I've been on my share of tarpon quests. Plenty of fish have sent me home disappointed. I've put them in the air. Been totally beaten up by fish longer than I am tall. I've hung on every word of my tarpon guide, as I tried -- for years-- to connect with one of these fish. And after so many sunburns and near-misses, so many years of babbling like a complete idiot about them to anyone who would listen, I finally caught and released a few of my own. I consider this one of the greatest things I have done -- and that is just on CONVENTIONAL gear. This little movie is totally insane. Insane fish bums -- BUMS!-- hiring insane charter captains, to put them on an insane fish, which they try to catch with the most insane method possible. A fly rod. Just crazy. They are going after a fish that literally swims right out of the water as it tries to get away -- muscling itself upward into the air, higher and higher, water no longer holding it back, twisting and contorting, shaking and rattling and sending spray flying in all directions, all within a hang time worthy of an NFL punt timer. Plus, the fish owns a mouth so tough, a full-sized crab gets crushed inside like popcorn in the maw of a 10-year old. And how are the stars of this little show going after these beasts? With flimsy fly rods and lures made out of feathers. (And man, do they catch the fish.) But don't look for much how-to info. Don't ask why these guys do what they do. If you don't get it, if your jaw doesn't drop when you see a silver submarine slowly pursue an undulating fly, just allow yourself to be wowed by the scenery. (That's pretty easy.) But the Zen of what's going on may be a bit inaccessible to you. This is about finding the ultimate ride. The surfer's perfect wave. Tarpon anglers KNOW what the perfect fish is, and they are looking to connect. Sometimes the fish peers at an offering and just speeds off into the depths, unimpressed. Sometimes one bites what you threw at it, storms off 100 yards or more and ditches a hook that couldn't hang on. Other times, the gear measures up to the task and the lucky angler is rewarded with a big beautiful thing by the side of the boat. Chasing Silver is tarpon fishing distilled down to its elements most raw: There's a guy with a stick. He's being moved along on a floating platform by another guy with a bigger stick. And they're after the most incredible fish anyone could ever imagine. Yeah, it's the perfect wave. The tarpon is the hot-rodder's ultimate muscle car, complete with all the flashy chrome and zero-to-60 punch. And does the movie capture the spirit of it all? Yup. It does. It's not perfect, mind you, but it is niiiiiice. The fly anglers are at the top of their game, and unless you have tried to cast in the wind, had clients snag your person with errant flies, or done any of the other insane little facets for yourself, what these guys are doing comes off looking deceptively easy to do. Even though plenty of fish do get away, the guides are so good at finding more, the casts and presentations are so dead on, and things look so easy, you are there watching and thinking that the next hookup is a matter of seconds away. It doesn't really sink in that the main angler, Andy Mill, goes 28 down before finding success and unhooking a tarpon he brings in. (Most fish manage to unhook themselves, thank you very much). The only clue you really get on how unpredictable and difficult these fish are to capture is by paying close attention to the camera work. Sometimes the footage is perfect, with angler and fish framed beautifully. And it's art. But, more interestingly, there are plenty of times where the cinematographer blows it. A fish jumps and the camera can't follow, so a head gets cut off. Or, after a long run, the fish comes up AND SHOULD GET ON CAMERA. Unfortunately, the cameraman still is focusing on the angler, who, of course, is screaming with delight on an incredible jump that the camera has totally missed. So this all leaves us, the dumbfounded audience, wishing we had seen the elusive fish do what it does best. But we missed it all! The cameraman was right there, wasn't he? -- why was it so hard to capture the moment? What in God's name is that man yelling about and why can't we see it, too? When that happens, folks, don't blame the camera guy -- this is the nature of the fish...they are even hard to catch on video. They won't be caught in every frame. There is something too wild, too primal to make things fit all neatly into every shot. But it's campy fun. The chemistry between characters rivals the best of the cop buddy-flicks. And when the action isn't too fast and furious, and production has a chance to slow things down and plan the shots, the scenery is just un-real (particularly the bird's-eye shots from above, showing the expanse of the flats or schools of fish on the move). Mindblowing. I told you that it took me years to catch my tarpon. I thought I had brought some closure to my obsession. But after seeing this film, I know what I must now do. I need a fly rod and those flies and a very patient charter captain to show me the way. There is nothing I can do but join the insanity now. My new tarpon quest begins with this little gem and that is the highest praise I can pay it. Wonderful job, Mr. Howard. Give me more.
Reviews
7 Reviews
Outland
(1981)
Surprise! This is no science fiction flick
18 November 2006
It's tough to find a place more remote than a moon orbiting the planet Jupiter. Just to get back and forth from Earth, you'll spend a year in suspended animation. Why would anyone want to go? There's a marketable mineral on this moon, and that means big bucks for big business and plenty of jobs for the common folk. But just don't expect posh accommodations. You'll face claustrophobic hallways, caged-in cafeterias, steaming rusty plumbing and deadly silence outside. But people pretty much accept the conditions, work very hard, and life goes on...until some of the workers begin to freak out, then end up dead. Could it be just the stress of such an extreme place to make your living? It seems logical...until the body count continues to rise. And, curiously, the mining company doesn't seem too concerned. Enter Sean Connery as Marshall WT O'Niel. First, it's his job to figure out why someone would want to go outside without a pressure suit. Then he has a hostage crisis to resolve and mop up...pretty soon it becomes clear that there's more going on here than rotten work conditions taking a toll. Strangely, the more the Marshall pokes around, the more aggravated the company becomes. Plus, his men seem pretty inept, almost as though they are working against him. The townspeople are too afraid to help, too. Seems only the local doctor is willing to stand with him, even as killers are summoned to help the company smooth out this little inconvenience to their mining business...Now hold it! Wasn't this supposed to be a science fiction flick? Forget it. This is as classic as a Western gets. (Mining town. Big business. Lots of town folk. Tough Marshall vs Bad Guys coming to kill him -- get it?) O'Neil is Gary Cooper in High Noon. He is Wyatt Earp, with his own female version of Doc Holiday, played so nicely by Frances Sternhagen (with more than a healthy touch of Katherine Hepburn in her wraspy voice, interaction with the Marshall, and abrasive character that will stand up to any man) But make no mistake, as good as Sternhagen is, it's Connery's turf and this Scott is as American here as John Wayne. He won't leave, even when he knows the killers are coming for him. His wife does, though, taking his young son with her. (Just like High Noon). It's really no surprise to see space as the new genre for Westerns, when you consider Gene Roddenberry was able to sell Star Trek to TV execs almost 20 years earlier because it reminded everyone of the Wagontrain-style films and shows of the time. ("Space...the final frontier") And, of course, there's Star Wars, where the cantina on Mos Isley might as well have had cowboys inside the way it was a gunslinger hangout. Connery has been passed-off as an American in The Presidio and The Untouchables, but in both cases as an immigrant who kept his Old World brogue and bravado. Here, Earth is a distant place. O'Niel's son has never even seen it. You never hear where on our planet he and his family are from (But with his wife also having an accent, it's suggested that their home probably isn't the US) But standing as the lone law man, outnumbered and outgunned -- the American themes of the Western are loud and clear. Hey, if we can have Clint Eastwood go to Spain, to make Westerns for Italian director Sergio Leone -- why not stage a classic Western on a moon of Jupiter? The plot is helped along by brilliant use of sound (which was nominated for an Oscar) I don't think I'm giving away anything when I say in one fight, O'Niel's face is being pushed ever closer toward the hot grease of a french-fry fryer, and when you hear the cracking and sizzling, you just clamp your teeth and expect to see burns. There are blasts of his shotgun that seem to go right through you, too. (No lasers here.) If you like Connery, Westerns, or just fun movies, this is a good rent. And for extra credit, pick up High Noon, True Grit, High Plains Drifter, Tombstone, and Pale Rider. You'll reach a spot in each flick where the scenery and location pretty much disappear and what really matters is the clash between good and evil and the sidekicks each team collects along the way. Good entertainment.
Kon-Tiki
(1950)
A fabulous adventure arising from a radical idea
14 March 2006
The tweedy professor-types thought they had it all figured out. Today's peoples who inhabit Polynesia descended from migratory Asians, intrepidly moving from the Far East, island to island, eastward into Tahiti and all the other exotic tropic isles of the South Pacific over thousands of years. But the established thinking just didn't sit well with young Norwegian ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl. If that explanation were true, how come some folks born and bred in those islands have traditions, artwork, and physical features resembling not those from Asia, but South America? How can the vegetation of Ecuador, Peru and Chile look so much like what you'd find on the island several thousand miles away? Is it just a coincidence that the Islanders point out to sea in the direction of South America and say that is where their ancestors came from, led by Tiki, their equivalent of Adam? Meanwhile, how is it Norwegians speak of Scandanavian forerunners who were chased from the South American continent they had colonized, and, together with some of the native peoples they befriended, set off over the sea -- heading WEST? It's all too much to be a coincidence to Heyerdahl. With an amazing amount of moxie, a handful of crewmen, and the local know-how for traditional raft-building, an expedition begins. It's as much a trip into the human imagination as it is a pseudo-scientific demonstration that such a journey is possible with only the very basics of tools and seamanship. The Oscar-winning documentary may be dated in its tone and Anglo-ethnocentric approach, but it soars with a spirit of adventure besting even the space program that launched a decade later, as men are willing to risk it all to test a theory they think is true. Wonderful. Do yourself a favor and read the book first. It is an amazing page-turner and the perfect setup for the newsreel-style movie.
Slap Shot
(1977)
Like a @#$% time machine back to the 70s
11 March 2006
I grew up in south 'jersey when the Flyers were still the Broad Street Bullies and all lived on our side of the Walt Whitman Bridge. They had handlebar mustaches. Many spoke with thick French-Canadian accents and wore wide ties, jackets with lapels you could park a truck on, and more than the occasional leisure suit. Many were just kids when they were pulled from the farmlands of the North and found themselves in the middle of suburbia by day, and at night, playing "Old-time hockey" while the chanting and organ music echoed to the rafters. Now whether you played pro hockey like they did, or were on the semi-pro Johnstown Jets that inspired the crew here, there seems to be a prototype player who played a certain style of game for the rest of us to watch. Sadly, that era is long gone. Marketers and big business have left the game in smoldering ruins. But we still have Slapshot. It perfectly captures what the game used to be and the guys who used to play it. Paul Newman is incredible as Reggie Dunlop, the aging player-coach who seems to be the last guy to figure out his team is on the verge of folding. The fictional town has hit the skids so that means no more hockey team. But instead of going out with a whimper, Dunlop has a scheme to get his crappy team back in the standings and the fans in the stands. And as the plot develops there's locker-room talk that would make even today's teenagers shut up and take notes. Nancy Dowd's story, which she wrote after seeing her brother Ned play in the minors during his career (and parody in the movie as Ogie Oglethorpe) translates into a total classic. The raw banter between Newman and his GM, between the players -- literally all through the movie -- makes for the most quotable flick I know...but I have to be so careful where I can recite my favorites. One such place was out on the fishing boat of a hall-of-famer from the old Flyers. (It's rumored one of the characters in the movie was modeled directly from HIM.) Slapshot brought even this guy to his knees with hysterics. Just rehashing a few quotes from the movie triggered his REAL stories of his own team that won the Cup two years in a row, and then never again since. That's how well the movie tells the story of hockey. There's a lot of social commentary here, too, if you are into such a thing. Lots on relationships, male bonding, machismo and the like. Some of the subplots take the story off the ice for too long, and the movie tends to drag in spots, admittedly. But when play is on, the brutal scenes reach such a sublime level of violence all you can do is gape and laugh in astonishment. The players here have all become like Reggie himself: They don't seem to notice that they've gone too far and they are creating a goonathon just to fill arenas. Meanwhile, those with real talent get benched right along with the national anthem. It's pretty clear -- both on the screen and during the times when the movie was being made -- that Old Time Hockey was on its way out. But it didn't go with a whimper, either, and at least Slapshot was there to give it a send-off to remember.
The Legend of Bagger Vance
(2000)
Redford ripping-off Redford
10 February 2006
It may be a different movie, but we've seen this all before in a better package called A River Runs Through It. We see the same lavish, dreamy photography heavy with panoramic vistas and rosy figures in the setting sun. The nostalgia of preppy characters, a story line that spans the life of a boy-into-old man character and most unforgivable, this time, the golf swing elevated to the spiritual vehicle instead of fly fishing. Didn't anyone think we would notice? It's one thing to produce more than one study of a concept, like the dysfunctional family. The fact the director had such wonderful success with Ordinary People (1980) took nothing away from his presentation of Norman Maclean's novella, which he handled brilliantly 12 years later. But Bagger comes off looking like a parody of what has been done before, and it's a total bogey on this hole.
A River Runs Through It
(1992)
Pay attention to the themes that never go away
10 February 2006
Have you seen The Graduate? It was hailed as the movie of its generation. But A River Runs Through It is the story about all generations. Long before Dustin Hoffman's character got all wrapped up in the traps of modern suburbia, Norman Maclean and his brother Paul were facing the same crushing pressures of growing up as they tried to find their place in the world. But how could a place like post WW1 Montana be a showcase for the American family, at a time when the Wild West still was not completely gone? Just what has Maclean tapped into that strikes so deeply at who we all are and what we have to go through to find ourselves? As the movie opens, Norman is an old man, flyfishing beside a rushing river, trying to understand the course his own life has taken. The movie is literally a journey up through his own stream of consciousness, against time's current and back to when he was a boy. He and his younger brother Paul were the sons of a Presbyterian minister and devoted mother. The parents fit snugly into their roles. Mom takes care of house and home. Dad does the work of the Lord. The boys ponder what they will be when they grow up. Norm has it narrowed down to a boxer or a minister like his dad. Given the choice, little Paul would be the boxer, since he's told his first choice of pro flyfisherman doesn't even exist. The boys grow up and get into trouble with their pranks, fight to see who is tougher and do the things brothers do, all the while attending church and taking part in all other spiritual matters like flyfishing. They are at similar points in their lives before college. But when Norm returns from his six years at Dartmouth, things are very different. Paul is at the top of his game. Master flyfisherman. Grad of a nearby college and newspaper reporter who knows every cop on the beat and every judge on the bench. Norman is stunningly well educated for his day but has little idea what to do with his life, even as his father grills him about what he intends to do. You're left feeling that at least to Pops, God will call you to your life's work. But you have to stay open and ready to receive it -- all your life. Father has always taken his boys to reflect by the side of the river and contemplate God's eternal words. "Listen," their father urges. It's both Zen and Quakerly. Pretty radical for a stoic clergyman. But with all the beauty and contemplation, and even though the Macleans are truly a God-fearing, scripture-heeding household, how is it that Rev. Maclean's family is unraveling? Paul is true perfection as he fishes the river, but he's feeling the pull of gambling and boozing, while his family doesn't know how to keep him from winding up where he seems to be headed. Mom, Dad and Brother all seem to have the same quiet desperation of not knowing what they should be doing and why they can't seem to help. Pauly just waves it all off with a grin and his irresistible charm. But the junior brother is losing his grip. Norman starts getting his life on track, finding love and career, but Paul continues to slide. The family that loves him watches helplessly. Mother, Father, Brother flounder in their own ways trying to help, but none very effectively. How can a family that loves each other so much be so ill-equipped to handle this? How can someone be so artful and full of grace when out in God's nature, yet be somehow unfit or unwilling to fit into the constructs of society that God's peoples have made for themselves? These are all questions Norman will ponder his entire life. The eternal words beneath the smooth stones of the river forever haunt him, yet keep their secrets. The movie is beautiful to watch. This is certainly God's country, and filming it won an Oscar. Director Robert Redford plays with the story from the book and teases the narration a bit to follow the emotional pattern he's presenting, and it works well. But do go back and read the book, too. You'll see Norman made connections with his old man even deeper than the movie can suggest -- and you'll see the places where the storyteller's very words gurgle and sing right off the page with an exuberance of a river running through it, leading into the unknown.
Provides some interesting backstory
3 February 2006
So much time has passed since the movie was released that only die-hard fans (like me) still are interested. But if A River Runs Through It never really left you after all this time, you're likely to think this is a good documentary that can answer some of the questions on how the big movie was made -- especially if you have wondered about the significant differences between the book and the movie. It was great to hear from Robert Redford as well as some of the author's surviving family about how the movie was approached and the relationship that developed between author and director long before the filming began. It's interesting to hear the actors' takes on their roles as they are filming, the trouble spots they have, and the way they work through them. Punctuating throughout are some funny images like Tom Skerritt's interview: He's wearing both his minister's costume of Rev. Maclean AND a pair of Raybans. Emily Lloyd looks spectacular in her black I'm-all-grown-up period outfit and a chic hat over blonde curls -- speaking all the while in her mesmerizing British accent. Yeow. But equally interesting are all the comments from the crew, giving you the sense each member believed his or her responsibilities were the most critical to the production. It's pretty obvious, however, that each speaker had been pre-interviewed because several people refer to previous conversations that never made it into the final cut: "It's like I was sayin' before..." You would think movie people would know better than that. It may be a bit unpolished, but it makes up for it when you see how sincere and honest everyone is, particularly the author's family. Top it off with some really dramatic ending music that adds this spooky sense of life just rushing away, and you get something really watchable. I've seen it several times now, and I'm left with the feeling that even after Redford put so much of his own stamp on the big movie, he didn't fully grasp all the depth, themes and good nuances he was capturing in this version. Good stuff.
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