Posted by David LeMaster on Aug 18, 2011 in
Day-to-Day I stopped blogging for about a year as I underwent personal difficulties. The blog is back, and with it a new life and a quest to get myself back on my feet both as a Parkinson’s patient and as a human being. Over the last year I’ve lost a piece of myself in separating from my life partner, and I’ve gained 50 pounds as I’ve dealt with the loss. This blog will follow as I pick up the pieces and face my challenges head on.
Posted by David LeMaster on Aug 14, 2011 in
Day-to-Day 
Posted by David LeMaster on Aug 14, 2011 in
Day-to-Day The past year was a little tough for me; between difficulties in my personal life and a serious struggle with the side-effects of Mirapex that included enough night binges that I’ve gained fifty pounds. I’ve found it impossible to sleep for more than three hour at a time, difficult to stay awake during the day, and disasterous when I take a pill and then have to sit for more than five minutes. I’ve fallen asleep in midsentence on the phone, mid-thought on the computer, an d I fear, potential mid-maneuver in the car. In short, I haven’t written, and I haven’t been writing, mostly because it takes me a half hour now to type what used to take five minutes.
But I’ back.
As of today, August 14, I’m writing again, and my work will progress. I got through the year based mostly on photography; now I will keep the photography going and turn back to the written word.
Posted by David LeMaster on Apr 9, 2010 in
Day-to-Day While watching this week’s episode of Breaking Bad, which I will review in an upcoming post, I was delighted to see an old friend, casting director Shari Rhodes, as a wheelchair-bound woman accosted by a pair of drug-cartell villains. Then, at the end of the show, as I looked for Shari’s name in the credits, I was crushed to discover the show had been dedicated to her memory.
Shari Rhodes was a casting director, acting coach, genuine cheerleader and good spirit. Her credits include cating Jaws, Ragedy Man, and The Man in the Moon. More importantly, her credits also include teaching and encouraging young actors of all kinds. I cannot express how much Shari’s spirit, charm, and enthusiasm will be missed.
Thank you, Shari Rhodes, for the encouragement and friendship. I will miss you.
Posted by David LeMaster on Mar 16, 2010 in
Day-to-Day The three-minute montage of the life and marriage of Carl and Ellie Frederickson in the opening minutes of Upmight be the best animated sequence I’ve ever seen. I’ll admit being wary of the film; despite the great press and reviews, the dog and the dodo bird in the ads made me suspect Up would be the typical Disney schmaltz complete with silly jokes and sentiment that has dominated the production company since Walt’s death. However, Up is beautifully crafted and highly emotional without being sentimental at all. It will go on my list as a favorite film from last year, and it bumps Up in the Air from the “big five” films that I believe should have been nominated for Best Picture.
The strength of Upis its ability to tell a story and examine the human condition despite using animated characters. Frederickson, brilliantly voiced by Ed Asner, struggles with growing old and losing his wife, a subject never explored, as far as I know, by the art of animation. This makes the film unique, but it also gives it an extra challenge–using a medium normally reserved for “cute” to create both pathos and drama in a Chaplinesque flirtation with the tragicomic. The result is a tight, well written, well edited film that appeals to both adults and children. The journey, both physical and metaphorical, for Frederickson, results in his discovering himself again after losing the thing that kept him going for decades. We cheer for Frederickson, not out of pity, but out of our own experience with what is uniquely human.
The most interesting thing about this film for me was the occasional parallel to the Don Quixote story. An old man (Frederickson/Don Quixote) sets out on a quest (for Frederickson, it’s to go to the place he and his wife always dreamed of going, thus fulfilling a promise; for Don Quixote, of course, it’s to battle evil in all forms) and is accompanied by a much shorter, less trim, alter-ego (Sancho Panza, who craves an island in the novel; Russell, the boyscout yearning for a Aiding Senior Citizens badge in the film). Like Don Quixote, Frederickson’s quest is full of misadventures (a house lifted into the air with balloons–something I believe Cervantes would’ve given for Don Quixote had such a concept been possible at the time–seems an awful lot like a dragon that turns into a windmill to me) all in the name and spirit of a woman who cannot appreciate his work (for Don Quixote, Dulcinea El Toboso is simply unaware of his love and disinterested in his personage; for Frederickson, the maiden on the pedestal is dead). The Don Quixote elements also include the marvelous soundtrack, an ethereal, dreamy sound, which reminds me greatly of Charlie Chaplin’s musical composition accompanying his classic film, City Lights.
Although I greatly enjoyed the film, I found the entire subplot with Christopher Plummer as Charles Muntz and his pack of wild dogs distracting. Although Plummer’s character was essential to the story, the dogs did not work, providing Disneyesque “comic relief” (Alpah Dog speaks like a chipmunk when his translator shorts out; a dog who “turns good” sounds straight off a Looney Tunes cartoon). In short, I hated the dogs. They were the throwback to the cutsie “kid’s” stuff the Disney company seems obsessed with having in every motion picture. It’s distracting and took a way from an otherwise nearly perfect film.
The dogs, however, aren’ t enough to ruin Up. It triumphs anyway, despite the dogs. Up is touching, emotional, and beautiful. As a film, it is an extraordinary achievement.
The professor grades the movie
Acting: Can you grade acting in an animated movie? A
Directing: A
Script: A-
Special Effects: A+
Entertainment Value: A
Miscellaneous: A
Final Grade: A
S0 far on my blog I’ve mostly talked about films I like. There is a reason for this–they were films for the awards season! I must admit, this was one of the strongest years in recent memory, and I would have been happy seeing any one of the Big Five films win. This is not usually the case; i.e., last year’s winner Snoopdog Millionaire–er, Slumdog Millionaire, was one of the biggest pieces of crap ever to be nominated for an Oscar. I’m still recovering after sitting through that piece of drivel. Oh, horrible, horrible, most horrible.
Posted by David LeMaster on Mar 16, 2010 in
Day-to-Day Does anyone else have problems with getting overly sore after exercise? Maybe I pulled a muscle or pinched a nerve, but something happend after a short workout with 8-pound handweights, and I can’t move. Couldn’t have been after an impressive lift, over a hundred or so?
Posted by David LeMaster on Mar 12, 2010 in
Day-to-Day When I was diagnosed with Early Onset Parkinson’s, I realized I could do one of two things: give up, or live life. I began doing things I always wanted to do–and one of them was to work with photography.
And it ain’t easy.
The adventure began with an Olympus pocket-camera to take snapshots. It had “image stabilization” capability, but one problem remained: you could only choose that capability alone. Any other special ability (night shooting, closeups, etc.) had to be disabled to get the stablization effect. While that may work for some people, for a Parkinson’s patient, the image stabilization must be on all the time.
Posted by David LeMaster on Mar 7, 2010 in
Day-to-Day 
Posted by David LeMaster on Mar 6, 2010 in
Movie Reviews
What better way to start my official blog than to make predictions about the Oscar race? It’s a highly unusual year, and there are five films worthy of Oscar contention, any one of which I would be satisfied to see win. However, ten films are nominated, leaving the whole process a bit like a little league baseball awards festival–everybody who played gets a trophy. Although I have no room to complain about such trophies—I received one for my horrible performance on a middle-school football team—the Oscars are not about “feel good” awards. For that reason, I will comment on and review the five films which deserve Best Pictures nominations and ignore the other five.
Up in the Air is charming, funny, and tight. It will win Best Adapted Screenplay, and in any other year might be a solid competitor for Best Picture. Clooney is as good as he’s ever been, but the highlights of the film include the performances by the two leading ladies, especially the marvelous Anna Kendrick. Despite the film’s excellent performances and screenplay, it doesn’t stick with you long and is bound to be forgotten in the mass of nominees.
Precious is the most emotionally draining movie of the year, dominated by two powerhouse performances by Mo Nique (who will win Best Supporting Actress), and Gabourey Sidibe, who, if there were any justice, would win Best Actress over Sandra Bullock. Oh, if only Sandra Bullock and the deserving Meryl Streep would cancel each other out. . .
Speaking of Bullock, I refuse to talk about Fourth Down and Goal, or whatever the heck her Cliché, er, film, is called .
Precious is disturbing, challenging, and off-putting, but it’s also clunky and sometimes sloppy. Nevertheless, the performances alone make it one of the year’s top five.
My personal favorite film (not for Best Picture, but favorite overall) of the year is Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds. Christoph Waltz should walk away with Best Supporting Actor. The film has lived in my mind months and months after I first saw it; though I was somewhat troubled by pace and editing at first viewing, I quickly changed my mind. Who but Tarantino would manage to change World War II in such a bold and dynamic manner? As Walt’s character shouts, “Oh, that’s a Bingo!”
The Hurt Locker is my choice for Best Picture for numerous reasons. The extraordinary sense of tension throughout the film makes it one of the most memorable and enduring war movies in years. Director Kathryn Bigelow masterfully directs “battle” scenes, bomb diffusion incidents, and heated exchanges among the soldiers, creating both a realistic atmosphere as well as a tight story. Bigelow’s strength as a director is her refusal to preach or give in to cliché. Although we’re in the middle of great fear and emotion, the soldiers are never overtaken by sentimentality and the film emphasizes reality without melodrama. All performances are outstanding, as recognized by a Best Actor nod for Jeremy Renner. Supporting cast member Anthony Mackie was overlooked and deserves a nod as well.
The winner of the 2010 Oscar, however, will be Avatar. Why? Because it’s the Academy. . . During a desperate economic time when Hollywood has been accused of straying further and further from Joe Public, the Academy decided to expand the nominations list to ten so it could include popular films; past fan favorites left off the list (think The Dark Knight from last year) caused an Oscar controversy, so to bring back the audience they’ve expanded the nominees—and it naturally follows they’ll give the award to the blockbuster rather than the low budget film nobody saw.
That said, Avatar is deserving; though an inferior film to Hurt Locker ( acting performances are inconsistent; the Cliché Monster rears his ugly head enough to devour the middle of the film; the script could have been improved by hiring a third grader to ghostwrite. . . Mr. Cameron, please—you’re so good at everything else: Let someone else write your dialogue!), Avatar is nevertheless groundbreaking technically, visually spectacular, entertaining, memorable, and magical. I truly felt after Avatar the same way I felt about the original Star Wars. . . telling a cinematic story will never be the same.
So my predication: Ms. Bigelow will get a much-deserved Best Director, while Cameron takes home the Best Picture prize.
Copyright 2010, by David J. LeMaster
Posted by David LeMaster on Mar 6, 2010 in
Film Review Podcasts My biggest pet peeve about Hollywood is multi-million dollar computer-graphic effects. Nothing ruins a good scary movie faster than the lengthy cut to a computerized demon, laughably fixed in front of a blue screen, drooling, or growling, or killing, or maiming, or whatever the cookie-cutter villain does that so terrifies its victims. Such shots dominate modern horror and its subgenre, the ax-murderer/slasher movie, and quite frankly, I’m sick of it. Give me psychological thrills over visual graphics any time.
Paranormal Activity, therefore, is what movies should be about for me: good acting, good editing, hellacious psychological scares, and good, clean fun.
Director Oren Peli’s film is far from perfect; the conceit becomes somewhat difficult to watch at times, the film is a little slow at the beginning, and the handheld camera makes the audience dizzy at best, and queasy at worst. I’d never gotten dizzy in a film before, not even in
Blair Witch, a film easily compared (but far inferior) to this one, but had to move to the very back of the theater to keep from getting sick. Nevertheless, the film’s strengths and energy far outweigh the few imperfections, and
Paranormal Activity goes down as the year’s most pleasant surprise.
Katie Featherston as Katie carries the film with a believable, stirring performance. Her banter with Micah Sloan, sometimes scripted, sometimes improvised, retains an element of truth difficult to achieve in any genre, much less in the often melodramatic turns of horror. Featherston’s character evolves through the film as her hope for resolution dims and her sense of humor leaks away, replaced by an overwhelming alarm. The audience willingly takes the trip with her, enveloped in the mystery which is made all the more effective by Peli’s decision to keep his villain psychological, a thing of our imaginations. As a result, we join Featherston in imagining the sheer horror of the thing lurking in the dark.
Micah Sloan provides the perfect foil for Featherston, and much of the film’s humor (and yes, a horror film can be quite humorous, even without the canned one-liners and generic retread jokes). Got a problem with a spirit lurking in your house? Sloan’s answer–buy a camera and try to make the spirit show up more often. Is the spirit turning angry? Sloan’s answer–buy a Ouija board and open up the metaphysical doors! The relationship between the two is fresh and amusing–and, surprisingly, very real.
Mark Fredrichs as the psychic provides subtle exposition in the film’s first twenty minutes as well as much-needed comic relief in the buildup to the catastrophe. Ashley Palmer’s character is not fleshed out, and the actress delivers a forgettable performance. But that’s the only thing forgettable about Paranormal Activity.
The film’s greatest achievement is its building a sense of suspense. Featherston and Sloan sleep with the bedroom door open and a video camera pointed toward them that gives us a view of the bedroom and hallway and what lurks beyond. With each passing night the audience’s sense of anticipation grows as we seek out a movement in the shadows. This is imminently effective in creating a dramatic irony and tension. By the ending (which I didn’t like quite as much as the rest of the film, partially because I lost a sense of the unknown) the audience is ready to scream even at the mere passing of shadows on the floor.
So. . . is it an Oscar winner? Probably not. Is it the most horrifying film in years? I’m not the right person to ask–I’m horrified by war films (Platoon, Saving Private Ryan), and find myself laughing and having great fun in a suspense/horror film like this one (I laughed uproariously throughout, especially in the last reel). Am I crazy? Naw. I just enjoy laughing through a good scare. And Paranormal Activity is a great one.
The professor grades the movie:
Acting: A-
Directing: A
Script: B
Special Effects: NA
Entertainment Value: A-
Miscellaneous: B+
Final Grade: A-
Copyright 2009 by David J. LeMaster
