Business Traveller

Ever since I got my first DVD player, I've been dying to get a copy of Ford Fairlane on DVD, but even the almighty Amazon couldn't help. Imagine my excitement at stumbling accross it on the Netflix catalog the other day, and ordering it.

I watched with baited breath as Netflix told me that they were shipping it, then that it had been posted, and should be in my mailbox the following morning Finally, on Saturday morning, I went to my mailbox like a kid on Christmas, and there was the red envelope. I ripped it open, and pulled out the DVD, and yes – this was it – The Rock 'n  Roll detective had arrived.

I forced myself to take the dogs for a walk, came back, and had a braai (BBQ). Eventuall, by 8PM, I couldn't take it anymore, and popped the movie into the DVD player, and was instantly transported back to the early '90s. God I love that movie. I also remembered having a friend called David – a 6'6" gorilla of a man. He had this tiny little girlfriend – Jenny. Jenny was just gorgeous. Jenny was also the only girl I've even known that really got Ford Fairlane. She loved the way that he rips off the other detective movies, and amplifies their chauvenism to parody it. Most other girls just think it's a chauvenist movie, and leave it at that…

That got me thinking. I miss David – I wonder what happened to him). I miss Richard (although we still talk often, and see each other every chance we get – as often as living on different continents allows).

Most of all, though – I miss Me. The Me that discovered that movie in the early '90s. The me that was a fun guy, before he became a boring 30-something businessman…

Starting today, I'm going to try and find me again – Un-be-fucking-lievable!

Suspension of Disbelief is a very important tool for movie makers to use. Not all movie-makers – you understand. I don't think that Spielburg counted on people to suspend their disbelief in Schindlers List, but if you are making a futuristic movie – for example – you need to make it believable enough that people will blindly accept the less believable bits.

Stealth'sattempts at doing this are not helped by phrases like "It's a modified scramjet…" Maybe I'm being pedantic here, but a Scramjet is a tube that is wider at the back than it is in the front, with a small port on the side where a combustible material is inserted. There are no moving parts. The shape of the tube is dictated as being wider at the back than it is in the front – because this creates the venturi effect. The venturi effect sucks in more air than just the forward motion of the tube can sustain, and this highly pressurised air is the secret to the Scramjet working without moving parts. I guess what I'm really saying here is "How the fuck do you modify a Scramjet?"

That's just the start of it too. You have "Hypersonic Jets" refueling off a zeppelin (that just happens to be hovering somewhere over India or China – as near as I can gather). Ignoring anything else – "Hypersonic jets" need to maintain forward motion to stay in the air. Zeppelin type balloons are not known for their high-speed.

The planes fly from tthe carrier in the Phillipeans, hit a target in Khazakistan, Then ehad for the russian border (which if my Geography Serves is North). Just inside the Russian Border, your man runs low on fuel, and is told that the carrier is too far, he eneds to go to Alaska? How is that closer? And how does the other plane (the one that ran into trouble before even hitting the Russian Border) crash all the way over in North Korea?

Verdict? In the words of Ford Fairlane – "Mildly amusing, but mostly painful"

The problem with watching a movie that is based on a book you love is that no film director yet has ever managed to produce anything close to what my imagination produces – but then, some people have told me that I am weird…

I read the chronicles when I was very young, and I loved it. When the movie hype started, I fished out the 5 books, and read them again. Still loved them.

The movie was always going to be for kids. The books were for kids. I was really hoping, though, that they would put something in there for grown-ups. When you start watching, it takes a little while, but you stop looking for something extra, and start enjoying the movie.

It's a good movie, and one that I would heartily recommend to anybody.

If you want to give you kids a real treat, though – buy them the books. Let the lion be what their imagination sees. Let Narnia be a magical place, and not just another countryside in a movie.

I don't know why, but when I saw the trailer for this movie, I thought it was a comedy – oh yes, I know why – it's listed as a comedy. Funny that.

I was in a comedy mood. I'd just spent the entire day buying wine in Napa. When I got home, I fired up the BBQ, threw some dead animals on the grill, uncorked a particularly nice Merlot, and got my comedy hat on. When the animal was sufficiently dead to be eaten without squealing or running off my plate, I sat down in-front of the TV, and started to watch.

Cage has had a few of these very depressing type movies. Some of them – like Leaving Las Vegas – had Elizabeth Shue's breasts to carry them through. The Weatherman does not have Elizabeth Shue's breasts. It doesn't have anybody's breasts.

There are one or two funny points, but they're all funny in that slightly uncomfortable way. Actually, scratch that – Michael Cane's American accent was pretty funny, but I kept waiting for him to say "You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!"

My advice – if you're having a really shitty time, and you want to see that you are not alone, or that somebody out there has it worse than you, then get this movie. If you're feeling good when you watch it though, you won't be by the end of the movie.

I finished off my evening in the hot tub with the Merlot. Somehow that has the ability to make everything OK again.

(c:

From the very first time I saw this movie's title, there was something that vaguely bothered me. I managed to avoid it in a cinemas, and recently succumbed and got it on DVD from Netflix.

Early on in the watching, the nagging feeling got stronger, and suddenly it struck me that the lead actor also played in The English Patient. I tried really hard to not let this bother me overly, because the trailer definitely looked like it was a movie where things happened. I was wrong.

Admittedly, in this movie, she gets on with it and dies right at the beginning, and we're not forced to endure every excruciating moment of the death – like the English Patient, but then she keeps coming back in flashbacks – sometimes the same one over and over again…

Every time you think that something interesting might happen, we flash to a flock of birds flying over a large lake – my Great Grandmother would approve.

Not that I think it's possible to ruin it for you, but I won't tell you the ending – except for to say that Ralph Feinnes does the honorable thing to apologise for this movie. I hope it's the end of these now…