Emile Hersch was also acceptable as Speed, and I foresee a bright future for this kid. Into The Wild was a very well made, understated film, and already we have some indication of his range. Cristina Ricci was underutilized, and Susan Sarandon’s presence was simply baffling. Really, Susan, you need a paycheck that bad, or did you owe the Wachawski’s a personal favor? As far as the brother producing/directing duo goes, this probably ranks among their better efforts. I thought that V for Vendetta was a real stinker, and the Matrix trilogy got worse as it went along, concluding with Revolutions, a real crash landing if I ever saw one. This works where those others failed, probably because it seems less pretentious, and doesn’t aspire toward any loftier aspirations that it then fails to deliver on. Here, you’re looking for a monkey called Chim-Chim as one of the principle characters, and that’s what you get. Bottom line, this movie was eminently watchable. Fine for kids, fans of the original show, or those who have just consumed hallucinogenics. The colors, children, the colors! My rating: 5/10