kimmy

Can I ask which province you're in? Here in BC it seems like there's non-stop news about school boards coping with budget cuts, and health authorities trying to deal with budgets that have been slashed drastically. Alberta was similar in the 1990s. I think most provinces were probably similar in the mid-to-late 1990s as the federal budget was balanced. -k

The Golden Globe awards nominations have been released, and Christoph Waltz is predictably nominated in the supporting actor category. Less predictable-- judging from the opinions here at least-- are Tarantino's nominations for best director and best screenplay, and for the Bastard as best drama. You've mentioned this in a number of threads, and it always makes me wonder what the hell you're talking about. Is a Super Jew faster than speeding klezmer, more powerful than a whole wheat bagel, and able to leap tall menorahs in a single bound? I assume you refer to this character as a "Super Jew" for the same reason you described Israeli soldiers as specially bred Super-Jews in another thread. In your mind, a Jew is an accountant with a pencil neck and thick glasses. In your mind, Barack Obama isn't a black man because he's not out there in a pimp-hat and gold chains delivering speeches in ebonics, so I guess none of this is surprising. -k

Is $10 really that much to venture on a movie? People plunk down $10 for a crappy fast-food meal without hesitation, and the results are usually less satisfactory and memorable than even a flawed movie. Avatar has also received Golden Globe nominations for Best Picture and Best Director. I don't put much stock in awards, but it's uncommon for this sort of movie to be nominated for awards other than the special effects and technical ones. -k

"Earth bag" update: On Saturday I bought beer at one of the bigger chains here, and was provided with a free "earth bag" to carry my beer home in. This brings my complement of "earth bags" to four, yes FOUR "earth bags", for which I have paid a grand total of $1. (But I still occassionally buy the 5 cent plastic bags to use in my garbage can.) -k {feel free to share your own "earth bag" stories!}

I think it is a mistake to equate gadgets with prosperity or "having it easy". Right now, it takes a couple 2 full-time incomes to provide a lifestyle for their children that previous generations were able to provide on a single income. I think that many young couples feel disappointed that while their parents were able to provide a house with a yard with mom home full-time, it now takes both of their incomes just to provide their children with a 2-bedroom condo and after-school care. I think the reason so many couples hold off having kids until their late 20s or 30s now is that they are trying to work a few extra years to save enough money so that they can provide their kids with the same kind of environment that their parents were able to provide for them. This is fair. I work in construction; that wouldn't have been possible in the past. And I'm guessing no. More iPods and cell phones and gadgets, maybe, but not more of anything of significance. There's more people, and less of everything to go around. Kids today might be more likely to be given iPods and cellphones by their parents. But will it be easier for them to obtain a quality public school education? Quality health care? Attend university? The answer is different in the United States of course, but in Canada, the answer is no. As Capricorn mentioned, the public debt had become so massive that funding for all of these things has been massively slashed during my lifetime. My 1st year of university, which I paid for out of my own pocket with no assistance from anyone, cost me 5 times what my special guy paid in tuition just 15 years earlier. Public school funding has likewise been slashed... schools that used to offer options for vocational or fine arts and music and athletics and other programs are providing less and less "extras" and talk of "back to basics" education. Schools are being closed, kids are being amalgamated into classes that are twice as big as they were even when I was in public school. Healthcare technology may have advanced to the point that we now have the ability to help more people than we used to, but that's somewhat offset by the rising costs of providing it and the declining public funds to do so. I'm not sure that having iPods and cellphones makes up for those things. I agree completely. I've been calling it "selective memory". We do this thing in the Arts & Culture forum every couple of months where old-people tell me how awesome the music and TV shows of yesteryear were compared to the new stuff, and I point out all the dog-crap from yesteryear that they've forgotten about. Pop on by next time, everybody has a great time. Young people do it too. They hear about The Beatles and Led Zepplin but aren't aware of all the garbage that just didn't survive the test of time. As relates to this discussion, though, I think maybe the selective memory is the tendency to focus on things like iPods and cellphones and lose sight of things like a safe and comfortable environment and education and issues that are more significant measures of real prosperity. And I think that a lot of people of a certain age don't recognize that people entering the workforce and making lives for themselves today face challenges that they themselves didn't face. People who start off conversations with "when I was your age..." and don't seem to recognize that when they were that age things were different than they are now. -k

It may have a story worth telling, or it might just be a movie that people go to see because it amazes their senses. I don't know which it'll be yet, and I reserve judgment until I've seen the movie. (And I will be seeing the movie, if only out of curiousity. I'm not 14, and I'm not Asian, but I can afford $12 to see what Cameron has come up with. I have $12 to spend and I'm curious. That's enough to get me into the theatre.) But even if it's just a movie that's worth seeing because it amazes the senses... such movies have existed for a very long time. Long before CGI, people flocked to Star Wars to see incredible special effects. Before that, people flocked to The Ten Commandments to see amazing special effects. It might be that people flocked to see The Wizard of Oz because the idea of a movie in COLOR was amazing. (and maybe people flocked to some earlier movie because the idea of hearing the actors TALK was amazing, and at some point people probably flocked to see this absurd concept that pictures could MOVE at all.) Star Wars, and The Ten Commandments, and The Wizard of Oz are not remembered because of special effects or other stuff that may have seemed gimmicky at the time. Each of these films had contemporaries that had comparable gimmicks yet have been long forgotten. Each of these films exceeded its contemporaries not because of gimmicks, but because of some other aspect. I've written about lots of films in the past year... Coraline, Up, Basterds, Monsters Vs Aliens... all of them were quite good, and all were commercial successes... but probably none of them will be remembered in 30 years in the way that Star Wars is, or in 70 years as The Wizard of Oz is. Does Avatar have that mystical quality that will gain it that sort of longevity? Probably not. Does it have qualities that will make it a commercial success? I am thinking probably yes, it will eventually earn a profit for the people that invested in it. -k {and if I could define that mystical quality that separates movies like Star Wars and The Wizard of Oz from movies like Coraline and Monsters Vs Aliens, I'd be a millionaire before I turn 30.}

My special guy of many years was several years older than me... his parents were both of the age that their formative years were during the Great Depression. I had dinner with his family once, before his mother's untimely death. I was quite struck that even though this family was quite well off, his mom was still insistent that someone eat the last teaspoon of green beans, and the last two teaspoons of mashed potatoes. "There's not enough to store, and we're NOT throwing away good food!" she said. And my special guy dutifully crammed down the last teaspoon of green beans and the last two teaspoons of mashed potatoes. Not because a strapping 200 pound man needs an extra teaspoon of green beans and two teaspoons of mashed potatoes, but because his mom grew up in circumstances that made it abhorrent for her to see anything, anything at all, go to waste. -k

I see this a lot. Guys who get all politically correct on every other topic, but cling to chauvinism just to show they haven't completely turned in their nuts. -k {I was always welcome at Saturday afternoon no-hitter pickup hockey at the local rink, once the guys found out that I could skate faster backwards than most of them could skate forwards.}

Being willing to pay extra for something, and being able to actually buy it, are two different things. I'd be willing to pay for a really nice seafood dinner. In this town, it's not going to happen regardless how much I was willing to pay. I'm skeptical that shopping for care-aides is like shopping for cars. I don't think you can look over a list of brands and think "well, for $11/hr I could hire a Kia, and if I was willing to pay a little more, I could get a Honda... but if we can afford it I really want to get this wonderful BMW." How are you going to tell if the care-aide you're hiring is a Kia or a BMW? You can't turn a Kia into a BMW by paying more for it. Even supposing there's some agency that's able to guarantee its customer a much higher standard of care, that's probably not applicable to most Canadians. Most elderly Canadians aren't going to be hiring private care-aides from high end agencies. Most elderly Canadians will probably be lucky to get what they can get, or end up in a long-term care facility where they don't have a say in the matter. I do know some people who work at one of these facilities... they're terrible. And the facility they work for is grateful to have them, because they're chronically short of people. It's a fair bet that the service will be provided as cheaply as possible. The quality of people providing the service will be about what you'd expect from that premise. As with kimmy and her seafood dinner, so with aging people and the quality of care. What you could theoretically afford to buy and what you can actually obtain are not always the same thing. People might assume that the money they've accumulated will guarantee them high-quality care when they are unable to care for themselves... I am skeptical that such a thing will be available whether they've got money or not. As for the value of all of these assets people accumulate during their lives, you're right. In 2000, a couple who were friends of my family were retiring early because they had accumulated a stock portfolio full of shares in Nortel. Needless to say, that didn't work out well. If your big asset is the house that you bought in 1983 for $57,000 and is now evaluated at $421,000... you can only get your $421,000 if somebody can afford to buy it. A lot of peoples' nest-eggs are in the form of funds that are made out of stocks. All of this stuff... paper money or stocks or assets like a house... the value of all of it in the future depends on the idea that the future is as prosperous as the present. That's not a given. -k

I suppose what it means is that old people will get the best care that $11/hr can afford. I know several care-aides... I don't think I'd even trust them to take care of my cat. They're poorly paid, poorly trained, and frankly not particularly gifted people-- if they were, they'd be doing something else. The contempt and disgust they have for the people in their care is disturbing. I find it frightening to think that I might some day depend on people like this. I take comfort in the knowledge that some sort of cataclysm will most likely eradicate our entire species before I get that old. -k

When I heard there was a Winter Olympics Games Quiz, I started writing up my cheat-sheet. It reads: "stolen from First Nations!" "on the backs of the poor!" "corporate elitism!" and "propaganda exercise for a corrupt government!" Clearly I prepared for the wrong quiz. -k

Think back on this conversation in the not-too-distant future when your physical comfort and well-being are dependent on some whiny, bitter, victimized care-aide. -k

I am not sure if it is Waltz himself who made the character so memorable, or if it was a superbly written character, or some parts of both. There are a lot of movies where the actors portraying the villains seem to be having a lot more fun than the actors portraying the heroes. I made this observation to a friend after watching Michelle Pfeiffer in Stardust but I think The Joker (Nicholson version or especially Ledger version) is the classic example. There are probably countless more. These characters are disconnected from humanity and the actors are free to be as over the top as they wish. The heroes, by contrast, aren't. At least, that's usually the case. In Basterds we get "heroes" who are as brutal and inhumane as the Nazis. And we get Colonel Landa... whose motive for committing evil isn't some kind of idiology, it's personal ambition and nothing more complicated than that. -k

Stephen Harper will be remembered as a great Canadian and a man who changed this country for the better. Whatever he chooses to do after politics, I am sure his services will be highly sought after. -k

If you don't think Uncle Jim is relevant to the discussion, fine. I'll add my own addendum to dad's comment: if you weren't making money in 1966, you were a real schmuck too. I think it's funny that you deny that housing prices are far beyond what they were back in your day. I think it's funny that you can't concede that your generation's unprecedented wealth and high standard of living was accumulated by looting the planet to a degree unheard of before and unable to be sustained since. I do find the "I got mine" attitude galling. You've left a legacy of environmental devastation and scarcity of resources and massive public debt, and you dismiss people pointing this out as "whining". There's little that can be done about it now. However, as you people age and old-people issues occupy an increasing spot on the public agenda as you petition for more public funds to take care of your withered old asses, people my age will remember that "they already had theirs." Final thought: if your parents were "the Greatest Generation", how do you think you'll be remembered? -k

The thread is really about people who cashed in after WWII, so Uncle Jim is relevant even if he's a few years too old to be a "boomer". There, that wasn't so painful, was it? If it was just fish, maybe you'd have a point. The damage done to the fisheries by your generation just mirrors the damage done in other areas by your generation's mentality that there's always more land, more water, more oil, more trees, more places to bury garbage, and that the air can always hold more pollution. That free ride has since come to an end. I make no excuses at all. I've done very well for myself. However, I find the smarmy attitude and self congratulatory back-patting of people old enough to have cashed in after WWII to be quite off-putting. There is this mythology that it was a tremendous work ethic and strength of character that created all of that wealth, when really it was just being in the right place at the right time. Your generation seems to see itself as paragons of progress who achieved great things and take smug satisfaction that none who come after have achieved the levels of wealth that you did. I see your generation as more like obnoxious party guests who showed up, got drunk, puked on the carpet, and left behind a big mess to clean up. Relative to income, houses cost a fraction back then of what they do now. -k

Fascinating, but who cares? Uncle Jim may have been a 5-10 years too old to qualify as a baby-boomer, but he was just the right age to cash in on the period of unparalleled prosperity that started after WWII and continued into the 1970s. He's even luckier than the boomers: too young to have experienced the Great Depression or fought in WWII, but old enough to cash in soon after. "We gave our kids so much more than our parents ever gave us!" Of course. It's a generation that was able to amass wealth in a way that's unprecedented in our history, and doesn't recognize that those who come afterward are not going to have the opportunity to do the same. I like eyeball's earlier comment: "The boomers had it easy because they still had a planet for the taking." -k

What fun is mental illness if you can't share it? -k

Interesting comments, bloody. Your comment about demythologizing Hitler reminds me of another analysis I read recently. Your point that Hitler made to look like just an ordinary man (and kind of a putz at that) is a good one. This critique points out that the mythology is also challenged by depicting Raines and his crew as being just as inhuman as the Nazis are supposed to be: We get "heroes" who commit savagery upon other humans, and we get "villains" like the young officer who just wants to go home to Frankfurt to see his wife and newborn baby, or Freddy the reluctant war hero. The article I linked also makes some interesting observations about how Germans reacted to the movie. Other WWII movies have apparently been met with intense scrutiny and debate... Germans have apparently really loved Basterds, finding it almost cathartic: "a revenge fantasy for Germans born since the war who have been made to feel guilty for a war and crimes that they had no part in." I have read that Christoph Waltz is an almost certain Oscar nominee for his performance as Col. Landa, and that Basterds could earn a best screenplay nomination as well. -k

I think the cost of buying a home has gone up far out of proportion to incomes. I remember a relative once telling me "when I was your age, I had a brand new car and a staff of 5 working for me!" and my dad told him "yeah, well, if you weren't making money in 1959 you were a real shmuck." -k

The "Shatner interprets Palin as beat poetry" thing has been one of the funniest ongoing things in a long time. -k

I think I know what August is getting at, but Aliens is a very poor example. First off, as pointed out, not CGI. Secondly, while there are lots of movies where there's nothing going on except for astounding visual effects, Aliens wasn't one of them. Aliens (and especially Alien) are excellent movies. And finally, I believe Aliens had an R rating, so its box-office success wasn't a result of 14 year olds anyway. Another quibble: why are we talking about 14 year old Asians? or 14 year olds in Hong Kong? You can't make money at the movies by making movies that appeal to 14 year olds in Hong Kong. (Counterfeiters might profit, however.) I don't think 14 year old North Americans have any more artistic sophistication than their Asian counterparts. 14 year old boys want to see explosions and gun fights and kung fu and cars turning into robots. 14 year old girls want to see ... uh, totally hot vampires, apparently. Current movies relying on CGI to create spectacular images are really just an evolution of the "special-effects blockbuster" which has been around for far longer than CGI has existed. August presents Aliens as an example of a movie relying on special effects wizardry, but it doesn't. Alien and Aliens made a lasting mark, not because of special effects (which by today's standards are entirely forgettable) but because they tell a story extremely well. The story itself is about as simple as it gets (Alien: people try to escape from a scary monster! Aliens: people try to kill the scary monsters!) it is the telling of it which is exceptional. Giving the audience an actual scary monster that actually looked scary was part of that, but only part of it. Alien and Aliens were at their best not when the scary monster was actually on the screen, but when it wasn't. CGI (and other special effects) are just a tool. Like any other tool, directors can use it with deftness and artistic discretion, or they can use it to ridiculous excess. I think there is some preconception (assumption? conceit?) that movies that use special effects do so as a substitute for "real" artistry. Snobs may have the idea that movies use special effects as a gimmick to attract an audience, or to distract viewers from having a weak story or bad acting, or similar notions. I completely disagree. It's no more legitimate than arguing that movies use famous actors, or beautiful actors, or gimmicky premises, to compensate for their shortcomings. It happens, but it's not always the case. Some stories need amazing visuals to be told. You can't do Apollo 13 justice without going into space. That doesn't mean the story itself has less merit than something that could filmed in a crappy apartment in Paris. A good director can use CGI (or any other tool) to enhance the story he is telling. A bad director can get so wrapped up the special effects that he completely loses sight of what the story is actually about. It was in the "Up" thread where we talked about character before. I watched some of the special features on my Up blu-ray this week. They had some interviews with the creative people that I found very interesting. A couple of things I found especially interesting (as somebody who writes a bit myself) were the choices they made regarding Muntz (the sort-of villain). One thing they said is that they had originally planned a much more elaborate ending for Muntz. They eventually decided to do a much simpler scene. The reasoning: it's Carl's movie... doing more elaborate scenes for Muntz took the focus off of Carl and put it where it didn't belong. "I sort of wanted to just get Muntz out of the way and get back to Carl." Another thing they mentioned was they'd originally constructed a much more elaborate motivation for Muntz... his quest for the giant goofy bird was based on a mythical quest to create a potion of eternal youth for which the bird's egg was a key ingredient. They scrapped that because the mystical element of it seemed out of place for the movie, and more importantly because it just didn't matter. For purposes of the story, it just doesn't matter why Muntz is so determined to get that goofy bird... it just mattered that he was obsessed with it and that his obsession put him into conflict with Carl. The people behind Up recognized that the movie was ultimately about Carl... and as a result they chose to pare away unnecessary distractions and remove some elements that took the focus off of Carl. August mentioned Shrek... I think Shrek could have benefited from more of the same kind of thinking. The movie is at its best when it's squarely focused on Shrek, and at its weakest when it veers off course into too much Donkey and gives us Myers and Murphy doing schtick. I'm not sure I really get the idea of "character driven" vs "plot driven". Is it only "character driven" if nothing actually happens? If our unattractive Parisian couple leaves their crappy apartment and something actually happens, does it stop being a character driven story and become a "plot driven" story? Good stories can still bring vivid characters to life and their character is illuminated through conflict and through the dilemnas they face and the choices they make. Also in regard to character: August mentions Twilight as well. I watched Twilight (oh, the shame) and the thing that struck me most is how completely devoid of character the central character Bella actually is. One review I saw described it as Kristen Stewart "underplaying" the character (which might be a charitable description of Stewart's acting skills, but that's beside the point.) The reviewer went on to suggest that this is actually a central element of the film's appeal to it's target audience: by making Bella essentially a blank canvass, it becomes easy for a teenage girl to project herself onto Bella. By making Bella almost a non-entity, they make it possible for a girl to imagine herself as Bella. With regard to Avatar, and the inevitable comparison with Cameron's other giant-budget epic... I do not think Avatar will compare to the box office success of Titanic. However, I don't think it will be a dud. Transformers 2 did $400 million of domestic box office this year; The Dark Knight grossed over $500 million domestic the year before, neither are "chick flicks". Indeed, a lot of the most commercially successful movies of all time are not "chick flicks". The following adjusted-for-inflation list puts it in perspective: 1 Gone with the Wind MGM $1,450,680,400 $198,676,459 1939^ 2 Star Wars Fox $1,278,898,700 $460,998,007 1977^ 3 The Sound of Music Fox $1,022,542,400 $158,671,368 1965 4 E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial Uni. $1,018,514,100 $435,110,554 1982^ 5 The Ten Commandments Par. $940,580,000 $65,500,000 1956 6 Titanic Par. $921,523,500 $600,788,188 1997 7 Jaws Uni. $919,605,900 $260,000,000 1975 8 Doctor Zhivago MGM $891,292,600 $111,721,910 1965 9 The Exorcist WB $793,883,100 $232,671,011 1973^ 10 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Dis. $782,620,000 $184,925,486 1937^ 11 101 Dalmatians Dis. $717,405,900 $144,880,014 1961^ 12 The Empire Strikes Back Fox $704,937,000 $290,475,067 1980^ 13 Ben-Hur MGM $703,640,000 $74,000,000 1959 14 Return of the Jedi Fox $675,346,600 $309,306,177 1983^ 15 The Sting Uni. $640,045,700 $156,000,000 1973 16 Raiders of the Lost Ark Par. $632,858,500 $242,374,454 1981^ 17 Jurassic Park Uni. $618,957,900 $357,067,947 1993 18 The Graduate AVCO $614,402,600 $104,901,839 1967^ 19 Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace Fox $609,049,300 $431,088,301 1999 20 Fantasia Dis. $596,252,200 $76,408,097 1941^ http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm Quite a variety of genres, from romance to family films to science fiction and fantasy, to horror. My guess: Avatar will have enough domestic gross to almost cover its huge production budget, and will earn a profit when worldwide gross is factored in. -k

I don't think that Ed Asner's resume for the decade prior to Up is what people mean when they use the word "bankable". We'll have to agree to disagree on the point. However, it's irrelevant to what I was getting at. Earlier August proposed that recent animated movies like Up are made because And since we're all at least agreed that Ed Asner has not been a star for a long time, it's ridiculous to suggest that studio executives planned a 100 million dollar production to cash in on his star power. -k

Ed Asner might be bankable today. But if he had been bankable before "Up" was a smash hit, his resume for the previous decade sure doesn't show it. A guest appearances on CSI:NY, a minor character in 6 episodes of Studio 60, a minor character in 3 episodes of ER. And that's it: the rest is voice work for cartoons and video games or guest appearances on shows nobody ever heard of. Prior to Up, it appears that the last time he was cast as a main character in a production of any significance was in a short-lived 1998 sit-com called "The Closer". Cheney appears to think that anybody who can get acting work is "bankable", but I think that's far from what industry folks mean by the term. But instead of get drawn into a debate about the definition of a piece of jargon, I'll just leave it at this: if people thought Ed Asner had the star power to sell tickets or create ratings prior to Up, he wouldn't have spent the previous 10 years doing Saturday morning cartoons and video-game voices. And that is not to insult him. It is to point out the obvious: he had not been a star for a long time. I'm sure he is a sentimental favorite for people old enough to remember MTM, and I think it's neat that he is having a resurgence at 80 years of age. I also think it's neat that "Up" presented the world with a very elderly hero and that people embraced it. Wonderful character, wonderfully voiced, wonderful movie. -k

Well, Mr Cheney, you've certainly demonstrated an aptitude for using "cut and paste", but you've also demonstrated that you don't understand what the word "bankable" means. That Mr Asner has been able to keep himself busy guest-starring in occasional episodes of TV series, and has lent his voice to a lot of animated series and video games does not show that he is "bankable". If anything, that list of credits proves the opposite: no credits of note for years prior to "Up". -k