Tom Snyder

1936-2007

Michael Ochs, Getty Images

Thanks, Tom, for years of
Rich and thoughtful interviews.
May you rest in peace.

Breach

Motivation.

It's something I've always been interested in, and the thing that most attracted me to the movie Breach. Sure, a talented-as-hell cast and a well-written screenplay is fine and dandy, but it's not always enough. Sometimes, especially when a movie is telling a true life tale, I wanna know The Why.

And it's on delivering this that the film fails.

Chris Cooper is FBI agent Robert Hannsen, a career fed who specialized in Soviet espionage and revolutionized the way the Bureau maintained it's data. Although smart, Hannsen was held back on the career path because of his personality. He was egotistical, obsessive, narrow-minded and more than a bit of a perv. (While those qualities may serve one well in politics, they are typically career busters in most other professions.)

Oh, yeah...He was also a spy. And the FBI knew it.

Eric O'Neill, played by Ryan Phillippe, is the upstart clerk pegged by administration to work with, get close to and ultimately bust Hannsen in the act of making a drop. O'Neill is ambitious, and sees this assignment as his way of getting on the Bureau's fast-track.

What he finds out about himself during the assignment changes who he is at his core, though, and also changes the direction of his life.

Breach has fine acting, and is a mostly-entertaining flick. But I struggled with The Why. Did Hannsen spy because: (a) he was held down by The Man and not promoted when he should have been, (b) he wanted the big pay-outs that comes with the spy-game, (c) he was a patriot, and was trying to show the Bureau where it was failing, or (d) he was a selfish bastard. The movie flirts with all four possibilities, but leaves the door open as to The Why.

And I really needed to know!

Smokin' Aces

Smokin' Aces was one of those flicks. You know, the kind you love while you are watching it, then like a whole lot less at time passes.

The movie is about the FBI trying to protect a highly placed mobster (Jeremy Piven) who is ready to cut a deal with the government to avoid going to jail. The mob has placed a bounty on killing the weasel--$1,000,000 smackeroos--which contract killers salivate after as they try to get past the cops to Piven. The movie is fast-paced: lots of actions, tight dialogue and interesting characters. But something seems to be missing...

Substance.

Yep, Smokin' Aces has lots of style and very little substance. And that's too bad, because it could have been a really terrific movie instead of just so-so.

An alternative title might have jazzed the movie up a bit. Like Talladega Night: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby did for the Will Ferrell film. You know as well as I do that the cool title made that movie funnier than it actually was. So, here are some title suggestions I'd make that would improve Smokin' Aces:

Smokin' Aces: Spot The Cool Cameo Appearances

Smokin' Aces: Why Jeremy Piven Will Never Be John Cusack

Smokin' Aces: It's In English, But You'll Wanna Use The Subtitle Feature Anyway

Smokin' Aces: Smoke Him If You Got Him

and,

Smokin; Aces: The Ballad Of Characters We Didn't Know Long Enough To Invest In

I Gots Me Some Talent

I read somewhere that The Late Show with David Letterman is auditioning people in the area on Saturday for it's Stupid Human Tricks and Stupid Pet Tricks segments.

If only I had a pet... But, there's still hope.

Although not having a pet keeps me out of that specific part of the audition, I very well could have the skills necessary to be successful in landing a spot on the Stupid Human segment of the show. (At least that's what Mrs. Film Geek tells me.) With her encouragement, I've come up with a list of personal reasons that will certainly ramp up the "wow" factor for the Late Night judges.

Reasons I Could Be Should Be A Stupid Human

1. I continue to drive my Ford Taurus, even though the "check engine soon" light has been on, constantly, since March, 2003;

2. I sat through two-thirds of Basic Instinct 2;

3. "I don't understand why you buy that rap shit. Rap's a fad, and it's gonna die soon, man. Just like disco." ~Me to my younger--and hipper-- brother. Fall, 1982;

4. At age 42, I just discovered that not everyone can fart the opening drum beat of Queen's "We Will Rock You" on command, and at will. And I continue to find that odd...;

5. "How much for that file folder? It's my wife's birthday, and I wanna get her something special!" ~Me to the Assistant Manager of The Office Depot. June 14, 2006.

Leather Britches

I couldn't get over the unusual sight I was watching on the news. Somewhere in Wisconsin--along some dairy-lined roadway, I'm certain--a semi-truck overturned, accidentally dumping it's load of green beans across the highway.

50,000 pounds of green beans!

I watched video of crews working to clean up the mess; shoveling, bulldozing, sweeping. How the hell do you put a dent in what amounts to a mountain of green beans?

My grandpa would have made leather britches.

It seemed my grandpa always had several strings of leather britches hanging around his kitchen. After he retired and before he became too ill to garden, he seemed to find a sense of self-worth in what he produced on the farm. Tomatoes, corn, potatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, beets--you name it, he probably grew it every year.

But he seemed most to love the variety of things one can do with green beans.

Threaded carefully with string and spaced evenly apart, green bean necklaces and bracelets hung all around his kitchen. Long strings, short strings, lengthwise or dangling, the leather britches hung for weeks as they dried out. They looked almost ornate to a 12-year-old kid who knew little about life other than that his grandpa hung the moon.

After they were dried and cooked, they were pretty tasty, too.

I haven't eaten leather britches since my grandpa died twenty years ago. Hell, I don't think I've even seen them since that summer, and that's rather sad. Making the dried beans was more a cultural practice than it was about feeding the family. And the skill to do it shouldn't end with me.

I think my kids are gonna learn a new craft later this summer.

The Fountain

Depending on the perspective of the viewer, The Fountain may well be about any of the following: obsessive love; the human desire for immortality; man's search for knowledge; spiritual awakenings; or the healing effect of personal forgiveness.

Just don't ask me what it's about, because I'm not certain I know. Hell, check out the Wikipedia synopsis of the flick. It's an interesting read.

Starring Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz, The Fountain is three tales in one. The intersecting stories follow a 16th century conquistador, a modern day scientist and an astronaut from the far future as each attempts to free his love interest from political, biological or spiritual death. Woven together and progressing toward a common conclusion, each story is compelling and complex. Director Darren Aronofsky frames the movie so that much of the complexity is told in a subtle fashion, through imagery and visual effects.

Like Aronofsky's Requium For A Dream, there is no tidy ending designed to make the audience happy. The story stays true, and leaves more questions than answers. Which is mostly the reason I liked it as much as I did.

The Fountain isn't for everyone. If you aren't comfortable being unsure where a movie plot is taking you 45 minutes in, this is not the flick for you. If you enjoy complicated and colorful puzzles, pick this one up.

Agent 000

Uh...



It seems Hanna-Barbera was on to something.

My Top 5: Who Directed That?!? Moments

Mostly, it's the quality of the writing and the acting of a movie that catches my attention. I'm content with most movies that are of better than average quality in those areas. Many movies have problems in the same area--with continuity, plot design, etc.--but for me, as long as the dialogue and the acting are consistently good, I'm invested.

One area that I rarely pay attention to is who directs the flick.

Sure, there are directors that create a buzz for a film just by having their names attached to the project. My favorite movies, though, are those that allow the film itself to tell the story, and which avoids the signature devices some big name directors like to embed into the story. In music, that works: I always loved recognizing an opening Joe Walsh lick, and being able to anticipate the auditory miracle that was about to occur. On the other hand, I was always annoyed with Alfred Hitchcock's obsession with finding a spot for himself in his films.

The audience began to look for it, and that "there he is" moment made the film less believable to me.

I admit that on occasion, I'll notice something so special about a movie that my curiosity is piqued about the director. Maybe it was her use of visuals to tell an aspect of the story, or how he paced the film. Those rare instances stick in my mind for some reason, and I have to figure out ways to purge them.

Like this.

My Top 5: Who Directed That?!? Moments

Duel: (1971) This made-for-TV flick was Steven Spielberg's transition from directing episodic TV to directing feature films. Dennis Weaver starred as a businessman who, while driving through a lonely California desert region, is nearly killed by a driver in a semi-truck. Weaver's character--as well as the audience--never sees the assailant during the cat-and-mouse adventure, except for a glimpse of the driver's cowboy boots. It was that fear of the unknown that caught my attention. It was an unusual plot device at the time, and one that made me look forward to future films made by some guy named Spielberg.

Reservoir Dogs: (1992) The directorial debut of Quentin Tarantino was riveting: amazing dialogue, well crafted scenes and peep-through-your-fingers-so-you-don't-miss-a-thing violence. It was, simply, brilliant. The opening scene of the jewel thieves having lunch and debating the method of tipping the waitress is still one of my favorite movie scenes of all time. Tarantino's work grabbed me by the head and forced me to take notice. And I loved it.

The Sixth Sense: (1999) M. Night Shyamalan's early home run is the flick to which the rest of his movies are compared. While that may not be fair, it's easy to understand. Shyamalan told the story with integrity and patience, allowing the audience to invest in the characters. That's why the ending was such a surprise: we cared about the characters, and were distracted by the emotion. It was a masterpiece.

Raging Bull: (1980) During the 70s, I knew nothing of Martin Scorsese. New York mob stories didn't play long at Grove's Theater, and I was too young to get into an "R" rated movie anyway. So, Raging Bull was the first Scorsese film I saw. And I was hooked. Filmed in black and white, the biopic of boxer Jake La Motta was psychologically edgy with it's themes of guilt and insecurity. It was also the movie that made me search out VHS (and Beta, back in the 80s) tapes of Scorsese's earlier work.

Chasing Amy: (1997) I caught Kevin Smith's flick on VHS, and immediately understood the guy. The flick had tight dialogue and characters that were interesting, but it was Smith's ability to make transparent the angst of twenty-something slackers with which I most identified. (Although I count on my fingers that I was 32 years old in 1997, in my mind I was still 25.) Chasing Amy made me camp out at Blockbuster the following weekend to check out Clerks and Mall Rats. I still identify so much with Smith's perspective of life that I miss his work when he hasn't directed in a while.

The Answer: September 18, 2007

The question: When will the We Are Marshall DVD be released?

It must be because there is a smell of football in the air, but this site is getting lots of traffic from people looking for information on the release date of the flick.

More info from the local newspaper about pre-ordering can be found here.

Pokin' Fun

One of the most enjoyable aspects of writing The Film Geek for the last year-and-a-half has been getting to know some of the other bloggers from West Virginia.

One of my favorite blogs, The West Virginia Hot Dog Blog, is written by a couple of goofs named Stanton and Chris James. In addition to knowing a thing or two about all-beef franks, both are pretty clever.

And both can be funny as hell.

Stanton recently took a shot at writing a tongue-in-cheek hot dog review in, what he described as, "the manner of The Film Geek." I'm not sure exactly what that means, but the piece sure sounded familiar when I read it.

Check it out here.

I mean, ...If you like that sort of thing.