Mark L. Van Name's Blog, page 163

The Way, Way Back

I don't want to tell you anything about this movie, because I don't want to ruin a single second of it for you.  So, I'll lead instead with this:  Go see this movie.  Do not miss it.

The Way, Way Back (the title in some places omits the comma, but I love the comma for reasons you'll understand after you've seen it) is quite simply the best film I've seen in quite a little while.  It's a quiet gem, never flashy but nearly always right on the mark.

This movie has it all:  Story, dialog, acting, cinematography, directing--every element of it delivers the goods.  

It's not a perfect film, though it's as close to one as I've seen in many, many a month.  I could tell you where I think it went a little too far or didn't hit a note perfectly, but I suspect my list of tiny imperfections would differ slightly from yours.

Its ending is as perfect a single, simple grace note as I have seen in a movie, exactly right for all that has preceded it.

Seriously, don't miss this one.  Catch it in the theater, then buy the DVD and watch it again. 

Levi Weaver's PledgeMusic campaign reached its goal

I wrote about his campaign
Thank you, all.

Last call for supporting Levi Weaver's new album

Levi Weaver is a musician whose work I quite enjoy.  As I wrote in
As of this writing, he's 92% of the way to his goal. 

For a fun sample of him performing a Death Cab song, as well as an amazing live ending, check out this video, which I've posted once before.



Let's put Levi's campaign over the top so we can all enjoy his new album.

Blame it on Sean

He mentioned this song in a work email tonight, and now we all have to suffer.



Really, it's Sean's fault.

You can blame me, though, for this other 80's song, which was recently on my mind.



I don't care what anyone says, Steve Perry had a great voice for the type of music he sang.

The Wolverine

I wanted to love this movie.  I love the comic book character, I love the X-Men comics, and I love the notion of taking the Wolverine character to Japan.  Hugh Jackman has juiced himself to a huge size and carries off the part pretty well, so I was prepared to love him as the Wolverine.  I fell for Rila Fukushima in the first trailer and could happily watch her read the yellow pages. 

I was ready to fall in love.

Instead, I had a good time and enjoyed the film, but I didn't love it.

Like almost all of this summer's blockbuster action flicks, The Wolverine focused almost entirely on fights and effects and moving characters here and there so they encounter interesting locales and difficult foes.  What the movie lacked, what so many of them have lacked, is an internally consistent story that makes sense and in which characters behave the way they really would.

I realize that the writers seem to be the least significant people working on major films, but I wish Hollywood would reconsider that approach and give us both great action scenes and superb stories. 

I also lament what appears to be the common wisdom these days about fights:  The way to make a fight better is to make it last longer.  No, that doesn't always work.  It really doesn't.  When you realize that you're fidgeting a bit during a fight that feels like it has just gone on too long, and when you further realize that the rest of the audience in the theater is doing the same, you have to question whether in fact the fight simply isn't too long.  Each major action sequence in The Wolverine suffers from this problem. 

Having said all that, I have to return to my earlier summary:  I enjoyed the film well enough, and I recommend it to those who like the Wolverine character.

I just wish I could have loved this movie.

Blu-ray frustrations

I want all the movies I like to be available on Blu-ray, but to my frustration, quite a few of them seem unlikely ever to appear in the high-def format.  For various reasons, these five have recently crossed my mind, and I can't find any of them in Blu-ray.

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth DimensionBanditsSerial Streets of FireWhiffs Hello, Hollywood studios, are you listening?

Of course you're not.

If by chance you are, though, I'd far rather you get J.J. Abrams to direct a series of Jon & Lobo movies than give me the above in Blu-ray.  If that's a choice I get to make.  Just sayin'.

Rain on the skylights

overpowers the music.

The storm and the singer battle. 

Neither wins. 

They merge.

I smile as I write.

About my nose

Not a blog entry title I've ever expected to write, but one that's appropriate given some of the questions I've received since posting those three old photos of me.  As the questioners have correctly noticed, my nose today looks rather different from the nose on the younger me in the photos.  Some folks want to know why.

I could lie and say the change is the result of aging, but it's not.  I could also make up some dramatic story, say one in which a cop busted my nose during a protest for women's rights to control their own bodies, but that didn't happen either--though I strongly support such protests and believe that women should of course have those rights.

No, my nose looks different today because I was stupid when I was seven and a surgeon was incompetent when I was twenty.

At seven, I was playing tree-tag with a group of friends.  If you don't know this game, as the name suggests it's tag you play in a group of trees whose branches overlap.  You can't touch the ground except at one or more designated bases, which you can reach only by hanging from a branch and letting go.  I was doing just that, heading to safety, thinking all was well--which it was, until I let go of the branch.  I'd failed to notice the smaller branches hanging off the large one from which I was hanging.  One of those smaller branches caught in my nose when I let go of the bigger branch.  The end of this particular little branch was forked.  When I let go of the bigger branch, the forked end of the little one caught in my nose and tore up the inside of my nose, leaving my septum deviated on both sides and me the unhappy recipient of quite a few stitches.

When the injury healed and my then-father pulled out the stitches, a wonderful treat I received because he didn't want to pay another doctor bill to fix another of my stupid injuries, I had almost no air flow in one nostril and only about ten percent of normal air flow in the other.

At twenty, my mother told me that before I went off her medical benefits she could arrange for the insurance company to pay to fix my nose.  After much thought and many conversations, I agreed to have the surgery. 

The surgeon botched the operation.  I emerged from the operating room with almost no cartilage in the end of my nose, a very thin septum, and no better nasal air flow.  I had a new, somewhat different-looking nose, but it worked no better than its predecessor.

About a dozen years ago (I honestly can't remember the exact date), I had a second nose-repair surgery.  This time, an excellent surgeon was able to give me normal air flow in both nostrils and take very little cartilage in the process.  He did not change the way my nose looked. 

So, the young me in the pictures had his natural nose, but he couldn't breathe through it.  I at least can breathe easily through mine, a big improvement--in function, if not in appearance. 

Okay, one more

I wasn't going to post this last blast from high school that Lynn provided, but I found several emails asking for more, so what the heck; I'll embarrass myself once more.

This one dates from late 1971, when I was a junior in high school.

Click on the photo to see a larger image.
In it, my sideburns and hair are just beginning their journey to greatness--or, at least, to hugeness. 

I also had not yet adopted what became my uniform for many, many years--and still frequently is:  jeans and a t-shirt.

I look so young in this one.

One more golden oldie

This one is again courtesy of Lynn, who has apparently unearthed a trove of copies of our old high-school newspaper. 

Click on the photo to see a larger image.
Yes, I was on the school's Hi-Q team--not only on it, but captain of it.  What of it, buddy?  We were the comeback kids and undefeated heading into the semifinals, at which incorrect judging during a match televised live cost us that match.  (The show runners later admitted the judge was wrong but said they could do nothing about it because the show had already aired.  Not that I'm bitter about it or anything.)

That hair of mine is like a separate creature.  Amazing.