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Review: This Is Our Land
Throughout the film, Lucas Belvaux sidelines the emotional textures that might complicate all his sermonizing.1.5
At its most provocative, Lucas Belvaux's This Is Our Land captures the intimate details of how far-right political parties—or, less euphemistically, white supremacists—rebrand themselves for the 21st century. Modeled after the National Front of France, the film's Patriotic Block claims to be neither left nor right—a common bit of rhetorical jiu-jitsu that flatters a disenfranchised voter's senses of independence and hopefulness. Supporters of the Patriotic Block are encouraged not to utter racist sentiments, but, just as importantly, not to condemn others for voicing them. In other words, the modern Patriotic Block is to be the party of innuendo, though, if Donald Trump has proved anything, innuendo isn't a quality that the far right requires. At one point in the film, someone likens Arabs to raccoons, and subsequently accuses an offended partygoer of closemindedness for refusing to hear his "side of the argument." This has proven to be a winning strategy for conservative firebrands all over the world: attack and then feign indignity as if attacked.
Tellingly set around Pas-de-Calais in northern France, which is shown to be rife with empty storefronts, a nest of ghost towns born of economic hardship, Belvaux's film follows Pauline (Émilie Dequenne)—a home nurse who works with immigrants and is a daughter of a staunchly pro-union communist, Jacques (Patrick Descamps)—as she's seduced by the Patriotic Block into running for mayor of her town. Pauline is meant to serve as a puppet for Agnès Dorgelle (Catherine Jacob), who's a very thinly veiled fictionalization of Marine Le Pen. Like Le Pen, Agnès was born into fascist politics and has a name to live both up and down to if she's to become president of France. And so Agnès attempts to woo younger liberal voters with candidates like Pauline while sating her conservative base with vigorous promises to purge France of outsiders, which will restore the country's economy for reasons that conveniently aren't specified. (Last year, Le Pen's strategy fell short.)
This Is Our Land asks how someone like Pauline, an ostensible humanist personally acquainted with harassed immigrants, can make a turn toward a party that's powered by bitterness, hatred, and ignorance. For both better and worse, Belvaux never answers this question. On the one hand, the ease and inexplicability of Pauline's political conversion is chilling, suggesting the almost narcotic persuasiveness of stature. In essence, Pauline is given what conservative voters, from supporters of Le Pen to Trump, are promised: newfound respect. Lonely, as well as abused and taken for granted by her patients, Pauline feels that she can exert more control as a flattered politician, even if she appears to hold absolutely no convictions of her own. On the other hand, Pauline is such a cipher that her transformation lacks the lurid power of, say, the protagonists' embrace of Nazism in American History X, which was rooted in fury that was so palpable as to be biblical.
Pauline is a cipher because Belvaux's theme and narrative require her to be, as this film is less a melodrama than a tedious op-ed procedural. Astonishingly naïve even for a political novice, Pauline claims with a straight face that her private life has nothing to do with politics. She dates a neo-Nazi, Stanko (Guillaume Gouix), and is oblivious to his fascist tattoo and penchant for taking her son on terrorist training excursions. Most gallingly, Pauline is shocked when her immigrant friends and patients spurn her in light of her embrace of the Patriotic Block. Her ignorance bolsters Belvaux's assertion that far-right voters live in a fantasy land, willingly oblivious to the effects of their beliefs, but this contrivance robs the film of stature or ambiguity.
Belvaux sidelines the emotional textures that might complicate all his sermonizing. Jacques, who's dying from exposure to asbestos due to a lifetime spent in metalwork, is This Is Our Land's most poignant character, and his rejection of Pauline is its most powerful scene. But he's forgotten for large portions of the narrative, his reconciliation with Pauline occurring off screen. Stanko, an ex, is a significant influence in Pauline's flirtation with fascism, yet the rekindling of their relationship is also almost entirely elided—taken for granted merely as a necessary variable in Belvaux's equation.
Characters in the film rarely discuss politics with any degree of specificity, and so we're never allowed to psychologically grasp how Pauline separates the Patriotic Block from the violence it encourages, and how she's able to morally condone herself for such behavior. How can she condemn Stanko's terrorism with earnest self-righteousness, given that she aids his superiors? This Is Our Land is driven by Belvaux's desperation to understand how the far-right lives with itself, and is shackled by his inability to dramatize it.
Cast: Émilie Dequenne, André Dussollier, Guillaume Gouix, Catherine Jacob, Anne Marivin, Patrick Descamps, Charlotte Talpaert, Mateo Debaets, Coline Marcourt, Corentin Lobet Director: Lucas Belvaux Screenwriter: Lucas Belvaux, Jérôme Leroy Distributor: Distrib Films Running Time: 118 min Rating: NR Year: 2017 Buy: Video
Review: Guns Akimbo Squanders a Nifty Setup with Excruciating Humor
Writer-director Jason Lei Howden's humor might have been tolerable if his film was at least reasonably imaginative.1.5
For much of Jason Lei Howden's Guns Akimbo, Miles (Daniel Radcliffe) is in his jammies, because getting dressed is difficult when your hands are nailed to pistols. Eating and using the bathroom are no easy feat either. With this, the film hits on an amusing setup for physical comedy, as Miles can do little but stumble about as he strives to drive a car or use his phone with his nose. He also must avoid being shot by Nix (Samara Weaving), his designated opponent in a kill-or-be-killed online competition called Skizm. But the film ultimately fails to capitalize on its concept and gets smothered by its smug, abrasive tone.
Miles is a coder for a video game titled Nuts Bust 2, one of too-many examples of the film's groan-inducing comedy. He's also a bizarrely self-aware depiction of an internet troll, as Miles admits via narration that, in order to feel worthwhile, he seeks out arguments in comment sections and reports "offensive content." When he goes to Skizm's chatroom to tell the viewers off, he runs afoul of the organization's facial-tattooed leader, Riktor (Ned Dennehy), who at one point says, "I'm going to do a poo-poo in my pantaloons," because why not? Those guns for hands and his forced participation in Skizm are Miles's punishment.
Most of Guns Akimbo's dialogue squanders an intriguing concept through truly excruciating attempts at humor, oscillating between snide comments, gay panic jokes, and capital-A attitude-laden one-liners. In one scene, Miles remarks that the world looks "so HD" because, with gun-hands, he can't go outside with his face in his phone.
The humor might have been tolerable if the film was at least reasonably imaginative. Radcliffe really digs into Miles's sniveling bafflement and the expressive Weaving clearly has a lot of hammy fun as the unhinged Nix. But too much of Guns Akimbo consists of unremarkable car chases and gun fights that hardly feel transformed at all by Miles's unique predicament. We watch a lot of people fire a lot of guns against a lot of concrete backdrops, except Howden deploys a hyperactive camera style that's always zooming around the characters in slow motion or fast forward. He appears to be going for the Neveldine/Taylor style of films like Crank and Gamer, except he's not nearly as inventive and most of his flourishes outright distract from the action choreography, sometimes obscuring it altogether.
Worse, Guns Akimbo strains to be self-aware, with Miles assuring audiences via narration that this isn't one of those stories where he wins back his ex-girlfriend, Nova (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), in the end. And it's weirdly self-congratulatory for a film that visibly revels in torturing Weaving's character and eventually has Nova kidnapped for the big climax anyway. The film has even less to say about the sort of obsessive spectatorship that makes up the story's backdrop, as though simply depicting reality-TV audiences and internet users as assholes is some profound statement. Luckily, unlike Miles, viewers have a say in the matter. They aren't bolted to the couch and the remote isn't nailed into their hands; they're free to quit watching at any time, or simply opt not to watch this obnoxious film at all.
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Samara Weaving, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Ned Dennehy, Rhys Darby, Grant Bowler, Edwin Wright Director: Jason Lei Howden Screenwriter: Jason Lei Howden Distributor: Saban Films Running Time: 97 min Rating: R Year: 2020
Review: The Assistant Is a Chilling Portrait of Workplace Harassment
The film is designed so that we feel as starved for rudimentary human emotion as its main character.3
With The Assistant, writer-director Kitty Green offers a top-to-bottom portrait of incremental dehumanization, and, on its terms, the film is aesthetically, tonally immaculate. The narrative is set in the Tribeca offices of a film mogul, but it could take place in a branch of any major corporation throughout the world without losing much of its resonance. Offices encourage professional functionality as a way of divorcing people from themselves, leading them to make actions without a sense of complicity. What starts small—throwing co-workers under the bus, neglecting friends due to punishing work hours—can blossom over time into people enabling atrocity under the guise of "doing what they're told."
With this psychology in mind, Green fashions The Assistant as a pseudo-thriller composed entirely of purposefully demoralizing minutiae. The film opens with a young woman, Jane (Julia Garner), being picked up from her apartment for work so punishingly early that it's almost impossible to tell if it's morning or night. By 8 a.m., she's been making copies, printing documents, reading emails, and tending to office errands for hours. Other employees gradually drift in, talking obligatorily of their weekends off—a privilege that Jane isn't accorded.
In these early scenes, Green conjures a peculiar, very palpable dread, her precise, anal-retentive compositions suggesting what might happen if David Fincher were to adapt Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener." This dread springs from two places, as the visual palette is silvery and moody, evoking a potential corporate thriller, though the film refuses to move beyond the expository stage and gratify this expectation, and so we fear that we may be trapped with Jane in her tedium. We are, and this is by Green's moral schematic.
The Assistant is designed so that we feel as starved for rudimentary human emotion as Jane. No names are uttered throughout (the name Jane, which brings to mind the anonymity of a Jane Doe, is only stated in the credits), while the film mogul is only evoked via male pronouns (he's never seen but often referenced and occasionally heard over the phone, usually in a torrent of rage against Jane for her inability to talk down his wife, who knows of his infidelity). Jane brings another assistant the wrong sandwich, and he treats her cruelly; it never occurs to him, or anyone else, to thank Jane for the tasks she performs for everyone in the office. At best, Jane's co-workers regard her with a kind of pitying befuddlement, as if she's not quite real. When Jane eats, it's quickly and without pleasure, and she's always alert to being watched. No one speaks of their personal lives. Green springs one perceptive, poignant detail after another, especially when the mogul compliments Jane via email just as she thinks he's reached his limit with her. This is, of course, a major tool of the master manipulator: praise when least expected, and only enough to keep the person in your sphere of influence and at your mercy.
Increasingly unsettling details seep into this deadening atmosphere. Jane finds an earring in the mogul's office, which is repeatedly seen from a distance through its open door and becomes a chilling symbol for the mogul himself, suggesting his unshakable presence even in absence. There are jokes made about his couch, which Jane cleans. Young, beautiful women are brought into the office at late hours, and are referenced by both male and female employees with contempt. Growing fearful for one of the women, Jane tries to complain to an unsympathetic H.R. officer who sets about gaslighting her. It becomes evident that we're watching—from the perspective of a powerless yet ultimately complicit person—a parable about rich, insulated predators like Harvey Weinstein, and Green's grasp of Jane's indoctrination into this perverse world is impeccably believable.
Yet The Assistant also feels too narrow, too comfortable with its thesis. The rendering of the mogul as an unseen specter is effective but also dime-store lurid in the tradition of mediocre horror movies, and this device also conveniently absolves Green of having to wrestle with how a Weinstein type might live with himself. George Huang's similarly themed 1994 film Swimming with Sharks, which is mostly inferior to The Assistant, benefited from such a friction, as its own Weinstein surrogate (played by Kevin Spacey) had a magnetism that complicated and enriched the script's anger. There's also something insidious about Green's evasion, as the mogul's absence elevates him, mythologizes him, which reflects how people low on the power ladder see powerful exploiters. But Green physicalizes this idea without standing outside of it, challenging it, or contextualizing it; she traps us in a monotonous hell and leaves us there. Her fury with Weinstein and his ilk contains an element of awe.
Cast: Julia Garner, Matthew Macfadyen, Makenzie Leigh, Kristine Froseth, Jon Orsini, Noah Robbins, Stéphanye Dussud, Juliana Canfield, Alexander Chaplin, Dagmara Dominczyk, Bregje Heinen Director: Kitty Green Screenwriter: Kitty Green Distributor: Bleecker Street Media Running Time: 87 min Rating: R Year: 2019
Review: Benh Zeitlin's Wendy Is a Half-Hearted Spin on Peter Pan
Wendy veers awkwardly and aimlessly between tragedy and jubilance, never accruing any lasting emotional impact.2
Like Beasts of the Southern Wild before it, Wendy unfolds through the eyes of a child. Benh Zeitlin's sophomore feature puts a new spin on Peter Pan, and not only because it takes on the perspective of a 10-year-old Wendy Darling (Devin France). The film's modern-rustic settings and costumes and relative lack of fantastical elements—notwithstanding the presence of a majestic, glowing sea creature, referred to as "mother," who may hold the secret to reversing time—also play a large part in re-envisioning J.M. Barrie's classic. But Zeitlin's brand of magical realism strains in its conflicting desires to both demystify Neverland (never mentioned by name in the film), chiefly by grounding it in a rather prosaic reality, and imbue the story with all the enchanting qualities we've come to expect from fantasies of everlasting childhood. Like its version of Peter (Yashua Mack), Wendy wants to fly, yet, because of its self-imposed restrictions, it never quite gets off the ground.
Across this tale of a child lurching toward adulthood, there's a sense of wonder and awe to the sea creature's brief appearances, and to Wendy's initial encounters with the free-spirited Peter, who playfully eggs her on from atop the train that regularly roars across the barren, rural locale that houses her family's rundown diner. But Wendy's whimsical flourishes, from Dan Romer's incessantly rousing score to Wendy's breathy and all-too-mannered voiceover, brush awkwardly against the film's dour conception of a Neverland drained of all its magic and grandeur. Despite this, Zeitlin strives to capture an unbridled sense of childlike exuberance as kids cavort around the rugged cliffside vistas of the remote volcanic island that Peter calls home. But lacking any of the mystical features typically associated with them, Peter and his cohorts' behaviors appear overly precocious to the point of ludicrousness; it's almost as if they're performing a twee, optimistic rendition of Lord of the Flies.
Unlike Quvenzhané Wallis, whose magnetic presence imbued Beasts of the Southern Wild with a pervasive warmth and soulfulness, Mack is an unfortunately listless presence as Peter. Several years younger than Wendy and her twin brothers, Douglas (Gage Naquin) and James (Gavin Naquin), Peter appears, more often than not, like a six-year-old playing dress-up. His utter lack of charisma and gusto renders him an ill-fitting avatar for boisterous youthfulness, while his occasionally domineering, yet still unimposing, demeanor hardly makes him out to be the inspirational figure that the film ultimately wants him to be. Not only does he allow one boy to drown at one point, he chops off the hand of another to prevent him from aging.
Such events position Wendy as a twisted take on Peter Pan, but these moments are never given room to breathe. Rather, they're uniformly undermined by the film cutting back to the idyllic adventures of children, in lockstep with Zeitlin's relentless pursuit of galvanizing his audience through a gleefully idealized vision of the world. This jarring intrusion of darker elements into the story makes for bizarre clashes in tone, leaving Wendy to veer awkwardly and aimlessly between tragedy and jubilance, never to accrue any lasting emotional impact. When Peter buoyantly declares that "to grow up is a great adventure," one is left to wonder not only why the boy who never grows up would, out of nowhere, embrace this worldview, but why Wendy, or any of the other children, would want to follow such a troubling figure on that journey.
As Wendy stumbles into its final act, where adult pirates attempt to use Wendy as bait to catch the giant sea creature, it becomes even more convoluted, contradictory, and murky in what it's trying to say about growing up. Wendy eventually begins to stand up to and question Peter, both for his mistreatment of her brother and his harshness toward the adults Peter has excommunicated to an impoverished community on the outskirts of the island. But no sooner does she chide Peter than she's back on his side, cheering him on as he fights off an admittedly cleverly devised Captain Hook. It's as if she, much like the film, can't seem to settle on whether Peter's a hero or a borderline psychopath, or if childhood is a magical time to live in permanently or a necessary step on the way to adulthood. Rather than meaningfully subverting audience expectations, Wendy instead plays like a half-hearted twist on the familiar tale that ultimately doesn't change the moral at the core of countless other Peter Pan adaptations: childhood is magical, and growing up is scary but inevitable.
Cast: Tommie Lynn Milazzo, Shay Walker, Devin France, Stephanie Lynn Wilson, Ahmad Cage, Gage Naquin, Krzysztof Meyn, Gavin Naquin, Romyri Ross Director: Benh Zeitlin Screenwriter: Benh Zeitlin, Eliza Zeitlin Distributor: Searchlight Pictures Running Time: 112 min Rating: PG-13 Year: 2020
Review: Philippe Garrel's The Salt of Tears Forecloses Feeling for the Sake of Fantasy
Garrel illustrates the absurdity behind the myth of the complementary couple without humor or wit.1.5
Two strangers, a man and a woman, meet at a bus stop in Paris. He's from the countryside and has come to the city to live out his father's dreams, which in Philippe Garrel's The Salt of Tears means taking an entrance exam for a top carpentry school. He insists on seeing her again, and they meet for coffee after his test. They want to make love but have nowhere to go; he seems upset that she can't host, and ends up taking her to his cousin's place. She isn't comfortable with all his touching, perhaps afraid that if he makes love to her right away he'll have no reason to come back. Indeed, she seems more invested in the future of their encounter, what it can become, than in the encounter itself, whereas he sees no reason for her to stay if she won't put out. By the time he kicks her out, she's already in love.
The strangers' names are Luc (Logann Antuofermo) and Djemila (Oulaya Amamra), but they might as well be called Man and Woman. That's because The Salt of Tears unfolds like an archetypal narrative of heterosexual impossibility where Luc is the everyman and Djemila is interchangeable with Geneviève (Louise Chevillotte), Luc's subsequent fling, or whatever woman comes next. He seems fond of collecting rather than replacing lovers. In the course of his brief encounters, which are nevertheless always long enough for the women to get attached and promptly burned, Luc is inoculated from heartache. His only emotional allegiance seems to be to his father (André Wilms), which tells us a thing or two about heterosexuality's peculiar tendency to forge male allegiances at the expense of women, who circulate from man to man, father to husband, husband to lover, like some sort of currency.
We've seen, and lived, this story a million times—in real life and in cinema. You, too, may have waited for a lover who never showed up after making meticulous plans for an encounter, wrapped up in the sweetest of promises, like the one Luc makes to Djemila when he says, "For the room, I'll refund the whole amount." It's then that she takes the train to see him. At a hotel, she puts on her prettiest nightgown, powdering her face in preemptive bliss. But Luc never shows up. And when Djemila goes to the hotel lobby to ask for a cigarette from the night porter (Michel Charrel), we see that the scenario, the woman who waits, is quite familiar to the man as well. "I've seen women wait for their men all their lives," he tells her.
And yet, despite so much identification, and despite the fact that some of the best films ever made, from Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage to Rohmer's A Summer's Tale, are precisely about masculine cowardliness and feminine despair, why is it that The Salt of Tears makes no room for genuine emotion to emerge? Which is peculiar given that Garrel so recently, with In the Shadow of Women and Lover for a Day, documented the impossibility of monogamy with not only a no-nonsense sensibility but also profound gravitas. Maybe the failure of the film is in Garrel's use of melodramatic music during transitional scenes, a device at odds with the detached style of the rest of the film. Maybe it's in the overtly fable-like structure that reduces the characters to not just archetypes, but cutouts. Maybe it's in the omniscient voiceover narration that punctuates the film with such disaffection and irregularity.
Garrel illustrates the absurdity behind the myth of the complementary couple with the same cynicism that permeates his previous work but none of the humor or wit. He thus elevates The Salt of Tears to the status of a work to be enjoyed only intellectually, as if, like Luc, he, too, had learned to foreclose feeling for the sake of some fantasy of self-preservation or pride.
Cast: Logann Antuofermo, Oulaya Amamra, André Wilms, Louise Chevillotte, Souheila Yacoub, Martin Mesnier, Teddy Chawa, Aline Belibi, Michel Charrel, Stefan Crepon, Lucie Epicureo, Alice Rahimi Director: Philippe Garrel Screenwriter: Jean-Claude Carrière, Philippe Garrel, Arlette Langmann Running Time: 100 min Rating: NR Year: 2020
Review: Greed Is an Unsubtle Satire of Global Capitalism's Race to the Bottom
The film takes occasional stabs at comic grotesquerie, but it's brought back to earth by an insistent docudrama seriousness.2.5
A morality tale about a piratical fast-fashion clothing entrepreneur, Greed takes occasional stabs at comic grotesquerie. Each time, though, it's brought back to earth by an insistent docudrama seriousness. That uneven mixture of tones, not to mention its easy and somewhat restrained shots at obvious targets, keeps writer-director Michael Winterbottom's film from achieving the Felliniesque excess it strives for.
Steve Coogan plays the discount billionaire villain as a more malevolent variation on the smarmy selfish bastard he's polished to a sheen in Winterbottom's The Trip films. Sir Richard McCreadie, nicknamed "Greedy" by the tabloids, is one of those modern wizards of financial shell games who spin fortunes out of thin air, promise, hubris, and a particularly amoral strain of bastardry. He made his billions as the "king of the high street," peddling cheap, celebrity-touted clothing through H&M and Zara-like chain stores. Now somewhat disreputable, having been hauled before a Parliamentary Select Committee to investigate the bankruptcy of one of his chains, the tangerine-tanned McCreadie is stewing in semi-exile on Mykonos.
While McCreadie plans an extravagantly tacky Gladiator-themed 60th birthday for himself featuring togas and a seemingly somnolent lion, the film skips back in time episodically to show how this grifter made his billions. Although specifically inspired by the life of Philip Green, the billionaire owner of Top Shop (and who was also investigated by Parliament for the bankruptcy of one of his brands), Greed is meant as a broader indictment of global capitalism's race to the bottom. Cutting back from the somewhat bored birthday bacchanal—Winterbottom does a good job illustrating the wallowing "is this all there is?" dullness of the ultra-rich lifestyle—the film shows McCreadie's ascent from Soho clothing-mart hustler to mercantilist wheeler and dealer leveraging a string of tatty bargain emporiums into a fortune.
Linking the flashbacks about McCreadie's up-and-comer past to his bloated and smug present is Nick (David Mitchell), a weaselly hired-gun writer researching an authorized biography and hating himself for it. Thinking he's just slapping together an ego-boosting puff piece, Nick inadvertently comes across the secret to McCreadie's success: the women hunched over sewing machines in Sri Lankan sweatshops earning $4 a day to produce his cheap togs. The Sri Lanka connection also provides the film with its only true hero: Amanda (Dinita Gohil), another of McCreadie's self-hating assistants, but the only one who ultimately does anything about the literal and metaphorical casualties generated by her boss's avarice.
With McCreadie as a big shining target, Winterbottom uses him to symbolize an especially vulgar manifestation of jet-set wheeler-dealers who imagine their wealth has freed them from limitations on taste and morality. That means giving McCreadie massive snow-white dentures, having him yell at the lion he's imported sending him storming out on the beach to yell at the Syrian refugees he thinks are spoiling the backdrop for his party. He's the kind of man who, when his ex-wife (Isla Fisher) calls him out for cheating by using his phone to look like he's reciting classical poetry by heart, shouts proudly and unironically, "BrainyQuote!"
Greed isn't a subtle satire. But, then, what's the point of going small when the target is the entire global clothing supply chain, as well as the consumerism and celebrity worship ("adding a bit of sparkle to a $10 party dress," as McCreadie puts it)? Despite his deft ability to authentically inhabit numerous geographical spaces without condescension (the scenes in Sri Lanka feel particularly organic), Winterbottom often has a harder time summoning the kind of deep, gut-level emotions needed to drive home an angry, issue-oriented comedy of this kind. But even though he isn't able to balance buffoonery and outrage as effectively as Steven Soderbergh did with his Panama Papers satire The Laundromat, Winterbottom at least knew to pick a big enough target that it would be nearly impossible to miss.
Cast: Steve Coogan, Isla Fisher, Shirley Henderson, David Mitchell, Asa Butterfield, Dinita Gohil, Sophie Cookson Director: Michael Winterbottom Screenwriter: Michael Winterbottom Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics Running Time: 104 min Rating: R Year: 2019
Review: With Saint Frances, the Rise of the of the Abortion Comedy Continues
It has almost enough genuine charm and heart to compensate for the moments that feel forced.2.5
Even for American liberals, abortion has long been a touchy subject. "Legal but rare" is the watchword of cautious Democratic candidates, and popular film has long preferred to romanticize the independent women who make the brave choice not to terminate a pregnancy (see Juno). With Gillian Robespierre's Obvious Child and, now, Alex Thompson's Saint Frances, we may be seeing the emergence of something like the abortion comedy. The very concept of such a thing is probably enough to make a heartland conservative retch, which Thompson and his screenwriter and lead actress, Kelly O'Sullivan, no doubt count on.
Bridget (O'Sullivan) is a white Chicagoland millennial who, like so many of her generation, finds herself still living the life of a twentysomething at the age of 34. Messy and a little irresponsible—qualities that could be largely chalked up to the inert decade of post-college poverty she's endured—she struggles to admit in conversation with her ostensible peers that she works as a server at a greasy diner. In the film's opening scene, a tidy encapsulation of the tragicomedy of being an underachieving hanger-on in bougie social circles, she's brought to the verge of tears when a yuppie dude she's chatting with loses interest in her after her age and employment come up. She immediately pounces on Jace (Max Lipchitz), the next guy who talks to her, after he casually reveals that he, too, works as a waiter.
Fortunately, Jace turns out to be an indefatigably cheerful and supportive 26-year-old who comes across as perhaps a tad too perfect until the precise moment in Saint Frances that the filmmakers need him to come off more like a Wrigleyville bro. At some point during their initial hook-up, Bridget gets her period, and the couple wakes up fairly covered in blood. (Bridget's nigh-constant unexpected vaginal bleeding and the stains it leaves will serve as both metaphor and punchline throughout the film, and it works better than you may think.) Amused but unphased by the incident, Jace will also prove to be a supportive partner when Bridget chooses to terminate her accidental pregnancy later in the film, even though Bridget remains openly uncertain about whether or not they're actually dating.
In the wake of her abortion, Bridget is taken on as a nanny for Maya and Annie (Charin Alvarez and Lily Mojekwu), a mixed-race lesbian couple who need someone to look after their unruly daughter, Frances (Ramona Edith Williams), while Maya cares for their newborn. Frances is a self-possessed kindergartner whose dialogue sometimes drifts into "kids say the darnedest things" terrain, even though it can be funny ("My guitar class is a patriarchy," she proclaims at one point). But O'Sullivan's screenplay doesn't overly sentimentalize childhood—or motherhood for that matter. One important subplot involves Bridget's mother's (Mary Beth Fisher) reminiscing that she sometimes fantasized about bashing the infant Bridget's head against the wall, a revelation that helps Maya through her post-partum depression.
Maya and Annie live in Evanston, the Chicago suburb where Northwestern University is located, and Bridget counts as an alumna of sorts, though in conversation she emphasizes that she was only there for a year. She clearly views the town as the epicenter of her shame; underlining this is that the couple's next-door neighbor turns out to be Cheryl (Rebekah Ward), an insufferable snob who Bridget knew in college, whose "lean in" brand of upper-class feminism doesn't preclude her from treating her erstwhile peer like an all-purpose servant. Frances's smarmy guitar teacher, Isaac (Jim True-Frost), also embodies the moral ickiness of the privileged, as he takes advantage of Bridget's foolhardy crush on him.
Bridget's relationship with Frances and her parents changes her, but the film isn't making the point that she learns the majesty of child-rearing and the awesome responsibility of parenthood. It's that Bridget finds strength in intersectional and intergenerational solidarity, emerging from the isolating cell she's built herself out of quiet self-shame. If that approach sounds academic, it's true that at times Saint Frances is staged too much like dramatic enactment of feminist principles—a public confrontation with an anti-public-breast-feeding woman ends up feeling like an after-school special about conflict mediation—but it has almost enough genuine charm and heart to compensate for the moments that feel forced.
Cast: Kelly O'Sullivan, Charin Alvarez, Lily Mojekwu, Max Lipchitz, Jim True-Frost, Ramona Edith Williams, Mary Beth Fisher, Francis Guinan, Rebecca Spence, Rebekah Ward Director: Alex Thompson Screenwriter: Kelly O'Sullivan Distributor: Oscilloscope Laboratories Running Time: 106 min Rating: NR Year: 2019
Review: Disappearance at Clifton Hill Is a Well-Sustained Trick of a Thriller
What distinguishes the film from much of its ilk is Albert Shin's ongoing taste for peculiar and unsettling details.2.5
Throughout Disappearance at Clifton Hill, director Albert Shin nurtures an atmosphere of lingering evil, of innocence defiled, that shames the ludicrous theatrics of Andy Muschietti's similarly themed It movies. Set in Niagara Falls, Ontario, the film opens with its finest sequence, in which a young girl, Abby (Mikayla Radan), runs into a frightened boy in the woods. One of the boy's eyes has been gauged out, and he wears a bloodied white bandage over it. (Perversely, the square shape of the bandage and the red of the coagulated blood make it seem as if he's wearing a broken pair of 3D glasses.) The boy gestures to Abby to keep quiet, and soon we see pursuers at the top of the hill above the children.
Much of this scene is staged without a score, and this silence—a refreshing reprieve from the tropes of more obviously hyperkinetic thrillers—informs Shin's lush compositions with dread and anguish. Just a moment prior, Abby was fishing with her parents (Tim Beresford and Janet Porter) and sister, Laure (Addison Tymec), so we feel the shattering of her sense of normalcy. The boy is soon scooped up, beaten, and thrown in the trunk of a car, never to be seen again.
Years later, the thirtyish Abby (now played by Tuppence Middleton) has yet to settle into herself, as she's a loner who haunts the nearly abandoned motel that her deceased mom used to run. By contrast, Laure (Hannah Gross) has married a sensible man (Noah Reid) and has a sensible job as a security manager at the local casino, which looms above the town surrounding Niagara Falls like an all-seeing tower. The casino, run by the all-controlling Lake family, is in the process of acquiring the sisters' motel. Looking through old pictures, Abby finds a shot that was taken the day she ran into the kidnapped boy, and she becomes obsessed with solving the case, descending into the underworld of her small, foreboding community.
Shin and co-screenwriter James Schultz's plot, and there's quite a bit of it, is the stuff of old-fashioned pulp. But what distinguishes the film from much of its ilk is Shin's ongoing taste for peculiar and unsettling details. A local conspiracy theorist, Walter (David Cronenberg), is introduced bobbing up and down in the water behind Abby as she investigates the site of the kidnapping, emerging in a wet suit from a dive to look for potential valuables. It's a hell of entrance to accord a legendary filmmaker moonlighting in your production, and it affirms the film's unease, the sense it imparts of everyone watching everyone else.
When Abby's sleuthing leads her to a pair of married magicians, the Moulins (Marie-Josée Croze and Paulino Nunes), they memorably turn the tables on her smugness, using sleights of hand to intimidate her and illustrate the elusiveness of certainty. And one of Shin's greatest flourishes is also his subtlest: As Abby surveys the hill where the boy was taken in the film's opening scene, a bike coasts across the road on top, echoing the movement of the kidnappers' car decades prior, suggesting the ongoing reverberations of atrocities.
Shin does under-serve one tradition of the mystery thriller: the unreliable protagonist. Abby is understood to be a habitual liar, a fabulist who's either a con woman or a person wrestling with issues of encroaching insanity. Given the luridness of the boy's disappearance, and the way it conveniently meshes with Abby's unresolved issues, the notion of the mystery as a terrible, self-entrapping fabrication is credible and potentially revealing and terrifying—suggesting the wrenching plight of the doomed investigator at the heart of Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island. But for Shin, Abby's fragile mental state is ultimately a red herring, relegating Abby to an audience-orienting compass rather than a true figure of tragedy. Which is to say that Disappearance at Clifton Hill isn't quite a major thriller, but rather a well-sustained trick.
Cast: Tuppence Middleton, Hannah Gross, Marie-Josée Croze, Paulino Nunes, Elizabeth Saunders, Maxwell McCabe-Lokos, Eric Johnson, David Cronenberg, Andy McQueen, Noah Reid, Dan Lett, Tim Beresford, Mikayla Radan Director: Albert Shin Screenwriter: James Schultz, Albert Shin Distributor: IFC Midnight Running Time: 100 min Rating: NR Year: 2019
Review: With Onward, Pixar Forsakes Imagination for Familiarity
While Onward begins as a story of bereavement, it soon turns to celebrating the payoffs of positive thinking.2
Pixar specializes in tales of people, animals, and artificial intelligence coping with loss: of a spouse (Up), of human contact (the Toy Story films), of love (WALL-E). But like a lot of Hollywood dream-workers, Pixar's storytellers also believe in believing. And faith in something, anything, is essential to the studio's latest feature, Onward, as the heroes of this comic fantasy are two teenage elves who go searching for the magical gem—and the self-assurance—needed to briefly resurrect their departed and sorely missed father.
Ian and Barley Lightfoot's (Tom Holland and Chris Pratt) 24-hour quest is lively and sometimes funny but seldom surprising. Writer-director Dan Scanlon and co-scripters Jason Headley and Keith Bunin have assembled a story from spare parts of various adventure and sword-and-sorcery flicks, and topped it with a sentimental coda about the value of a male role model. Mychael Danna and Jeff Danna's drippy score pleads for tears, but viewers who sniffle are more likely to have been moved by personal associations than the film's emotional heft.
Blue-haired, pointy-eared Ian and Barley live with their widowed mom, Laurel (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), in a neighborhood that's a cross between Tolkien's Shire and a near-contemporary California suburb. A prologue explains that "long ago the world was filled with magic," but enchantment succumbed to a diabolical adversary: science. The invention of the light bulb is presented as this toontown's fall from grace. What's left is a Zootopia-like cosmos where such mythic creatures as centaurs, mermaids, cyclopses, and, of course, elves live together in stultifying ordinariness. Most stultified of all is Ian, who meekly accepts the torments of high school. He's nearly the opposite of brash older brother Barley, a true believer in magic who crusades to preserve the old ways and is devoted to a mystical role-playing game he insists is based on the world as it used to be. (A few of the film's supporting characters appear by courtesy of Wizards of the Coast, the game company that owns Dungeons & Dragons.)
It's Ian's 16th birthday, so Laurel retrieves a gift left by the boys' father, who died before the younger one was born. The package contains a magical staff and instructions on how to revive a dead soul, if only for 24 hours. It turns out that Ian has an aptitude for incantations but lacks knowledge and, crucially, confidence. He casts a spell that succeeds but only halfway, as it summons just Dad's lower half. A mysterious crystal could finish the job, so the brothers hit the road in Barley's beat-up but vaguely magical van with a gear shift that reads "onward." Barley is certain that his role-playing game can direct them to their shadowy destination.
Like most quest sagas, Onward is an episodic one, but it doesn't make most of its pitstops especially memorable. The supporting characters are few and most are easily forgotten, save for a once-terrifying but now-domesticated manticore, Corey (Octavia Spencer), and Mom's cop boyfriend, Colt Bronco (Mel Rodriguez), who may be a centaur but strikes his potential stepsons as embarrassingly bourgeois. Both join a frantic Laurel on her sons' trail.
Onward doesn't have a distinctive visual style, but it does showcase Pixar's trademark mastery of depth, light, and shadow. As in Scanlon's Monsters University, the fanciful and the everyday are well harmonized. That's still a neat trick, but it's no more novel than Ian and Barley's experiences. Animated features often borrow from other films, in part to keep the grown-ups in the crowd interested, but the way Onward recalls at various points The Lord of the Rings, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Ghostbusters feels perfunctory and uninspired. And it all leads to a moral that's at least as hoary as that of The Wizard of Oz or Peter Pan. While Onward begins as a story of bereavement, it soon turns to celebrating the payoffs of positive thinking. That you can accomplish whatever you believe you can is a routine movie message, but it can feel magical when presented with more imagination than Onward ever musters.
Cast: Tom Holland, Chris Pratt, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Octavia Spencer, Ali Wong, Lena Waithe, Mel Rodriguez, Tracey Ullman, Wilmer Valderrama, Kyle Bornheimer, John Ratzenberger Director: Dan Scanlon, Jason Headley, Keith Bunin Screenwriter: Dan Scanlon Distributor: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Running Time: 103 min Rating: PG Year: 2020
Interview: Lesley Manville and Liam Neeson on Working Together on Ordinary Love
It's to the immense credit of these two great actors that Ordinary Love is so inspiring.
It's to the immense credit of Lesley Manville and Liam Neeson that Ordinary Love is so inspiring. As Joan and Tom, the couple at the center of Lisa Barros D'Sa and Glenn Leyburn's drama about a couple tested by the wife's breast cancer diagnosis, their naturalism and comfort never waver while the characters stare down the disease.
Despite having never collaborated prior to their brief rehearsals for the film, these two celebrated actors settle authentically into the quiet dignity of longstanding companionate affection. Both performances hum with grace notes as the actors imbue even the most quotidian moments with compassion and wisdom. Ordinary Love speaks to how Joan and Tom maintain the strength of their relationship in spite of cancer, not because of it.
The bond that appears effortless on screen, however, was quite effortful, as I learned when talking to the two actors following the film's limited release. The organic chemistry was evident between Manville and Neeson, who both spoke softly yet passionately about their approach to forging the connection at the heart of Ordinary Love. The two performers came to the film with storied careers and full lives, both of which contributed to how they approached bringing Tom and Joan's tender marriage to life.
Lesley, you've said that Liam was the big draw for you to board this project. I'm curious, to start, what's your favorite of his performances and why?
Lesley Manville: Oh my gosh! I've got to say the right thing here. I wish I'd have seen you [to Neeson] on stage. I never have. Schindler's List, I think, really is up there. Had the [Ordinary Love] script been awful, then I wouldn't have wanted to do it despite Liam. But the script was great, and they said Liam was going to do it, so I said it sounded like a good one, really.
Liam, do you have a favorite performance of hers?
Liam Neeson: I've seen Lesley in a couple of the Mike Leigh films. She struck me, and I mean this as a compliment, as like, "Oh, that's someone who just walked in off the street and is playing this." She was so natural and so great as an actress. And I did see her on stage, I thought she was wonderful.
Right away, we can sense such a shared history of the couple. Surely some of it came from the script itself, but how did you collaborate to ensure you were on the same page about where Tom and Joan have been?
Manville: Sometimes it's hard to manufacture that or try to cook it up. I guess the casting of the two of us was pretty good and a fluke to some degree. We could have not got on. The warmth we have for each other is a bonus. We couldn't predict that until we'd met. We're quite similar as actors, really, we see what's on the page and try to make it as truthful as possible. But day one, we were shooting scenes of them on the sofa, watching telly, not doing much, 30-plus-year relationship…you just have to plow in and do it. We've both lived a fair amount—
Neeson: We didn't really "plan" anything. There's a saying, "If it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage." That foundation stone of the script was beautiful.
Was there a rehearsal period, or did you just jump right in?
Manville: We had a couple of afternoons in New York, didn't we?
Neeson: Yeah, we did.
Manville: Liam lives here, and I was doing a play. Lisa and Glenn, our directors, came over and we spent a few afternoons mostly eating quite nice lunches.
Neeson: Yeah, those were nice lunches. But we certainly didn't "rehearse" rehearse it, did we?
Were they more like chemistry sessions?
Neeson: Yeah, just smelling each other, really!
Liam, you've said that part of what drew you to the film was the ability to play someone like yourself, a nice Northern Irish man. Is it easier or harder to play something that's less like a character and more like yourself?
Neeson: I think if you're playing a character that's not you, i.e. thinking of doing accents, there's a process of work you have. Be it an American accent or a German accent, there's a process. Then I try to do that and ignore it. So, whatever comes out of my mouth comes out. If a few Irish words come out, if it's supposed to be German, I don't care. You can fix it a little bit in an ADR department, but I hate doing a scene with a dialect coach there.
I have to tell you a funny story. I did this film Widows with Viola Davis a couple years ago. And myself and Colin Farrell have to be from Chicago. I met with this lovely lady, the dialect coach. My first scene was in a shower, right, and into the bathroom comes Viola with a little drink [mimes a shot glass] for her and I, it's a whole process we do before I do a heist job. It's a little ritual we do, and she has a dog, a tiny wee thing. When we finish the scene, I'm supposed to go "rawr-rawr" to the dog. I did this a couple of times, and the dialect coach literally ran in and says, "Liam, you're doing the dog sound wrong, accent wise! It should be 'woof-woof,' use the back of your throat." I thought, "She's pulling my leg! The dog's that size [puts hand barely above the ground]." But she meant it.
Manville: Oh dear, she needs to take a check, doesn't she?
Neeson: But being the professional I was, I went "woof-woof."
When you're playing characters who are "ordinary" or "normal," as the final and working titles for the film have suggested, do you start with yourself and fit into the character? Or is the character the starting point and you invest little pieces of yourself into it?
Manville: Certainly, for me, there's a lot about Joan that's not a million miles away from me, although there are obvious differences. I just thought, there's this woman, they've had this tragedy in their lives, they've lost their daughter, getting on with things, their lives have reduced down to this co-dependent small existence—it's all about the ordinary stuff. And then you've just got to layer onto that the fact that this horrible diagnosis happens. But, in a way, I felt that took care of itself because I—touch of wood [knocks on the wood frame of her chair]—have not been through breast cancer. I've had a sister who did, but the women in the [hospital] scenes, the technicians and the surgeons were all real, and they were very helpful. They were wonderful women, and they helped me hugely just walking me through it. I just thought, "There's Joan, and you've just got to be Joan as these other things are happening to her." Of course, all bits of your own experiences and life stuff comes out. But it's almost not conscious. I've had a lot of life—a lot of ups, a lot of downs, as has everybody. That's nothing exceptional. Nothing more different than the average person. Our job is we lock those feelings away somewhere inside of us, and they're there to call upon if we need to.
Neeson: Yeah, that's a great way of putting it. James Cagney used to have an expression when an ingénue would ask him how to do a scene. He famously said, "You walk in the room, plant your feet and speak the truth." That was always his answer. It's true.
There's a moment during chemo where Joan makes a remark that she thought the experience would change her more but feels relatively the same. Lesley, I'm curious, do you believe her at that moment?
Manville: Yeah, because you're always you, no matter what's happening. I guess that kind of statement is probably quite particular to people who go through a big health thing like that. You expect it's going to really alter you, shift you, but actually it's still you underneath. Because it's just you with this epic thing happening to you. Nevertheless, it's you.
Is it tough as an actor to depict that kind of stasis while also bringing some variation?
Manville: I think there's enough in the scenes. A good point in the film is when they [Tom and Joan] are having a row about nothing—which color pill. But it's bound to happen. They're a great couple, yet something gives way because that's human. I felt that was quite well charted throughout the script.
We don't really get a similar moment of verbal reflection from Tom. Do you think the same sentiment of feeling unchanged might apply to him?
Neeson: There's one scene where he visits their daughter's grave and talks about how scared he is. And I think he is. But he's "man" enough to put up a kind of front that everything's going to be okay, and I think he really believes that too. But he's terrified that he might lose his life partner. It might happen. Without getting too heavy about it, I know Lesley has experienced loss in her family. I've had four members of my family die. It was wrenching for the family—very, very wrenching. It's a horrible disease. Lesley was saying to me last night, in America alone, one in eight women are going to suffer some form of breast cancer, which is an astronomical number. We are all one degree of separation from someone who has it.
Manville: But the survival rate is very impressive now.
It's nice that the film is about more than just the struggle of the disease but how life continues in spite of it. We even start the film more or less where we ended it in the calendar year.
Neeson: Just that minutiae of life. Going to a grocery store. You still have to eat! Save up your coupons, that minutiae, I love that it comes across the script.
You've both worked with some incredible directors in your time. Is there anything in particular that you took from them for Ordinary Love, or do you just clear out your memory in order to execute what Lisa and Glenn want?
Neeson: I think Lesley said in an earlier interview—forgive me for jumping in, darling—that you absorb it through osmosis if you work with really good people. And bad people too. You just allow it to come out. You're not, "What was it Martin Scorsese said? I must remember that. Or Steven Spielberg"—I don't do that.
Manville: Also, they get a lot from you too. A lot of people think directors are like dictators. If they employ two actors like us, they're expecting a collaboration of some sort. Hopefully they get something from us too.
In this more recent stage of your career, you've each had roles that have exploded and become beloved by the Internet—Liam with Taken, Lesley with Phantom Thread. How do you all react to something like that making such a big splash where people turn your work into a meme?
Manville: I didn't know what a meme was until quite recently. Somebody told me I was a meme.
Neeson: What is it? I honestly don't know. I've heard the word, but I don't know what it means.
Manville: They just take a bit of a performance…
Yes, snippets of a performance and use it as a response to something else. Recontextualized.
Neeson: Oh, I see. Like "release the kraken."
Or "I have a very particular set of skills" from Taken. I see that, and I see bits of Cyril a lot online.
Manville: Apparently, I'm a bit of a gay icon. So that's new. Never thought I'd reach my age and be that. But I'll take it!
Is that just a nice thing to keep in the back of your head? Does it enter into the process at all?
Manville: No! Listen, I think there's a myth that actors, however successful they are, wander around in some sort of successful bubble. You're just not! You're having your life like everyone else. I understand that our jobs are quite exceptional, and other people view our jobs with some kind of halo over them. But personally speaking, when I'm working, I'm working. The rest of my life is incredibly regular.
Review: The Call of the Wild Provides a Resonant Take on a Classic
The film's avoidance of cruel Gold Rush realities is more than made up for by its spirited kineticism.3
The latest cinematic adaptation of Jack London's The Call of the Wild is a surprisingly thrilling and emotionally moving adventure film. Its surprises come not only from director Chris Sanders and screenwriter Michael Green's dramatic overhaul of the classic 1903 novel for family audiences, but also from the way their revisions make London's story richer and more resonant, rather than diluted and saccharine.
It's worth recalling that London's vision of man and nature in The Call of the Wild is anything but romantic; indeed, at times it's literally dog eat dog. In his story, the imposing yet spoiled Buck, a St. Bernard and Scotch Collie mix, is kidnapped from his wealthy master's California manor and sold to dealers in Yukon Territory, where the Gold Rush has created high demand for sledding dogs. Buck's initiation into the culture of the Northlands involves severe beatings at the hands of his masters, brutal rivalries with fellow sledding dogs, harsh exposure to unforgiving elements, and an unrelenting work regimen that allows for little rest, renewal, or indolence. What London depicts is nothing less than a Darwinian world where survival forbids weakness of body and spirit, and where survivors can ill-afford pity or remorse.
Not much of that vision remains in Sanders and Green's adaptation. Buck is still kidnapped from his home and sold to dog traders, but his subjugation is reduced from repeated, will-breaking abuse to a single hit. In this Call of the Wild, dogs never maul one another to death, a regular occurrence in London's novel. And minus one or two exceptions, the human world of the story has now become uplifting and communal rather than bitter and cutthroat. In the first half of the film, Buck's sledding masters are an adorable husband-and-wife team (Omar Sy and Cara Gee) in place of a rough pair of mail deliverers, and in the second half, John Thornton (Harrison Ford), Buck's last and most beloved master, isn't revealed to be hardened treasure-seeker, but a grieving man who finds redemption in the great outdoors.
The film's avoidance of cruel Gold Rush realities is more than made up for by its spirited kineticism and by its deepening of the man-dog bond that forms the heart of London's story. This Call of the Wild relies heavily on a CGI Buck (and other virtual beasts) to create complex choreographed movement in labyrinthine tracking shots that would be impossible to execute with real animals. One might expect the artifice of even the most convincing CGI to undermine Buck's palpable presence, as well as the script's frequent praises to the glory of nature, yet the film's special-effects team has imbued the animal with a multi-layered personality, as displayed in joyously detailed, if more than slightly anthropomorphic, expressions and gestures. And the integration of Buck and other CGI creations into believable, immersive environments is buttressed by the cinematography of Janusz Kamiński, who lenses everything from a quiet meadow to an epic avalanche with lush vibrancy.
In the film's first half, human concerns take a backseat to Buck's education as he adapts to the dangerous world of the Northlands, but in the second half the emergence of Ford as Buck's best friend adds to the film a poignant human dimension. Thornton rescues Buck from a trio of inept, brutish, and greedy city slickers (Dan Stevens, Karen Gillan, and Colin Woodell), and Buck in turn saves Thornton from misery and drunkenness as he pines away for his late son and ruined marriage while living alone on the outskirts of civilization.
This is a welcome change from London's depiction of Thornton, who possesses on the page a kind heart but not much else in the way of compelling characteristics; the summit of his relationship with Buck occurs when he stakes and wins a fortune betting on Buck's ability to drag a half ton of cargo. In this film version, Thornton and Buck's relationship grows as they travel the remotest reaches of wilderness where Thornton regains his sense of wonder and Buck draws closer to the feral origins of his wolf-like brethren and ancestors. Ford lends gruff vulnerability and gravity to Thornton in scenes that might have tipped over into idyllic cheese given just a few false moves, and his narration throughout the film forms a sort of avuncular bass line to the proceedings lest they become too cloying or cute.
A paradox exists in The Call of the Wild, which is indebted to advanced technological fakery but touts the supremacy of nature and natural instincts. Yet there's a sincerity and lack of pretense to the film that transcends this paradox and evokes the sublime.
Cast: Harrison Ford, Dan Stevens, Omar Sy, Karen Gillan, Bradley Whitford, Colin Woodell, Cara Gee, Scott MacDonald, Terry Notary Director: Chris Sanders Screenwriter: Michael Green Distributor: 20th Century Studios Running Time: 100 min Rating: PG Year: 2020 Buy: Book
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US officials have announced the arrest of seven people in a crackdown on the illegal global trade in endangered black rhinoceros horns.
Arrests were made across the country over recent days in "Operation Crash," which involved multiple law enforcement agencies, the US Department of Justice said in a statement on Thursday.
A Chinese citizen, Jin Zhao Feng, was arrested in Los Angeles and is accused of shipping dozens or more rhino horns to China. The horns are used in traditional Asian medicine, regardless of fears that poaching is driving the huge African animal to extinction.
Also arrested were four alleged members of a US-based trafficking ring that supplied Feng with the horns. They were charged with conspiracy and violation of laws protecting endangered species.
Searches of one of the alleged suppliers, Wade Steffen, who was arrested in Texas, turned up 37 rhino horns, as well as $337,000 in cash, US officials said. Additional searches by agents pointed to the lucrative nature of the illegal business.
"Agents found rhinoceros horns, cash, bars of gold, diamonds and Rolex watches. Approximately $1 million in cash was seized and another $1 million seized in gold ingots," the statement said.
Another two men were arrested in the sweep, one of them in New Jersey after he allegedly purchased horns, and another, an antiques expert, in New York, where he was charged with trafficking horns and creating fake documents.
The antiques expert, David Hausman, allegedly purchased a taxidermied rhinoceros head from an undercover officer "and was later observed sawing off the horns in a motel parking lot," the Justice Department said.
"The rhino is an animal of prehistoric origin that is facing possible extinction because of an illegal trade for its horns on the black market that is driven by greed," said Ignacia Moreno, assistant attorney general for the environment and natural resources division of the US Justice Department.
"The rhino is protected under both US and international law, and we are taking aggressive action to protect the rhino by investigating and vigorously prosecuting those who are engaged in this brutal trade," Moreno wrote.

subset: commoncrawl


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This mod makes several improvements to autons and the NAMI Auton Bay:
- Adds the ability to rename autons using the Auton Bay. This name applies to the auton item and the ship it becomes.
- If an auton ship's name is changed by another mod (such as Automatic Auton Numbering), that change will also apply to the item it becomes when it returns to your ship.
- Shows the amount of cargo the auton is carrying, if any, when examining it in the auton bay.
- Fixes a bug in vanilla where repairing an auton's armor with the auton bay deletes its cargo. (fixed in vanilla in 1.7B5)
- Works around a vanilla bug with (objSetItemData) where replacing an auton's armor with identical armor sets the quantity of the auton stack to 1 if the autons have ever been launched or modified. (fixed in vanilla in 1.7B5)
- Shows the maximum armor mass and device power use the auton can support as action descriptions under the relevant actions in the auton bay. Power use should automatically adjust to the change in 1.7A2 allowing ships to install devices with power use equal to their reactor power.
- When returning to the main auton bay screen from a subscreen, the previously selected auton will still be selected, whether or not it was modified. (Surprisingly, this was one of the most difficult parts.)
- Makes the auton bay not close after launching an auton unless there are no autons left on board.
- If an auton is ordered to return while other autons are already returning that will fill the available cargo space, it sends an error message rather than returning.
- If an auton attempts to return to the ship while there isn't enough cargo space for it, it relaunches and sends an error message.
- Fixes an issue where if damaged armor is installed on an auton, the auton bay redundantly or incorrectly describes the armor as damaged forever.
- Fixes a bug where if a mule auton's armor is replaced, all armor items in its cargo are moved to the player's cargo.
This mod does not require Corporate Command, but many of its features are specific to the NAMI Auton Bay and won't be available without it.
This mod overrides dsAutonBay, dsAutonBayRepairArmor, dsAutonBayReplaceArmor, dsAutonBayInstallDevice, and baStdAutonBase. So it probably isn't compatible with other mods that override these types. It is compatible with Auton Bay Misc. Slot, and may or may not be compatible with other mods that modify the XML of these types or change the dock screens in <OnGlobalPaneInit>. It adds actionIDs to all the actions, so mods that rely on the default numerical IDs won't work.
Mule Status
This mod allows Mule autons to report how much cargo they're carrying in response to a "Status" message. As a proof of concept for mod interoperability using <Events>, it also works with Com Groups. With both mods active, it will be possible to send the "Status" message to the whole non-combatant com group.
This mod modifies the XML of scMuleAuton (and any autons added by mods with nonzero cargo space and docking ports), but should be compatible with other mods that do so, thanks to the bug fix in 1.7B5.
Auton Bay Misc. Slot and Hotkey
As the name suggests, this mod makes the NAMI Auton Bay take a miscellaneous device slot, rather than the cargo bay slot, allowing the Constellation (and other ships, if they acquire one) to use it at the same time as a cargo bay. It also add a hotkey (B) for it in the Use menu.
This mod won't do anything without Corporate Command.
This mod modifies the XML of itNAMIAutonBay, scConstellationPlayer, and baStdAutonBase, so it might conflict with other mods that modify those types. However, it is compatible with Improved Auton Bay Screens.
Old version without the hotkey:
Automatic Auton Numbering
This mod appends a unique number to the end of each auton's name when it's launched.
This mod overwrites the global function (rpgDeployAutonFromItem). It's probably compatible with any mods that don't do that. If you combine it with Corporate Command or another mod that allows autons to be converted back into items, I recommend also using Improved Auton Bay Screens, otherwise the numbers will be lost when the autons return.
Improved Mule Screens
This mod clarifies where cargo is being transferred and allows the player to jettison items from a Mule auton directly into space.
This mod alters the Main dockscreen of any auton that's the player's wingman using an <OnGlobalPaneInit> event. It should be compatible with any mod that doesn't alter that screen.
Possible mod ideas
- Allow using armor repair items on auton armor
- Salvage and repair autons from wrecks with the auton bay
- Add Lumiere autons to their loot tables (this is planned for Core at some point)
- Replace the Longreach on the 310A with a lower value custom version for financial balance
- Allow Mules to be ordered to loot a target
- Make Explorers more cautious while exploring
As always, feedback, suggestions and bug reports are welcome.


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Some Great Contract Hire and car Leasing Offers on all Citroen Vehicles, Click the deals below to view the great lease deals on on the Citroen car range.
Car Leasing Solutions Limited has some fantastic contract hire and car leasing deals on all Citroen for both business and personal customers, choose one of the many special offers we currently have on our Citroen deals page.
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23k Gold Plated Sterling Silver Garnet Half-Hoop Earrings, "Jaipur Curve"
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Majestic 23k gold plated sterling silver curves in a half-loop in a stunning design from Bhavesh. Sparkling pools of faceted garnets dot the lovely earrings to add a touch of sophistication.
- 5 grams
- 0.18 oz
- 1.5 cm L x 0.8 cm W x 0.5 cm D
- 0.6" L x 0.3" W x 0.2" D
Bhavesh is a highly-skilled jewelry artisan. In his workshop, he employs several artisans on a full-time basis and others on a part-time basis.
Bhavesh is a dedicated father who works very hard to provide for his two children.
22 Artisans Impacted
1 Helpful Vote (verified_buyer)
Verified Buyer
"Will pass these on to daughter and then grandaught"
Elegant for evening, dressed for daytime as well. Garnets flash with light and pick up brilliant color , add hues to the face . Will definitely pass this pair of earrings to my daughter or granddaughters in the future. Beautiful ! So well made!
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Meet the Artist
Sterling silver and gemstone jewelry
India170 artist reviews
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Bhavesh Sterling silver and gemstone jewelry
"My father was a craftsman of precious stones… [designing] was not difficult for me, since I knew a great deal about gems and their settings. I think it was in my blood."
"Jewelry crafting is our family tradition, dating back to the ancient time when Jaipur was brought to its present structure by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II. During that time, my ancestors were jewelers in the kingdom of Jaipur. Since then, the tradition and art have been handed down from generation to generation.
"My father was a craftsman of precious stones. I grew up observing the colors and exquisiteness of jewelry so I was inclined to do something different within the same field. I started selling stones when I was only 16. But it turned out to be not very interesting, so I started designing jewelry. It was not difficult for me, since I knew a great deal about gems and their settings. I think it was in my blood. My designs were appreciated in the market and this motivated me to become a professional. Eventually I opened my own workshop.
"My designs feature gold with precious stones and sterling silver. I use both traditional and modern techniques, according to the requirement of my design. Five artisans assist me. My designs were exhibited in Paris in 2003 and 2004 and received an overwhelming response. I'd welcome your comments too."
170 Testimonials for Bhavesh
More from this Artist
Fiery SolitaireNatural Garnet Solitaire Ring from India
US Ring Size: 5,6,7,9,10,115.0
Delhi SkyBlue Chalcedony Dangle Earrings in Polished 925 Silver
Length: 1.2" x 0.4" W x 0.2" D4.8


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Knowing What to do is half the battle
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I love the website guys! My customers keep complimenting me on it, and the best part is my business and traffic has all but tripled. Thanks Again. You rock.
I was assured my businesses would appear on the first page, at the top no less, within 1 month. Well, they did it! Within 1 month, and for the keywords I wanted to be found with. Very Professional!
I didn't have any online presence & no clue where to start. They took care of me & in 3 mons. (no exaggeration) my phone was ringing off the hook. Now I am so busy I can't handle it.
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Managing Natural Resource Pathways
In natural resource work, equipment and organisms are often moved from one location to another. The specific equipment or organism being moved is called the target. Targets could include animals for relocation or stocking for recreation, equipment such as a bulldozers and backhoes, sampling gear such as nets or traps, and even people. Transporting targets provides a potential vector for the spread of non-target species that could potentially invade new habitat. Non-target species are the plants, animals, diseases, pathogens and parasites that are not intended to be moved. As Natural Resource Managers, it is essential that we do our best to remove these hazards from pathways.
International Standard: HACCP Planning is an international standard (ASTM E2590 - 09) for reducing or eliminating the spread of unwanted species during specific processes or practices or in materials or products. Please see the Standard Guide for Conducting Hazard Analysis-Critical Control Point (HACCP) Evaluations.
Resource management work often creates open pathways that could spread invasive species to unique and critical habitats for already endangered species. Next to habitat loss, invasive species are resource management's biggest challenge. Executive Order 13112, 1999, directs agencies to prevent the spread of invasive species in their work but few management tools exist to implement this Directive. Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) planning has been modified from the food industry for natural resource work. Around the world industry uses the HACCP planning tool to remove product contamination. In natural resource pathways, hitchhiking species are considered contaminants. HACCP's comprehensive planning identifies these species and the risk of contamination while documenting the best management practices used to prevent and remove hitchhikers.
HACCP planning focuses attention on critical control points where non-target species can be removed. Documenting risks and methods used to remove non target species gives managers a strategic method to make consistent decisions based on identified risks. Planning builds a logical framework of information to weigh risks for species spread against management benefits.
Why? A few errors can have long-lasting affects on agency mission! Additional planning support is available on this web site where a planning manual, supporting documents, forms and a database of completed HACCP plans are available in several formats. Please share your best management practices and return completed plans for the database.
Appropriate planning should be implemented for species collections, relocations, equipment transfers and other natural resource work in order to prevent the spread of hitchhiking species through these pathways.
For more information, please contact...
David Britton, Ph.D.
Regional AIS Coordinator
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Southwest Region
(817) 272-3714


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Men's Freestyle - Dedicated to André Paskowski
Double Elimination
Winners' Final
Having defeated Dieter van der Eyken (Starboard / Severne), Jose 'Gollito' Estredo (Fanatic / North) and then fellow countryman Tonky Frans (Tabou / Gaastra) - Kiri Thode earned the chance to battle for the double elimination crown against Steven van Broeckhoven. With the light winds both sailors reached for their biggest equipment with Thode on 5.2m and van Broeckhoven on a 5.4m respectively. However, it was Thode who really excelled in the light conditions as he landed a ridiculous clew-first, and regular backloop, together with a trademark one-handed air bob as he dominated to force a super final. Van Broeckhoven did land some monster moves of his own such as a brilliant air bob and a massive kono, but it wasn't enough to defend his single elimination victory.
Super Final
In the super final the wind became lighter and more gusty, but Thode was able to make more of the conditions on offer than his Belgium counterpart. Thode opened with an incredible, barely planing, culo, whilst van Broeckhoven rotated through a fast air flaka and a powerful culo of his own. The Bonairean though, continued his irresistible form as he exploded through a super stylish one-handed shaka, a fluid double spock and the best of the bunch another amazing one-handed air bob - as in the winners' final. Soon afterwards the results were announced that Thode had reigned supreme in the double elimination, at which point the twenty-three year old was overcome by emotion as it dawned upon him that he is now within touching distance of the maiden world title.
Kiri Thode speaks after fighting back in the double elimination to storm to victory:
"I knew that I had to perform really, really well and after sailing I'm super happy with my performance. I haven't been focusing on what results I needed, I was just trying to remain focused on today and I'm currently feeling very comfortable on the water. It's been a dream since I was six years old to be the freestyle world champion, and to be this close to it is amazing, I'm so close to realizing my dream. I'm so motivated right now and let's just see what happens."
Close Calls
Although Thode won the double elimination it could've so easily been a different story. In heat forty-eight Thode faced an on fire Dieter van der Eyken and the Belgium maestro pushed Thode all the way. By the end of the heat the two sailors were almost inseparable with just half a point difference between the judges. However, van der Eyken's final move of the heat on starboard tack was a regular chachoo, which he landed slightly wet. Unfortunately this proved to be a counting move for the twenty-one year old and ultimately this was the difference between the two sailors as Thode advanced.
That wasn't the only close call of the day either as the freestylers produced some stunning battles. In heat forty-three Bjorn Saragoza (Starboard / Hot Sails Maui) narrowly missed out to Phil Soltysiak (Starboard / Sailworks). Saragoza landed a stunning pasko, but with four moves from seven to count the Bonairean also half a switch chachoo to count, which resulted in him missing out. Soltysiak still produced an excellent heat with a brilliant skopu and a culo. Anthony Ruenes (Tabou / Gaastra) advanced by way of a 2:1 decision in his favor against Amado Vrieswijk (Starboard / Severne) to move into the top seven, but van der Eyken then stopped his fight back through the double. Heat forty-six B was also an incredibly close heat between Davy Scheffers (Tabou / Gaastra) and Taty Frans (Starboard / MauiSails / Mystic / Maui Ultra Fins). The two sailors were move-for-move with each other until the very end of the heat, at which point Scheffers attempted a shaka but had to settle for a shuvit, which proved to be his downfall as Frans advanced into the top six.
Ricardo Campello (JP / NeilPryde / MFC) eventually finished the double elimination in joint ninth after defeating Thomas Traversa (Tabou / Gaastra), receiving a bye past an injured Yarden Meir (Loft Sails / Maui Ultra Fins) and then knocking out Max Rowe (Fanatic / North). The former three-time PWA Freestyle World Champion landed stunning, almost, air shuvit spocks combined with burners, air flakas and air funnels to progress before van der Eyken stopped him in his tracks. Jacopo Testa (RRD / AL360) also achieved his first top ten finish on the PWA World Tour after defeating Choko Frans, Rick Jendrusch (F2 / Severne / Mystic) and finally Adrian Beholz (Fanatic / Sailloft Hamburg / Maui Ultra Fins).
Elimination Five
Winners' Final
Alberto Menegatti (Starboard / Point-7) made the best start to the winners' final just ahead of Antoine Albeau (RRD / NeilPryde). The Italian rounded the first mark ahead of Albeau, Cyril Moussilmani (Starboard / Severne) and Ross Williams (Tabou / Gaastra). Menegatti was able to hold his lead until the final mark at which point Albeau out maneuvered him to take the top spot. On the home straight Albeau made no mistakes as he now looks to have taken an almost unassailable lead as he goes in search of back-to-back world titles. Behind him Menegatti secured second place followed by Williams and Antoine Questel (Starboard / Loft Sails) - who made a brilliant comeback - to finish in third and fourth place respectively.
Elsewhere in the fifth elimination fifteen-year-old Ethan Westera (Starboard / Loft Sails) did brilliantly to qualify for the quarterfinals after finishing in fourth place in heat seven. Unfortunately the Aruban then jumped the gun along with Kasper Larsen (Starboard / Loft Sails). Taty Frans jumped straight from his freestyle gear onto his slalom kit, but after a perfect start he made a catastrophic error as he sailed towards the wrong mark after the opening gybe, which cost him dearly as he finished in fifth place.
Heat four saw an incredible six sailors jump the gun and therefore disqualified - gifting Tomas Malina (Fanatic / Simmer) a place in the quarterfinals.
"Timing your start today was very difficult - with the low level of light you don't have much depth perception, and when you combine this with the swell and gusty winds it's extremely difficult." said Michah Buzianis.
In heat eleven Julien Quentel did brilliantly to fight back and claim the final qualifying place after overtaking Bjorn Dunkerbeck (Starboard / Severne / Chris Benz / Dunkerbeck Eyewear), who eventually narrowly missed out in fifth place. Also qualifying from the heat were Ben van der Steen (Starboard / Gaastra / Mystic / Different), Bernd Flessner (JP / NeilPryde) - who enjoyed a fantastic day in his final event as he reached the winners' final - and finally Cyril Moussilmani.
In the first semifinal Damien Le Guen (Exocet) pipped his fellow compatriot - Alexandre Cousin (Patrik / Loft Sails / Mystic) - to a place in the winners' final. The two sailors were neck-and-neck as they flew down the home straight, but Le Guen did just enough in the end.
Saturday offers the potential for a southwesterly breeze of 16-25 knots, which could create a few waves, with this in mind the wave fleet will meet at 07:00 with the action commencing at 7:30. The freestyle and slalom sailors will meet at 10:00 with the first possible start at 10:30. Don't miss any of the brilliant action by tuning into the PWA live stream at www.pwawordltour.com.
Results after Men's Freestyle Double Elimination - Dedicated to André Paskowski
1 Kiri Thode (Starboard / Gaastra)
2 Steven van Broeckhoven (JP / NeilPryde / Different)
3 Tonky Frans (Tabou / Gaastra)
4 Jose 'Gollito' Estredo (Fanatic / North)
5 Dieter van der Eyken (Starboard / Severne)
6 Taty Frans (Starboard / MauiSails / Mystic / Maui Ultra Fins)
7 Davy Scheffers (Tabou / Gaastra)
7 Anthony Ruenes (Tabou / Gaastra)
9 Amado Vrieswijk (Starboard / Severne)
9 Jacopo Testa (RRD / AL360)
9 Philip Soltysiak (Starboard / Sailworks)
9 Ricardo Campello (JP / NeilPryde / MFC)
Results after Five Eliminations - Men's Slalom
1 Antoine Albeau (RRD / NeilPryde)
2 Julien Quentel (RRD / NeilPryde)
3 Alberto Menegatti (Starboard / Point-7)
4 Cyril Moussilmani (Starboard / Severne)
5 Steve Allen (Starboard / Severne)
6 Josh Angulo (Angulo / Gun Sails)
7 Antoine Questel (Starboard / Loft Sails)
8 Micah Buzianis (JP / MauiSails)
9 Gonzalo Costa Hoevel (Starboard / Loft Sails)
10 Alexandre Cousin (Patrik / Loft Sails / Mystic)
Scope the action
For more information on all the entrants, and to keep up to date with every piece of the action, click on www.pwaworldtour.com


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Laptops / Notebooks
Laptops Buying Guide
Laptops computers have come a long way from what they used to be....
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Laptops Buying Guide
Laptops computers have come a long way from what they used to be. As technology gets smaller and smaller, designers are able to cram not only a lot more into these little computers but also a lot more powerful components as well.
Before getting into the technical end of things, I'll first touch on the visual end of things; the physical design of laptops. Most will range from slightly under an inch thick to as deep as almost two inches thick. A lot of this depth will depend on what type of components you have in the laptop and what type of cooling they require. Hotter components will require larger heatsinks and blowers inside the notebook thus leading to a thicker design. Screen sizes on a notebook will the biggest determining factor to the overall size of it. Most notebooks will range from around 13" screen sizes up to a whopping 19"+! The most common sizes will be 14.1", 15.4" and 17" but with many digital media notebooks and desktop replacement style notebooks we are starting to see manufacturers play around with non-standard screen sizes a lot more. All new notebook screens follow the same trend as most new desktop screens; they are starting to come only in widescreen. A few options you might find with a notebook screen are gloss or matte finish and LED backlighting or traditional cathode backlighting - both will play a slight factor in overall price. Of course the colours and funky designs that notebook bodies are coming in are practically endless these days and many manufacturers are even offering custom designs if you're willing to cough up the extra cash. However, anything can look pretty on the outside to let's dive more into what you need to look for inside your new notebook.
The CPU will be one of the more important hardware pieces inside your new notebook. You will probably want to consider budgeting to get the best possible CPU that you can afford. Not only is this a good idea for the horsepower behind your computer but it's also a good idea because in a notebook you can not upgrade your CPU like you can in a desktop machine. This means that whatever CPU you purchase you will likely be stuck with it until you make your next notebook upgrade. I mention this because it is a more important thing to consider. Some of the other components can be upgraded in a notebook, but usually not the CPU. Some people need a simple and cheap notebook for nothing more than internet and document use, so these people probably won't look at their notebook the same way as someone who is buying it for a specific use (such as graphic design or music production). When you are checking out the CPU options available in new notebooks, you will probably see the striking similarities to their desktop counterparts. Most notebook CPUs are coming from the identical series' as desktop CPUs, with even their speeds being the same in some cases. The only major difference between the two is that the notebook variants do have slight design changes to allow their use inside a notebook (think more limited cooling and battery life). Although all new notebooks have pretty much transitioned into the dual core spectrum, quad core is one sticker you won't find on many of them yet. Transitioning to more cores in a CPU of course means more heat, so we won't see some of these goodies available instantly in notebook designs just yet.
RAM (memory) is an area that I probably don't need to discuss a whole lot in this guide. Most desktops have either 2 or 4 slots for RAM where as notebooks are constricted to having only two. Since notebook RAM sticks are coming in capacities up to 2gb a piece that makes it possible to have notebooks with up to 4gb of RAM. A decent new one will usually ship with between two to four gig to help both Windows Vista and all of your applications co-exist in peace. Unlike the CPU, notebook RAM is easily upgradeable by either yourself (if you're comfortable enough with basic hardware install) or by a computer repair shop. This way you can easily add a little more in the future to help extend your time before needing to buy a whole new notebook.
Gone are the times of having small hard drives in your notebook. With 2.5" notebook hard drives now shipping in sizes upwards of 500gb, these little drives are matching the storage capacity of most new off-the-shelf computer systems. At this time, new notebooks are shipping with hard drives that are usually at least 160gb and the highest end models will come with 500gb drives. As manufacturers are able to squeeze even more space onto hard drive platters we will start seeing even larger drives. For the curious techie's, all new notebook hard drives are using the same SATA interface that desktop drives use but most are 5400 rpm as opposed to 7200 RPM like in our desktops. Using a 5400 RPM drive is usually favored because they produce less heat than a 7200 RPM notebook sized drive. Now it's time to talk about the future of notebook hard drives, something that is slowly starting to creep into some models out there already. SSDs, or Solid State Drives, are essentially a flash based hard drive. Although they look almost identical to a mechanical hard drive on the outside, you won't find a single moving part inside these little guys. Rather, under the hood of an SSD you will find something that looks identical to what's inside your USB flash sticks and SD cards; lots of flash memory chips. The gains from these drives are that they are many times faster than a conventional hard disk drive because there are no moving parts to slow down the reading and writing of data. This gain of speed will help tremendously with reading and writing files as well as the speed of the operating system itself. However, the downfall to these drives is the same problem that plagued early model USB flash drives; the amount of storage that can be packed into one of these little cases. At the current time, SSD drives range from 4gb up to 128gb, but expect to pay a very hefty price tag for most 128gb models! With this in mind, the cost to storage ratio of these drives is still not good enough to make them mainstream enough for every new notebook so most manufacturers are offering them only as an add-on choice.
Graphics card variations in a notebook are just like what you would find in a desktop computer. The majority of notebooks out there use an integrated graphics chip that is usually a part of the entire mainboard chipset used on the motherboard itself. For example - Intel graphics, VIA graphics, etc.. Since these are basic performance chips they are enough to handle the needs of the Windows Vista operating system and maybe some older games or games that aren't reliant on heavy graphics acceleration. For those looking for a notebook that will allow them to do some moderate gaming on, they actually do exist! By paying a little more when purchasing it isn't hard to find higher performing notebooks that use an actual Nvidia or ATI powered graphics chip in them with dedicated (not shared) video memory. These cards will often have similar series names to their desktop counterparts but for obvious reasons will be scaled down quite a bit to reduce the extreme heat from a desktop chip that a notebook simply could not cool adequately enough. For those willing to pay a lot for the best graphics possible, I have also seen some high end gaming laptops that are running an SLI setup with two internal Nvidia graphics chips! If you want the best of both worlds then it is possible to get notebooks using both a separate graphics chip and the integrated chipset one. What these setups will do is dynamically switch to the offboard graphics when a demand is placed for accelerated graphics, but for regular use the onboard graphics will be used to help dramatically lengthen battery life.
When it comes down to it, there is a huge variety of laptops on the market to choose from. Most manufacturers will have any number of different models with each model coming in several hardware configurations. If you need a laptop for either a specific purpose or to fit a specific price, it shouldn't be hard to find that "perfect machine".Close


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The Campaign for History and Citizenship
Donor Stories
Bob and Marion Wilson
President Colin Campbell presents the Churchill Bell – Colonial Williamsburg's most prestigious award – to Bob and Marion Wilson, honoring their 30 years of unstinting dedication, service and support of the Foundation.
The Colonial Williamsburg Teacher Institute launched in 1989 thanks to the vision and generosity of Bob and Marion Wilson of California. Ever since, the Wilsons and a group of other committed donors have worked tirelessly to expand the list of benefactors for this immersive, hands-on program. The unique training that, to-date, more than 7,700 educators have received at the Institute is reinvigorating their teaching of American history and broadening their students' very concept of America.


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franchise has been in an odd position the last couple years. While the franchise often worked to mix up the formula from year to year a decent bit, the release of EA's own Burnout Paradise posed a bit of a conundrum for the publisher. With Burnout switching to an open world setting, it meant that it competed directly with Need for Speed in that space. Last year's Need for Speed ProStreet was a diversion for the series from recent years, going to track-based racing, plenty of tuning options and focusing entirely on the events than exploring the city or running from the cops.
see deal
Need for Speed UndercoverBest priceon Amazon
ProStreet didn't turn out too well, so Black Box went back to the drawing board and returned to an open world setting with this year's Need for Speed Undercover, but that wasn't the only design change. Undercover also seems to be directed right at the casual market, both in terms of presentation and its extremely relaxed learning curve.
Click here to watch the video review.
The end result, however, is a game that has practically zero redeeming qualities. It fails on almost every front and is a major step backwards not only for the franchise, but racing games in general.
Part of the reason for this is the game's complete and utter misuse of its open world setting. The major reason for having an open world is to allow gamers to explore their environment, find new challenges, perhaps some hidden locations and generally hunt down people to race. That doesn't happen one bit in Undercover. You cannot even drive to an event to start it or enter your garage. To begin an event, you can either head to the overhead map, which requires a couple of seconds of loading despite its utter simplicity, or simply press down on the D-Pad. This will load up whatever your nearest event is, or in some cases, the next major event you're supposed to take part in.
All of this means that unless you're running from the cops, there's absolutely no reason to drive around the city when not in an event. You can't come across any hidden events, new racers or anything of this sort. Unless just feel like testing out your ride or just feel like exploring, there's no reason to drive around on your own.
The open world setting is also ignored in many of the game's events. When you take part in any standard race, the game closes off the streets so that you can only drive on the correct route. It's the game's way of putting you in a pre-defined track and not letting you veer from the beaten path. While transparent arrow walls would have been fine, this restricts not only you and your competition, but the traffic to the set race course as well. In other words, there's no cross traffic to deal with. How can you have an open world game and not have any cross traffic to contend with in races?
Not all events are like this, but they don't get much better. One event type challenges you to get out in front of your competition and then stay ahead for a minute or so (or just pull away entirely). Once you're able to get ahead, it's an absolute piece of cake to dominate them, especially if you head to the highway since they'll likely crash into someone and leave you with such a gigantic lead that you can come to a complete stop, start again and still have plenty of breathing room.
This brings me to my next issue - the game is incredibly easy. It was fairly often that I'd win events by a good 20 seconds or so, and I'd have the worst car in the pack. In fact, I've been able to smoke a lineup of Lamborghinis and Corvettes with an Audi TT, and that should never happen. If your car's ratings are half of what your competition has, you can probably win with ease.
If you buy something through this post, IGN may get a share of the sale. For more, learn more.
In This Article
Need for Speed Undercover Review


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When I saw your father then. Before you birthed.__________________________________________________________________
I saw a boulder, broad chest, wavering
Awkward as his skin, stretched and cracked
Losing his old self.
I saw his words become weighed.
His life mission sharpening like a pencil.
I saw him testing father. He would roll it
Around like hot liquid and squint under its burn.
As you stretched in your mothers tummy,
So he stretched. He shed parts to prepare.
I saw a man naked and unsure, rolling daddy
Around his tongue, preparing like the raw trumpet
Stretching abstract notes creating jazz.
I saw you make him a man.
Malika Booker
Malika Booker was in Malaysia last year both to perform and to run workshops, and I had the pleasure of interviewing her for StarMag, which is where this poem appeared.
This is a very strong and moving poem about fatherhood, addressed by the mother to her child.
The main players in the act of childbirth are, of course, mother and child. But here in a sense the father too is being given birth to. It's a highly effective shift of focus, especially as fathers often feel sidelined during the act of birth.
Look at how the new father's initial awkwardness and hesitancy is highlighted, not just by the words, but also by the punctuation. The poem is choppy at first, the full stops occurring not at the end of grammatical sentences but between clauses in the first line. And how, in comparison, the long run-on sentence in the third stanza (with no commas in places where we would normally expect them) shows his growing confidence, his joy.
The imagery of the poem is extremely effective. The image of the skin stretching and cracking reminds the reader of a snake, shedding its skin, just as the man is sloughing off his old skin to find a new self within. I like too the way the image of the word "father" being like hot liquid, a new taste sensation on the tongue, something that must be tested before it can be assimilated.
The father is described very effectively in the same terms as the baby – stretching, shedding parts (as the umbilical cord is shed, I suppose), naked. The reference to jazz improvisation is apt for there is no manual for fatherhood, and each man must come to it in their own way.
The poem reminded me of an earlier one I posted about learning the true meaning of becoming a father: The Almond Tree by John Stallworthy.
Give Malika's poem to a new father near you!
(Written by bibliobibuli who is at the moment unable to move her blog over to Blogger 2).
Labels: poems about motherhood, poems about parenthood, Sharon's choices