15 January 2005---Movie Review---The First--(In Good Company)

Taken from that other webblog I have, I have had the chance to do a movie review. Can you believe it? I am a movie critic! Through hearing about it on Hugh Hewitt's talk radio program and his own increasingly well-known blog (He has written the first definitive book on blogging..called, appropriately, Blog, I found out about Grace Hill Productions, and the movie In Good Company. Grace Hill made a neat promotional, allowing bloggers to attend a preview screening free if I wrote a review of the movie in my blog. That I have done. Gail and I were able to get to go to an advanced preview screening Thursday night in La Jolla, the night before it opened in U.S. theatres on Friday night (just passed).

So, see below, the first movie review I have ever done. I enjoyed it. I hope you did, too.


Dudes! This movie rocks! I admit that this may be rather an audacious introduction to a movie that, frankly has received some pretty mixed reviews. But last night, at an advanced showing of IN GOOD COMPANY (www.ingoodcompanymovie.com), I saw once again how a movie can be romantic, funny, even a little sexy, without having to throw in tons of sleaze. Yes, I read the Style section columnist of The Washington Post, Ann Hornaday, as well as the Weekend section columnist for The Post, in yesterday's Post Online (www.washingtonpost.com) (free registration required). Ms Hornaday caustically referred to COMPANY as an "occasionally phlegmatic pastiche of cliches and dull encounters." In other words, she thought it sucked. Well, Ms. Hornaday, it is I and the Post's Weekend's Desson Thompson who think that it's your opinion that sucks, as his reaction to COMPANY WAS, "You can't help liking it, no matter how much or little you laugh."

Such was the reaction to the Paul & Chris Weitz co-directed film from Universal Pictures and Grace Hill Productions, which was co-produced by Rodney Leiber and Andrew Miano. The Weitz brothers have been Academy Award recipients for Best Adaptive Screenplay (ABOUT A BOY), and have directed numerous other film projects.And the cast was simply first rate: Dennis Quaid (Far From Heaven, The Rookie, The Alamo, The Day After Tomorrow), Scarlett Johansson (Lost in Translation), Topher Grace (TV's, "That 70s Show", Traffic), Marg Helgenberger (TV's "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation", Erin Brockovich), Academy Award nominee David Paymer (Mr. Saturday Night, Quiz Show), and Philip Baker Hall (Boogie Nights, Top Eight), created an exquisitely balanced collection of actors.

They completely created a situation that brought forward, simultaneously, several themes that expose part of the underbelly of what is sorely lacking in American culture: the shallow obsession of style over substance in business and culture, a legacy of sexual irresponsibility coming home to roost, the exchange of materialism over morality, the myopic embrace of high technology over good sense in the New Economy, the loss of loyalty and integrity, and the desperate need and, in the hearts of Generation Y (and some Xers), the realization, that natural ability, intelligence, and youthful passion needs the knowledge, stability, and at last, heart that comes from the experience retained by decent people who have lived life. In other words----Hallelujah! Father Knows Best again! He may be a little dinged up for the road, but American culture is still relearning that, yes, a family and its youth are incomplete without (here it comes, blue staters!)---Fathers and Mothers! I've noticed it coming more in some of the Mel Gibson pre-Passion genre, such as The Patriot, We Were Soldiers, and even What Do Women Want. In Good Company keeps the truth coming through the cinema, which seems to be the substitute for pastors and teachers nowadays.

Sam Foreman (Quaid), is a top New York advertising executive for a sports magazine, whose life revolves around his work with a top-notch, highly loyal (and profitable) staff, and his imperfect but highly loving wife Ann (Helgenberger) and two daughters, one of whom is dealing with boyfriends and high school, and the eldest, Alex (Johansson), has just been accepted to transfer from SUNY to NYU, the prestige of the upward move is matched by its increase in expense. The gracefulness of the pace of this baby-boomer-led family is smashed by two occurrences: Ann's pregnancy at 50, and the corporate takeover of the parent comporation of Sam's company by a high-tech buccaneer. On top of it, that buccanneer proceeds to place a 26-yr.old executive, Carter Duryea (Grace) in charge of Sam's advertising division, with Sam as his "wingman" and with a supervisory boss from the takeover company putting intense demands for both increased revenue and decreased employees. The move of placing a brilliant, but woefully inexperienced man half his age in his position, and even into his office rankles Sam no end, and creates the kind of corporate pandemonium that happens every day in the world of suits and Vaio laptops.

In the meantime, Carter's own life is full of holes. His appointment to a level far beyond his present level of developed competency has him alternating between extreme ego rush and complete panic. Furthermore, his wife of seven months announces that she has had enough of his workaholism and walks out. The divorce plunges Carter into a depression due to the fact that his own complete non-functional family life (father deserted at 4, mom a 60s flower child never grown up) leaves him effectively abandoned. Into that void walks the Foreman family, led both by Sam and Carter's chance meeting of Alex, which has them falling for what may eventually be love by two young people who aren't sure how to go about it. Of course, thanks to this culture, Alex knows more about how to sexually seduce Carter than how to love him, and Carter surprises her by actually falling for her first. All this is completely without the knowledge of Sam, who can't understand why Alex isn't calling her dad every day, as he had been used to since she was a small child.

In the meantime, Carter, hungry for a family, terribly alone in his cold, modern "architecture" mansion, moves into a downtown apartment, which he can't stand staying in alone, and starts inviting himself over to Sam's house for dinner. It's a subtle but priceless capture of the contrast of Sam's and Carter's life in the two homes, with Sam's "Father of the Bride"-like suburban home exuding human warmth and security as opposed to Carter's manse. Also a master stroke by the screenplayers was the scene where Carter, just anointed an heir apparent to big Tommy K (the big corporate mogul)'s corporate inner circle, gets a deluxe blue Porsche. Carter's totally swept up in the ego-feeder of the moment, when the front end is smacked by an SUV (that red state family fav). Could we be seeing symbolic expressions of what happened in November? I give myself over to the pleasure of the thought.

The struggle of the excesses of Old over New Economy continued in situations such as the loss of Sam's best account due to a conflict between Tommy K and a rival mogul, who owns the corporation of which Sam's customer is a subsidiary. The two men's bewilderment over the forced separation of a highly profitable relationship highlights the inanity of the corporate world centered in New York. Sam's staff get Knicks game tickets at Madison Square Garden (on of the hottest in all of sports) taken away, and replaced by Carter with a reception at a gangsta hip-hop concert. And one-by-one, Sam's staff is decimated by the irrational cutbacks demanded from above, which slash into profitability, too.

The company, and young Carter (and Alex) are saved, in the end by Sam. He confronts their lack of integrity as any good father would do, or at least should, complete with a staredown of the daughter, and one effective right hook to Carter's eye, in an uptown Manhattan restaurant. Quaid is the hero, and acts like the everyman-Texas father that makes this unlikely morality tale work so well. Modern fathers work very well on cinema, as in real life, when, as here, while showing their flaws, their wrinkles, and their lost dunking ability (complete with shoulder separation), they also show both kindness, compassion, and an ability to elicit with a well-turned question both contrition (which he gets from Alex) and the expose of a charlatan (which he does to Tommy K when he visits the sports magazine).

Johansson's performance with Grace is a superb parallel performance of the plot involving the workplace, showing how their emotional immaturity struggles to come to grips with a very real love they are experiencing, in spite of themselves. Grace, as Carter, well develops the emergence of his character into a man With character. His handling Alex's breakup of their relationship shows him now a man with the sensitivity that comes from a man strong enough to let this younger woman have time to figure out what and who she is. Their farewell in the lobby of the building where Carter, now ousted after taking a courageous stand for Sam, saving his position but losing his own in a bizarre turn, is an effectively subtle scene. There Carter leaves the 'door' open to her for a future reunion, and Alex is clearly glad that he did.

In Good Company, I think, is one of those movies that may surprise people, one that may not appear to be memorable, but may turn into a movie with its own cult following. It was extraordinary how, in its 40s-50s Golden Age of Movies-like fashion, it could show sexual love and passion without ever showing the couple actually even partially nude, much less actually having sex. Or, how it could realistically portray anger or incredulity without a constant stream of obscenities punctuating the air. Good Company, as has an increasing number of family-friendly movies has shown, that one of my biggest gripes about Hollywood is abundantly true: moral restraint can, and should, force writers, directors, producers, and actors to be better at their craft. More reliance on plot, dialogue, and subtlety, and less reliance upon shock value, what a desperately needed concept in the trade. What is also really nice about the movie is how, frankly, there were no weak performances. Quaid, nor anyone else, had to carry anyone else. Even the minor character played by David Playmer, a timid, executive terminated and later reinstated by Sam, was exquisite in his portrayal of a man who struggles with being dominated by an unseen wife who is riding the wave of professional women crashing through the corporate glass ceiling, but shows quiet grace and humility when it is he who survives the strange fortunes of corporate musical chairs, while his wife loses her job and becomes a stay-at-home housewife. Yes, I loved this movie, alright. Grace Hill Productions needs to be noticed, yes, crowned as a new star in Hollywood. Cream always rises to the top. It probably will here.

---Floyd Fernandez

Reference: www.InGoodCompanymovie.com
www.GraceHillProductions.com

A blog entry from Multiply--Thought it was important to say.

This was something I wanted to make known, in the light of the tragedy in the Indian Ocean. So I am adding it today, even though a day late.

Well, nothing much this day. The worst rains in almost 90 years in southern California have finally ended. Today was beautiful. It was sad to see those who lost loved ones in the mudslides north of Los Angeles. Obviously it is nothing at all compared to the megahorror of what happened the day after Christmas in the Indian Ocean basin. They need our prayers, and we can't forget them, regardless of whether it still is a news story. Not this one, this is too much, too horrible. Equal to a hundred 9/11s.

So in light of my desire to remember those who have suffered so much, I am stunned to read in the Sydney Morning Herald (www.smh.com.au) that the Indonesian government is telling all foreign aid workers and soldiers to leave Aceh province in Sumatra! Oh, please! Their government and infrastructure, poor and with a past legacy of corruption even in the best of times, is just simply at a virtual standstill. They get the biggest outpouring of compassion ever given to people in human history, our U.S. Marine helicopters (or Australians, UK, Japanese, South Koreans, too) are often the only ones who are able to get food, clean water, and medicine to the remotest areas, and now this is their gratitude! They think that in a month they can handle it themselves? This disaster? Why would they do this?

But President Yudhoyono of Indonesia just got elected because the majority of the people there (almost 80% Muslim, about 20% Christian) rejected the actions of the radical Islamofascist terrorists like Jemaah Islamiyah. And they are rapidly emerging into a pretty good democracy. While I am totally incensed with anger, I can understand what I think is the reason for what seems totally illogical: the fact that all those generous U.S. Marines and American Christian aid workers from the likes of Samaritan's Purse, World Vision, MercyCorps, Feed the Children, Save the Children, Christian Children's Fund, the American Red Cross and other similar organizations might just make America in particular, and Christianity in general look good in front of Muslims!!! And consider that, according to all the major human rights groups Aceh province has been the setting for some of the worst violent persecution of Christians in the world by Muslim extremists in recent years. It is the home of Jemaah Islamiyah, one of the most brutal terrorist branches of Al Qaida, it isn't surprising that they may prefer that their people starve or die of disease by the hundreds of thousands rather than have the dreaded infidels of Christianity, or especially the Great Satan--America, gain any credibility with them. It is simply nauseating!

I imagine that the government may even be trying to get these aid workers and Marines out before the terrorists start killing people in the name of God again, because the government can't assure their safety. They have already taken over one large refugee camp near Banda Aceh, the provincial capital (Widely reported around the world). Unbelievable! I don't blame the government so much, I think that they hate the idea of ordering out aid workers especially. Some of these many aid organizations have been in Indonesia for decades (World Vision for some 40 years), working among the poor. I have Muslim friends who would not approve of this state of affairs in Indonesia. Heck, I have made friends from Indonesia, Muslim as well as Christian, who are terrific people. They must be totally embarrassed, if they knew what I just read in the Sydney Morning Herald. It is as the prophet Isaiah said in the Bible, "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter." (Isaiah 5:20). It shows the bizarre nature of the Islamofascists: dramatic acts of kindness and compassion in the midst of one of the greatest natural disasters in human history is to be rewarded with the threat of kidnapping aid workers, suicide bombers, and death.

It is once again a cautionary tale about the price of mistaking zeal for God and His truth for good sense, or for simple decency. Fanaticism has no place in spirituality, and that applies to any faith, not just Islam. Christians may not launch crusades anymore, or fly planes into office towers, but we who have "called upon the Name of the Lord" have seen too many of our own brothers superimpose their biases and prejudices into people who differ from us. No one is ever successful in the marketplace of spiritual ideas---seeking to win over hearts and minds engaged in the search for truth, by meanness and bigotry. It shouldn't be necessary to tell people that the way to persuade people to accept spiritual truth you've discovered is through respect, tolerance, and friendship as you talk about such sensitive and private matters as God's existence and how He has revealed Himself, which I as a Christian, am convinced has been done in the person of Jesus of Nazereth. Unfortunately, it is necessary.

But there is something that can be done. You can write or e-mail the Indonesian embassy in your country--their websites are only a Google search away---and express your frustration over such an illogical and self-destructive decision. They will not stop the terrorists by chasing the compassion of the world away from their shores, they will embolden them. And pray for the people of Indonesia, both Muslim and Christian. Most of the people there want to live together in peace, and now they have to deal with the mass death and destruction of the earthquake and tsunami. To have precious food, medicine, clean water, water purification and reconstruction equipment possibly stolen by the terrorists is a macabre and desolating prospect (would not be the first time that has happened---Sudan, Rwanda, etc.). To be held hostage by the Islamofascists is simply not to be endured.

Well, I'll be around tomorrow. This was not very cheerful, but it is necessary. Pray for peace, pray for truth to win in the hearts of all God's children. Bye for now. God bless.

Regards,Floyd F.

Well, Hello, I'm Back--Link-up with Multiply

Well, like the title says, I am back. I am still learning what I need to know to make this blog work. I am determined, though. I am way too much into being intimidated into loading code into settings at appropriate times, but that's just part of living life and learning new things. I am fascinated with the Internet. I sometimes will go for days and never think of how incredible this medium is, which is, in terms of its popular use, just a few years old, and yet has transformed the way people do business, pursue democratic change and express opinion, educate themselves and their children, and even pursue a spiritual life. I still remember doing all my research papers in university and graduate school, and most of law school, with old Smith Corona typewriters, and that was only 20-25 years ago.

Anyway, I am going to post copies of what I am writing on Multiply, which is now where I do most of my blogging. I'm keeping this blog on Blogger because I want to keep my options open, in case the work I do begins to grow. Everything is rather fluid and uncertain in what I am doing, so what I decide today may not be the way I choose next week. Sometimes I feel like I'm not very sensitive to the will of God, but then I do read in the Bible about certain things like this happening (example: the Israelites in their wilderness wanderings going from Egypt with Moses to the land that bears Israel's name today. So I guess I'm in good company.

Well, here's the entry on Multiply. Hope you like it.

It has been a very difficult day, but I am thankful to be alive and living in the blessing of God. I want everyone who reads this to know that I am thinking about you, and keeping you in my prayers. I just had the opportunity to invite all my international contacts from Yahoo to join my contacts on Multiply, and I hope to restart friendly contact with many of them this way. If you're one of those I've contacted, please, by all means join Multiply and send me a line. I think you'll be glad you did.

I want to invite you to check out a truly wonderful group, that has taken the name of one of the most incredible best-selling books that has ever been around. For the last two or three years The Purpose Driven Life (www.thepurposedrivenlife.com), written by Dr. Rick Warren, has sold somewhere between 40 and 60 million copies, in at least nine languages, and counting. It is literally, next to the Bible, the biggest selling book in the world over the last 3 years. Dr. Warren is the leader of a Christian community just 75 miles north of my home city of San Diego in the town of Mission Viejo, California.

The notable thing about The Purpose Driven Life (www.thepurposedrivenlife.com) is that it takes Christianity's message, straight from the Bible, and changes it from something religious bound to a culture that existed 2,000 years ago, and makes it modern, current, applicable to this world. The problem that so many have had with the Christian faith is that it has been so taken up with religious ritual, arcane arguments of ideology, and outdated notions of what is acceptable personal and moral conduct.
It has been on the wrong side of so many issues of culture, art, education, race, poverty, and especially science, that it has basically dug its own grave in the eyes of most people.

Indeed, its hypocrisy (the recent sex scandals in the Catholic Church an example) have truly poisoned the ground of the hearts of the world in general. That faith in God and Jesus of Nazereth has continued to endure, and even to flourish in many areas, is a testimony to the compelling character of the faith's "Mighty Founder", to paraphrase Charles Dickens, rather than any credit to His followers.

And indeed, this condemnation does not solely rest on Christianity. The bigotry, oppression, and spiritual disconnection between religion and the people they would serve is universal. Look for enlightenment and prosperity in the Middle East and Africa with Islam, or India with Hinduism, or Myanmar, Thailand, Sri Lanka, or rural China with Buddhism. Or what secularist Marxism has done to the former Soviet Union, or North Korea, Cuba, or the yearnings for freedom in China. Or for that matter, the yearnings for meaning among non-spiritual humanist Europeans and North Americans whose living for self, wealth, and personal gratification have brought emotional and relational emptiness, that all the drugs, sex, and money in the world cannot fill. When it comes to meeting the strongest yearning of the soul of those it is to serve, religion's sole and all-consuming task, religion has almost universally failed.

But The Purpose Driven Life (www.ThePurposeDrivenLife.com) seems to disconnect the faith and life offered by Jesus (or Jesu, Jehu, or Isa, or however your language calls Him), off of religion or religious activity and returns it to the purpose of true spirituality. That purpose is twofold: to link us individually to the God who made us, and to each other as fellow human beings in one community. That two-fold link is the heart of what Jesus came to do, to reconcile us to God, and to reunite us to each other. In 2,000 years Christianity has never really figured that out, neither has any other religion or philosophy. But Warren returns those who read his book to the source of spirituality, and endeavors to strip out the baggage that has come with it.

I'll talk a little more about that tomorrow, and share a little bit of what I've learned. If you can get the book, do it. If you need to connect with an appropriate website, get in touch with me. I don't mean to try to shove religion or spiritual matters on you, and if it seems like I am, please pardon a sincere desire to share something with you that I believe will change your life, to something far better than you could imagine. There's very little traditional about The Purpose Driven Life, and I think you will be very pleasantly surprised.

Anyway, I'll be back. I have different links and information to pass along. I'll also be working on building my home page on Multiply. I'll also be copying some of the past few blog entries onto Blogger, particularly on Shiloh House, CA(www.ShilohHouseCA.blogspot.com). There all a bit threadbare, but I'll work on them. I'll let you know about it all later.

But let me know how you're doing. I miss getting good human contact, here in the house where Gail and I do all our work, all our conversation with others, and even most of our shopping now, especially online. Even if you're not interested in hearing about this particular book I just talked about, that's ok. We just hope to hear from you, and about what is happening in your life. Bye for now, God bless.

Regards, and friendship,

Floyd Fernandez
San Diego, CA