You Can Be My Wingman Anytime

Joel and I caught the Sunday morning viewing of Pacific Rim.

Everything you need to know about this movie can be gleaned from Top Gun.

In fact, I am 90% certain you could take the lines from Top Gun, voice it over this movie, and it would largely make sense.

Fortunately, Joel and I are Top Gun fans, so we enjoyed the movie for its entertainment value and for the fact that we tried to pick which Top Gun lines and characters would apply to a given scene or character in Pacific Rim.

The acting was actually decent (nothing like this unspeakable travesty), and the story was well-conceived, though formulaic.  But you can't go into a Giant Summertime CGI Blockbuster expecting Oscar material, except for maybe the CGI.  Largely, the storyline for Pacific Rim was a delivery vehicle for CGI fights between giant 50-story robots and 50-story alien creatures.

And. It. Was. Awesome.

But it had it all:  diamond-in-the-rough hot-shot pilot with a personal tragedy, the Ice Man, the incredulous Commander always busting the hero's balls, the uncertain "co-pilot" (each robot is piloted by 2 troops, who must be able to establish a mental and emotional link for the robot to move), the forces of good on the brink of defeat, a faceless bureaucracy ready to dismantle the world's best chance of defense, on and on.  There's actually, as Joel and I discussed, plenty of room for a series based on this, given the rich back story only hinted-at in the first 15 minutes of the movie.  Pacific Rim for sure has way more style points and predictably-satisfying scenes and outcomes, but damn...it's fun! And I can't say enough about the CGI. These fights looked and felt real without the herky-jerky, hard-to-follow Transformers fight scenes.

Now, I kept it short on the review because that's not really my goal with this post.  Go see Pacific Rim; I plan to take my 8-year-old to see it, who will probably go apeshit for it.  My goal is this, reiterated from the 2nd sentence of this post:  everything you need to know about this movie can be gleaned from Top Gun.

Pick any movie about pilots, piloting big machines, and maverick-y heroes, and they all stem from Top Gun.  Top Gun, IMO, is the progenitor of that type of movie.  These pilot/co-pilot, fantastic machinery flicks follow the Top Gun formula devised by late MSU professor Jim Cash.

This led our discussion to:  all cop movies stem from Lethal Weapon (the uptight 'gimmie your badge and your gun' commander whose past turns out to be strangely similar to the hero's, the cop-on-the-edge, the reluctant but faithful partner who is wounded or dies, etc).

No point on a summer Monday other than:  discuss.

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Man-Boy Movies

I don't know if this looks stupid or cool - maybe both - but it has big robots smashing big monsters, so my lizard brain likes it.



Pacific Rim Official Trailer by teasertrailer

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A Bockumentary Film Review

Let me set the stage for you: Five friends leave New York City by minivan and set out to visit 38 breweries in 40 days.

Did you see the last part of that sentence? 38 breweries in 40 days. I am jealous beyond belief. I wish I had the luxury to take a month and a half off of life and go on that type of road trip.

But instead, those 5 guys did it for me and made an entertaining and very well-="edited and well-conceived documentary called American Beer: A Bockumentary.


What really set this documentary apart from other "road trip" style efforts is that the focus was not on the 5 friends and their relationship over the course of the trip. It was on the brewers and breweries. That is exactly as it should have been and I loved it.

It felt like a really fast hour and 45 minutes. The 38 breweries they stopped by are some of my favorites, including Anchor Steam, Brooklyn Brewery, Dogfish Head, Ommegang, New Belgium and Rogue. It was fun to put faces and voices to the "brewmasters" I have been reading about and drinking from. Sam Calagione from Dogfish Head is a physically fit dude just about my age. Larry Bell from Bell's is sort of an unkempt nerdy-looking fellow. Anchor Steam's brewer is older than my parents and bought the brewery in 1965. On and on, it was fun to see the brewers and the guts of the breweries.

The brewers, for their part, were extremely forthcoming about being a craft brewer. Each one, in part, discussed how and why they started, the challenges in owning and brewing in a craft brewery, humble beginnings, and their favorite beers. Larry Bell's story of his rocky start ("My second year, I made $25,000 and lost $25,000") and the mysterious sale-from-heaven that allowed his brewery to take-off was a really cool story. One and all had a great tale of starting with a single kettle brewing 3 times a day to the operation they have now. Some still brew amazing beers in cobbld-together shops and the Yuengling brewery (American's oldest) still makes use of the 52-degree tunnels hand-dug into the mountains (and apparently brew with ghosts).

The guys, of course, get smashed with some of the brewers, but again, little attention is paid to their party episodes in lieu of footage capturing each brewer's personality and story.

This is not a movie that will teach you how to brew. This is simply a movie about the greatest beer run in American History. I highly recommend this bockumentary and further, declare it Required Watching for the contributors to Around the Keg. It's a great contribution to the history of the AMerican Craft Beer movement. As the movie says when it starts

By the end of the 1970's," reads the white-on-black text that opens the film, "corporate consolidation" left the United States with less than 50 breweries.

There are nearly 1,400 in the U.S. today.

Cheers!

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Lions for Lambs

Mrs. Smitty and I pawned Smitty Jr. off on the grandparents this weekend and had a day-long kid-free shop-a-thon.

And what did we buy, mostly? If you guessed "stuff for Smitty Jr." you'd be correct.

At any rate, one of the many things that we crammed-in yesterday was a viewing of Lions For Lambs. I must say, Mrs. Smitty and I were impressed. The movie really got us thinking, and it awakened a lot of thoughts that I had repressed and allowed to go dormant.

Quickly, so I don't give much away, it's about an hour and 20 minutes, give or take, in the life of 3 sets of people: a reporter (Meryl Streep) and her hour-long interview with an up-and-coming Republican Senator (Tom Cruise); a college student in a come-to-Jesus (and not the religious kind) meeting with his professor (played by an Andrew Garfield and Robert Redford, respectively); and 2 Army Rangers in a pretty shitty spot (played by Michael Pena and Derek Luke, two folks I've never ehard of but I'll give credit where it's due). Their three separate story lines converge, in a way.

It's more of a vignette. You come in to the story with events happening, and leave it without everything having been wrapped-up. I really like that as a device. But that's not all the movie does for you. For me, it left me asking what one of the characters would do. And in essence, it was like asking myself what I'd do.

Before I get into any philosphical discussions I guess I'll touch on the movie itself. Critics have been slamming this film and there's some folks out there who think it's emotionless and dull. Well, true, the only action scenes take place with the Rangers in Afghanistan. But you go to this movie to listen to what it says through its characters. And even from what they say, I imagine 2 different people with 2 different biases would come away with 2 different messages from this movie. That's pretty cool. Don't go to this movie looking for a Private Ryan-esque shooter or even a The Kingdom gripping thriller. It's not. It's 2 debates and 1 set of consequences. I found the movie to move very quickly despite the lack of action because the interplay of the 3 different stories, as well as the philosophy behind the dialogue, really moved it quickly forward.

This movie also doesn't wrap stuff up in a neat little bow for you. It makes you ask yourself what happens, and as I said above, it makes you ask yourself what you'd do. So if you need things wrapped up like a little present, don't go see this movie.

Speaking in broad terms, here's what it did for me. I am dissatisfied with our progress in the War On Terror. I don't think that stopping completely is the right answer. I see a different answer that involves engagement at many different levels; military, social and educational. But what can I do? I've served, honorably, in the military already for 8 years. I have a wife, a Smitty Jr. and a Thing 1 and Thing 2 on the way...do I reenlist? My wife certainly doesn't want me to. But like the movie points out, talk is cheap if you can figure out a way to make a change, even if it ultimately brings you to the same place as doing nothing. But where I am stuck right now is what, exactly, can I do right now to institute change? Can I run for office and get my ass kicked by Congressman Mike Rogers (R - Brighton)? Not to mention I'm a political Nobody; just another lobbyist.... Should I try to attend the National Defense Institute? Maybe. But right now, I am dissatisfied with the current direction and dissatisfied with my level of involvement.

At any rate, go check the movie out. It's not a thriller folks, but it at least makes you ask yourself important questions: is the passion of those willing to continue or repackage the war misplaced? Is it bullshit? Is our media complicit? What would you do to change things?

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