Book Review - The Time Keeper

The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom (2012 Hyperion)  Got this one as a Christmas present.  I read "Tuesdays with Morrie" a couple years ago and was moved by Albom's story.  So I was happy to put this on the To Read pile.

The book tells the story of Father Time.  He was the human who first invented time keeping and is condemned (?) by God to live in a cave listening to the voices of all the humans who wish for more time.  Eventually he is freed to follow two specific people, a young girl who wants less time and a fabulously wealthy man who wants more.

The storytelling isn't bad.  Albom has been word-smithing for decades now and knows how to make words do what he wants.  At the same time I kept feeling "It's A Wonderful Life" tap me on the shoulder as I read.  Both Sarah and Vincent will get their George Bailey moment as Dor (Father Time's real name) shows them what happens after their death.  Dor meanwhile struggles with memories of the life he lost so many years ago.

It's an interesting series of stories but at the end my reaction was "What's the point?".  Albom lays claim early on to a point of view that says creating a clock is a sin.  That's why Dor is punished.  I'm not sure I see that.  Certainly there is a mistake in mortgaging our lives to a false understanding of time.  It can't be stopped, it can't be negotiated with and in the end we will all cease.  Time is inexorable and uncaring.  We need to deal with it and realize that this moment, right now is a precious thing that we need enjoy and use well.

In the end Albom gets that line of thinking started so I guess that's a success.  I'm just left with a book that I don't mind having read but don't feel any great desire to ever re-visit.

Rating - *** Worth A Look (with a shrug)

Movie Reviews - Eastern Promises, Cashback

Eastern Promises (2007) - This is one of those movies I'm "supposed" to like.  It's directed by David Cronenberg, the critics generally love it, the movie won a couple minor awards, received several larger award nominations including a Best Actor Oscar nod for Viggo Mortensen.  It didn't make a huge amount of money but enough that there was talk for a while about a sequel.

Here's the problem - I don't much care for the movie.  It's not terrible but it's a long way from great.

Start off that I'm not on the Cronenberg band wagon.  This is the third of his films I've seen.  "The Dead Zone" (1983) which I don't especially like (Stephen King's book is infinitely better) and "A History of Violence" (2005) which is a virtual book end for "Eastern Promises".  Mortensen played the violent man with a past in that one too. As I remember my feelings on the two movies are much the same.   Cronenberg's style seems to lean heavily on violence and body distortions.  As I recently posted for me the story is the central element that I want to see in a movie.  Cronenberg strikes me as being much more about style over substance.

In this movie there's very little story.  An English midwife (Naomi Watts) is drawn into contact with a Russian criminal gang when a 14 year old sex slave/prostitute dies while giving birth.  The midwife wants to find some family for the baby based on a diary that was found in the dead girl's effects.  She takes it to a local Russian restaurant with which the girl seemed to have a connection.  There she meets (without realizing it at first) the head of the gang Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), his son Kirill (Vincent Casel) and their driver and rising star in the gang Nikolai (Mortensen).  Turns out they know more than they let on about the girl.  Turns out there's several things going on that you find out as the movie wanders to the end.  The beginning of the movie is very slow and Cronenberg fills in the places where there is no story to advance mostly with graphic violence.

The two best things about the movie are Mortensen and Mueller-Stahl.  Viggo specializes in immersing himself in his character's back stories which makes him a joy to watch.  Mueller-Stahl has made a career of creating subtle, finely detailed characters as well.  The problem is that there are no particularly likable characters here.  The Russian mobsters are cruel and violent.  The midwife is a little on the self righteous side (and not overly bright.  Lecturing violent criminals about morality?)  Most of the rest are one dimensional.  Kirill is yet another weak son of a mobster boss.  The rest is a ballet of venality and violence.  There's no story to draw you in and no characters to care about.

In the end there's just not much to recommend about this one.

Rating - ** Not Impressed

Cashback (2006)  Not quite sure what to make of this one.  It's charming and lame, thoughtful and just a bit shallow.  It's both a bit erotic and a bit sleazy.  And finally it's a bit clever and tries to be a bit too clever.

Ben (Sean Bigerstaff) is an art student who develops chronic insomnia when he breaks up with his girlfriend.  Basically he just stops sleeping.  This gives him 8 extra hours a day to fill and he ends up working the overnight shift at a supermarket.  There he meets a variety of idiot co-workers and a pretty girl (Emilia Fox) who might just be the answer to his problem.  He also discovers he can stop time.  Ben explores his fascination with the female form by undressing the female customers and drawing them, then re-dressing them before he restarts time.

The movie is based on a 2004 award winning (and Oscar nominated) short by director Sean Ellis.  Virtually all of the original was included in the feature.  They could do that since all the original cast was available for the expanded version.  The critics are split down the middle on this.  The nudity seems to be the difficulty.  You either accept it as a necessary part of the story telling or you don't.  For me it works but I certainly understand that others may find it difficult.  At the same time most of it is unnecessary.  Yes the attitude toward women is a bit juvenile but then so is Ben.  This is a lot more intelligent juvenile male fantasy movie than most.  Watching it makes me wish they'd spent more than a week writing the feature length script.  It could have been really excellent.

Rating -*** Worth A Look

No Accident, On Netiquette, Crisis Management

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Tuesday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com.  Copyright 2013 by Jay Phillippi.  All Rights Reserved.  You like what you see?  Drop me a line and we can talk.



Program scripts from week of April 15, 2013



My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside. 

On Netiquette                                                                                                   

A couple of weeks ago a Facebook friend of mine made the comment “Netiquette is still under development”.  Netiquette is that legendary set of shared behaviors that will allow us to get along on the World Wide Web.  Oh, stop laughing.  The hope has always been that someday we might find some social norms to that allows the best of life on the Web while restraining the worst.

What brought all of this to mind was an experience of my own.  Unless you’ve got your Facebook Friends list really tightened down you have lots of “friends” that you really don’t know.  I have 901 friends on Facebook.  The vast majority I’ve never met in real life and a large percentage of them are in that broad category of “friends of friends”.  It was one of the folks in that category that triggered this.  This young man had begun posting a bunch of  photos that I just found uncomfortable.  Normally I would just hit “Hide” and move on but it became photo after photo after photo.  So I sent him a private message and suggested that rather than blasting these photos out to everyone (I was not the only person to comment) but to use Facebook’s “Lists” function to target them.  I was politely told to go away.  Permanently.  So I did and unfriended him.

In and of itself it was no big deal.  But I started thinking about the netiquette aspects of it all.  Effectively the other guy’s point of view said “This is my space, my living room and I can do what I want”.  On the surface that would seem to be true.  Except that it overlooks one critical fact.  It’s you living room into which you have invited hundreds of people.  Imagine doing this in real life, inviting all kinds of people into your house and then doing things that make some of them uncomfortable.  When they comment on this you simply tell them to get lost.  

In the end we need to remember that our social media is NOT the same as our personal living spaces.  These are generally public forums and they are public because we have chosen to make them public.  How we behave in public is often different than how we may chose to behave at home.  When I was growing up it was called “company manners”.  Your family and closest friends are usually willing to put up with personality quirks.  Social settings work better when we try to ease the jagged edges a little.

But for the time being we’ll have to wait for Netiquette to make it out of development.

No Accident                                                                                                      

There is no greater minefield in American culture than racism.  Last week Country music star Brad Paisley didn’t just walk into it, he did a belly flop.

Right off the bat let me say that I think Paisley’s intent was good.  The song was a reaction to a true story in his own life when an African American barista at Starbuck’s took exception to a t-shirt Paisley was wearing with the image of the Confederate Stars and Bars.  Wanting to start a discussion on the subject of race using his high profile stardom is a good idea.  

Sadly it didn’t go well from that point on.  Let’s take a look at what, in my opinion, are two primary mistakes here.

First is the title of the song, “Accidental Racist”.  I’m really rather surprised this got the nod.  Let’s try a few other variants to demonstrate my point.  Accidental Wife Beater, Accidental Serial Killer, Accidental Nazi.  It’s just a dumb title that pretty much sets the song up to fail.

The second problem I see is focusing the song on the issue of the battle flag.  Saying that wearing that flag is just a way of showing you’re a fan of southern rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd, by anyone but perhaps most especially by a southern man, is either astounding stupidity or appalling naivete.  Paisley talks about the modern South (quoting the lyrics now) “...still paying for the mistakes that a bunch of folks made long before we came...”.  Well here’s a suggestion - how about NOT wearing important symbols of the people who made those mistakes.  How about not trying to paper over the profound evil that the culture of that time was built upon?  If Brad Paisley had really wanted to advance the discussion he would have been better off writing a song about how he took that shirt home and burned it.  Then vowed to never wear that flag again.

Music can be a powerful tool in advancing the cause of social change.  Brad Paisley and LL Cool J (who contributed what sounds even to my ears as some pretty lame rapping to the song) had a solid idea in opening a discussion of race through popular music.  Unfortunately they chose a very poor map to guide them through the minefield.

Crisis Management 

It wasn’t bad enough that it was Monday.  It was Monday AND Tax Day.  That’s probably as much bad news as most of us really needed or wanted that day.  Of course by mid-afternoon things took a very serious turn for the worse when news came out of Boston about explosions at the Boston Marathon.

As I write this Monday evening there are still many more questions than answers.  That will probably be the way of it for a while yet as the authorities work to track down whoever is responsible.

There was a perfectly predictable immediate aftermath to the breaking news however.  It was a near panic reaction from some people.  It was 9/11 again, it was this, it was that.  All of this based on virtually no actual factual information of any kind.  That was followed by a wave of folks mourning the constant onslaught of bad news.

All the experts recommend that we have plans for dealing with emergencies.  Selecting a location for the family to gather if we have to leave the house.  Having emergency supplies in our cars if a blizzard is coming.  It’s the practice of thinking things through BEFORE the bad stuff happens.  I’d like to suggest we do the same thing with the media when there’s a catastrophe or emergency.  

Call it your Emergency Media Management Plan.

The problem is that there are just too many outlets for what is usually a small load of information.  When I came home Monday afternoon I actually was getting my updates from ESPN.  They had as much media presence there as anyone.  Trying to keep track of what all those outlets are saying is like trying to drink from a fire hose.  Pick one and only one and stick to it.  Any breaking news will break on your network within minutes of it showing up.  The reality is that the vast majority of us don’t need instant access to the latest information.  Then after you’ve watched or listened for a half an hour walk away from the media for at least that long.

Trust me, you’ll get the news you need while keeping your anxiety level at a manageable level. Days like Monday are bad enough on their own.  Finding a way to manage our media inspired madness is a great way to fight back.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

Movie Review - Olympus Has Fallen

(Having just said I don't do new movie reviews I will now break my word.  Hey, it's my party, I'll review what I want to)

What an enormous pile of crap.

I need to begin by offering my sincerest apologies to the agents of the U.S. Secret Service.  These brave men and women put their lives on the line to protect our highest officials.  And they deserve better than this.  I assume this is #1 with a bullet (you should pardon the expression) on the Most Hated Movies of the Secret Service list.  I am truly sorry I wasted $15 on tickets and popcorn.  Don't make the same mistake.

Action movies come with plot holes and require a certain level of what is called "willing suspension of disbelief".  That's when you go along with things that are patently not possible for the purpose of entertainment.  But there is a limit on how much disbelief we should be asked to suspend.

"Olympus Has Fallen" uses up about 5 movies worth.

In a nutshell, Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) had been a member of the Presidential Protection Team (the A team for the Secret Service) but is removed after making a tough but correct call that results in the First Lady's (Ashley Judd) death.  A year and a half later while on desk duty at the Treasury Department he is thrust into the middle of a crisis when the White House is attacked and the President (Aaron Eckhart) is taken hostage. Working mostly on his own but with the usual incompetent assistance action heroes get from the bureaucrats in the government, intelligence and Armed Forces he saves the day.  Morgan Freeman kind of wanders through the role of Acting President while most of the rest of the Executive Branch is being held hostage as well.

If you think that was a spoiler you haven't seen many action movies.

Here's where things start to go down hill.  You have to be willing to swallow ALL of the following -

1. There are only 47 C-130 gun ships in the world. The Air Force owns all of them. Somehow the bad guys steal one, rig it with guns on BOTH sides (the C-130 classically only has guns on the port side) and get away without anyone noticing till it shows up headed for the nation's capital.
2. No one bothers to send out planes to investigate until this unidentified stolen military aircraft is actually OVER the nation's capital.  And when the fighter pilots are confronted with the guns appearing out of the sides of the plane they stare at them like hayseeds from Mayberry till they're shot down.
3. The bad guys manage to bring in at least 40 militia type terrorists from Korea, steal a top secret Army prototype weapon and mount high caliber machine guns on two garbage trucks WITHOUT ANYONE EVER NOTICING ANYTHING.  I'm assuming this movie also makes the Intelligence community's list of movies they hate.
4. When the assault on the White House (which in at least one fake newscast is consistently spelled "Whitehouse") takes place the combined skill of both the uniform branch and Protection team of the Secret Service manage to kill virtually none of the intruders.  The agents die in enormous numbers.  Even as large numbers of high caliber slugs come flying into the front of the Executive Mansion the agents just keep running out into the line of fire to die like lake flies in a bug zapper.  Meanwhile our hero pretty much kills people at will, on the run, snap shots, blind shots, you name it.
5. The President conveniently gives the terrorists their invitation into the bunker.  This violates Secret Service protocol (which is shouted out once) but at the moment when that protocol is most important NATURALLY they just chuck it over the side and invite all kinds of extra people into the most secure room in our country.
6. Curiously while the bad guys are supposed to be looking for the President's son no one ever seems to go to the Residence until they're hunting down the hero.
7. The North Koreans have inserted a deep cover mole into the security detail of the South Korean President.  That might fall within the range of "willing suspension of disbelief" until we discover that this person is in fact the most wanted terrorist in the world.  He has been active in planning several high visibility terrorist acts.  Um, no.  You can be one or the other but not both. 
8. A fail safe program designed to enable blowing up a nuclear missile once it has been launched curiously does NOT include a redundancy step actually requiring the missile to be in flight for it to work.

I have to stop.  But I keep thinking of one more thing.  I have to stop.  Please.  I can't keep on re-living the horror in my head.

 But hey, why let reality get in the way of a good fairy tale?  This list only scratches the surface of the farcical story elements this movie wants to drag the audience through.  I really expected that the people behind me were going to ask me to calm down because I kept throwing my hands into the air as each absurdity piled on  the previous.

The movie is far more realistically violent (without of course actually being realistic) than most and it enjoys showing lots of blood and violent death.  The script is generally lame (beyond the stuff above I mean) with trite, awkward dialogue.  It leaves an otherwise solid cast (Butler, Eckhart, Freeman, Judd, Dylan McDermott and Angela Bassett) with damn little to work with here.  It goes for the feel good patriotic ending but even that feels hollow.

For a "check your brain at the door" bit of action movie fun it barely qualifies.  If your brain slips into gear for even a moment you'll never be able to slip it back out again.  Strictly for your inner 12 year old boy.

Rating - ** NOT Impressed

On Reviews

Not sure I've ever laid this out.  The passing of Roger Ebert got me thinking about why I do all this and how I make my judgments.  For me a critic's opinions are worth very little if I don't understand where they find their foundation.  Some of my most reliable critics are the ones with whom I ALWAYS disagree.  If they hate it I'll like and vice versa.

The movie reviews are a spin off of the radio show where I talk about the movie industry regularly.  I love the movies so I decided to share my thoughts.  You will never hear me claim that I'm an expert because I'm not.  I do some research and background reading but that is based on the fact that I'm a fan as well.  For me that's the basis.  If you want deep philosophical discussions of the movies you won't find much to feed you here.  These are the thoughts of a fan.  Hopefully a fan with some deeper knowledge of the whys and hows of the movie making industry but someone who watches movies for the fun of it.

The book reviews are a spin off from the movie reviews.  If there is anything I love as much as the movies (at least among the media) it's reading.  And again I review from the point of view of a lover of books.

I rarely review current stuff.  There are lots of people who do that (looking for a good young movie critic?  Check out Stewart Smith of the Tyler (TX) Morning Telegraph.  Smart, funny and loves the movies.  Oh and my cousin.  But don't hold that against him.)  I prefer looking for good movies from the decades of product that Hollywood and the rest of the world have created.  Sometimes those are classics, sometimes those are movies that get overlooked.  And I try not to be afraid to say that I think a classic is over-rated ("The Searchers", rated as the Greatest Western of All Time by AFI.  Not even close in my opinion).  At the same time I want to say when I enjoy a movie even if I know it's not a great movie.  Sometimes a movie is just a movie.

If there is one thing that I will always look for in a book or a movie it is storytelling.  Everything in the book/movie should advance the storytelling.   This is the place that a lot (not all but a lot) of special effect movies fall down.  When it becomes about the effects rather than how the effects help the story telling they've lost me.  I don't care how great the cinematography may be, or how spectacular the special effects or how intense the acting or witty the script, if they don't contribute to story telling then they are a waste of my time.  The quality of the story telling will always be the bottom line for me.  The one difference between the movie and book reviews is that I do sometimes review brand new books.

Don't know that anyone else cares why I say what I say other than me.  Just wanted to be able to say "These are my core beliefs" when it comes to this stuff.

Back to movies reviews next week, I promise.

Satire Danger, April Foolishness and RIP Roger Ebert

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Tuesday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com.  Copyright 2013 by Jay Phillippi.  All Rights Reserved.  You like what you see?  Drop me a line and we can talk.

Program scripts from week of April 8, 2013



My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside. 

R.I.P. Roger Ebert                                                                                                    

It’s only been a couple weeks since I noted that when I do the memoriam programs I try to stick to folks that I don’t think will get massive coverage in the mainstream media.  I will now promptly break that rule.  But I need to offer up my own eulogy for the late Roger Ebert.

Prior to discovering the show “Sneak Previews” I was just a guy who liked to go to the movies.  I don’t remember exactly when I started watching but my bet is that it wasn’t long after the show began airing on PBS in 1975.  My dad loved the movies too so I’m sure we picked up on this show very quickly.  What we didn’t know at the time was that we were watching TV movie criticism changing forever.

Think about it, movie reviews on TV prior to this were Gene Shalit on “The Today Show” doing something short and maybe with an interview with someone from the production.  It was the newspaper review read on air.  What Siskel and Ebert did was different.  This was a pass fail grading system, thumb up or thumb down.  Plus you got two guys who really knew the movies talking about WHY they liked or didn’t like them.  Plus they took a few good humored shots at each other.  Remember this is 1975, this is radical stuff.

And don’t forget the network that was willing to take a shot at this madness was PBS.  It would be seven years before someone on the commercial media side would sit and and say “Hey, we can make some money on these guys”.

For me personally it was epiphany time, that moment when the light comes on and suddenly things that were hidden become obvious.  I was studying acting so I was already looking at the movies from that point of view.  It was Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel (two guys who you would NOT have chosen as great TV stars) that inspired me to spend more time thinking a little more deeply about all the aspects of what I saw on that screen.  From those moments watching the two Chicago newspaper critics speak from their personal passion for the movies grew my own passion.

Maybe I would have come to know and respect the work of Howard Hawks, maybe I would have come to appreciate the difference between a movie that’s great fun and one that’s great.

Maybe.  But thankfully Roger Ebert was there to show me the way.

Roger Ebert was 70 years old.

April Foolishness                                                                                                      

I actually held off on this story for a week because the ending could have gone two different ways.  You should always be careful when reacting to April Fools Day pranks done by radio stations.  I’ve played a couple of them myself over the years.  The idea is to play the joke just as close to the edge as you can while still never slipping over that edge.

So on the whole I would actually have given very high marks to the morning team of Val St John and Scott Fish at Gator Country 101.9 in southwestern Florida.  The duo went on air last week on Monday and announced that their listeners should be aware that a substance called “di-hydrogen monoxide” had been found coming out of faucets all over the listening area.  I’m sure all the chemistry teachers in the audience got quite the chuckle (chemistry teachers have been trotting out this particular joke for years) but a great many people in the rest of the audience panicked.  And flooded the local water authority with upset phone calls.

In case you did as poorly in chemistry as I did “di-hydrogen monoxide” is also called H2O or water.  That’s right the DJs announced that water was coming out of the water faucet.

This is where the story starts getting really stupid.  The water authority began making noises that the duo could face felony charges for making a false report.  The radio station yanked them off the air before their airshift was over, suspended them indefinitely and began making repeated apologies on the air.

All because two air personalities had said that water was coming out of the water faucets on April Fools Day.

I’m really not sure who should be more embarrassed here.  The candidates are the water authority for over reacting to what was without a doubt a major annoyance, the radio station for over reacting to radio personalities being, well, radio personalities or the listeners of Gator Country for well, let’s be nice about this, being astoundingly gullible.

But I’m pretty sure I know who feels the most embarrassed.  A station poll asked listeners when St. John and Fish should be returned to the air.  At one point 78% said “Never”.  I’m happy to report they were back on the job Wednesday morning.

All for saying water was coming out of the water faucet.  

Amazing.

Satire Danger

One of the great advantages of the World Wide Web is that it allows everyone to take a shot at being what they’ve always wanted to be.  Whether that’s writer or movie maker, journalist or model  It’s the great democratization of the media.  In many ways that’s a really good thing.

But not always.

The problem is that a lot of those roles are a lot harder to pull off than people realize.  Doing it well is a whole ‘nother question.  

Plus you get people who don’t really understand the medium or genre they’re trying to create.  I think that may have been part of the problem for a disgruntled high school senior recently.

Suzie Lee Weiss is a very bright young woman from my hometown of Pittsburgh PA.  She really wanted to go to an Ivy League school, applied to a bunch as was turned down by every single one.  Now she had the basic qualifications but those selection processes get really competitive and she came up short.  Not surprisingly she was a little miffed.  Out of that unhappiness came an open letter to those schools published in the “Wall Street Journal” that was, shall we say, fairly scathing.

There was an immediate backlash calling her spoiled and suffering from entitlement issues.  To which she responded that it had been a satire.  I’ve read the original piece and I think I see the problem.

You see if you’re a well known satirist like say Jonathan Swift people know not to take you seriously.  How else do you think he got away with “A Modest Proposal” where he suggested the solution to Ireland’s problems was to use their children for food.  Most performers will agree with the great Shakespearean actor Edmund Kean who said that dying was easy but comedy was hard.  Trying to be funny or ironic or satirical is very difficult.  It’s even harder when you don’t set it up right.

I think that’s where the young lady came up short.  Without the right set up she wrote something that a lot of people took seriously (either in favor or against).

In the end the answer is just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

Book Review - Spinning by MIchael Baron

Spinning - Michael Baron (2011 - The Story Plant) When I flipped this one open and saw the author being compared to Nicholas Sparks I almost closed it again.  No insult intended to Mr. Sparks or his legions of readers.  Just not my cup of tea.  But I was between books and really needed something to read.

Dylan Hunter is a rising star in the public relations business.  His life fulfilled all his dreams with a strong likelihood that it would continue for the foreseeable future.  Then a former fling showed up at his door early one morning with her three year old daughter in tow.  In the next six months that little girl will change everything in Hunter's life.  And in ways he never knew he wanted.  It's a story about change and love.

There's good news and bad news from this point on.

The bad news is that the characters are cliches, two dimensional stock characters.  The young aggressive Yuppy account executives who spend the nights scoping out sex partners at the hottest clubs and during the day setting the world on fire.  Yawn.

The good news is that Michael Baron is a talented writer.  Even with such an unpromising start he turns a tired old sow's ear into a silk purse.  There's nothing particularly surprising here, (OK, there's one twist in the middle that will probably jolt you) the plot is pretty predictable.  But the story telling is superb.  Really fine story telling can make up for a lot of other shortcomings.

In the end I was glad I kept reading.  I'm not sure I'd seek out Baron again though.

Rating - *** Worth A Look 

RIP Richard Griffiths, April Fools and Facebook Phone

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Tuesday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com.  Copyright 2013 by Jay Phillippi.  All Rights Reserved.  You like what you see?  Drop me a line and we can talk.

Program scripts from week of April 2, 2013



My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside. 

R.I.P. Richard Griffiths                                                                                                      

I’ve always wondered about this.  Most of us will pass through this world known to a only small circle of people.  And there is a very small percentage of people who will be remembered for generations.  In between those two groups are the people who will be remembered for a little while usually for some small thing.  I sometimes wonder if what they are remember for is what they would have chosen in that category.

It was the death of actor Richard Griffiths last week that brought this bubbling to the surface for me.  I’m betting the majority of you are having trouble pulling up just who Richard Griffiths was.  Now if I say that he was the piggish Uncle Vernon Dursley from the Harry Potter movies I’m betting an image has jumped into a great many folks minds.  There is no doubt that that one role will be Griffith’s memorial.  One obituary even referred to the role as the “renowned Vernon Dursley”.  This despite the fact that he probably wasn’t on screen a total of an hour over the eight movies of the series.

So my question is that really everything that should come to mind when you think of Richard Griffiths?  Over the course of his career he had no less than 91 TV and movie credits to his name.  That would be a solid career all by itself.  You could also check a career acting on the radio with the BBC or his voice over work on movies like “Hugo”.  Then add in his career on the stage where he worked with, among others, the Royal Shakespeare Company.  On the stage he won a variety of awards including a Laurence Olivier Award and a Tony both for an astounding show called “The History Boys”.  If you want to add a little honor to the memory of a fine actor check out the film version of that title where Griffiths re-creates his stage role.  Or keep your eyes peeled for smaller roles like King George in “Pirates of the Caribbean - On Stranger Tides”.

In the end we will be remembered for whatever the wider world decides to remember.  Given the short attention span of the modern media and those of us who consume it that probably means that if we’re remembered at all it won’t be for what we’ve given most of our lives and energy to.  It just makes me a little sad to see someone reduced to a two dimensional image of all the things they were in life.

Richard Griffiths was 65 years old.

April Fools                                                                                                      

Given that this was the week of April Fools day for 2013 I’m digging back into the files a little bit for this story.  It actually took place back in mid-February but it just feels right for right now.

On February 12 of this year folks in Great Falls Montana who had their TVs tuned to KRTV that day were suddenly greeted with what seemed to be an Emergency Alert System message.  One that claimed that the dead in the Great Falls area were rising from their graves and attacking the living. The message was a hoax and the TV station apologized for the confusion.  It seemed someone had hacked into the EAS and played the prank.

Now here in the week of April Fools it would be easy to just mark this off as just a high school or college computer geek prank.  This particular prank has happened before and even has a name.  The technical term for it is a “broadcast signal intrusion” and if they catch you it’s a quarter million dollar fine and up to ten years in Federal prison.  So somebody out there doesn’t take it all that lightly.  Honestly not many people get caught so the penalties are mostly show but the incident raises other questions that need to be examined.

I’ve mentioned the problem with the whole Emergency Alert System model.  It’s still based on the idea that most people will be either watching TV or listening to the radio for significant portions of the day.  While there’s a lot of TV still being watched it’s much more diverse than it was back in the day and the question is whether an EAS model system might actually reach the population centers needed in time of emergency.  Add into that that apparently there are exploitable computer weaknesses in the system and it’s worrisome.  As the cherry on the top is a study out last year that more people are turning to social media for their news.  And the top news source for these people?  Facebook.  I’ll just let the horror of the concept of Facebook as a primary hard news source sink in on you.  The study also notes that the quality of information found on the social media sites is significantly lower quality than what can be found through traditional news sources.  It’s fast, it’s unedited and it’s unverified.  And more Americans are turning to it for information.

That just might be the worst April Fools joke of all.

Facebook Phone

Some publications are calling it the rumor that won’t die.  It’s the legend of the Facebook phone.  This one has been going on for a while (well what passes for awhile in media terms these day.  Don’t forget Facebook has only been around since 2004 and smartphones in any form from just shortly before that.) That Zuckerberg fella keeps denying that any such thing is coming but the rumor just refuses to go away.

Now just like the first flowers of Spring peeping through the snow it’s time for the rumor to begin the rounds again.  This time concerning a rather obscure PR release the folks at Facebook about a mobile event this week that included the word “Android” in it.  Now as recently as January the Z man has said that Facebook is NOT building a phone.  So the focus right now is on Facebook based software that would integrate the online social media site tightly into the function of the phone.

Which leads me to the question of - why would anyone want that?  This strikes me as a loser of an idea for everyone involved here.

It’s a potential loser for both the phone manufacturer (rumor says it’s HTC) and Facebook.  HTC (if that’s who will turn the vapor into something solid) has been struggling.  A high profile flop doesn’t help them.  Neither does a phone that is probably a one trick pony.  So you can use Facebook more efficiently, so what?  Would that really sway YOU to buy this phone over whatever else may appeal to you?  Especially given that you can access Facebook anyway on other phones?  It seems inevitable that Facebook would be teaming up with a struggling manufacturer to bring this to market.  They are the ones more likely to take a shot at something like this.  Apple doesn’t need it.  So without a highly desirable phone platform all the money has to be on the desirability of a phone that is deeply tied into Facebook.

So my question is - why would anyone buy such a thing?  I love Facebook, between work related visits and personal ones I spend at least two hours a day on it.  And while I might glance at a Facebook phone there is no chance I’m going to buy it.  With any newer smartphone I can get as much social media as I need.  Plus ALL the other things I use my smartphone for.

I know Mark Zuckerberg wants all our social media lives to be rooted in Facebook.  I just think that if this week’s announcement is about turning the rumor into reality it’s going to be a pretty nasty April Fools joke on him.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

Book Review - The Age of Innocence, Stress Fracture

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1920) If I am honest I must confess that I had no idea what to expect from this book (in fact in my head I had confused it with Dreiser's "American Tragedy".  No idea why).  What I discovered was a truly astounding story about people for whom I would have very little respect.  No doubt fans of the book are now appalled but there it is.  At the same time they'll be astounded I'd never read the book before.

"The Age of Innocence" is the story of the highest caste of American society in the 1870s.  The wealthy families of New York City were an attempt to create an American aristocracy.  One the wanted nothing to do with the Old World aristocrat but were every bit as straight laced and bound by tradition and social standing as anything from the French court.  In the middle of this we find Newland Archer, scion of one of those families and engaged to the beautiful May Welland.  All is exactly as it should be.  Maybe.  When May's scandalous cousin Ellen arrives, fleeing her unspeakable husband the Polish Count Olenski, things suddenly come off the tracks.  Ellen operates from a different set of rules and expectations.  She is like nothing he has ever met before and the attraction is mutual.  The dance they dance is intricate and filled with potential land mines.  They will both chose the social order over their own happiness and live out lives that are shallow charades.

Wharton became the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize with this novel and I can't argue with that honor one bit.  While the world she weaves for us is alien to most modern readers she does it with an expert touch.  The characters remain intensely real even as they navigate through this decorum strangled social paradigm.  Newland and Ellen and Mae and all the other characters make the choices they feel they must.  Those choices will feel terribly wrong to most modern readers.  Certainly the ending made me crazy.  At the same time it offers the chance to examine the expectations of our modern social strata.  The laces can draw just as tight only in different places.

Still a brilliant book all these decades later.

Rating - **** Recommended (and for someone desiring a well made personal library probably a
 *****-Must Own)

Stress Fracture by D.P. Lyle (2010) - The first in what is promised to be a series surrounding Dub Walker a forensics expert from Alabama.  In this case he has to investigate the brutal murder of his long time friend Sheriff Mike Savage.  Walker has been at this for a while and thought he had seen it all.  But this killer is about to go on a spree and simply doesn't fit the established patterns.  Walker has to try and get ahead of the killer before he kills again.

This is pretty solid police/forensics procedural stuff (the author is a cardiologist as well as a sometime technical consultant on shows like "Cold Case" and "CSI - Miami") and is very well written.  Beyond that Lyle gives us something a little different with this killer and that's nice for a change as well.  Beyond the twist with the character of the killer there's not a lot that's surprising here but if you like these kinds of books that won't bother you much.  There's a pattern and format to this kind of book that works.  Only a very skilled or very foolish writer chooses to diverge to far from the standard.  Lyle walks that line quite creditably.

The second book in the series "Hot Lights, Cold Steel" came out in 2011.

Rating - **** Recommended

Movie Reviews - Three Days of the Condor, The Iron Lady, Cinderella Man

Three Days of the Condor (1975) - A smart ass young CIA analyst steps out to get lunch for  his office.  When he returns he finds everyone dead.  Now he's running for his life and unsure of who he can trust.  He will face decisions that he was never trained to make but will determine whether he lives or dies.

This is a classic mid-70s spy flick.  It focuses on the moral ambiguity that the nation was struggling with as we left an age when we believed in government for one where we had deep doubts about it all.  Condor (Robert Redford) makes morally ambiguous decisions while trying to figure out the logic of his agency and what they're doing.

Solid cast (Redford, Faye Dunaway,  Cliff Robertson, Max Von Sydow and John Houseman), good story (with just one large plot hole - Condor is a low level analyst with no field experience.  Logically he should have immediately "come in from the cold" but instead proceeds to keep veteran field agents guessing.) and well directed by Sidney Pollack.

Is it a great movie?  No, not really.  Is it a bad movie?  Not even close.

Rating - *** Worth A Look

The Iron Lady (2011) -  Another of last years Best Movie Oscar nominations I hadn't seen yet.  Not sure I see the Movie nomination.  Brilliant turn by  Meryl Streep as the legendary Conservative British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (an Oscar winner for Streep).  The rest of the movie strikes me as awkward, lurching and ponderous.

The movie begins Thatcher had begun to show the signs of dementia.  She sees and converses with her dead husband Denis while flashing back through her life.  For me the net effect was to diminish her legacy.  Lady Thatcher and my politics will never agree but she is a pivotal figure in modern English politics.  The constant return to her declining mental state just made me uncomfortable.  Additionally director Phyllida Lloyd occasionally slips in some odd shots that apparently are playing on the altered perceptions of Thatcher but they don't strike me as being a consistent motif and therefore feel awkward and out of place.  The movie felt longer than it's 105 minutes.

A brilliant lead actress supported by a wonderful support cast and a powerful story.  Somehow that adds up to only a middling movie.

Rating - *** Worth A Look

Cinderella Man (2005) - Ever wonder if there could have been a real life "Rocky"?  Well there was back in the '20s and '30s.  His name was James Braddock.  An up and coming light heavy/heavyweight the combination of the Great Depression and a broken hand that he couldn't allow to heal properly took him from the top of his profession to the bottom.  Astoundingly he would eventually get the chance to fight in the big time again and became heavyweight champion of the world.  It was Damon Runyon who named Braddock as the "Cinderella Man".  He became the hero of everyone in that time who had to scrabble to find enough money to feed their family.

The really astounding thing about this movie is that virtually no one went to see it.  With a budget around 80 million dollars the worldwide box office was only 108 million.  This despite the fact that Russell Crowe was the star with recognizable faces and names in Renee Zellweger, Bruce McGill and Paul Giamatti.  I assume that folks saw "boxing movie" and decided they weren't interested.  It's too bad they miss a great story of love, determination and faithfulness in a time of great hardship.

Actually it makes an especially appealing movie for today.

Rating - **** Recommended