Last Entry for 'Gratitude'
This is my blog and of course it's biased. So let me make three concluding points.
First off, even though I've pointed out how many union members feel no gratitude to the New Democratic Party, there's many thousands of workers in B.C. who are unionized and do vote N.D.P. election after election. As one former head of the B.C. Federation of Labour Len Guy, once told me,"If union members don't vote for the N.D.P. I don't know who does."
Unions like the B.C.G.E.U. may have negotiators who praise right wing premiers. Yet come election time, dozens of B.C.G.E.U. officials flood into N.D.P. campaign offices. Like many other unions, the B.C.G.E.U. gives lots of money to the N.D.P. before and during elections.
Jean Swanson, the long-time anti-poverty activist is not hated on the downtown eastside. Far from it. Many of the poor people who live there, admire Swanson. Some of them revere her.
Billy Taylor may have made enemies among members of the Cree nation. Yet many Cree aboriginals admire him. And before I get on my high horse to denounce those who show no gratitude, I too have been guilty of being helped by people and then never thanking them. One man who drove me to school for one entire
year never saw me again after that.
"You just used me," he said when he ran into me a few years
later. So as the 20th century American movie star Mae West used to say, "I'm no angel." Nor was he the first person I used and then vanished from. with no thanks give.
Ingratitude I conclude has been shown by me and many others. Alas it's just part of life.
Saturday, 3 January 2015
Gratitude - Continued
' Gratitude' contnued
This is a story about gratitude and when it's given and when it's not. In the first part of this blog entry I talked about a union that never said thanks when it was needed. So let's stick to this theme and talk about another union called the B.C. Government Employees Union. The 'BC Goo' as it's sometimes called is one of the major public sector unions in British Columbia.
Its more than 30,000 members toil away as social workers, court reporters, data entry work and highway maintenance workers. Some work in provincially owned liquor stores, stacking shelves, recording sales as cashiers, and putting sale prices on liquor bottles. In 2014 the liquor stores staff got a new contract after some hard bargaining with the usually anti-union B.C. Liberal government. B.C. premier Christy Clark took part in the bargaining sessions.
"I think she's a brilliant politician," David Vipond, the B.C.G.E.U.'s chief negotiator said of Premier Clark. "She's got a lot of skill."
Flash back about 40 years. At this time, the N.D.P. government of Dave Barrett just about created the present BCGEU. Before Barrett's time in power, government workers scuffled long and hard to get any rights. The reigning B.C. premier of the 1950's and 1960's, W.A.C. Bennett was a right-wing Social Creditor who decided what if any raises government workers would get. He decided everything else about their working conditions too.
Once Barrett's government was elected in 1972, everything changed. The B.C.G.E.U.'s new leader English-born John Freyer helped forge a genuine union. He negotiated members's rights, wages, and so on. Yet he and his aides were helped by Barrett's Minister of Labour, the former railway worker Bill King. King encouraged and helped form the present B.C.G.E.U.
What a difference this was from W.A.C. Bennett's day.
"The B.C.G.E.U. couldn't negotiate its way out of a paper bag," one union official from another public sector union scornfully remarked about the B.C.G.E.U. "Have you ever seen its members on a picket line? They go out on strike once in a blue moon. Everything they won at first they were given by the N.D.P. government."
This comment was a bit unfair. Yet without doubt if the N.D.P. hadn't formed a government once in a while, the 'BC Goo' would be a very weak union indeed.
Yet 40 or so years later here was B.C.G.E.U. negotiator praising Liberal premier Christy Clark to the skies. The NDP that sits usually in opposition and helped create the B.C.G.E.U.? Vipond didn't even give them a mention. Or maybe he did but the media never reported. there was no gratitude here.
Of course 40 years is a very long time. So maybe you can forgive the unions I've mentioned. So let me add a personal anecdote. In 1981 I went down to Vancouver City Hall on behalf of a future housing co-op. I and another housing co-op member
went before the 11 member city council and asked the council for a six month property tax deferral so our money-starved co-op could start being built. Before that meeting I lobbied three council members to support our tax deferral plan. The deferral went through after some discussion.
After that I went to at least 15 more co-op meetings. I was also put through the grinder by an official from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation or CMHC as it was known. CMHC oversaw housing co-ops back then and this lady from CMHC forced me to find out the rents from 50 nearby apartments and then rank them from 1 to 50.
"You've got 48 hours to do this," she firmly informed me.
I moved into the co-op in the late summer of 1982. After that I went to dozens of meetings and did help track down a a handy man. That took me over 14 hours on one weekend.
But then danger struck. "Dave," someone informed me over the phone in 1995. "There's a group of people who want to throw you out of here. They held a meeting of 14 people last night. They don't like you.
I know what had happened. A few days before I was phoned, I had an argument with the group's leader, a short chunky woman who tried to bully me and others. Still at great cost to myself I kept my cool. I recalled what a sociology instructor had told me years ago. "The bigger the group, the more likely it is to split into at least two factions."
Which is what happened to this group. Soon, nobody talked about kicking me out. They were now fighting with each other.
Of course I am not the easiest person to get on with. I have a terrible temper, and a wide streak of paranoia, talk too much and panic easily. I sure offended people in the 42 unit co-op I still live in to-day. But this incident taught me once again, that many people show no gratitude to those who help them.
This is a story about gratitude and when it's given and when it's not. In the first part of this blog entry I talked about a union that never said thanks when it was needed. So let's stick to this theme and talk about another union called the B.C. Government Employees Union. The 'BC Goo' as it's sometimes called is one of the major public sector unions in British Columbia.
Its more than 30,000 members toil away as social workers, court reporters, data entry work and highway maintenance workers. Some work in provincially owned liquor stores, stacking shelves, recording sales as cashiers, and putting sale prices on liquor bottles. In 2014 the liquor stores staff got a new contract after some hard bargaining with the usually anti-union B.C. Liberal government. B.C. premier Christy Clark took part in the bargaining sessions.
"I think she's a brilliant politician," David Vipond, the B.C.G.E.U.'s chief negotiator said of Premier Clark. "She's got a lot of skill."
Flash back about 40 years. At this time, the N.D.P. government of Dave Barrett just about created the present BCGEU. Before Barrett's time in power, government workers scuffled long and hard to get any rights. The reigning B.C. premier of the 1950's and 1960's, W.A.C. Bennett was a right-wing Social Creditor who decided what if any raises government workers would get. He decided everything else about their working conditions too.
Once Barrett's government was elected in 1972, everything changed. The B.C.G.E.U.'s new leader English-born John Freyer helped forge a genuine union. He negotiated members's rights, wages, and so on. Yet he and his aides were helped by Barrett's Minister of Labour, the former railway worker Bill King. King encouraged and helped form the present B.C.G.E.U.
What a difference this was from W.A.C. Bennett's day.
"The B.C.G.E.U. couldn't negotiate its way out of a paper bag," one union official from another public sector union scornfully remarked about the B.C.G.E.U. "Have you ever seen its members on a picket line? They go out on strike once in a blue moon. Everything they won at first they were given by the N.D.P. government."
This comment was a bit unfair. Yet without doubt if the N.D.P. hadn't formed a government once in a while, the 'BC Goo' would be a very weak union indeed.
Yet 40 or so years later here was B.C.G.E.U. negotiator praising Liberal premier Christy Clark to the skies. The NDP that sits usually in opposition and helped create the B.C.G.E.U.? Vipond didn't even give them a mention. Or maybe he did but the media never reported. there was no gratitude here.
Of course 40 years is a very long time. So maybe you can forgive the unions I've mentioned. So let me add a personal anecdote. In 1981 I went down to Vancouver City Hall on behalf of a future housing co-op. I and another housing co-op member
went before the 11 member city council and asked the council for a six month property tax deferral so our money-starved co-op could start being built. Before that meeting I lobbied three council members to support our tax deferral plan. The deferral went through after some discussion.
After that I went to at least 15 more co-op meetings. I was also put through the grinder by an official from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation or CMHC as it was known. CMHC oversaw housing co-ops back then and this lady from CMHC forced me to find out the rents from 50 nearby apartments and then rank them from 1 to 50.
"You've got 48 hours to do this," she firmly informed me.
I moved into the co-op in the late summer of 1982. After that I went to dozens of meetings and did help track down a a handy man. That took me over 14 hours on one weekend.
But then danger struck. "Dave," someone informed me over the phone in 1995. "There's a group of people who want to throw you out of here. They held a meeting of 14 people last night. They don't like you.
I know what had happened. A few days before I was phoned, I had an argument with the group's leader, a short chunky woman who tried to bully me and others. Still at great cost to myself I kept my cool. I recalled what a sociology instructor had told me years ago. "The bigger the group, the more likely it is to split into at least two factions."
Which is what happened to this group. Soon, nobody talked about kicking me out. They were now fighting with each other.
Of course I am not the easiest person to get on with. I have a terrible temper, and a wide streak of paranoia, talk too much and panic easily. I sure offended people in the 42 unit co-op I still live in to-day. But this incident taught me once again, that many people show no gratitude to those who help them.
Wednesday, 31 December 2014
When there is no gratitude
When There is no Gratitude
"If you've come to this world to hear the words 'Thank You', you've come to the wrong world," said Billy Taylor, a Cree First Nations person.
Taylor and his people had fought battles - most of them peacefully - against the giant public utility firm called Hydro Quebec. From the 1960's on, Hydro Quebec built huge dams on traditional Cree land in northern Quebec. The Cree foiled some of Hydro's plans. But only some. Taylor led part of the Cree fightback. If he failed sometimes I'm sure some of the Cree nation put him down. Then he must have realized that some people don't thank you, or show little gratitude for your past efforts.
A few weeks ago one poor person on Vancouver's downtown eastside, put down Jean Swanson, a veteran anti-poverty activist."Jean Swanson's a poverty pimp," he said. In short, Swanson made money on the backs of poor people. This is totally untrue. Swanson has spent 40 years on the downtown eastside, a low income place that is now morphing into yet another place of upscale condominiums.
Swanson lives in a modest housing co-op apartment on Vancouver's northeast area. She has, I'm sure, saved some money. Yet she's far from rich and surely made no fortune from her anti-poverty work.
In the early 1990's, a group of poor people, led by a convicted bank robber, put out a paper that accused Jean Swanson of being a poverty pimp. This group of people have long vanished. Yet poor people, like richer folk,often show no gratitude to people who tried to help them.
Some bus drivers are no different from some poor people. "Gratitude," is defined by 'Webster's Dictionary' as "Thankfulness'. Yet not all people or unionized workers thank or vote for people that help them.
The 3,000 members who make up the bus drivers and mechanics in Metro Vancouver owe their jobs and their slightly above average wages to the long ago NDP government of Dave Barrett. Jim Lorimer, who was Barrett's Minister of Municipal Affairs, ordered close to 100 new buses for Metro Vancouver, not long after he took on the cabinet post. Lorimer set the stage for a true public transportation system in Metro Vancouver.
Before this some trolleys and a few busus trundled City of vancouver streets. A scattering of buses every hour or so servced the growing suburbs that ringed Vancouver. But that was it. "You sure don't have too many buses here," a visitor from Montreal said in the spring of 1972.
Jim Lorimer changed all that. He hired public transit experts to plan new bus lines. When he ordered new buses he also hired new bus drivers and mechanics to drive and repair them.So more people found jobs in transit.
Soon new buses shot back and forth between Vancouver and suburbs like Burnaby, Richmond, New Westminster and other places,. Though Dave Barrett's government lasted a bare three years and three months in power, Lorimer's planners set the stage for transit systems and buses in smaller towns and cities across B.C.
In 1975, for example, the north Okanagan city of Vernon had no publicly-run buses. But by the late 1980's it did. Buses soon ran up and down the streets of Fraser valley cities of Abbotsford, Chilliwack and other places. So Dave Barrett's short-lived government laid the groundwork for a modern bus system. Yet this means nothing to so many bus drivers to-day.
Over 40 years after the time Dave Barrett was premier of B.C. a man I'll call Frank, drove buses all across Metro Vancouver. A big, chunky man, Frank lives in a big suburban home. He owns
two cars, numerous electronic appliances and has taken many holidays in Europe and elsewhere.
He couldn't have done all this as a worker if Dave Barrett's government hadn't come along. Yet Frank has never voted NDP and never will. "I don't believe in socialism," he said in 2013. "No way. I'm a free enterprise man all the way."
Ron comes from the sunny Okanagan. In the B.C. election of 2013 he voted for the Liberals too. And so did other drivers like Ujjal, Hank, Sara, Jean and many other bus drivers. (The are not their real names).
Many of these people know little or nothing about the N.D.P.'s creation of a modern bus system. Yet I think that even if they did, they would still vote for the right wing Liberal party. They surely won't vote N.D.P.
"I'd say about half the bus drivers voted Liberal in 2013," says a man I'll call Merinder. Another big husky driver, this man has never voted for the N.D.P.
So good deeds in politics don't always lead to people voting for your party. The N.D.P. in B.C. found that out in 2013 and earlier than that. There's often no gratitude in politics.
(end of Part One)
"If you've come to this world to hear the words 'Thank You', you've come to the wrong world," said Billy Taylor, a Cree First Nations person.
Taylor and his people had fought battles - most of them peacefully - against the giant public utility firm called Hydro Quebec. From the 1960's on, Hydro Quebec built huge dams on traditional Cree land in northern Quebec. The Cree foiled some of Hydro's plans. But only some. Taylor led part of the Cree fightback. If he failed sometimes I'm sure some of the Cree nation put him down. Then he must have realized that some people don't thank you, or show little gratitude for your past efforts.
A few weeks ago one poor person on Vancouver's downtown eastside, put down Jean Swanson, a veteran anti-poverty activist."Jean Swanson's a poverty pimp," he said. In short, Swanson made money on the backs of poor people. This is totally untrue. Swanson has spent 40 years on the downtown eastside, a low income place that is now morphing into yet another place of upscale condominiums.
Swanson lives in a modest housing co-op apartment on Vancouver's northeast area. She has, I'm sure, saved some money. Yet she's far from rich and surely made no fortune from her anti-poverty work.
In the early 1990's, a group of poor people, led by a convicted bank robber, put out a paper that accused Jean Swanson of being a poverty pimp. This group of people have long vanished. Yet poor people, like richer folk,often show no gratitude to people who tried to help them.
Some bus drivers are no different from some poor people. "Gratitude," is defined by 'Webster's Dictionary' as "Thankfulness'. Yet not all people or unionized workers thank or vote for people that help them.
The 3,000 members who make up the bus drivers and mechanics in Metro Vancouver owe their jobs and their slightly above average wages to the long ago NDP government of Dave Barrett. Jim Lorimer, who was Barrett's Minister of Municipal Affairs, ordered close to 100 new buses for Metro Vancouver, not long after he took on the cabinet post. Lorimer set the stage for a true public transportation system in Metro Vancouver.
Before this some trolleys and a few busus trundled City of vancouver streets. A scattering of buses every hour or so servced the growing suburbs that ringed Vancouver. But that was it. "You sure don't have too many buses here," a visitor from Montreal said in the spring of 1972.
Jim Lorimer changed all that. He hired public transit experts to plan new bus lines. When he ordered new buses he also hired new bus drivers and mechanics to drive and repair them.So more people found jobs in transit.
Soon new buses shot back and forth between Vancouver and suburbs like Burnaby, Richmond, New Westminster and other places,. Though Dave Barrett's government lasted a bare three years and three months in power, Lorimer's planners set the stage for transit systems and buses in smaller towns and cities across B.C.
In 1975, for example, the north Okanagan city of Vernon had no publicly-run buses. But by the late 1980's it did. Buses soon ran up and down the streets of Fraser valley cities of Abbotsford, Chilliwack and other places. So Dave Barrett's short-lived government laid the groundwork for a modern bus system. Yet this means nothing to so many bus drivers to-day.
Over 40 years after the time Dave Barrett was premier of B.C. a man I'll call Frank, drove buses all across Metro Vancouver. A big, chunky man, Frank lives in a big suburban home. He owns
two cars, numerous electronic appliances and has taken many holidays in Europe and elsewhere.
He couldn't have done all this as a worker if Dave Barrett's government hadn't come along. Yet Frank has never voted NDP and never will. "I don't believe in socialism," he said in 2013. "No way. I'm a free enterprise man all the way."
Ron comes from the sunny Okanagan. In the B.C. election of 2013 he voted for the Liberals too. And so did other drivers like Ujjal, Hank, Sara, Jean and many other bus drivers. (The are not their real names).
Many of these people know little or nothing about the N.D.P.'s creation of a modern bus system. Yet I think that even if they did, they would still vote for the right wing Liberal party. They surely won't vote N.D.P.
"I'd say about half the bus drivers voted Liberal in 2013," says a man I'll call Merinder. Another big husky driver, this man has never voted for the N.D.P.
So good deeds in politics don't always lead to people voting for your party. The N.D.P. in B.C. found that out in 2013 and earlier than that. There's often no gratitude in politics.
(end of Part One)
Monday, 29 December 2014
Another Mind-Body Book
'When The Body Says No' by Dr. Gabor Mate, M.D., Vintage Canada, 2004. 306pp.
Gabor Mate, a doctor of medicine, has carved out another career as a writer. His book 'When The Body Says No' urges people to see the mind-body illness connection in a new
way.
"Repression of anger increases the risk of cancer," writes the Vancouver-based doctor. "It magnifies exposure to psychological stress." And psychological stress, Mate points out, lies behind many other illnesses too, like sclerdoma, multiple sclerosis or M.S., amytrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease as it's called, and types of cancer.
Here the doctor is leaning on the ideas of Dr. Hans Selye, who Mate co-dedicates the book to. 50 years ago Selye pioneered the ideas that stress lies behind many illnesses. The book forced me once again to look back at my own childhood and adolescence. For 'When The Body Says No' is chockful of patients whose early years like my own, were far from ideal.
And these patients later became victims of cancer, skin diseases and so on. My family like many others was a breeding ground for stress and illnesses. My father was an Orthodox Jew, though not a Hassidim Jew. Still he believed in every word of the Old Testament. He was at times a warm caring man but he could also erupt into frightening spasms of anger.
My mother was a long suffering woman from an upper middle class English family. "your father gave her warmth and love," one of my father's future partners said. My mother surely needed both of these emotions. For her father was a tyrant who drove his wife to deafness by his constant shouting.
Many of the patients in the book remind me of my mother. She nearly always put other people's needs ahead of her own needs. She died of breast cancer in the late 1960's of breast cancer. She was only 50 or so. My younger sister Valerie died at about the same time at the age of 20. I still feel that the estrogen-dosed birth control pills caused the stroke that killed her.
I didn't mourn my sister and mother when they died. As a result, when my dad died about 15 years later, I was seized by rage and great feelings of sadness. Then I started to mourn for my three dead family members. Yet I still blamed my father for the poverty our family endured from the early 1950's to the mid-1960's. And for many years I ended up like my father, full of rage and arguing with everybody.
"David is still fighting with his father," a woman said about me after I had a terrible argument with her.
All of this was brought back to me while reading this book. It took me down memory lane and often I erupted in rage and sadness after reading some pages. Dr. Mate by the way, likes anger but not rage.
"Health rests on three pillars," he points out near the book's end. " They are the body, the psyche and the spiritual connection. To ignore any one of them is to ignore imbalance and dis-ease."
Gabor Mate touches on all three pillars and opened my mind once again, to the connections between emotions and illness, not only in my own life, but the lives of many others. Though ten years old now, it's still a fine book.
Gabor Mate, a doctor of medicine, has carved out another career as a writer. His book 'When The Body Says No' urges people to see the mind-body illness connection in a new
way.
"Repression of anger increases the risk of cancer," writes the Vancouver-based doctor. "It magnifies exposure to psychological stress." And psychological stress, Mate points out, lies behind many other illnesses too, like sclerdoma, multiple sclerosis or M.S., amytrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease as it's called, and types of cancer.
Here the doctor is leaning on the ideas of Dr. Hans Selye, who Mate co-dedicates the book to. 50 years ago Selye pioneered the ideas that stress lies behind many illnesses. The book forced me once again to look back at my own childhood and adolescence. For 'When The Body Says No' is chockful of patients whose early years like my own, were far from ideal.
And these patients later became victims of cancer, skin diseases and so on. My family like many others was a breeding ground for stress and illnesses. My father was an Orthodox Jew, though not a Hassidim Jew. Still he believed in every word of the Old Testament. He was at times a warm caring man but he could also erupt into frightening spasms of anger.
My mother was a long suffering woman from an upper middle class English family. "your father gave her warmth and love," one of my father's future partners said. My mother surely needed both of these emotions. For her father was a tyrant who drove his wife to deafness by his constant shouting.
Many of the patients in the book remind me of my mother. She nearly always put other people's needs ahead of her own needs. She died of breast cancer in the late 1960's of breast cancer. She was only 50 or so. My younger sister Valerie died at about the same time at the age of 20. I still feel that the estrogen-dosed birth control pills caused the stroke that killed her.
I didn't mourn my sister and mother when they died. As a result, when my dad died about 15 years later, I was seized by rage and great feelings of sadness. Then I started to mourn for my three dead family members. Yet I still blamed my father for the poverty our family endured from the early 1950's to the mid-1960's. And for many years I ended up like my father, full of rage and arguing with everybody.
"David is still fighting with his father," a woman said about me after I had a terrible argument with her.
All of this was brought back to me while reading this book. It took me down memory lane and often I erupted in rage and sadness after reading some pages. Dr. Mate by the way, likes anger but not rage.
"Health rests on three pillars," he points out near the book's end. " They are the body, the psyche and the spiritual connection. To ignore any one of them is to ignore imbalance and dis-ease."
Gabor Mate touches on all three pillars and opened my mind once again, to the connections between emotions and illness, not only in my own life, but the lives of many others. Though ten years old now, it's still a fine book.
Tuesday, 25 November 2014
Another Journey To The Stars
'Interstellar' Starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain. Directed by Christopher Nolan.
Science fiction and space journeys rarely turn me on. Stanley Kubrick's '2001' stunned me long ago with its dramatic visuals. Yet for me the film failed. After this, Kubrick kept churning out flicks. Yet none of his later works ever matched his 'Paths of Glory'.
A decade later in the 1970's, George Lucas's 'Star Wars' hit the big screen. Again the visuals were impressive but the message struck me as a right wing one. And the same was true of the t.v. series and later the movie 'Star Treck'.
Now comes 'Interstellar' that takes place in the near future. Earth is running out of some precious gas. So Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), and a few others, set out in a spaceship to start up a colony of humans on a distant planet. McConaughey dominates the film and shows us he's one fine actor.
Yet for all its high-tech glitz, and Stephen Hawking type science terms, the core of the film hinges on the power of family. "We're not here to save the world," Michael Caine, the overseer of the mission to outer space says. "We're here to save it." So at film's end, McConaughey meets his family again. he is still young, but his daughter, played by Jessica Chastain, is now an old woman.
Chastain is a very fine actor and Anne Hathaway, who heads out on the mission as a co-pilot, has a strong supportive role. Yet in the end, the film descends into a sermon about the importance of family. My questions is: Shouldn't we first try to save the earth, before fleeing to outer space?Wouldn't that help all the families who may be left behind?
One other problem is the length of the film: It's far too long. The flick, directed by Christopher Nolan, has suspense, action and drama. Yet in the end I found it boring. Anyway high marks go to McConaughey and others, especially Jessica Chastain. Yet I'm not going to any space travel flicks for a long time after watching 'Interstellar'.
Its Harperesque massage is not my trip.
Science fiction and space journeys rarely turn me on. Stanley Kubrick's '2001' stunned me long ago with its dramatic visuals. Yet for me the film failed. After this, Kubrick kept churning out flicks. Yet none of his later works ever matched his 'Paths of Glory'.
A decade later in the 1970's, George Lucas's 'Star Wars' hit the big screen. Again the visuals were impressive but the message struck me as a right wing one. And the same was true of the t.v. series and later the movie 'Star Treck'.
Now comes 'Interstellar' that takes place in the near future. Earth is running out of some precious gas. So Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), and a few others, set out in a spaceship to start up a colony of humans on a distant planet. McConaughey dominates the film and shows us he's one fine actor.
Yet for all its high-tech glitz, and Stephen Hawking type science terms, the core of the film hinges on the power of family. "We're not here to save the world," Michael Caine, the overseer of the mission to outer space says. "We're here to save it." So at film's end, McConaughey meets his family again. he is still young, but his daughter, played by Jessica Chastain, is now an old woman.
Chastain is a very fine actor and Anne Hathaway, who heads out on the mission as a co-pilot, has a strong supportive role. Yet in the end, the film descends into a sermon about the importance of family. My questions is: Shouldn't we first try to save the earth, before fleeing to outer space?Wouldn't that help all the families who may be left behind?
One other problem is the length of the film: It's far too long. The flick, directed by Christopher Nolan, has suspense, action and drama. Yet in the end I found it boring. Anyway high marks go to McConaughey and others, especially Jessica Chastain. Yet I'm not going to any space travel flicks for a long time after watching 'Interstellar'.
Its Harperesque massage is not my trip.
Monday, 27 October 2014
'Gone Girl' is Doggone Unbelievable
'Gone Girl' Starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike'. Directed by David Fincher.
In the U.S. heartland state of Missouri, a weird story unfolds. Nicholas Dunne (Ben Affleck) comes home and finds his wife (Rosamund Pike) missing.
From then on, the movie moves backwards and forwards creating a suspense-filled flick as it does. In the end Nicholas and Amy are re-united. The film is directed by David Fincher and scripted by Gillian Flynn who also wrote the novel on which the film is based.
Ben Affleck fills the screen in his role as the bewildered hunk of a husband. Yet in the end, the flick doesn't make sense. As one feminist told me years ago," The most dangerous man a woman will meet is her former husband and/or lover." Crime statistics bear this out. Yet 'Gone Girl' doesn't back up this fact at all.
Also in the film, Amy Dunne suddenly reveals her true character, or the film reveals it. In any case the sudden revelation of where this lady's head is really at, comes too suddenly for this observer. Rosamund Pike tries hard to make her role as Amy Dunne look credible. Yet in the end she fails.
"You have a world class vagina," Nicholas tells Amy in public as they plan to get married in New York City. This is the place where these two writers meet and fall in love. At film's end, a psychically-battered Nicholas asks Amy, "What will we do?"
Quite frankly I couldn't give a damn about the answer to that question. 'Gone Girl' has some good moments and a very good supporting cast that includes Tyler Perry as lawyer Tanner Bolt . Yet in the end I turned thumbs down on 'Gone Girl" It deserves 2 1/2 stars and no more.
In the U.S. heartland state of Missouri, a weird story unfolds. Nicholas Dunne (Ben Affleck) comes home and finds his wife (Rosamund Pike) missing.
From then on, the movie moves backwards and forwards creating a suspense-filled flick as it does. In the end Nicholas and Amy are re-united. The film is directed by David Fincher and scripted by Gillian Flynn who also wrote the novel on which the film is based.
Ben Affleck fills the screen in his role as the bewildered hunk of a husband. Yet in the end, the flick doesn't make sense. As one feminist told me years ago," The most dangerous man a woman will meet is her former husband and/or lover." Crime statistics bear this out. Yet 'Gone Girl' doesn't back up this fact at all.
Also in the film, Amy Dunne suddenly reveals her true character, or the film reveals it. In any case the sudden revelation of where this lady's head is really at, comes too suddenly for this observer. Rosamund Pike tries hard to make her role as Amy Dunne look credible. Yet in the end she fails.
"You have a world class vagina," Nicholas tells Amy in public as they plan to get married in New York City. This is the place where these two writers meet and fall in love. At film's end, a psychically-battered Nicholas asks Amy, "What will we do?"
Quite frankly I couldn't give a damn about the answer to that question. 'Gone Girl' has some good moments and a very good supporting cast that includes Tyler Perry as lawyer Tanner Bolt . Yet in the end I turned thumbs down on 'Gone Girl" It deserves 2 1/2 stars and no more.
Wednesday, 17 September 2014
Brooklyn Gangsters
'The Drop'. Starring Tom Hardy, James Gandolfini and Noomi Rapace. Directed by Michael R. Roskam.
Do you like watching people smoke, drink, kill and caress a pit bull dog? If you do you'll like 'The Drop'.
Based on a short story by Dennis Lehane, who also wrote the film's script, 'The Drop' stars Tom Hardy, as Bob, a Brooklyn bar tender. "I just tend the bar," Bob Says. He works in a very busy bar that was once owned by his cousin Marv, played by the late James Gandolfini. But eight years ago or so, a group of Chechen gangsters took over the bar and turned it as a drop for illlegal crime money.
Marv still seethes about that. Then a hold-up in the bar, maybe makes him even more angry.
Enter Nadia (Noona Rapace) who helps Bob save a wounded pit bull. To make things even more frightening, along comes a creepy stalker(Matthew Schoenarts), who claims to be a killer, the pit bull's past owner and Nadia's one-time lover.
Nearly all the people in the film are either crooks, killers or both. Nadia may not be. One man who isn't crooked is Detective Ortiz (John Torres). He knows the bar is a front for organized crime. Yet how can you prove this when everybody's closemouthed. And if they tell the police anything, they can be killed.
Belgian director Michael Roskam has given us a sometimes slow moving but scary take on criminals working in gritty working class neighbourhoods in Brooklyn. Nobody here it seems usually talks in anything but monosyllables.
"I was feared," Marv boasts to Bob, Here, Gandolfini is a fine actor, playing in his last film role. In the film, as usual Gandolfini is way overweight and smokes many cigarettes. I guess Brooklyn gangsters believe that cigarettes and alcohol aren't dangerous when compared with real live bullets.
In any case, in 'The Drop' the British actor Tom Hardy overshadows James Gandolfini. Hardy is the film's real star. He looks so innocent and acts so kindly. Yet in 'The Drop' it seems everbody's got blood on their hands.
Do you like watching people smoke, drink, kill and caress a pit bull dog? If you do you'll like 'The Drop'.
Based on a short story by Dennis Lehane, who also wrote the film's script, 'The Drop' stars Tom Hardy, as Bob, a Brooklyn bar tender. "I just tend the bar," Bob Says. He works in a very busy bar that was once owned by his cousin Marv, played by the late James Gandolfini. But eight years ago or so, a group of Chechen gangsters took over the bar and turned it as a drop for illlegal crime money.
Marv still seethes about that. Then a hold-up in the bar, maybe makes him even more angry.
Enter Nadia (Noona Rapace) who helps Bob save a wounded pit bull. To make things even more frightening, along comes a creepy stalker(Matthew Schoenarts), who claims to be a killer, the pit bull's past owner and Nadia's one-time lover.
Nearly all the people in the film are either crooks, killers or both. Nadia may not be. One man who isn't crooked is Detective Ortiz (John Torres). He knows the bar is a front for organized crime. Yet how can you prove this when everybody's closemouthed. And if they tell the police anything, they can be killed.
Belgian director Michael Roskam has given us a sometimes slow moving but scary take on criminals working in gritty working class neighbourhoods in Brooklyn. Nobody here it seems usually talks in anything but monosyllables.
"I was feared," Marv boasts to Bob, Here, Gandolfini is a fine actor, playing in his last film role. In the film, as usual Gandolfini is way overweight and smokes many cigarettes. I guess Brooklyn gangsters believe that cigarettes and alcohol aren't dangerous when compared with real live bullets.
In any case, in 'The Drop' the British actor Tom Hardy overshadows James Gandolfini. Hardy is the film's real star. He looks so innocent and acts so kindly. Yet in 'The Drop' it seems everbody's got blood on their hands.
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