Saturday, December 29, 2007

… so I’ve decided to watch a film …  
 
 I say ‘film’ as opposed to ‘movie’ because a film has considerably more substance and depth to it where a movie is something that keeps the mouth breathers and the bling-toothed entranced.  Sometimes a film can be a movie <‘Star Wars‘; ‘Close Encounters’; ‘Forrest Gump’ ;>, but a movie can never be a film <‘Fridays’; ‘Independence Day’; ANYTHING by Tyler Perry (but by admission, a guilty pleasure of mine)>
 
 Tonight’s film, ‘The Verdict’ starring Paul Newman, is a very good movie.  Good actors with proven chops, with a David Mamet screenplay and direction by Sidney Lumet, I mean could you really ask for more?  I picked it up at the Library <why yes Virginia, I do really enjoy going to the Library> and against my better judgment, asked Mookie if she would share watching it with me.  Being that it was character driven, it wasn’t the bang-bang kind of movie that fed your senses.  You would have to work a little if you wanted what it held …
 
 So after about twenty minutes, she’d been bored to tears, with nodding off, then going downstairs to watch whatever.  Were this one of the crap reality shows on MTV or VH1, it would have been riveting.  Que sera, I put my effort in …
 
 I decided to get cable here, because I thought the peace of mind it would give me, was worth the $20 buck special for six months.  What I did not really anticipate was how large the gap between us is. Cable has exposed the divide between us and I am a little surprised by the distance.  That I think is because I did not want to believe that the gap between us was that great.  Even now, it may be a little distorted.  Make no mistake though, there is one, and I don’t have the passion needed to build a bridge.
 
 Now I didn’t anticipate that Friday night, a cat that I once beat up pretty good on my way up would be fighting on the telly this evening.  I DID NOT want to watch it … just didn’t.  I wouldn’t mind sharing my feelings, or just spending some time with Mook, but she doesn’t see it my way.  Give some credit, because I am sure she is trying.  I don’t really care at this point. 
 The whole thing reminds me of when I left for Carolina way back in the day.  I actually left FROM here, not Detroit.  The things that I thought were left behind then are still around.  Not a good thing. 
 
 Paul Newman’s character in ‘The Verdict’, is a once promising lawyer who has fallen down on himself, as the illusions he had as a young lawyer was stripped away from him working in a large firm.  A friend hands him an easy case of medical malpractice, all he has to do is settle the case.  But the idealist in him staggers through the booze and makes him stand up for himself.  He decides to fight for justice, not just for the payday.
 
 As in all film noir’s, everyone has flaws and the deck is stacked against the good guys.  You have good people trapped between doing what is right and doing what is expedient, fighting against taking the easy payday by laying down their moral sense rather than going with what their inner compass directs them to.
 
 And when the fix is in, Paul’s character comes out swinging!  That he would win doesn’t matter to me, as much as it was a good film.
 
 Uh, I won’t check out any boxing sites for about a week.  Maybe two.  I don’t care to know what happened … I am sure that the cat didn’t win … he just was a puffed up cat, who couldn’t get it done when the heat really got turned up …
 
… not a freakin’ opinion … that is a FACT ..!

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