This a.m. I dialed the theater's automated schedule--and it did not list Sharkwater. OK, odds on "listings error" improve. I have lots to do before my daughter and granddaughter come to visit this week, so I briefly considered putting S-L on hold and getting some things done at home. Briefly. In the event (duh) I walked downtown to catch the 9:30 bus. This is where the story begins to get magical. The bus stops, people get on, then the guy in front of me is, it seems, holding things up. Finally the driver waves the guy on but stops me from dipping my 10-pass and waves me on too, because the fare box is on the fritz.
I sit and read, and the bus sits--is he waiting for someone to come fix the box? I have some time to spare, but only about 20 minutes. Let's go, dude! After a few minutes, he beckons me forward and asks me to fill out a card w/ my contact info. OK, fair enough: I'm happy to pay for my ride later if I can't pay for it now, but let's go (I don't say). Driver gets busy w/ a bunch of other riders (including one who swipes my seat), so I hand off the card and pen to another CT Transit person standing there, find another seat, return to reading about Dr. King's final months.
Driver beckons me again. Dude, what more do you want from me? I'd love to fix the fare box, but . . . he's holding out another 10-pass to me, albeit one with only 6 rides left on it. I look at him quizzically, but before I can think of anything to say, he says, "Take it," and goes on to apologize for the inconvenience. I have no idea why. I saw no indication of anyone else getting such a payoff. Was it the Righteous Babe hooded sweat shirt? The king bio wasn't wearing its jacket, so that doesn't seem a likely answer. Middle-aged white-guy privileges? Dunno, but I rode free and got a bonus of 6 more rides.
Though he does barely get me there in time to race through Hell (the bus stops on the far end of Hell from the megaplex), pop my credit card in the machine (I avoid human contact when I can), buy my S-L ticket and my popcorn-and-Diet Pepsi-lunch voucher, and discover that Sharkwater doesn't show up on this menu any more than it did on the phone. Damn!
Still, I figure I'll go to the ticket counter and see whether I can get an explanation. The rolling marquee is showing no sign of the flick when I approach, and the ticket seller asks, "How can I help you?" "Apparently you can't," I say, and start to explain why I'm there so early when the marquee rolls over and there it is: Sharkwater, PG, 10:30. "There it is!" I say, because, well, wouldn't you? and I ask for one ticket, meanwhile pulling out my money clip, which is actually a money rubber band. And then more magic: "It's a free show," she says. OK, so I've ridden the bus for minus seven and a half bucks, and now I'm going into my first movie for free. Is this a great fucking country or what?
Sharkwater
(2006)Post
There wasn't a whole lot here that I didn't at least know the general outlines of--that humans eat about a zillion sharks for every human eaten by a shark, that the Jaws reputation of the Great White (and, by extension, all sharks) is nonsense, that (OK, I hadn't encountered this stat before) the five humans killed annually by sharks is fewer than the number killed by soda machines (for god's sake, if it takes your money, just walk away quietly--they can smell fear!!!)--but this is what movies are good at: making the merely known felt, reinforcing the knowing and the feeling with gorgeous imagery (the shots of schooling hammerheads alone was worth more than the $7.75 I'd been planning to pay), and getting your dander up.The vast majority of sharks we kill fall prey to one of two phenomena: (1) long-line fishing, which catches indiscriminately and kills awkwardly nontargeted fish, and (2) the (pardon my ethnocentrism, but please!) moronic Chinese notion that shark fin, a product that adds no flavor but only a little texture to soup flavored by chicken or pork, is a fucking delicacy, and must must must be served to guests who must be impressed by your respect for them. So sharks are hauled onto boats, their fins are hacked off, and their carcasses are dumped back into the ocean--which is bad enough if the shark has had the good fortune to die during the ordeal, and much worse if it is still alive but bereft of its means of locomotion and navigation.
Long-line fishing is internationally illegal, I believe, and shark-finning is illegal in most of the coastal waters where sharks can still be found to fin, but that's irrelevant, of course, because we are a race of assholes--a principle articulated much more effectively (see post title) by Paul Watson, the hero of the film, whom I'd met a few months back in an excellent New Yorker piece. Or, rather, Watson would be the hero of the film, if filmmaker Rob Stewart weren't so determined to fill that role himself.
I could have done without Stewart's smugness and his narcissism--hey, don't I look swell swimming nearly naked with the sharks? Let's see that fat toad Michael Moore do this! But merely being somebody I wouldn't care to hang out with doesn't stop the dude from being right, and from making an important film. Oh, I also could have done without his imperfect command of syntax, as in a graphic at the end that tells us, solemnly, "While watching this film, more than 15,000 sharks have been killed." At least I hope it's a syntax problem--if it's not a dangling participle, it's evidence of a tragic, horribly perverse bait-and-fin scam, and it raises the question of how the sharks got to the movie theater in the first place, and how they bought their tickets without opposable thumbs.
Stop-Loss
Damn, I wanted to like Kimberly Peirce's first picture since Boys Don't Cry. But this is how by the numbers it is: I'm not even concerned about a "spoiler" when I say that, about three-fourths of the way through the film, when an important-but-secondary character walks out of the scene, there might as well have been a flashing arrow on the screen, with the text "ABOUT TO KILL HIMSELF."OK, this may be the worst war we've ever been involved in (which is tall cotton, as my token southerner friend says), and the de facto draft policy that stop-loss represents is one of the most hideous aspects (more tall cotton) of the disastrous "policy" directing this war, but you still need to give us characters to give a shit about. Ryan Phillippe and Abbie Cornish do the best they can, and Victor Rasuk plays one extraordinary sequence as a soldier trying to maintain his naturally optimistic outlook despite the war's having robbed him of an arm, a leg, and his eyes, but finally, the film is like shooting sharks in a barrel.
Trailers
Street Kings--Looks awful. Keanu and Forest Whitaker as mean-streets cops.
Bangkok Dangerous--Oh! Didn't realize it's a remake. Looks like one of those for which you'd be better off renting the original. Or maybe it will revitalize Nic Cage's career. Hey, it could happen!
Defiance--Excuse me, but do Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber deliver so much box office that it makes sense to have them doing accents rather than cast European actors?
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