JolieSimons.com

Reports have surfaced that legendary actor and director Sydney Pollack has died after a nine month battle with cancer. Pollack was 73.

I remember Sydney Pollack from great films he directed like Tootsie, the Dustin Hoffman vehicle that was hilarious and touching at the same time. Pollack was also responsible for such award fodder as Out of Africa (starring Meryl Streep) and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They.

Youngsters will probably recognize Pollack not from his directing but from his acting. In his later years, Pollack became a sort of everyman character actor and appeared in many different projects ranging from Will and Grace to last year’s Michael Clayton.

The New York Times is reporting that an all-Republican Texas appeals court has ruled that the 468 children taken from the Mormon fundamentalist compound in west Texas were taken and held illegally. The children were taken from the Yearning for Zion FLDS polygamist ranch outside of Eldorado, Texas.

The prosecutors for the state could not prove that the children were in any imminent danger of physical or sexual abuse and that the abuse previously reported was mostly unsubstantiated. Though the ruling only applied to the families who appealed, the burden of proof now lies with the state to prove that those remaining children are in immediate danger. Without such proof, all of the children will be returned from the foster families they’ve been living with in as soon as 10 days.

The call that prompted the decision, a call made by a supposed 16-year old girl who was being sexually abused by an older “husband,” is being called a hoax by many. The search for the girl who made the phone call came up empty, leading many to doubt that she actually existed in the first place.

The quick reaction to take away the community’s children was sanctioned by a lower court judge who was chastised in the appeals court’s ruling.

The quick reaction to take away the children, as I’ve said before, stinks of religious condemnation rather than genuine concern for the children. After all, the impetus for the raid was a single phone call and not the long, documented histories required for most children to be placed in the protective custody of a foster family.

Hopefully the state will now find a way to accurately find those children being abused and take them out of their family situations without widespread harm to the entire community.

You can read my previous posts on this subject here and here.

There’s one moment in the new Indiana Jones film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull that really defines the new turn of Indiana and his ragtag gang that end up way over their heads, searching for ancient artifacts in remote corners of the world. Times have changed. It’s now the fifties and Indiana Jones is an older, wiser man. When we first see him, he’s been hauled out of the trunk of a car by the bad guys. Gone are the Nazi instigators in Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. Today’s baddies are all Russian, all the time.

You can almost see the anti-red sentiment dripping from old Indy’s brow as he sneers contemptuously at the Ruskies, antiquated leather fedora on top of his head. We get the feeling, even before he says anything, that we’re looking at a man who’s down but not out. Sure Indiana Jones is older and wiser. He’s no longer the youthful, vigorous, and worldly professor he once was. However, as Indiana begins his escape from the evildoers, as he always does at the beginning of these films, we see the character reclaiming his rightful place in the world. Sure, he knows he’s old and washed up. But he also is the last of the old guard, ready to take down the Reds at every turn.

“I like Ike” he sneers after proclaiming the Red Menace the real threat to America, and we believe him. We even find this endearing, as if fifties-era conservatism is a welcomed change from today’s corporate-whore conservatives.

Without revealing too much of the plot of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, we soon learn that Indiana Jones will be forced to use his knowledge to find a valuable artifact that incidentally can contribute to world domination by the Russians. It’s up to Indiana to foil the Russian’s plans. You know, the usual fare. This time, the adventure takes us to South America again, just as in the first scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark. In fact, Indiana’s old love from Raiders, Marion Ravenwood (played by an older-but-wiser Karen Allen, just as in the original), has also been captured. Indiana also gets stragglers in the form of Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf), a tough-acting greaser kid who seeks out Indiana in order to find his mother and stepfather who’ve been kidnapped by the Russians.

Between the stunt-heavy fight sequences through the jungle and the seamlessness of CG animations, we learn that the significance of the Russian’s find is stranger and more wonderful than we could have imagined before. This is where the movie takes an odd turn into the surreal. Crystal Skull makes use of strange, occult ideas, just as with the other three movies, only this time the artifact isn’t part of the major world religions. The artifact in question, the Crystal Skull is actually aboriginal, dating back to pre-colonialism and the South American civilizations before they were wiped out by the Spanish.

After watching all four movies in the past four days, I can attest that Crystal Skull doesn’t live up to the charm, humor, and wisdom of The Last Crusade which is, in my opinion, the best Indiana Jones movie made so far. That being said, this movie bathes the Indiana Jones franchise in a whole new light. Today’s Indiana Jones is worn from hard years as adventurer and, we later learn, intelligence operative fighting the Reds. However Indiana is not down for the count, and it shows. The times have changed and Indiana hasn’t… much. In Crystal Skull, we can see how Indiana Jones adapts in a world that’s no longer for men like him.

All in all, Crystal Skull will be the inevitable summer blockbuster. Is it good? Yes, definitely worth a watch. Is it missing Sean Connery? Most definitely. Should you see it? Yes, and preferably on the big screen. You wouldn’t want to miss the magic of the dramatic CG climax because you’re watching on a screen that’s too small. Go see in the theaters.

Grade: B

I love my Wii. My husband and I managed to stand out in the cold, freezing ourselves to the bone for nine hours outside of a Wal-Mart in order to get one, but the wait was totally worth it. The night we got it, we stayed up until very early in the morning playing Wii Sports, the game that comes packaged with the Wii system in this country.

The thing about Wii Sports is that it gives you the opportunity to actually get off the couch in order to play games. There are real motions involved. To play baseball, swing the Wiimote like a bat. To play golf, swing the Wiimote like a golf club, and so on.

When the concept of the new game Wii Fit was introduced at the famed E3 convention and advertising videos were placed online, the inevitable backlash began. This video on YouTube lampooned the strange motions that accompany a Wii Fit gaming session:

After all, who would want to play this game? When playing the game, you look very silly.

Wii Fit is the next evolution in Nintendo’s bid for an “active gaming” market. The game comes packaged with a balance board, a white board on which you stand in order to do most of the minigames involved in Wii Fit. You can also check your weight and track your progress over time. There are aerobics, strength training, yoga, and balance games you can play, all using the ingenious balance board to measure weight fluctuation and center of gravity.

After seeing and reading about recent demonstrations, including a somewhat-puzzling demonstration on NPR’s Morning Edition, I’ve decided that the Wii Fit is the next frontier in active gaming and I’m all for it. Perhaps kids all across the country will play fun balance games while at the same time dropping some pounds. Perhaps it will bring families closer together with games everyone can play. Or perhaps it will surprise everyone and become a flop.

Whatever it is, I want one. If my family is reading, you can buy me one for my birthday which I know is in the fall, but I take advanced presents.

Wii Fit is now available at stores for about $90.

Just thought I’d pass on a little comic gem I found, a gallery of the 50 worst album covers as compiled by Newsday. Of course these albums are mostly old LP’s, many of which are so tragically awful looking that it boggles the mind.

Also, there seem to be a lot of covers with dummies as in the puppets some comedians use to illicit laughs.

It’s been a hectic week here in the ‘Lou and I don’t know about you, but I could use good laugh. Enjoy!

At first, I wondered who would really care about the new Beverly Hills 90210 spinoff they’ve created. Apparently the cast consists mostly of fresh-faced teenagers much like the old show only now it’s a new cast with new problems. Jennie Garth rehashes her character and manages to come back as a guidance counselor. Other actors on the original series have expressed interest in coming back.

As what? The guy who refills the vending machine at school? But I digress.

Today they released the publicity photo for the new show and guess who’s on there? None other than the fabulous Jessica Walter. Walter, as you may or may not remember, was the fabulous Lucille Bluth on what was once America’s best television show, Arrested Development.

I know I miss Arrested Development a lot, so I’m hoping that the producers of the new 90210 fully utilize Walter’s talents. Maybe I’ll even like her as a character besides Lucille.

And let’s hope they give her plenty of time off to shoot the Arrested Development movie. Please?

In a sudden and surprising turn of events, police in San Diego arrested nearly a hundred people, 75 of them college students, in a suspected drug ring. Only 20 of those arrested were detained because they were alleged dealers. The rest were arrested for possession.

Above is a picture of the stash seized. Police confiscated cocaine, along with, according to an AP report “350 Ecstasy pills, marijuana, psychedelic mushrooms, hash oil, methamphetamine, illicit prescription drugs, several guns and at least $60,000 in cash, authorities said.

The operation, called Operation Sudden Fall, first involved local police after a cocaine overdose by one student. The DEA joined the operation soon after and launched a full-on attack, including undercover buys by youthful-looking DEA agents.

Apparently a few fraternities on campus were actively selling and recruiting customers to which they could sell drugs. Six fraternities have now been suspended because of the bust according to a SDSU press release.

In a damning piece of evidence, one fraternity member sent a mass text message to his “loyal” customers discussing the selling of cocaine and listing a price for the drug. His name is Kenneth Ciaccio, who still has active MySpace and Facebook profiles online:

In a slight touch of irony, you can also read an article titled “Parents Guide to Fraternity and Sorority Life” about all the reasons your child should go Greek at San Diego State University.

So the folks at Paramount decided they were going to try out a little game. They already knew that Iron Man, the new film starring Robert Downey Jr. and Gwenyth Paltrow would be a smokin’ hot summer release. People have been talking about this movie–at least the nerds I associate with–for months if not years. So, much like other highly-anticipated big blockbuster summer action movies, they decided to host midnight airings for the nerdy boys with disposable income. And, just to spice things up a bit and get this party started off right, they decided to allow theaters to let patrons see the movie before midnight, as early as 8 PM.

Some of us nerds have jobs in the morning, you know.

The word didn’t get out as quickly as many had hoped, but the turnout was still very good for the last minute change in start time at the theater I attended. Total sausage fest. Lots of denim and chuckling at subtle comic book jokes. But here’s the real shocker: this movie was awesome! Totally unexpected.

Iron Man tells the tale of the beginning of superhero Iron Man. Tony Stark (Downey Jr.) plays the billionaire playboy role without a lot of brooding, almost like the antithesis of Christian Bale’s dark and conflicted Bruce Wayne in the contemporary Batman series. The difference is that Stark loves to talk. He’s not so much a transparent character, but he does lay everything out on the line.

The audience instantly connects with Stark’s plight. After a weapons demonstration in Afghanistan goes south, he ends up the prisoner of a terrorist sect which orders him, at gunpoint, to build a special missile using parts from the other missiles laying around, ironically purchased from his own weapons manufacturing company. Stark decides to defy orders and spends his time building a special suit instead to not only fix his ailing heart but also make him bulletproof.

John Jon Favreau does a bangup job as director. It’s almost like he decided that Iron Man was going to be the anti-superhero movie. Cheesy one-liners are almost entirely eliminated and replaced with dialogue that’s, well, actually funny. Actors are given plenty of room to breathe and the stilted dialogue of other big action flicks–like the woman constantly screaming in fear or the constant shouting of “We’re running out of time!”–is nonexistent. In some places, Favreau gives a little homage to the late Robert Altman by even letting characters talk over each other, much like we do in real life.

Iron Man succeeds where other movies have failed. Iron Man is good to the comic book nerds who want to see some authenticity to the Tony Stark/Iron Man character. Movie goers want to see a movie that’s original and not the hackneyed affair we’re used to (ahem Spiderman 3). The laughs are steady and often. Even the emotional moments are bittersweet and surprising in a flick with this much CG.

If you see only one movie this summer… oh, wait, isn’t that the quote they always put on movie posters? How about… Go see Iron Man. It’s the big summer blockbuster that WON’T kidnap or kill you.

Grade: A -