While I was watching INVICTUS, I thought that it wasn't as kind to Mandela as previous stories. Mandela is flawed in so many ways. He isn't an angel. However, he gets my respect as being a leader who didn't put the "outs" in power to oppress the previous "ins"... The truth and reconciliation public confessional he set up takes my breath away. I agree, he is not a family man to be admired.

I thought the film did itself a disservice in the following aspect -- first, it only gives one or two very brief scenes to Pienaar, the Matt Damon character, showing dissatisfaction with his losing team. A team despised by half the country and worse, a losing team. Let's face it, SpringBoks was a second rate bunch of drunks. Second, it creates the scene where Pienaar is in the car with his girlfriend after Tea with Mandela when he realizes that he was asked to win the World Cup. That's the subtle brilliance of Mandela. The discussion during the Tea was of leadership. How does a leader inspire their followers to become more than what they are? I thought the movie lost that point in trying to be subtle and suffered for it.

I haven't watched TREME.

I recently started watching "Rumpole of the Bailey" on DVD. For those who don't remember, this is a British show that ran 1978-1992, and showed here on PBS. The shows are brilliant, full of mordant wit, verbal acrobatics, high drama, and splendid acting, especially by Leo McKern, who played Rumpole. (You may remember McKern from "A Man for All Seasons," where he played Cromwell.)

Rumpole is a barrister, specializing in the faintly disreputable criminal law. In each show, Rumpole is masterful in court, but suffers continual defeats and humiliations in every other aspect of his life. This show is not for Americans who love happy endings. Most episodes are tragedies, in which flawed and unhappy people claw at one another like crabs in a barrel. Everyone is trapped in his or her private hell of incommunicable loss and frustration. Yet triumphing over all is Rumpole's love of English eloquence, dedication to professional ethics, pleasure in a job well done, and his ability to marshall his understanding of psychology in defense of his clients. This is rougher sledding than the average TV law show, and much deeper, but for those with a stomach for it, it makes a rare satisfying entertainment. Rent the DVDs from Netflix.

I enjoyed all of the Rumpole of the Bailey shows. They entertained and Rumpole was a lovable curmudgeon. The shows were intellegently written and well acted.

I watched the new SHERLOCK HOLMES with Robert Downey and Jude Law last night. I enjoyed it but (and this is going to sound really arrogant) I think they made it too subtle for general audiences. You really have to watch that screen to get all the details. It's typical Sherlock Holmes with lots of odd and hidden details but not a lot of talk. Holmes always held forth in grand exposition the stories and this version leaves it all visual.

I enjoyed the new Sherlock Holmes, but it was more visual than verbal, as you say, and had little to do with Holmes as written, or even as previously filmed. It made "action heroes" out of Holmes and Watson. The producers' calculated that a standard action/adventure movie, with a mystery layered on top, would make a successful entertainment. It wasn't even conceived as a Holmes movie.

The plot is very involved and full of surprises (also good show biz), but this is a problem only if you insist on understanding everything that happens. In recent years, movies have been more and more abandoning plausibility. Film after film contains events that are impossible or highly unlikely, if you stop to think about it. But the producers have found that most people don't care to stop and think. They want only the rush of action, and a "happy ending."

The thing about Sherlock Holmes is that everything is fully and logically explained by the end. That's why there's so much detail, with so rapid a pace. It takes time and effort to present a coherent plot. There's so much that it's hard to take it all in at a viewing. I saw it twice, and didn't understand everything until the second time. I'm grateful the film worked to be logical. It would have been easier to discard logic, as most modern movies do. (For an example, see the new Knight and Day, in which there's scarcely a scene that can be believed or makes any sense.) In this way, if none other, Sherlock Holmes stays true to the original.

THE INVENTION OF LYING

This started and I wasn't prepared for the dreariest, saddest bunch of people ever created. About ten/fifteen minutes in, I wanted to slit my wrists. It's that sad. However I stuck with it. It really is funny in a different sort of way. Ricky Gervais is excellent. I liked this by the time it ended. Get your snark out and start aiming those snappy little insults at the people in the beginning.

17 AGAIN

Oh good lord what an awful movie. I quit less than ten minutes into watching it.

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS

Don't let Ashton put you off. This is farce worth watching until the end of the credits when they show the first wedding and it's a doozy. We all know what's going to happen and this is better than what I thought it would rise to. But watch the backgrounds as weirdness reigns on set.

RUN FATBOY RUN

This is a British, very British, a funny farce. Only the Brits do it this well and understated. But it is British. It's dry and cutting humor. I like it. I'm a sucker for British comedy.

FROST/NIXON

If you like history. This is still very much a stageplay (done very well) and you have to watch the performances and pay attention to who says what and why. Worth it for the history. Frank Langella is spectacular as Nixon and worth the viewing.

ALL ABOUT STEVE

Funny and watchable but this is really scrapping the bottom of the barrel stuff. There are several characters TSTL.

THE HANGOVER

I was determined to hate this bunch of drunks and I laughed at the sheer audacity of the opening. However, it's all downhill from their on. Sheer stupidity. A bunch of guys wake up the morning after a bachelor party and can't remember what they did the night before because one of them dosed them all with roofies. It doesn't work for me. They are endearing, charming drunks and fools and deserve to be castrated so as not to reproduce their kind. Evolution be kind to the rest of use and give them all girls babies.

Sorry for the misfire, I hit the send button by accident.

OTHER THINGS I WATCHED, mostly old and on DVD.

DAS RHEINGOLD by Richard Wagner.

The Patrice Chereau Centenary Production from Bayreuth. It's on DVD. The introduction, the PREQUEL to the story of the RIng of the Nibelungen. German with English Subtitles.

This is epic storytelling of giants, castles, dragons, gnomes, mermaids and above the ring, made from the gold in the Rhine river and the curse upon it.

THE EMERALD FOREST

A friend saw it in my stack of DVDs and insisted. Still a good movie. I would say its for kids but the Brazilian natives are close to naked and its boobalicious, so to speak. That being said, the story is top rate and the acting is solid. It manages lessons about family and conservation without being heavy handed and obliterated by them.

CARMEN by Bizet

This was on PBS and was the new production of the Metropolitan Opera in NYC.

A love story between a prison guard, a scarlet woman and her new love, a toreador. At the end, the bullfight is not in the ring, it is outside with Carmen and her lover. There's lots of good music in this and lots of familar music. The entrance of the Toreador in Act 2 is one of the most hair-raising tenor arias in music. Plus boobs. Carmen is after all, a tart.

I just watched an oldie, "Capricorn One", starring O.J. Simpson.

Dear lord. What stilted acting, what inane writing; the only bright spot was Elliot Gould, and even he had to deliver utter dreck for lines.

About the comment above re. the movie "300"; yes, that was a bad choice to take your kid to, if you assumed it was going to be remotely educational.

You mentioned it was as if it was written on LSD; your closer than you think! You see, most people who went to it knew that it was NOT meant to be true to history... AT ALL. This is because it was an adaptation of the comic book by Frank Miller, a very well known name in the comic world. I remember making a lot of money when I found a bunch of Frank Miller written and drawn Daredevil comics (issue 157 to 200-some) at a new comic store in Winnipeg for about a dollar each; I bought them and resold them downtown for over 300 bucks.

Anyway, the point is, 300 was a fun movie only if you went to it knowing that. Frank Miller himself admitted, unashamedly, that it was postively NOT to be taken as historical, but rather a fanciful reconstruction in a 'comic world' setting.

The Book of Elie: I just watched this one, and it, too, is rather heavy-handed, but it was a GREAT movie to watch with my dad, who doesn't mind some violence in a show if it has a message; this was a great one to watch with him, as the whole bible subtext kept him interested. Also, I really liked the stars acting in it.

Wondering if Dave has seen "Karate Kid", or rather, "Kung Fu Kid" as it should have been called - Will Smith's latest vehicle, with his young son shoved into the part.

Actually, G3 and I found it rather entertaining - but I had to warn him, "If you hit me again (after it was over) I will give you a ninja wedgie so bad so you'll be pulling your shorts out of your ears!"

If anyone is interested, there's a hot 720p rip of a real Chinese DVD trading on the torrents sites with about 5,000 seeds.

The four worst movies I have ever had the misfortune to sit through to the very end,

Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor. 1963 not to be confused with all the others.

Dr. Zhivago 1965

Lawrence of Arabia 1962

and the worst of the bunch,

Gone with the wind 1939

They all had one thing in common, it took way to long to get to the end so we could all say we saw it once but would never want to sit through it again.

Because,

Frankly Scarlet, I don't give a damn.

It was Hours and Hours and Hours and Hours of Hours and Hours and Hours of total boardem.

I remember sitting in an old theater watching Gone with the Wind, it was an OK movie and the curtain finally closed and I was thinking thank god, my butt hurt from sitting so long, then it said Intermission. I went for yet another bag of popcorn and soda I even moved to a different part of the theater to maybe get a different view of this greatest movie of all time, it did not help. Yes, yes, I know it won all the awards, and its called the best movie ever made, but if you think my rant is long, go watch the movie.

River

My neighbor, who was practically the one who raised me, tortured me with all of the old 'classics' at one time or another. "Boys Town" and "How Green was my Valley" particularly hurt. Almost literally. I remember the first Christmas he made me watch "Holiday Inn". That may well be why I hate Christmas to this day! hehehe