"Ford v Ferrari": B+. I'll admit I had a few reservations about spending good money to see Ford v Ferrari. First of all, I found the film's title to be rather blah. But then I remembered you can't judge a book by its cover, so the same precept must apply to movies. Secondly, I'm not a big auto racing fan. Watching guys making left turns for two hours is not a big turn on for me, even if they are approaching the speed of sound. But then I remembered the key race is LeMans where the unique, eight and a-half mile track requires right turns as well; plus, the event is an all-day-and-night proposition. Thirdly, I was concerned that the automotive jargon would pose a language barrier. I don't know a piston from a crankshaft or a shock from a strut. But then I figured this immensely popular movie is probably being viewed, and praised, by other people like me whose mechanical know-how amounts to being able to read a dip stick. Oh, and regarding that "good money" I was hesitant to part with? My ticket cost a grand total of $2.50 at the Hopkins Theater.
Ford v Ferrari is a buddy movie of sorts, and the two leading men are nearly perfect. Matt Damon is Carroll Shelby, known among industry professionals as a world class automobile designer. Christian Bale is Ken Miles, one of a select group of drivers whose uncanny, intangible instincts give him an accurate assessment of how his car will perform under race conditions when he calls on his machine to rise to the next level. Miles is also an astute strategist, banking on his unmatched big race experience to know when to lie back and when to throttle his adversary.
The story abounds with villains, or at least men who are at odds with the aspirations of our two heroes. My favorite adversaries, naturally, are the Italians, led by Enzo Ferrari (Remo Girone). He negotiates with Ford Motor Company's representatives, led by none other than future Ford president and Chrysler Corporation CEO Lee Iaccoca (Jon Bernthal). Ford is trying to form a merger with Ferrari. The proposed deal falls apart ostensibly over post-merger control issues relating to future races, but it's possible if not likely that Enzo is simply playing Iacocca to get a better deal from Fiat. The sly, cunning Enzo not only dismisses the Ford representatives with a waive of his hand, but hurls insults at its CEO, Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts), aka "Deuce," who has remained home in Detroit. When word of Enzo's personal invective gets back to Deuce, its Game On.
Deuce and Iacocca are counting on Shelby to steer Ford's racing division to international glory. Shelby is reluctant to take the job mostly because the corporate bureaucracy would interfere with how Shelby prefers to conduct business. When Deuce assures Shelby that he will only have to answer to one executive, Shelby accepts the challenge. Shelby naively assumes that the one big shot will be Deuce himself. Wrong. Enter the conniving Leo Beebe (Josh Lucas), an executive vice president of Ford. The "one guy" Deuce promised to Shelby as his only boss turns out to be Beebe, who throws one roadblock after another into Shelby and Miles' way.
The film is based on the true story of how Shelby and Miles combine to help Ford Motor Company reach the pinnacle of international auto racing, putting it in the same lofty stratum as Ferrari. Therefore, when director James Mangold chronicles many singular moments and incidences which seem too far fetched, we wonder if those things really happened, or if they're products of Hollywood fiction whose purpose is to add to the intensity of their respective scenes. For example, when Shelby needs to convince Deuce that not just any ol' race car driver can get the job done, but rather someone with the rare talent and experience of Miles, Shelby takes Deuce on a death-defying high speed chase around an airport tarmac. Deuce, a proud and cocky "suit," is reduced to tears of fear. It is no doubt an exciting minute or two on film, and provides Letts an opportunity to show some range versus the impression he had theretofore exhibited playing the part of Deuce, but I doubt the race car romp actually happened. I also seriously doubt that Shelby would go so far as to wager ownership of his own company, Shelby American, on the outcome of the Daytona 500, but in Ford v Ferrari, that's what happens. Finally, do racers hurtling side-by-side at speeds exceeding two hundred miles an hour really stare each other down making menacing faces? Miles and Ferrari's driver, Lorenzo Bandini (Francesco Bauco), make a habit of it. Well, their focus may have been lacking but at least they weren't texting, perhaps only because cell phones were still thirty years into the future.
It turns out I should not have worried about being clueless regarding the use of automotive intricacies. Director Mangold must have had viewers like me in mind when he chose the kind of racing dilemmas to film. For example, when Miles can't get the door of his racing car to stay closed, one of the engineers in the pit crew, Phil Remington (Ray McKinnon), bludgeons the door shut with a mallet. Problem solved. That I could understand! When there are problems with Miles' brakes, the crew simply replaces the entire brake system rather than extricating and replacing the faulty part. If you, the viewer, knew nothing at all about the innards of brake systems, it made no difference here. There are continual cautious references to 7,000 RPM. We are alerted that if a driver forces his engine to exceed that threshold, expect bad things to happen. Foreshadowing? Again, easily decipherable, especially since the camera shows us the RPM level on the dashboard plenty of times.
There are a smattering of minor negatives which detract from the quality of Ford v Ferrari. How many times do we need to see the drivers stomping on their accelerators or manipulating their gear shifts? There is an overdose of Miles' family reacting to the race they are watching on their little televisions back home. And most importantly, the last ten minutes of this 152 minute movie are arguably trite and unnecessary. Nevertheless, I was very impressed with the performances of Damon and especially Bale. Whatever deficiencies may be present, I can say without reservation that I was entertained, thanks to a large extent to those two gifted actors.
Saturday, February 29, 2020
Sunday, February 9, 2020
Twelfth Annual Movie Ratings Recap
Isn't it something that the three most eagerly awaited film events of the year all take place on the same day? That day is today! You can place these in any order of importance you feel is justified, but in chronological order they line up as follows:
* The Quentin Chronicle's annual Movie Ratings Recap.
* The Red Carpet entrance into Hollywood's Dolby Theatre, where the Academy Awards ceremony will take place.
* The Academy Awards ceremony itself.
It's kind of like Super Bowl Sunday, Final Four Monday and Game 7 of the World Series all rolled into one.
Last year I lamented the fact that my attendance at movie theaters had sunk to an all time low of thirteen times. I wrote in my February 28 MRR, "My wish for the coming year is that movie makers become more attuned to the fact that the baby boomer generation has an unquenched appetite for down-to-earth stories without the necessity of super heroes with supernatural powers, comic book characters, over-the-top special effects, locker room humor, one dimensional characters (many of whom are armed), and story lines which don't come close to passing the Logic Test." The bad news is that, generally, Hollywood and its foreign counterparts have failed to heed the call. Most of the previews and advertisements I've seen for the past year's films are aimed at a demographic of which, sadly, I am not a part. The good news is that, notwithstanding my continued disappointment with what the studios have offered for consumption, I did manage to take in fifteen movies during the twelve month period which ended January 31, 2020. According to my Norf Dakoter high school math, that's a 15% uptick over last year's tally.
Following custom, I have listed those fifteen films in descending order of my ratings, including within each grade level. I've also listed the month of my review.
A:
Linda Ronstadt: The Sound Of My Voice (September '19)
Knives Out (December '19)
A-:
The Highwaymen (March '19)
Love Them First: Lessons From Lucy Laney Elementary (June '19)
B+:
Vice (February '19)
1917 (January '20)
The Lighthouse (November '19)
B:
Hotel Mumbai (April '19)
Rocket Man (August '19)
The Quiet One (July '19)
B-:
Booksmart (June '19)
Uncut Gems (January '20)
Long Shot (May '19)
C+:
Little Women (January '20)
C:
After The Wedding (August '19)
Monday, February 3, 2020
A Case Of Mistaken Identity
I cannot tell a lie, Father.
It was I who chopped down your cherry tree.
- George Washington (1738)
Today we finally reach the long-anticipated Iowa Caucuses. For many it will come as a welcome diversion to the coverage of President Trump's impeachment and Senate trial. In the seven-plus years I have been writing this blog, I have seldom posted anything about my three year sojourn in Iowa, but, this being a kind of National Iowa Day, it seems like an appropriate time to do so. I have checked the Iowa statute of limitations laws, and I believe I'm good to go.
My family moved to Bettendorf, Iowa, one of the Quad Cities, in the winter of 1961. We lived in a development comprised of roughly ten townhouses on the northwest edge of town. Each townhouse had four units. Therefore, with so many families occupying those dwellings, I figured there would be at least a number of kids my age. Wrong. Down the street from us lived the only other teenage boys in the neighborhood: Bud, who was my age, and his brother Kevin, one year older. We did not attend the same school, but we hung out when we were home.
Kevin had a job delivering the Times-Democrat, the major daily newspaper published in Davenport, the largest of the Quad Cities. About six weeks after my family arrived, Kevin presented me with what he called a "great opportunity." His family was going out of town on the following Saturday and would not return home until Sunday evening. How would I like to make some "easy money" by taking care of his route that Sunday morning? His route was in a residential neighborhood about a half-mile away, and there would be 50 to 60 houses. The only downside, according to Kevin, was that I was supposed to start the route at 5:30 a.m. He conveniently avoided mentioning the bitter cold forecast for that day. He also failed to mention one other salient fact which bore heavily on the matters at hand.
Although I can't remember the exact monetary compensation involved, this would be way more money than I had ever earned in a single day. At age 13, I had not had a real job at that point. As for the early pre-dawn start, I wasn't all that concerned, as I had served as an altar boy for dozens of 6:30 masses in Libertyville not that long ago. The time of day for the paper route gig did not seem that different. I told Kevin I would accept his offer.
I was instructed to pick up the papers at a particular corner, the "stack corner," very near the start of the route. After walking the half-mile from home I arrived at the appointed time, 5:30, and sure enough there were the stacks which the newspaper truck had deposited next to the curb. The wind chill had to be below zero, and the pitch black night was still two hours before sunrise. It was all I could do to snag the list of addresses out of my pocket. Even with gloves on, my fingers were so cold that I had little feeling in them when I tried to hold a pencil to check off the houses as I made the deliveries to their front doors.
I didn't realize how much thicker and heavier the Sunday newspaper was compared to the other days' papers until I started to stuff them in my bag. The combination of weight and space meant I would have to make several trips back and forth to the stack corner in order to complete my route. As I was returning to the stack corner after the fourth or fifth round of deliveries, the eastern sky was beginning to display a glint of sun. "Just one more round," I told myself, "and then I can go back to bed and thaw out."
I expected to find on the corner a small stack of the remaining papers, the last ones needed to finish my route. Instead, there were two surprises awaiting me. The first surprise was that instead of just the eight or nine Sunday papers I expected to find, there was a whole other supply of newspapers piled high next to them. This supply was nearly as copious as the stack which I first saw at 5:30. To say I was dumbfounded would be an understatement. But yet, that was only the half of it.
The second surprise was that there was another kid, about my age, who was standing at the stack corner. I had never seen him before and had no idea what he was doing, other than standing there shivering. "Are you here to deliver Kevin's papers?" he asked. I replied that I was. It wasn't until his next statement that the light bulb went off for me. "I'm supposed to have 42 Registers here, but the truck only left me 8." I walked up closer to the paper stacks and could not believe my eyes. Sitting by the curb were two distinct stacks of newspapers: 56 Times-Democrats and 8 Des Moines Registers. I had mistakenly spent the last 90 minutes delivering the wrong newspapers!
I am embarrassed to confess that I played dumb, claiming ignorance. That was not one of my proudest moments. Other than to rationalize that my body was practically frozen solid, I can't, even now more than a half-century later, excuse my denial of any knowledge regarding the missing Registers. The alternative would have been to retrieve the Registers which I had delivered to Kevin's Times-Democrat customers, maybe even help the other kid deliver the Registers to the correct houses, and then deliver the 56 Times-Democrats to their rightful owners. The only one of those three things I did was the last. It was well past 9:00 by the time I finished.
I never saw that poor kid again and don't know how, or even if, the issue of the "missing" Registers was resolved. Kevin never brought it up when he paid me. I wanted to say to him, "Why didn't' you tell me the Des Moines Registers were going to be dumped on the Times-Democrat stack corner?" but I didn't dare bring up the subject. Besides, the blame was obviously more mine than Kevin's. If I had only bothered to look at the top of the newspapers before I started my route, I would have realized the Times-Democrat truck was very late; there would have been no ensuing mixup. I decided to let well enough -- at least for me -- alone.
According to legend, a day of reckoning arrived for George Washington at the age of six. A day of reckoning arrived for me at the age of thirteen. We handled it in two vastly different ways. One of us went on to become a great war general, a Founding Father, and the first President of the United States. The other went on to become the Functionary of the Quentin Estates.
It was I who chopped down your cherry tree.
- George Washington (1738)
Today we finally reach the long-anticipated Iowa Caucuses. For many it will come as a welcome diversion to the coverage of President Trump's impeachment and Senate trial. In the seven-plus years I have been writing this blog, I have seldom posted anything about my three year sojourn in Iowa, but, this being a kind of National Iowa Day, it seems like an appropriate time to do so. I have checked the Iowa statute of limitations laws, and I believe I'm good to go.
My family moved to Bettendorf, Iowa, one of the Quad Cities, in the winter of 1961. We lived in a development comprised of roughly ten townhouses on the northwest edge of town. Each townhouse had four units. Therefore, with so many families occupying those dwellings, I figured there would be at least a number of kids my age. Wrong. Down the street from us lived the only other teenage boys in the neighborhood: Bud, who was my age, and his brother Kevin, one year older. We did not attend the same school, but we hung out when we were home.
Kevin had a job delivering the Times-Democrat, the major daily newspaper published in Davenport, the largest of the Quad Cities. About six weeks after my family arrived, Kevin presented me with what he called a "great opportunity." His family was going out of town on the following Saturday and would not return home until Sunday evening. How would I like to make some "easy money" by taking care of his route that Sunday morning? His route was in a residential neighborhood about a half-mile away, and there would be 50 to 60 houses. The only downside, according to Kevin, was that I was supposed to start the route at 5:30 a.m. He conveniently avoided mentioning the bitter cold forecast for that day. He also failed to mention one other salient fact which bore heavily on the matters at hand.
Although I can't remember the exact monetary compensation involved, this would be way more money than I had ever earned in a single day. At age 13, I had not had a real job at that point. As for the early pre-dawn start, I wasn't all that concerned, as I had served as an altar boy for dozens of 6:30 masses in Libertyville not that long ago. The time of day for the paper route gig did not seem that different. I told Kevin I would accept his offer.
I was instructed to pick up the papers at a particular corner, the "stack corner," very near the start of the route. After walking the half-mile from home I arrived at the appointed time, 5:30, and sure enough there were the stacks which the newspaper truck had deposited next to the curb. The wind chill had to be below zero, and the pitch black night was still two hours before sunrise. It was all I could do to snag the list of addresses out of my pocket. Even with gloves on, my fingers were so cold that I had little feeling in them when I tried to hold a pencil to check off the houses as I made the deliveries to their front doors.
I didn't realize how much thicker and heavier the Sunday newspaper was compared to the other days' papers until I started to stuff them in my bag. The combination of weight and space meant I would have to make several trips back and forth to the stack corner in order to complete my route. As I was returning to the stack corner after the fourth or fifth round of deliveries, the eastern sky was beginning to display a glint of sun. "Just one more round," I told myself, "and then I can go back to bed and thaw out."
I expected to find on the corner a small stack of the remaining papers, the last ones needed to finish my route. Instead, there were two surprises awaiting me. The first surprise was that instead of just the eight or nine Sunday papers I expected to find, there was a whole other supply of newspapers piled high next to them. This supply was nearly as copious as the stack which I first saw at 5:30. To say I was dumbfounded would be an understatement. But yet, that was only the half of it.
The second surprise was that there was another kid, about my age, who was standing at the stack corner. I had never seen him before and had no idea what he was doing, other than standing there shivering. "Are you here to deliver Kevin's papers?" he asked. I replied that I was. It wasn't until his next statement that the light bulb went off for me. "I'm supposed to have 42 Registers here, but the truck only left me 8." I walked up closer to the paper stacks and could not believe my eyes. Sitting by the curb were two distinct stacks of newspapers: 56 Times-Democrats and 8 Des Moines Registers. I had mistakenly spent the last 90 minutes delivering the wrong newspapers!
I am embarrassed to confess that I played dumb, claiming ignorance. That was not one of my proudest moments. Other than to rationalize that my body was practically frozen solid, I can't, even now more than a half-century later, excuse my denial of any knowledge regarding the missing Registers. The alternative would have been to retrieve the Registers which I had delivered to Kevin's Times-Democrat customers, maybe even help the other kid deliver the Registers to the correct houses, and then deliver the 56 Times-Democrats to their rightful owners. The only one of those three things I did was the last. It was well past 9:00 by the time I finished.
I never saw that poor kid again and don't know how, or even if, the issue of the "missing" Registers was resolved. Kevin never brought it up when he paid me. I wanted to say to him, "Why didn't' you tell me the Des Moines Registers were going to be dumped on the Times-Democrat stack corner?" but I didn't dare bring up the subject. Besides, the blame was obviously more mine than Kevin's. If I had only bothered to look at the top of the newspapers before I started my route, I would have realized the Times-Democrat truck was very late; there would have been no ensuing mixup. I decided to let well enough -- at least for me -- alone.
According to legend, a day of reckoning arrived for George Washington at the age of six. A day of reckoning arrived for me at the age of thirteen. We handled it in two vastly different ways. One of us went on to become a great war general, a Founding Father, and the first President of the United States. The other went on to become the Functionary of the Quentin Estates.
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