January 2004 Archives

Wonder Boys is a Michael Douglas acting tour de force, a movie based upon Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Michael Chabon's novel of the same name. A wonderfully quirky movie, with lots of great acting and shots, it was probably one of my favorite recent viewings. Set in Pittsburgh, it tells the story of an aging lit professor with one hit novel under his belt and another one that just won't finish, and a bad couple of days he has, dealing with one of his "gifted" students - wonder boys both of them. Directed by Curtis Hanson, who did such a great job with LA Confidential, Wonder Boys was a lot of fun.

The story begins with a tired Grady Tripp narrating to the audience about his day, a rainy day in Pittsburgh. His young wife has left him and he is really feeling his age, especially because his agent (played with spot-on smarminess by Robert Downey Jr.) is coming to town for the upcoming "Wordfest", a literary conference his university (played by Carnegie-Mellon University) annually hosts. And he is going to want to know when Tripp's follow up novel to the smash hit "Arsonist's Daughter" will be finished, and Grady himself doesn't know the answer to that.

Also introduced in the beginning is Grady's star pupil, James Leer (Tobey Maguire), reading a dark short story about death and funerals, typical fare we are led to believe. The two become entangled in a web of bad karma, as things go from bad to worse.

Complicating matters is the Grady's beautiful border, Hannah Green (Katie Holmes, an amazingly fresh and innocent looking beauty). Hannah is interested in helping Grady get over his breakup, not knowing that he's already involved in an affair with the dean's wife, Sara Gaskell (the multi-faceted Frances McDormand, playing at a very low key).

Many serio-comic adventures ensue, as Grady tries to straighten out Leer, keep his agent's roving hands off of Leer, try to figure out who he loves, and also get his opus finished, which at this point is thousands of pages long. He also has a run-in with someone who is trying to steal his car, as well as putting up with the ego of the popular writer "Q", played with relish by Rip Torn.

But it all works out neatly in the end. He gets the dean's wife, they have a kid, Leer moves to New York to become a popular writer and we never do find out what happens to Hannah, the dog, or the coat. The last two you have to watch the movie to figure out:-)

All in all, I had fun while I was watching it, although when it ended I felt plot points were both unresolved and too neatly tied up. A couple of the major events in the movie were never satisfactorily played out, and some characters never really connected. But there were a couple of laugh out loud scenes and as well as some nice soliliquies.

I couldn't do a review of Wonder Boys without mentioning the soundtrack. Lots of great and atmospheric 70s and 80s music, but the best song was the brand new Dylan song, "Things Have Changed", which has a cool music video included on the DVD. In one of the extras, they talk about the songs and what they were looking for in their placement. Lots of fun there!

So at least rent this movie. You'll get some great acting, some funny scenes and some good music, even if, in the end, it is a little light and either too or not enough wrapped up.

Startup.Com is a documentary on the rise and fall of an Internet startup, coming just on the heels of the huge Internet technology bubble on Wall Street. The film-makers got in at the ground floor and followed govWorks.com from inception to buyout, carefully filming nearly all the seminal events in its short history. It pretty much mirrors the whole Internet craze, and is an amazing document for the era.

The film begins with Kaleil Isaza Tuzman leaving his high paying job at a stock broker to join his old school friend, Tom Herman, at Herman's new company, which is going to provide an easy way to pay parking tickets over the web, and quickly expands its horizons. One of the first things they need to do is to decide on a name. After much soul searching, govWorks.com (not "pay unto Caesar.com") is born.

From there it is a whirl wind of activity. The film-makers mostly focus on Kaleil and his efforts to raise money, without giving away shares and control They also follow some of the inside political machinations, especially when it comes time to force out the third founder, who has decided the .COM revolution is more than welcome to pass him by (fortuitously, as we find out). There is much gnashing of teeth, but they eventually give in, and buy him out, making him the only one in the entire story to make any money!

Also chronicled are other little victories and losses - getting some funding, firing more people, and struggling for an identity. As the film is more focused on Kaleil, and the marketing and money raising side of things, you don't really get a feel for what the company is trying to build. But you do get the feeling that it is spiraling out of control, culminating in the firing of Herman and finally, the selling out, for a pittance, the shell of what is left of the company.

It's a pretty engrossing film to watch, especially if you are at all familiar with the whole Internet bubble. As a software engineer, I felt it gave short shift to the technical side of things, and the commentary track bears out that feeling, as one of the film-makers was Kaleil's roommate, and neither was that technologically inclined. I would have liked to have known what its focus was, and how it changed over time. I'd be willing to bet something that started out as an easy way to pay parking tickets mushroomed into sales promises that the tech guys were unable to keep - PR campaign checks their mouths wrote but their brains couldn't cash, as it were. A familiar sight to anyone in a tech company!

It is amazing how the film-makers stumbled upon this story, and I found the commentary track as fascinating as the film itself. Small details emerged, like the fact the head of their main competitor, who drops in for a visit, would soon perish in a house fire. And how they would have to scramble to get to the right places for filming, and sometimes they lucked out and sometimes they missed things.

Like I said, the commentary extra was pretty good. The interview with the film-makers wasn't that interesting, and of course for a film taken on small digital cameras, the sound is nothing to write home about. But the film quality is amazingly good. I can highly recommend this disc to anyone, but especially to someone in the industry. It might even be too painful if you were one of those burned, so watch out!