What I learned....

  It's been a long week so please indulge me while I recount what I've learned this past week.  I've learned that you can't get fired in the Obama administration.  I've learned that Pat Quinn is an oblivious fool and that I still don't understand Obama care.  I've learned that people who pay three dollars a month for roadside assistance expect the moon.   I've learned that sleeping with an ex is the equivalent of empty calories.  I've learned that I LIKE empty calories and that my mom may have used faulty preventers at the factory when I was hatched.  I've learned that I hate doctors and I've learned that my immune system has a learning disability.  I've learned that I can't possibly trust the spokeswoman for Wendy's because she doesn't actually eat the god damn food.   You're a fraud woman and I'm on to your game.  Moving on.... I've learned that Mayor Emanuel wants to turn every piece of available land into a park of some kind.  I've learned that a dead pop singer can be resurrected as an awkward looking hologram and I've learned that a dead pop singer can be turned into a cash machine via the magic of old demo's and technological hocus pocus of sorts.

  Finally I've learned that the subway close to my house doesn't honor the freedom of assembly or the god given right to have a meatball sandwich without sauce.  I've learned that I hate dieting and that I miss my cigarettes.  Resist Tyranny!!!  Toot!!!  Toot!!!
 

Monsters triumph

  Watching the newest update of Godzilla I was reminded of the quandary that seemed to plague the writing team on last year's "Man Of Steel."  How does a writing team reinvigorate a premise that is essentially built on a one note character.   With Superman the characters flies and there's much more you can seemingly add.   The writers on Man Of Steel tried in vain to come up with a premise based on the one note that ultimately defined the Superman character.  The way I see it, Godzilla has the same issue.  The films hook is the beast itself.  So the question is, how do you keep the audience interested after they've gotten what they wanted.  Better yet,  how does the premise remain fresh and engaging if the main attraction is going to have limited screen time.  You could say that both Man Of Steel and Godzilla both suffer from a lack of quality time in the editing room.  At a running time of one hundred and thirty minutes, there's only so many times that you can watch a beast like Godzilla emerge from the shadows to wreak havoc on the mortals in his path.  Yet after all this, I give the Godzilla update a solid three star recommendation.  Sure the pacing bogs way down towards the end of the second act and into the last act, I'll give you that.  This being said, it's not because director Gareth Edwards has lost control of the premise.  In the directors chair, Edwards shows a steady hand and a rare discipline to let the story and the characters develop organically.  In Edwards' hands, the appearance of the monster serves as a snack of sorts.  And what of the monster and the cgi effects?  There are no quipping extras, just some great shots of terrified mortals running for their existence when Godzilla rumbles through town.  I like the less is more approach that director Garreth Edwards takes.  Edwards doesn't try to shock and awe the audience to death when it's time to up the eye candy factor.  We're passengers on the ride but we're not captives to the special effects.  Hello Michael Bay.
  Plot:  A nuclear scientist named Joe (Bryan Cranston)  suspects that the government knows more about a blast tremor than they're letting on.  While doing field research on the tremor, Joe's wife Sandra (Juliette Binoche)  is killed during yet another nuclear breach.  Feeling responsible for his wife's death, Joe drops off the radar; his life now consumed by the need to know why his wife died and what was behind the actual breech itself.  Fast forward 15 years.  Joe's quest for the truth gets him in trouble with the local authorities and this leads to a tense reunion with his son  Ford (Aaron Taylor Johnson.)  What begins as a quest to rescue his dad from his own guilt in China turns into an odyssey for survival as Joe and Ford finally encounter the secret Joe had unknowingly fought to expose; a long sought alpha male named Godzilla.  The same Godzilla that was presumed dead in a nuclear attack years before.  Not only did the monster survive, it grew stronger by feeding on the nuclear power that was used to try and destroy it.  I'll stop there, you can decipher the rest of the plot on your own.
  It's very rare in a popcorn like Godzilla flick to see a set of characters so fully developed.  The plot line involving the Ford character and his wife Elle (Elisabeth Olsen) feels genuine because both of the characters are designed by the screenplay as more than disposable set pieces.  I can't tell you how refreshing it is to see the Stenz character (David Straithairn) actually being written with more than a seek and destroy mentality.  Strathairn's character is a man under the gun who knows he has to contain the carnage being left in Godzilla's wake.  But the character is fully dimensional enough to realize that the plan he's set in motion to destroy Godzilla may lead to everyone's undoing.   As Stenz says at one point "if you have a back up plan, let's here it."

  Is Godzilla too long?  Yes.  Are there too many shots of smoky desolation while the creature stalks his prey unseen?  Yes.  And somehow, it works.  Garreth Edwards shows a steady hand as director.  His style is simple but confident and he has a knack for staying out of the way.  For once, it's nice to have a director of a summer blockbuster that actually respects the film IQ of the audience as a whole.

Ricketts finally gets it....

   Forget the image of Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts looking like a captive and forget the sound of unbearably cheesy music playing in the background as king Cub made his case for the Wrigley renovations to finally move forward.   This is a great day for Cubs fans because the grand poobah of Cubdom has finally learned how things get done in the wild west known as Chicago.  Tom Ricketts tried to be a nice guy, he tried to placate the rooftop owners.  For his trouble, Ricketts was peppered by spitballs in a room full of rowdy kids.  Only in Chicago could a group of people be granted a supposedly iron clad agreement to profit off of someone else's product.  Someone else said it best when they said Tom Ricketts hasn't been mean enough.  Nice guys get eaten in Chicago.  What Tom Ricketts needs to do is to scorch the very earth that is blocking his path to making Wrigley Field the money making entity he envisions it to be.  My hope is that Tom Ricketts isn't just issuing more empty threats.  The entities that get what they want in Chicago do more than talk, they demolish the obstacles in their path.  You have a mayor who can be a potential ally Mister Ricketts, use him and his uncanny ability to get what he wants when he wants it.  And if the roof top owners want to fight, squeeze them until they break.  It's the way things are done in this city.  It's time for the Cubs to get what they want.  It's time for their park to be a revenue making machine like they have in Fenway.  It's time for the Cubs to get paid what they deserve from their TV and radio deals.  You look around and it seems like everyone is making more money than the Cubs are on their product.  The future  of your legacy isn't romanticism or nostalgia or misguided loyalty Mister Ricketts.  Two things should have shaken out here.  Ricketts should have put the shovels in the ground and had the construction trucks rolling towards Clark and Addison as soon as the city signed off on the proposal to bring Wrigley Field into the modern era.  Either that or Ricketts should've have used the carrot of a Rosemont stadium to make his intentions clear.  Nothing gets people's attention more than the possibility of dwindling property values and the prospect of an economic depression once one of Wrigleyville's most lucrative landmarks leaves a crater in the middle of Lakeview.  This is your chance to silence your detractors Mister Ricketts, don't stop now.