Spike Lee Still a Better Director than Knic ks a Basketball Team

Sorry, that was harsh, but whoever thought Larry Brown was the answer didn't read the question.

Spike Lee is one of my favorite directors. Not because I like every movie he releases, I don't (anybody see SUMMER OF SAM) but he feels so passionately about his art, and he's so confident, he's not afraid to go out there completely on limb. INSIDE MAN is as predictable a Spike Lee film as Match Point was a Woody ALlen film, but Lee succeeds where Allen failed, because he brought the skills he has at his dispossible and translated them to the new subject matter. And INSIDE MAN has it all, race relations, people caught in a job they can't control, unbeleivable ego and an amazing unstanding of the environment. And its a mystery. Its about twenty minutes into the movie that you realize that 'they got away with it' - you spend the rest of the movie trying to figure out what 'it' was and how they did it. And the depth of the ensemble cast, where every character is intriguing and even likable, only helps to cloud your judgement. ANd the details, the dialogue, its vintage SPike Lee, like I never expected.

Clive Owen takes a bank hostage, ostensibly to rob it. But yet he is concerned when one of the kids in the bank is play a violent game on his PSP. Denzel Washington is a first time lead detective trying to quell the hostage situation, and yet they is the matter of some $140,000 in missing checks back at the police station hanging over him. He is anxious to spar with Willem DeFoe, the grizzled cop and captain of the swat team, who is anxious to go in and shoot it up, but also like to solve a good riddle. And Christopher Plummer, the bank owner with a wall of community service plaques and something to hide. And he turns to Jodie Foster, who sparkles as a high class 'fixer,' and lives in a different world than Denzel. What a cast and Spike gets perfect performances out of each of them.

I seldom have been so satisfied coming out of a film... I dubbed it immediately a 'perfect film.' It accomplished everything it set out to do, and kept me guessing the whole time. Spike Lee is one of the truly great directors in a world of babysitters and niche specialists. And its his confidence that lets him tackle whatever appeals to him. I wonder if he just walks around New York looking for movie ideas, there must be very few inches left in Big Apple that he hasn't logged into a film... And when he gets tired of that he'll just film somewhere else (like in BAMBOOZLED or SCHOOL DAZE). Until Peter Jackson proves he can make a film set in one location with no digital effects, I'm going to praise Spike Lee as the best director working today.

INSIDE MAN is recommended for anyone who ever wanted to rob a bank, fans of great acting and directing, and people who haven't seen a movie since christmas. Rick's Rating: A

Indiana Hire New Coach that is Still Not Bobby Knight

I am officially an IU alum. And I did search actively for www. firemikedavis. com And I don't believe Indiana has lived up to its legacy as one of the big four NCAA basketball programs (UCLA, Duke, Kentucky, Indiana) for several years. So I've been anxiously awaiting the end of the season to find out who they get to replace the coach who led IU to the final four and owns one of the best winning percentages in the big ten over the last five years.

The IU alumni have been clamoring for a return to the Bobby Knight era by hiring Steve Alford, a star from the Knight coached 1987 championship team and current coach of the Iowa Hawkeyes. FOr some reason, they prefer a coach with a lower winning percentage whose team got knocked out of the first round by Northwestern State, a 14 seed. Others felt Indiana should get Gonzaga coach Mark Few, whose teams, despite making the sweet sixteen this year, have failed to the last four years before that despite racking up the gaudiest winning percentages in the country. But Indiana seemed to shock all when it announced the hiring of Oklahoma coach Kelvin Sampson. Sampson has a final four appearance (2002, where he lost to a Mike Davis coached IU team) and nine straight twenty win seasons. But even OU seems anxious to get rid of him. His teams have accounted for more NCAA first round loses than any school save Penn and Murray State and this is despite normally having the higher seed. He's had a number of top recruits transfer out of the program. Guards Drew Lavender and Lawrence MacKenzie transfered just before the season, a year after big men Brandon Faust and Larry Turner. And before that De'Angelo Alexander who this year led the Charlotte 49ers in scoring in the Atlantic 10. And then there was All Big-12 freshman and McDonald's All American Ryan Humphrey who led Notre Dame in scoring and rebounding for two straight years and got drafted by the Utah Jazz (and immediately traded). And then there is attendance. WHich is down at OU for the fourth consecutive year. Now that probably won't happen at IU where the season ticket packages include only 6 games so everyone can get tickets who want them... but it is something to consider.

OU games are dull to watch. Because Sampson stresses defense and rebounding, they look like brawls and scores sit in the 40s and 50s. Why do you think people keep transfering? Now, I'm saying that style won't transfer well to the Big 10, it probably will, but its not going to look anything like the finesse teams of IU's legacy. And Sampson has often said that there is only time to teach a team one thing in the short season, so he teaches defense. Maybe there isn't enough time because he keeps losing players and has to rely on JUCO-Transfers. And IU has had enough of recruiting woes, having lost out on Indianapolis product and u.s.a. top prospect GREG ODEN to Ohio State. Ohio STate???? How is that possible. So Mike Davis wasn't able to recruit for shit and Kelvin Sampson isn't able to keep the recruits he does get. Actually, Oklahoma's recruiting class is one of the tops in the country for the upcoming year (we'll see if they all show after the latest news), but they is another concern. Sampson leaves OU amid scandal allegegations of some extra 500 illegal recruiting calls his staff made, 200 by Kelvin himself over a four year period. So Sampson may actually bring violations with him to Indiana (this just worse and worse).

Which brings us here, why was Mike Davis so bad? Sure his teams have underacheived, and he can't recruit instate talent, but this is not unrelated to the alumni's unfair expectations and culture of dissent that has arrisen around the IU program since Bobby Knight was ousted. The alumni want Knight back. THat's not going to happen. So they nitpick his successor and discuss very publically that Davis should be on the hotseat. Now who wants to go play for a coach in that position? And then there is the race factor. IU is full of racist KKK hicks who want a white guy coaching and white guys on the floor (spend some time reading the posts on www.firemikedavis.com and you'll see what I mean. So for that reason, I am glad Sampson is a person of color. Will he have any more luck with the alumni than Davis? Probably, because he is replacing Mike Davis, who they hate, instead of Bobby Knight, who they loved. Will he recruit better? Who knows. Will he recruit legally? Who knows.

I guess I'm just wondering is this the best they could do? I mean North Carolina got Roy WIlliams, who had already won a championship, and this Indiana University, the main program in the state of where they made a movie called Hoosiers. I'm sorry, but they obviously didn't throw enough money at whoever they really wanted, or they didn't even try.

p.s. special thanks to OU and IU alum Richard Ford for his insights on the issue.

V For Vendetta disappointedly NOT third part of the V mini-series

Okay, once I got over the fact that there was nothing in V FOR VENDETTA to do with Aliens conquering the world and stealing our water supply, despite the fact that the spray-paint graphic V looks anawful like another spray-painted V from the 1984 mini-series, I settled in and enjoyed a great sci-fi mystery action-flick. Set in the not-so-distant and not-so-impossible repressively conservative future, V FOR VENDETTA finds a nation who have given up much of their basic freedoms in exchange for safety. The Lord High Chancellor uses fear tactics and the media to bully the citizens into believing what is politically appropriate at the time. It can't happen here right? And in fact, in one of the funniest things about the movie, it doesn't. It happens in England. America is referred to as in civil war with too many different 'undesirables' allowed to live inside its borders. England has avoided that by kicking out the jews, the muslims, you get the picture.

And then comes V, donning a Guy Fawkes mask and blowing up the Old Bailey. V sounds strangley like Elrond, lord of Rivendale, but since you never see his face or his elfen ears, I don't really know who was behind that mask. I guess it could have been Hugo Weaving. Or just a double the whole time and Hugo could have layed all his dialogue down during ADR looping. Anyway, on the fateful night (V doesn't beleive in coincidences) he stumbles across Evey (Natalie Portman) being sexually harrassed by the curfew patrol, and she becomes entangled in his plot to bring down the government.

V FOR VENDETTA is a satisfying sci-fi, a an exciting mystery and full of fighting and explosions to please those with limited attention spans. Natalie Portman is wonderful as usual. She appears to have come through the Star Wars debacle unscathed. The rest of the cast is also strong. John Hurt as the dictator Sutler somewhat reminiscent of an Ian McKellen Richard III is especially effective - he mainly appears on television screens throughout the movie. Stephen Rea and Stephen Fry seem to be a package deal in movies, though they have no scenes together, and acquit themselves nicely as Portman's co-worker and the detective investigating V. THe movie is, according to their own spin cycle, the first 'must-see' movie of the year, and it may be (for me, apparently, it was, as this is the first movie I saw this year). It also clears the pallete from any taste leftover from the the last two installments of the MATRIX trilogy. One of the main reasons for the movie's success may be that the Wachowski brothers only wrote and produced V FOR VENDETTA and give directing duties to James McTiegue, who served as first assistant director on the Matrix movies as well as Star Wars Attack of the CLones. It is rare now days that someone arrives at directing by that route, but he brought the perfect amount of menace to the film and kept me guessing at the mystery behind the mask for much of the film.

The one flaw of the film is its reliance on that mask. THis is the same issue I had for the SPIDERMAN movie and that is there is nothing less exciting than looking at an unmoving mask and hearing dialogue. THe Green Goblin is hardly a frightening villian with that ridiculous mask, and there is nothing less exciting than watching the rooftop 'dialogue' of Spidey and the Goblin when neither one has lips or mouths to movie. (the worst part is when the mask itself seems to be called WIllem Dafoe from the chair - but thats also just bad plotting as well). ANyway, what works in a comic book does not alays translate well to the big screen. V FOR VENDETTA avoids many of the pitfalls by keeping the shots of V alone on screen to a minimum, and Hugo (or his body double) gives V a flourish with hands, hat and head shifts that keep the screen from being static. But still, would it have been that hard to just create a mask with open lips for the mouth... My only other qualm is that they shave Natalie Portman's beautiful hair off (it is very important plotwise) and that, even though she has enough time in the film time to grow it back, she doesn't... I like my heroines with hair. Especially Natalie Portman who has been the cutest button on the jacket since she was 11 and in THE PROFESSIONAL.

V FOR VENDETTA is recommended from anyone who thinks it can't happen here, anyone thinks it can happen here and anyone who thinks it is happening here, fans of sci-fi, Natalie Portman, and the first Matrix movie, and historians of the James I reign. RICK'S RATING: A-

Much Anticipated Return of The Amazing Pudding

Okay, I'm back.

And I come to direct from CALIFORNIA !!! That's right. I've moved.

"to see my own name on a screen five feet wide and luminous" - mike doughty.

I promise to start up with the movie reviews again ... in all honest, I saw pretty much nothing thoughout january and february, one of the main reasons being that hollywood usually releases crap after the oscar onslaught... so there wasn't a whole lot worth seeing. But I did see two good movies this weekend, so I'll hit those tuesday and thursday.

In the meantime, in getting ready for and enjoying my my move to the Bear State, I prepared the following list. It is by no means exhaustive, but since I had to pull together information from several sites all over the internet, I thought I'd post it here, in one place.

SONGS ABOUT CALIFORNIA, SONGS ABOUT LA

Classic division (pre 1986):

Going to California - Led Zeppelin
I Am I Said - Neil Diamond
Get Back - THe Beatles
California Dreaming - THe Mamas and the Papas
Hannukah In Santa Monica - Tom Lehr
Hotel California - THe Eagles
Gone Hollywood - Supertramp
To Live and Die in LA - Wang CHung
Walking in LA - Missing Persons
I Love LA - Randy Newman
California Man - THe Move
East LA - War
Born in East La - Cheech Marin
Hollywood Nights - Bob Seeger
LA Woman - the Doors
California Nights - The Sweet
Another Nice Day in LA - Eddie Money
Back to California - Carole King
California - Joni Mitchell
Little Old Lady From Pasadena - Jan and Dean
California GIrls - the Beach Boys (and pretty much every soon they ever wrote)
Los Angeles - X


Modern Division:

California - Dressy Bessy
Beverly Hills - Weezer
California Love - TuPac and Dr. Dre
Paradise City - Guns N Roses
One in a Million - Guns N ROses
Fuck California - THe Presidents of the United States of America
LA County - Lyle Lovett
LA Freeway - Jerry Jeff Walker
Staight Outta Compton - NWA
Electrolite - REM
City of Angels - 10,000 Maniacs
Hell Looks a Lot Like LA - Less than Jake
Los Angeles is Burning - Bad Religion
Burn Hollywood Burn - Public Enemy
California - Low
Malibu - Hole
LA - Elliot Smith
Goodnight Hollywood Boulevard - Ryan Adams
Unfair - Pavement
Going Back to Cali - L.L. Cool J
All I Wanna Do - Sheryl Crow
Los Angeles - Frank Black
Los Angeles I'm Yours - THe Decemebrists
Long December - Counting Crows
Naked and Famous - The Presidents of the United States of America
Hollywood - Madonna
HOllywood Cemetery - Cracker
Stanley Kubric - King Missile
California Stars - Billly Bragg and Wilco
I Remember California - REM
Hollywood Freaks - Beck
California - Tom Petty
Free Fallin - Tom Petty
Lullaby - Shawn Mullins
Come to California - Matthew Sweet
Screenwriter's Blues - Soul COughing
California - Phantom Planet (i.e. the fucking them from the OC)
California - Semisonic
Californication - Red Hot Chilli Peppers
Santa Monica - Everclear
No Peace, Los Angeles - Mike DOughty
Why You'd Want to Live Here - Death Cab for Cutie
California King - Everclear


Feel free to sugest additions... my only rules were that the song has to be about La/California, being there, living there, being from there, wanting to live there, not wanting to live there, etc. and not just a name check (note: almost all westcoast rappers mention they're from compton or watts etc, but NWA's song Straight Outta Compton is specifically about being from compton). Also, no covers of songs already on the list.

Also, there are a bunch of songs about San Francisco as well, but I didn't move there, so they are not part of the list.

Now I've Got Another Movie to Wait a Year For: HARRY POTTER IV

After much bemoaning that the years were feeling empty and hollow without a Lord of the Rings installment to cap them off, and since my petition Peter Jackson to make the Silmarrilion endeavor doesn't seem to be gaining any traction, I contented myself that the holidays would never be same as they were for those three glorious years I had anxiously rushed to the theater for the debut of each hobbitt filled fantasy. But bubbling under the whole time, HARRY POTTER boils over in attention with this fourth movie, THE GOBLET OF FIRE. For the record, I never read the HP books until after the movie comes out, that way I am given complete enjoyment of each as individual arts without having to moan and whine about what was left out. And I have enjoyed all three prior movies and books (each book I read sheds more light on the movie I just saw, giving me fuller enjoyment). But without a doubt, the FOURTH MOVIE is the best so far.

Chris Columbus knows how to work with child actors, and he picked an amazing cast back five years ago, and it has a been a pleasure to watch them grow up and grow as actors under different directors. The pay off has got to be in GOBLET OF FIRE, when they have finally reached the age where they begin to notice each other as attractive human beings (or wizards and muggles). Nev er before has the series offered such opportunity for character development as the horrors of having to go to your first formal dance. Add to this the final visual/physical representation of the evil Voldemort and the influx of whole new set of characters from wizardy schools elsewhere in the world and you have the make up of an exciting movie.

THE GOBLET OF FIRE revolves around a wizarding competition between the three schools, and Harry somehow is chosen to represent his school despite being vastly underaged. And unlike the past movies, where this feels oh, he's just a special wizard, this time it's really a mess. Everyone is mad at him and it is very dangerous. Meanwhile, the Death Eaters, the cloaked followers of the Dark Lord seem to be everywhere proclaiming their master's return. And even scarrier, Harry blows it with the girl he likes and Ron is too clueless to make the move on Hermoine.

At the director's helm this time is British director Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Mona Lisa Smile), who gives the emotional and social turmoil as much depth as the normal scare and tear of the other Potter films. Everyone's favorite trio of students turn in their best performances. Daniel Radcliffe (Harry) has finally grown into the stoic hero he needs to be and Rupert Grint (Ron) injects humor into an often dark film. The true star of the film is Emma Watson (Hermoine) who finds herself caught between the boy she likes who's too stupid to realize it and the boy who like her who is just plain stupid. I am anxious to see what she can do outside of the Potter world in the years to come and I hereby tag her it girl of the future as I did Kirsten Dunst after Jumanji and Anna Paquin after the Piano (before you comment I'm jumping on the band wagon a little late on this one I will report that I so labelled her after the first movie, I just didn't have a blog to write about it). Alan Rickman is excellent as ever as the morally questionable Snape and it's fun to see Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid) get a love interest.

And since this is fantasy, a word about the effects. They rule. And they are so much better than the earlier films (which I recently watched to brace up for the film). It is always interesting to see what a director will do with already predesigned sets and costumes and how they will add their own touches. ANd where as the prior director Alfonso Cuaron added much to the moodiness of the serious and the third film is still the best shot... Newell has done what others have so failed to do, made these characters lovable and made me love them. Even the minor characters... the most emotional moment of the film for me involved two new characters, Cedric Diggory and his father.

HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE is recommended for anyone who enjoyed the first movies or misses Lord of the Rings, anyone who still has nightmares of the Sophomore year Homecoming Dance, parents who want to scare the crap out of their kids, and if you haven't seen the other three movies, rent them, watch them, and then go see this one, then you two can anxiously await 2007 and the Order of the Phoenix. Rick's Rating: A