E.R. Torre's Blog, page 14

The Night House (2020) a (spooky) belated review

Many, many years ago and after two films, I became a huge fan of director James Cameron. The two films? The Terminator and Aliens.

When news came out that his next film would feature underwater action/intrigue, I was so there, looking forward to an Aliens-esq action film but set deep underwater.

When the movie came out, I recall one TV critic, now forgotten, who said that watching this new James Cameron directed film, The Abyss, was like watching a runner in a competition having the run of their lives. They’re in first place, far ahead of everyone, and then, just feet away from the finish line, they stumble and fall on their face.

I don’t think I need to draw a picture here with regard to the intriguing, eerie, but ultimately disappointing -at least with respect to its conclusion- Rebecca Hall starring The Night House.

Rebecca Hall is, for the most part, the whole show here, and she’s damn good playing Beth, a woman who, we find in the movie’s opening minutes, has lost her husband and is returning from his funeral. There are others in the movie, of course, but she is front and center through the film and there’s nothing to fault in her performance.

Beth lives in a beautiful lake house her husband built and, it becomes very clear, his death was a shock… especially once we find out it was by suicide.

I don’t want to offer too many SPOILERS from this point on, but suffice to say Beth’s questions regarding her husband’s suicide start to eat away at her. She has visions, perhaps spectral in nature, and wonders if her husband is trying to communicate with her.

The film, during the first two acts, is simply terrific and had me wondering where it was going, just as Beth was investigating her late husband’s last moments leading to his death.

But that ending…

For a film that presented itself in such a sure footed way, it sadly got silly by its ending and, again because I don’t want to get into SPOILERS, I don’t want to give it all away. Suffice to say after plenty of fascinating psychological intrigue and questions about what’s real and what isn’t, things get a little too concrete in the finale and this makes things far less interesting versus maintaining an eerie and unexplained vibe.

I have ideas as to where the story should have gone, but I suppose that’s the nature of my thought process, and it felt like this was a script that needed a little more work, if only in that ending.

So I’m put into a weird predicament. For some 2/3rds of the film, The Night House is terrific, gripping, suspenseful, and intriguing.

I loved what I was seeing.

But that last 1/3rd of the film really let me down and its a tough call to recommend the film based on this alone.

I suppose I would still recommend the film. Perhaps others may not find the ending quite as problematic as I did. Just beware you may find yourself let down in the end.

The Blue Dahlia (1946) a (incredibly) belated review

If one day you and I should meet and talk and you ask me as an author which writer do I feel is my all time favorite, I might well tell you its Raymond Chandler.

Raymond Chandler was a terrific author and his books, in my opinion, are great works. He’s best known for his Phillip Marlowe books, many of which were made into movies. There’s the Bogart/Bacall The Big Sleep as well as one featuring Robert Mitchum. There’s the first person point of view The Lady in the Lake. There’s Robert Mitchum again in Farewell My Lovely. There’s the quirky Robert Altman directed, Elliot Gould starring The Long Goodbye. There are a few movies that adapted his novels but didn’t use the Chandler titles, such as the James Gardner starring (and featuring Bruce Lee in a small, but extremely memorable role) Marlowe, and adaptation of The Little Sister. Then there’s what I feel is the very best adaptation of his novels, which also happens to be the first, the terrific Murder, My Sweet (1944), the first adaptation of Farewell My Lovely,

Raymond Chandler was wooed by Hollywood in and around the time his novels were being adapted and he wrote the screenplay to the classic film noir Double Indemnity. Flush off the success of that film, he was hired to write the script to another film, the result of which was The Blue Dahlia.

Featuring the powerhouse (at the time) pairing of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, the film is a pretty neat but ultimately flawed work which features just enough of Raymond Chandler’s terrific dialogue to make it worth a look, if you’re a fan of his like I am.

Here’s the movie’s trailer:

Alan Ladd plays Johnny Morrison, a veteran of the Pacific theater who returns home with two comrades in arms, George Copeland (Hugh Beaumont) and Buzz Wanchek (William Bendix). From the movie’s opening segment we realize Buzz isn’t all there: He sustained a head wound in the Pacific during the war and is capable of erupting at the least provocation.

They return to California and Johnny leaves them to return to his wife wife Helen, only to discover she’s having a noisy party in her bungalow with some questionable people. Included and most prominent in the party is Eddie Harwood (Howard Da Silva), the owner of the infamous Blue Dahlia club, who may well be a gangster and is most certainly Helen’s current boyfriend. Because of the movie’s age and the censorship of the times, the movie shows this in subtle rather than too obvious ways, but viewers should get the hint.

The party ends prematurely and Johnny confronts Helen. He wants to try to repair their marriage but Helen is a very broken woman, and this is revealed plainly when the argument turns to their son, who died very young.

Johnny leaves Helen and, later, she’s found dead.

The movie’s plot thus kicks in: Who killed Helen Morrison?

The finger of suspicion is on Johnny, but as viewers we know he didn’t do it. So who did?

The Blue Dahlia is a solid enough film noir but, as I noted above, is something of a flawed work.

Why? Because the plot has some whoppers we’re supposed to accept, perhaps the biggest being the waaaaaaaaayyyyyy too coincidental meeting between Ladd’s Morrison and Veronica Lake’s Joyce Harwood. That’s right, Lake plays the estranged wife of Eddie Harwood and the fact that they just happen to meet the way they do and she just happens to be married to the #1 suspect in Helen Morrison’s murder strains credulity to the point of snapping it… though to be fair there is a point where Johnny Morrison wonders about their meeting and whether it was coincidental after all.

Unfortunately, despite whatever suspicion he mentions, nothing is made of it beyond that one statement and I can’t help but wonder if perhaps Raymond Chandler had some ideas for that which never materialized and/or were changed from page to filming.

It is pretty well known, for instance, the original identity of Helen Morrison’s killer was someone else but was changed from the script. I’ll not reveal who it was, but it makes much more sense than the way this film ends -another example of the movie’s main weaknesses- where the killer essentially admits guilt just to give us a killer and wrap things up.

Yeah, the killer’s identity in the end unfortunately doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense, either, but is acceptable enough, I suppose.

If it sounds like I’m really down on this film… well, its not entirely true. The Blue Dahlia is a perfectly enjoyable, if at times illogical, film noir and its neat to see Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake co-starring in another vehicle (their two best features, IMHO, are The Glass Key and This Gun For Hire).

It’s a pity there were changes made to the film. The original killer made a lot more sense, frankly, and would have been quite a surprise as I’m sure it was in the original script.

Still, if you’re into this type of film, its a no brainer to spend some time with Ladd and Lake.

Recommended.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), a (…to boldly go…) belated review

Way, waaaaaaaay back in the 1970’s and when I was first getting into the various movies and TV shows which would impress me, one stood out above all the others: The original Star Trek.

While I thrilled to the adventures of James West in The Wild, Wild West or Colonel Steve Austin in The Six Million Dollar Man or laughed hysterically to the misadventures of Agents 86 and 99 in Get Smart, it was Star Trek that blew my very young mind.

The show quite literally could be anything. There were episodes which were filled with suspense and even horror. There were episodes which were grand adventures. There were episodes that were hilarious comedies. And yes, there were episodes that were… something, especially during the less successful third and final season.

Yet the show captured my imagination like few others and even now, despite its age and mostly inferior effects, I love it. Yes, I know they “remastered” the effects but I kinda prefer seeing the original episodes with their original effects, for better or worse.

The success of Star Wars in 1977, I strongly suspect, opened the door for the studios to want to make sci-fi films like it and, they hoped, cash in on this. It wasn’t too surprising, then, that the cult favorite Star Trek would get a second look and a movie greenlighted. It would be directed by veteran Robert Wise, whose career began in the early 1940’s (directing, uncredited, additional scenes for the Orson Wells follow up to Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons) and who had in his resume such impressive works as West Side Story (the original, natch), The Day The Earth Stood Still (again, the original), The Haunting, The Sound of Music, and The Andromeda Strain.

Truthfully, he was an inspired choice to direct Star Trek: The Motion Picture -or any picture, for that matter- given his works in so many different genres and styles.

Here’s the movie’s original trailer:

Alas, when it was released in 1979, I recall the reactions to it were mostly negative. More than one critic made fun of the film’s name, re-dubbing the movie Star Trek: The Motionless Picture, and many felt it was too slow going and didn’t really have much of a payoff.

What was learned over time was that Robert Wise and company were on a very tight -too tight- deadline and were rushed into releasing the film to theaters by December of 1979 to try to take advantage of the vacation time. Worse, when the film was shown on TV more scenes were added to it, sometimes with incomplete effects, and it was quite clear the film as it was released to theaters was, at best, a not quite complete work in progress.

Many years later and in 2001 a “Director’s Cut” of the film, supervised by Mr. Wise, would be released and I felt at the time that it was a much “smoother” work which made the movie move much better than the theatrical cut. Unfortunately, that edition was released just before the advent of high definition video and, since then, it hasn’t been available except for the original DVD. That will change as a new, 4K edition of this version of the film is set to be released very soon.

It was that news which got me curious to revisit Star Trek: The Motion Picture and, as I was set to do some flying (its become my life of late), I took my VUDU digital copy of the theatrical cut of the film and loaded it up to my iPad and, once in flight, watched the theatrical cut of the film for the first time in many, many years.

And I must say: The movie worked a lot better than I remembered, though I’m still curious to revisit the Director’s Cut (I do have the original DVD but would rather wait to see the new HD version).

Even more interesting is that it occurred to me that of all the characters shown on screen, TV or movies, William Shatner’s Captain Kirk is probably the only one who has been shown through almost all stages of life.

Sorry for the mild deviation in reviewing the film, but its fascinating to me that in the original TV show you had the young, clever, brash Captain Kirk. He was the adventurer, the risk taker, yet clever enough to find intelligent ways, especially with the help of Spock and Dr. McCoy, out of danger. He could fight, he could love. He was young and full of energy.

The Captain Kirk we see in The Motion Picture is older but still young enough to have the first present. He takes over the Enterprise and steps on toes but is smart enough to realize he isn’t infallible and does take others’ advice. This is indeed an older Kirk, but a Kirk who could still kick ass and romance the ladies, I suppose, though in the course of this film he isn’t shown to do either.

For the next film, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, we have a Captain Kirk who realizes he’s getting old and doesn’t like it one bit. He tries to fight age and feels melancholy about losing that youthful energy but, by the end of the film, has accepted that he has moved on into a new stage of his life.

In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the last to feature the original cast together, we have a Captain Kirk who has accepted he’s old and no longer looks back longingly to how he was when he was young.

Again, its a fascinating succession, from youth to older to older still and missing one’s youth to old and accepting it. I suppose one could add Star Trek Generations to this list to show his passing, but the execution (pardon the pun) of this was so terrible, IMHO, that I don’t really view the film as canon.

Anyway, returning to Star Trek: The Motion Picture, this film could well be the one that’s most like the original series. In fact, more than a few people noted the movie’s story bears more than a passing similarity to the original series’ episode The Changeling. Here’s the trailer for that episode:

In The Changeling, the crew of the Enterprise encounters a robot named NOMAD which tries to understand these humans, who it feels are an infestation on the ship. In STTMP, we have a machine named V’ger who has a similar confusion regarding the ”carbon based units” aboard the machine, and the danger winds up being similar.

Watching the film and as I said above, I found myself surprisingly involved in it. No, its not perfect. I feel like despite the movie’s long runtime (this theatrical cut clocks in at 2 hours and 12 minutes) it didn’t focus nearly enough on the relationship between the three leads (Kirk, Spock, McCoy), and gave very short shrift to the ancillary characters (Uhura, Scotty, Chekhov, and Sulu).

It would have been nice to see them interact a little -lot!- more.

Worse, the film introduces two new characters in Stephen Collins’ Captain Decker and Persis Khambatta’s Ilea who, while not terrible, are also given much less to do than one would have liked.

And yes, the film doesn’t feature all that much ”action”, mostly the actors looking in wonder/mystified by what was happening before them (ie, in their own imagination as this would later involve effects work!).

And, not to knock someone for something he’s been knocked for too many times, but the film also features what is perhaps the nadir of William Shatner’s Kirk acting, his incredibly wooden reaction to two people dying in a transporter malfunction (go to 1:05 approximately)…

But setting aside the ”bad”, one can then focus on the good. The film features some terrific effects, especially in the Enterprise itself. The music is spectacular. And it’s a freaking blast to see a still fairly youngish cast interact with each other and deal with a mystery -and tension involved in this- which is fairly well handled.

The film may not soar or have the intense action that can take your breath away, but it is a great way to rejoin old friends.

I highly recommend the theatrical cut of the film, warts and all, to any and all Star Trek fans.

And I really look forward to seeing the remastered Director’s Cut…!

Death on the Nile (2022) A (mildly) belated review

There are films you see that stick with you a lifetime, for better or worse.  Films that touch your soul or blow you away so completely you can’t help but remember them.  There are films that go the exact opposite way, and maybe are so awful to you that you can’t help but remember them, even if it is for all the wrong reasons. Still others are mediocre and forgettable, neither terribly good nor terribly bad yet don’t have much impact on you.

There are still others that are perfectly enjoyable the moment you see them -good even!- yet do not linger in your mind.  Disposable entertainment, I suppose, which don’t offer much beyond what enjoyment you get from them at that moment.

Which brings us to Death On The Nile, the second -and much delayed- Kenneth Branagh directed and starring murder mystery featuring acclaimed author Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot.

I enjoyed Murder on the Orient Express (2017), Mr. Branagh’s first go at Christie’s books, though I wouldn’t say it totally captivated me.  Branagh was decent in the titular role though, from photographs presented before the film’s release, his mustache seemed awfully overdone and, physically, he just didn’t seem to me to have Poirot’s darker and dumpier “look”.

Yet the film was fine, I felt, and I was looking forward to Death On The Nile.  Because of COVID, the film, like many others made in the past couple of years, had a very long delay before being released. During that time, unfortunately, a few of the actors involved in the production had certain personal… issues… which may have created considerable headaches to the movie’s producers.  Of course, I’m referring to Armie Hammer (the issues around him are truly bizarre), Russel Brand (of late he seems to have become a COVID “truther”), and Letitia Wright (who had made some news regarding vaccines and COVID as well).

Yikes.

Anyway, Agatha Christie’s book was adapted before in 1978 and featured a murderer’s row of great actors (including Peter Ustinov in the Poirot role) but I honestly didn’t recall all that much of the film other than the ending was rather hard to grasp for my younger -perhaps too young- mind. Here’s that version’s trailer:

This time around the story was relatively easy to follow, involving Gal (Wonder Woman) Gadot’s Uber-rich (and sexually loose) Linette Ridgeway becoming involved with and marrying Armie Hammer’s Simon Doyle despite the fact that he was first engaged to Ridgeway’s long time friend, Emma Makey’s Jaqueline de Bellford and essentially stole him from her.

Jaqueline, we find, keeps showing up at events and parties Linette and Simon are at, and this creeps out the newlyweds out. While they try to party in Egypt for their honeymoon, she again shows up and the two decide to try to ditch her by taking a private cruise down the Nile accompanied only by their closest friends.  Hercule Poirot is there as well and, we’ll find, for good reasons, but is also recruited by Linette because she fears something will happen to her.

Well, they didn’t call the story Death On The Nile for nothing, baby.

Here’s the new 2022 version’s trailer:

I don’t want to get into too many spoilers here but what immediately struck me about watching Death On The Nile is that it’s a subtle variation on Christie’s two better known novels: And Then There Were None and Murder On The Orient Express.

In the case of Death On The Nile, instead of a train going through a snowy landscape or being stuck on an island, you have your characters on a boat traveling the Nile.  You have a cast of suspicious characters, all of whom had the potential to be the one who killed our ill-fated victim, and you have Poirot watching and analyzing everything before coming to his conclusion.

Death On The Nile does feature more victims than Murder On The Orient Express, and Branagh both as director and actor appears more comfortable in his dual roles, delivering what I felt was a satisfying tale.  It was a little slow at times and perhaps a little silly (there’s an opening bit which tells us why Poirot has that ridiculous -at least in the movie version- mustache which is, as far as I know, an invention of this film and nothing Agatha Christie ever did in her novels).  There are a couple of sequences that perhaps could have been trimmed here and there and, alas, despite having some very good actors involved, there are a few who don’t have all that much to do but look shocked or surprised or appear to be having fun partying 1937 style.

Which brings me to what I mentioned waaaaay up there about the different types of films, both great, terrible, and… disposable.

Death On The Nile is, unfortunately, a film that falls in the later category.  It is a perfectly enjoyable work, in my opinion, yet one that doesn’t linger very long on the mind.

I literally saw the film only a couple of days ago -the first film I have gone to see in a theater since COVID began!- and today, a few days later and with time on my hands to write a blog entry, it quite literally took me a few moments to remember that was the film I had just seen…!

I don’t believe I’m losing my mind (though considering all the family and I have been through in the recent past it’s a wonder we haven’t) but it just goes to show how little this film impacted me beyond the enjoyment I had watching it.

Still, I do recommend the film, especially to those who enjoyed Murder On The Orient Express.  It is a well done work which features some nice scenery (albeit much is CGI) and a murder mystery that is satisfying in its resolution.

Just don’t expect to be blown away by it.

The Suicide Squad (2021) a (very mildly) belated review

I’m sure just about everyone knows about this film. Still, for those few who don’t, here’s the trailer:

Written and directed by James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy), The Suicide Squad can be viewed as a sequel to the 2016 David Ayer directed film in that several cast members return for this “new” mission.

Prominent among them is Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) and Colonel Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) while Idris Elba plays Bloodsport, a character who in most ways (at least in this movie version) appears to be a substitute for Will Smith’s Deadshot. (Note: Both Deadshot and Bloodsport are indeed DC comic characters but, at least IMHO, there was little attempt to make Bloodsport all that different from the screen version of Deadshot).

Anyway, there’s another “suicide” mission for them to engage in, involving a coup in the fictional island of Corto Maltese (for extreme comic book fans, the island nation was first referenced in Frank Miller’s Dark Knight comics and the name was based on a popular -and IMHO quite excellent- European comic book of the same name written and illustrated by Hugo Pratt)…

The original Suicide Squad film was mostly derided. It was heavily tampered with by the studio (director David Ayer claims there is a “Ayer Cut” of the film in existence, but unlike Zack Snyder, he doesn’t appear to have the fanbase necessary to get this movie released, as opposed to the recent release of Snyder’s Justice League). Nonetheless, the film did introduce the world to Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn and I suppose did well enough for Warners to green light James Gunn’s version of the film.

The film is quite violent but for the most part humorous, not taking the multiple -and often quite graphic- deaths all that seriously and… I dunno. I had problems with Mr. Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy because he did something similar there, trying to inject humor when the body count is incredibly high and its something that has rubbed me the wrong way about his works.

That’s just me, though.

The film worked in spurts, introducing a mostly new group of “villains” on their mission.

Perhaps most prominent among the mostly new cast is John Cena’s Peacemaker, who as most out there know went on to appear in a HBO Max series featuring his character. Sadly, the character isn’t anything like the original Charlton Comics incarnation of the character…

I bought this comic waaaaaaay back when it was originally released and still have it boxed up somewhere in my collection!

Having said that, the reality is that the original version of Peacemaker lasted only a few issues before being cancelled and since DC comics bought the Charlton characters they’ve had him appear as more of a lunatic, which I suppose is what Gunn sorta/kinda was going for. I’m a few episodes into the HBO Max Peacemaker series and I have to say -SPOILERS!- I like it more overall than The Suicide Squad film. Further, Cena’s Peacemaker is much different in the show versus what he was in the movie, where he was basically a one-note moron who said a few inappropriate things before revealing what he was about in the movie’s climax.

I’ve written a lot and I suppose the bottom line for me is the movie is a decent enough time killer. Funny in spots, excessively bloody at times, but entertaining enough even if it never totally “wowed” me.

However, there is one element of the movie that affected me in a very negative way and… it’s quite personal.

The movie’s climax involves a lot of buildings being destroyed and falling to the ground and, while The Suicide Squad is far from the first film to feature such destruction (see the Godzilla films, for instance), it was the first such film I saw after what happened at Champlain Towers and the loss of my parents.

I don’t want to keep delving into this particular tragedy but in watching those last minutes of The Suicide Squad, I started feeling uncomfortable. Anxious, in fact. And I realized right away watching this destruction was taking me back to that tragedy. In a way, it was like getting a minor case of PTSD and… I didn’t like it.

Again, I know this is unique to me and I doubt many others will feel this.

But it is a scar I bear and one that, clearly, is a long way from healing.

Oh those Russians…

If the above phrase is somewhat familiar to you, its the final line of Boney M’s pretty terrific song “Rasputin”.

There is nothing humorous, however, about the invasion of Ukraine, which began in full yesterday.

Waking up this morning, I felt as if I hadn’t gotten enough sleep and, yes, felt the worry about how this invasion -something it seems Russian President Vladimir Putin was considering for a while now- would eventually play out.

Europe takes up a relatively small area and even now there are U.S. troops stationed, as one network noted, some 90 kilometers from the Ukranian border.

President Biden had it right all along, noting his awareness that Putin was planning this invasion. To Biden’s credit, he’s managed to solidify most of the world’s sentiment against Russia/Putin’s aggression and considerable sanctions are being imposed against the regime.

Will they work?

I hope so.

Naturally, the right wing media seems to want to present this situation in some alternate light. Ex-President Trump stated what Putin was doing was “genius”. Other talk show hosts, from Tucker Carlson to Laura Ingram -people who deserve IMHO the utmost contempt- are trying to either justify Putin’s actions or mock the Ukraine leader’s attempts to bring peace.

It’s really… disgusting.

Yeah, BEWARE POLITICS.

But… its also humanity. People are dying and, I would say, needlessly at this point. It seems Putin’s actions are little more than a whim on his part, a need to rattle his sword. I know there are economic advantages to having Ukraine under his belt but, truly, was it necessary to go this far?

Even more frightening is the fact that no one knows where this will all lead in the end.

The New 2021/2022 Novel Update #13

Just a very quick update: I’ve printed up the latest draft of the book, #5, and will get to it today at some point.

I do plan to read through it quickly and revise what needs revision but I’m hopeful -though at this point I’m only guessing- that I should be quite clear to the finish line now.

We’ll see.

Regardless, onwards!

The Dolphins and the NFL

I’ve been around now and again and less than I’d like, so forgive me if I go over some older stuff.

After the latest season in the National Football League, the Miami Dolphins, the team I root for (though, given their record for the past twenty some years I wonder why) fired head coach Brian Flores despite having a pretty good run during his three years run.

To be clear: It wasn’t a spectacular run, but given the fact that the first year the Dolphins essentially unloaded every player of any worth they had, he has managed to overachieve with regard to the teams he’s had to work with.

This last year began pretty badly. While they won their first game against New England, they then went on to lose 7 games in a row, including losses to such “lesser” teams as Jacksonville.

But then, starting on November 7th and against the Houston Texans, they had a stunning turn around and wound up winning 7 games in a row, a tough feat to begin with, and achieved a record no team had to date: To lose 7 games in a row and win 7 games in a row in a single season!

Alas, those early loses would figure into their playoff chances and truthfully they had no margin for error in their last two games. They had a chance, certainly, but they needed to beat the Buffalo Bills in week 17 and simply could not. The Bills, much as I don’t like to admit it, are a powerhouse and they look to have a very bright future, even if they didn’t make it to the Superbowl this year.

Anyway, by the time the next, and last game of the season rolled around, it didn’t matter if they won or lost. They beat The New England Patriots once again and finished the season with a decent 9 and 8 record, slightly above average but clearly not enough.

What was surprising was that Brian Flores, whose ultimate record after three years as Head Coach was 24-25, was subsequently fired.

Then, things got ugly.

Brian Flores, after a few interviews with other teams, came out and stated the owner of the Dolphins, Stephen M. Ross, offered him $100,000 each game lost. He also presented some damning tweets between he and New England Patriots head coach Brian Belichick.

In those tweets, Mr. Belichick mistook Mr. Brian Flores for Brian Daboll and congratulated him on getting the New York Giants head coaching job… when Mr. Flores was scheduled to -but had not yet had- an interview with them!

In other words, Mr. Flores claimed this proved that the Daboll hiring was a done deal and the interview to come with him was a sham, a way of getting around the Rooney Rule (which forces NFL teams to interview minority coaches) when they had absolutely no intention of hiring Flores for the job.

Anyway, Jomills H. Braddock II and Alex R. Piquero have a good article regarding this whole affair here:

What the case of fired Dolphins coach Brian Flores says about the NFL today

Now, some of the accused, including Stephen Ross, have denied any wrongdoing and deny Mr. Flores’ accusations.

Other than being a fan of the team, I have no knowledge of the ins and outs of the organization other than watching them play their games during the season.

Yet I will say this: The Dolphins have, unfortunately, been a team that has all too consistently in the past few years been a disappointment, a huge turnaround considering that during the 1970’s they were a powerhouse, winning two SuperBowls and having their “Perfect” season, and during the 1980’s they were a consistently upper tier team under Dan Marino and Don Shula.

It seems like things went downhill pretty quickly when Don Shula was replaced with Jimmy Johnson -who came off a terrific run with the Dallas Cowboys but who seemed overwhelmed and uninterested in running another team- and when Dan Marino retired.

Watching Marino during his golden years was like watching magic. I loved those years, even if in the end they only reached the SuperBowl once… and lost to the San Francisco 49ers.

That match up, way back in 1985, was the last time my beloved team went to the SuperBowl. Ladies and gentlemen, that’s 37 years ago.

Yikes.

Anyway, now we have Mike McDaniel being hired to coach the team. He previously worked with the San Francisco 49ers and there may be something, I don’t know, weirdly interesting in that particular hiring, given the 49ers were the team that defeated us the last time we were in the SuperBowl.

Will he do well? Will controversy continue to follow the team and/or will Brian Flores’ lawsuit gain traction?

I don’t know.

Regardless, its a tough situation for me, a fan of the team.

I do wonder if, within what’s left of my lifetime, I’ll ever see my beloved team once again in the SuperBowl.

Oh Canada…

I lived in Ottawa, the capital of Canada, for one year way, waaaaaay back in 1984 and into 1985. It was my first year of College and, coming from the sunny (and warm) state of Florida, it was a hell of a change and was the main reason my stay wound up being so short.

My very early years were spend in Canada, Nova Scotia in particular, and I loved the time and figured I’d love returning to Canada. While my stay wound up being short lived, I had fond memories of Ottawa and its a beautiful and -at that time anyway- a very mellow city to live in.

For the past 10 days or so, though, its been ground zero for anti-vaccine groups which are protesting the vaccine mandates for truckers and… well, its really a right wing anti-government thing in the end, isn’t it?

And its pretty ugly.

Car horns are blasted at all hours, streets are clogged, and at times ambulances have been slowed or stopped from doing their function.

Reading the various reports on this (you can read one of them, by Christian Paas-Lang and presented on CBC.ca here), its clear the regular citizens and the government has had enough. They’ve given them some space but it looks like after all these days, that patience has ended and more aggressive actions will now be taken to end what some feel is nothing more than a “siege”.

Interestingly, there is some evidence right-wing characters within the U.S. have had a stand in this protest and GoFundMe.com had approximately $10 million in donations for the protests which they are now giving back (you can read about that here), which is prompting some, usually right-wing figures, within the U.S. to protest.

One person who reacted negatively to this news is Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla (you can read about that here).

I… I wonder about Mr. Musk sometimes.

He’s a hell of a mind. He’s done something that no one else has done regarding changing the whole concept of what a car can -and I would argue should– be. He touts sustainable energy, he is clearly convinced that we need to reduce pollution and that global warming is a very real and dangerous threat to our world.

He moves ahead with scientific research, his SpaceX is doing things with rockets that are -whether you like him or not- amazing. He clearly has a great intellectual curiosity and has managed to do something about it.

He has his detractors and that’s understandable. He often goes on twitter and shoots himself in the foot with stupid statements.

Is this one of them?

I feel like it is.

I will try to give him the benefit of the doubt in the sense that he tweeted a few days back his feelings regarding the GoFundMe issue and his “support” of the truckers who are protesting. Since then, we’ve had reports some of them are incredibly… out there, with confederate flags (or worse) and racist elements. The disruption of the city of Ottawa seems to be devolving too from “protest” to (again, as described by some) a “siege”.

Sometimes it might be better to sit back, assess, then -and only then- make your public statements. For better or worse, whenever Musk tweets, the world does listen and sometimes the stuff he tweets is used to justify many peoples’ criticisms of him, whether justified or not.

Ah well.

The New 2021/22 Novel Update #12

Man, how time flies.

When I last made an update in early December of 2021, I was noting how I just read and wrote in the various revisions on paper for my latest novel and would be getting into putting them into the computer.

Well… that took much longer than I thought it would.

In part, I suppose, its because of the Christmas/New Year/Holiday dates… it becomes very difficult to find the time to carve out what with visiting relatives and having family over. Plus, I traveled with my daughter back to Austin and spent some time there with her which also sucked away a few days. Not to mention my other work and those myriad issues regarding taking care of my parents’ estate, the lawyers, etc. etc.

Truly it feels sometimes like I need a real break.

But today, I’m extremely happy to say, I got into a groove and essentially burned through the final parts of the revision, making it some ten pages from the very end of the novel and, upon realizing just how close I was, decided to do a ”clean sweep” and finish off this draft once and for all.

The big question is: Where am I now with regard to finishing this novel?

Pretty far, it feels.

Of course, until I give the book another read and pull out the dreaded red pen and make all those revisions, I won’t know exactly how close to finished I’ll be, but I feel like things are getting there. Perhaps the biggest single revision I did in this part of the draft was moving an entire section of the story to a little earlier in the novel -thank the heavens for Word Processors!- but otherwise it was a matter of cleaning stuff up and adding better descriptors and/or dialogue here and there.

So I move along, hopefully printing this novel out by tomorrow (I have neither the time nor desire to do so today… there’s still stuff to be done around the house!) and, if all goes well, by either this weekend or early next week its time to start reading!

Onward!