‘Pirate Latitudes" - fun and forgettable

 The complete manuscript for ‘Pirate Latitudes’ was found after the ‘Jurassic Park’ author died-is it a literary treasure or fool’s gold?

WHEN MICHAEL CRICHTON, progenitor of the techno-thriller and best-selling author of 19 books ranging from “The Andromeda Strain” to “Jurassic Park,” passed away in 2008, an undated, complete manuscript no one knew about was discovered on his hard drive.

That novel is “Pirate Latitudes” (HarperCollins, New York, 2009, 312 pages), a most unusual book even for Crichton’s considerable bibliography. Most of Crichton’s recent work, such as the nanotech-centric “Prey” and his latest, “Next,” which tackled the dark face of genetic tinkering, obsessed about the immediate future rather than the colorful past.

In the 17th-century British colony of Jamaica, the privateer Captain Charles Hunter has been recruited by the colony’s governor to attack the Spanish outpost of Matanceros to seize the treasure aboard a galleon on the island’s bay. Hunter takes his swift vessel, the Cassandra, and crews it with a band of talented rogues: the incomparable helmsman Mr. Enders; the lethal French killer Sanson; the mute brute Bassa; the enigmatic lookout Lazue; and the explosives genius known as the Jew.

What follows is a by-the-numbers pirate adventure, complete with ship-versus-ship combat, swordfights, bad weather, treachery and even a sea monster. Lining them up one after another like obstacles marked on a treasure map, Crichton leaves no high-seas trope unused.

Almost knowingly typical, “Pirate” sails hard and surprisingly straight, making reading an ocean breeze. There are moments when Crichton pauses to elaborate on a seemingly random detail of 17th-century ship life, another Crichton trademark.

Like a real galleon, “Pirate” goes as fast as its captain takes it. Crichton’s protagonist Hunter seems like a prototypical swashbuckling hero, a Harvard-educated yet cold-blooded gentleman handy in a fight with either blade or pistol.

What makes Hunter different is his innovative streak: Crichton arms Hunter with a willingness to constantly try new and untested ideas to get out of the various jams he gets his crew into. He is, in other words, a Crichton version of a pirate king.

The crew members, despite being cut from the same basic pirate-novel template, are quite entertaining. The various villains, particularly the Spanish bogeyman Cazalla, are much more derivative.

This is not going to be the final Crichton book: Someone else will be finishing an incomplete techno-thriller for a 2012 christening.

“Pirate” is Crichton’s last complete book, though the manuscript’s age remains vague; the closest thing Crichton had written would be the 1976 Viking-oriented novel “Eaters of the Dead.”

But for the most part, “Pirate” feels like Crichton lite, almost as if he stashed the manuscript in the hopes of returning to it for polishing later. A fun read, “Pirate” reveals itself to be serviceable but otherwise forgettable, certainly not a fitting way to remember the amazing legacy of the cerebral and original storyteller Michael Crichton.

In the most unusual case of the novel “Pirate Latitudes,” the compelling story-behind-the-story of its discovery turns out to be the literary equivalent of fool’s gold.

Available in paperback from National Book Store.



David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer

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Our Oscars Choice!

            THE 82ND Academy Awards, for which 5,800 members cast their votes in 25 categories for our annual amusement, should be a break even for those who are past caring. It satisfies a psychic thirst that nothing else can quench.
This year, the Best Motion Picture category has been expanded, doubling the number of nominees to 10 – the biggest since 1944 – in what many consider an act of penance for snubbing “The Dark Knight” last year.
So now, contending for Best Picture are: “Avatar,” by James Cameron; “The Hurt Locker,” Kathryn Bigelow; “Inglourious Basterds,” Quentin Tarantino; “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” Lee Daniels; “Up in the Air,” Jason Reitman; “District 9,” Neill Blomkamp; “The Blind Side,” John Lee Hancock; “An Education,” Lone Scherfig; “A Serious Man,” Joel and Ethan Coen; “Up,” Pete Docter.
In previous years, only the first five would have made it to the list. The rest seem to have been added as an afterthought, as often happens with the Oscars. They probably thought this was corrective. In fact, it raised more questions, foremost of which is: Why didn’t they just replace such featherweights as “Up,” “The Blind Side” and “An Education” with heavies like Clint Eastwood’s “Invictus,” Oren Moverman’s “The Messenger” and Rob Marshall’s “Nine”?
(If any category needed expanding, it is Best Foreign-Language Film, of which there is a surfeit of worthies in any given year, dozens, actually.)
Frontrunners
There are three front-runners in the Best Picture race: “Inglorious Basterds,” “Avatar” and “The Hurt Locker.”
“Inglourious Basterds” is another of Tarantino’s wet dreams. It’s not just sublimated, it’s a wish fulfillment. He’s not out for a subtle historical revisionism, but for a brazen rewriting of history.
Inspired by John Milius’ “Red Dawn,” a Cold War revenge fantasy he saw in his youth, Tarantino said he had long wanted to make a film that would turn on its head the victimization syndrome often displayed by survivors of the Holocaust (think “Schindler’s List” and “Life Is Beautiful”) and, for that matter, of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (think “Grave of the Fireflies” and “Hiroshima Mon Amour”).
Tarantino, an apostle of postmodern cinema, is a genre-bender of the first order – from Hong Kong tough-guy movie (“Reservoir Dogs”) to noir (“Pulp Fiction”) to “blaxploitation” (“Jackie Brown”) to western and kung fu (“Kill Bill”) to slasher and biker movie (“Death-Proof”).
Taking his title from a far-fetched ’70s war movie (spelling correct), he serves up a heady brew of the war film and the Hitchcockian thriller (espionage, sabotage, detective, psycho, and distinctive camera movement).
His intention was to do away with the martyr complex and turn the table on the oppressors. So here he takes up the cudgels not just for the Jews but for all downtrodden peoples, including American Indians (he is 25-percent Cherokee) and Negroes (in the parlor game scene, King Kong represents the trade slave).
Opening caveat
The man is an inveterate name-dropper, like a movie reviewer who can’t help citing his range of film history to plead his case. This is all very well with cinéastes, as it adds to their amusement, but the ordinary moviegoer would feel disconnected.
Tossed around like ping-pong balls throughout the movie are such names as Pola Negri, Pabst, Max Linder, Riefenstahl (pointing to fascist cinema?), Clouzot (probably referencing the controversial “Le Corbeau,” German-financed and thought to be anti-French propaganda). Even Emil Jannings appears in a cameo. So does Churchill, improbably discussing German studio films.
The carving of the swastika on Nazi foreheads is something that even Jewish liberals find excessive. It serves as a final punctuation in the movie but comes as a punch in the audience’s stomach. We’re treated to graphic scalping and braining throughout (violence is, of course, a Tarantino signature) but they’re not as wince-inducing as the mark of Cain.
The climax is positively Jacobean, a lushly filmed incineration where the four Nazi top guns and their wives are roasted to a crisp. Centuries hence, schoolboys might really think Hitler died at a movie premiere.
There’s nothing new with Tarantino’s historical rewriting – this was exactly what Shakespeare had done with historical figures like Hamlet and Macbeth for dramatic exigency. Centuries thence, only scholars know what really happened to Hamlet and Macbeth.
The opening sequence bears the intro, “Once upon a time … in Nazi-occupied France,” which should be seen as a caveat to viewers: This is going to play like a fairytale. The film satisfies in us something deeper than historians and librarians can.
Sure winners
“Avatar” is another of Cameron’s bloated films – and one more exemplar of derivative cinema. Ranging in sources from “One Million Years B.C.” to Hayao Miyazaki animé, it is ultimately just an old-fashioned western set in a future alternate universe.
And just as the Kate-Leo scenario of his “Titanic” was an expansion of a subplot in the 1976 “Voyage of the Damned,” the love story of Jake and Neytiri in this one appears to be taken from the 1966 prehistoric saga that made Raquel Welch a star.
“Avatar’s” eye-popping visuals and heart-stopping action are, of course, unsurpassable, but this eco-epic is too formulaic for our taste. As with most inspirationals (think “The Blind Side” and “Invictus”), it doesn’t have the complexity, ambiguity and random quality of life. The conclusion is too neat; we’re manipulated to cheer and soar toward the end.
“The Hurt Locker” is merciless in its depiction of American soldiers in Iraq. Filmed in vérité style, it doesn’t stint on the telling details from the minutest to the most apocalyptic: The fly on the soldier’s eyelashes; the mushrooming smoke and crackling conflagration of the bombing of humans and buildings.
The seeming artlessness, remarkable restraint in performance and staging, plus the human pathos that imbues each scene should make this a winner.
Cameron and Bigelow, married for two years in the early ’90s, are in a lock for Best Picture and Best Director – and their contest has been dubbed “Battle of the Exes.”
But while he is a sentimentalist, her films are largely unsentimental, very masculine. Both could win either of the two categories and it wouldn’t disturb the order of the universe.
Top choice
Of the three, “Avatar” is the most enjoyable, “The Hurt Locker” seems most like felt life, and “Inglourious Basterds” is the most intellectually stimulating and aesthetically pleasing.
Our top choice is not one of them, though. That would be “A Serious Man,” about a Jewish family on the verge of a nervous breakdown. This film possesses all the foregoing superlative traits of those three.
We can settle for Tarantino’s work as Best Picture. If “Avatar” wins, he would be fine as Best Director. If Bigelow gets that (making her a historical figure, first female to have won it), then maybe he can have Best Original Screenplay. But for this he has to contend with the Coen Brothers – a really tough competition.
Tarantino won his only Oscar for the screenplay of “Pulp Fiction” 15 years ago. That’s probably because he made only a few films, rather like Kubrick and Malick. Now seems to be the right time to give him his second Academy trophy. They could deny him this, of course, to their eternal regret.
The acting categories are not as contentious as last year’s. We can’t help noticing that the dead-end life has become a recurrent theme in many Oscar entries – not to say that some have parallel story lines and relationship dynamics, such as “Up in the Air” and “The Messenger,” “The Blind Side” and “Precious,” or “Crazy Heart” and last year’s “The Wrestler.”
Jeff Bridges in “Crazy Heart” is a shoo-in for Best Actor. His portrayal of an alcoholic singer-songwriter whose life is spiraling down and who is seeking redemption in love, family and career recalls Nicolas Cage in “Leaving Las Vegas” – but less bleak.
Here, Bridges revisits the milieu of his youth, the small southwestern American town of “The Last Picture Show” 40 years ago. It is interesting to compare his performance from the cockiness of his youth to the world-weariness of his late maturity. That’s why the song “The Weary Kind” is organic to this film.
Main event
Another shoo-in is Christoph Waltz for Best Supporting Actor, as the Jew Hunter in “Inglourious Basterds.” Still another is Mo’Nique for Best Supporting Actress, as the abusive mother in “Precious.” If these two weren’t in the picture, we’d be rooting for Woody Harrelson in “The Messenger” and Anna Kendrick in “Up in the Air.”
So the main event is Best Actress. And here viewers have a real dilemma. Sandra Bullock is an appealing gal, but she’s up against the First Lady of American Movies, the indomitable Meryl Streep. As a white matron who adopts a black teen and turns him into a football star in “The Blind Side,” Bullock is likely to get the trophy, but for the wrong reason.
An Oscar fixture, Streep has had the most number of nominations (16) of all actors living or dead. So we were surprised to learn that her last win had come nearly 30 years ago, for “Sophie’s Choice.” Her performances have always been addictive, in comedy or drama. She is the butter to our bread, and we can’t have enough butter.
Once again, as the American chef in Paris, Julia Child, in “Julie & Julia,” she proves she can play anything, with matching accents. Thus, one film critic suggests that she be signed for the sequel of the alien parable “District 9,” and cast as a prawn.
For Best Animated Feature, “Up” is another shoo-in. Which makes this year’s Oscars as The Year of the Shoo-ins. Less exciting than the last maybe, but still anticipated.


















David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer

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Avatar vs Hurt Locker on Oscar 2010

This year’s race for Sunday’s top prize at the Academy Awards is anything but predictable.

In recent years, the drama has generally been sapped by a glut of earlier award shows that spell out what films will win at the Oscars before the show starts.

Not this time — at least for Sunday’s top prize, and maybe the weekend’s threatening weather.

With the best-picture lineup expanded to 10 films instead of the usual five, the science-fiction spectacle and box-office behemoth Avatar is going head-to-head with the low-budgeted, low-grossing Iraq war story The Hurt Locker. Each has nine nominations.

Adding to the suspense is how this year’s use of preferential voting for best picture — where voters rank the 10 nominees in order of preference — may affect the category’s outcome.

The acting prizes look as predictable as ever, with Oscars expected to go to Sandra Bullock as best actress for The Blind Side, Jeff Bridges as best actor for Crazy Heart, Mo'Nique as supporting actress for Precious and Austrian Christoph Waltz as supporting actor for Inglourious Basterds. Avatar won best drama at the Golden Globes, traditionally a good gauge for how the Oscars might play out. But the Globes were nearly two months ago, the first major ceremony in the long buildup to the Oscars. A lot has happened since.

The Hurt Locker dominated honors from Hollywood trade groups, including guilds representing directors, writers and producers. It also won best-picture and five other prizes at the British Academy Film Awards.

The films bring some behind-the-scenes drama. Avatar director James Cameron and The Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow were married from 1989-91, making this the first time ex-spouses have competed for the directing Oscar.

Bigelow would be the first woman ever to win best director, a prize Cameron earned with 1997’s "Titanic," whose box office records have been shattered by Avatar. And one of Bigelow’s fellow producers on The Hurt Locker, Nicolas Chartier, has been barred from attending the Oscars after he ran afoul of the awards rules by sending e-mails to academy voters urging them to support his film over Avatar. Overseers at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences took some heat after doubling the field to 10 films last summer. Many actors, filmmakers and others in Hollywood wondered if the Oscars had lowered their standards by letting so many films into the best-picture race.

But the move has brought a different energy to the show, both for producers with films in the running and TV viewers who have gradually lost interest in the Oscars. The ceremony’s TV ratings sank to an all-time low two years ago, then bounced back a bit last year.

The top awards were utterly predictable both years, No Country for Old Men dominating two years ago and Slumdog Millionaire winning last time.

Oscar organizers say they sense greater interest in the awards all-around, from the A-list lineup that will strut the red carpet outside Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre to the stargazers watching on TV at home.

"People seem to be talking about the movies. The idea that we've gone to 10 is something that’s been a little controversial to some people, even though we've done it before," said Tom Sherak, academy president. The Oscars often had 10 or more best-picture nominees until 1943.

"It’s created a conversation about the movies, and I don't think there’s a clear-cut winner. We want it to be fun to watch, for people to have an interest in seeing what’s going to happen with these 10 movies," Sherak said.

Also in the running for best picture: the football drama "The Blind Side," the science-fiction thriller "District 9," the British teen tale "An Education," the World War II saga Inglourious Basterds, the Harlem story Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire, the Jewish domestic chronicle A Serious Man, the animated adventure Up and the recession-era yarn Up in the Air. Along with The Hurt Locker, which took in just $12.6 million domestically, competitors such as An Education and A Serious Man have found relatively small audiences.

The lineup is balanced with huge hits, led by Avatar, the biggest modern blockbuster with $700 million domestically and $2.6 billion worldwide. Up and The Blind Side both topped $200 million domestically, while Inglourious Basterds and District 9 were $100 million hits.

Oscar TV ratings tend to rise in years when big hits are among the front-runners. The show had its biggest audience ever when Cameron’s colossal hit Titanic won best-picture 12 years ago.

Academy organizers also aim to liven up the show, continuing a trend they began last year by hiring song-and-dance man Hugh Jackman as host, rather than a traditional comedian.

Sunday’s show features past host Steve Martin paired with Alec Baldwin, the first time since 1987 that the Oscars have had more than one emcee.

Lifetime-achievement Oscars have been moved to a separate event to speed up the pace of the show.

Oscar producers Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic also are mixing up the cast of awards presenters with young talent such as Miley Cyrus and Twilight co-stars Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner and veterans such as Sean Penn, Barbra Streisand and Samuel L. Jackson.

"New Hollywood and classic Hollywood. Love it," Shankman said.

"You'll see that quite a bit," Mechanic said. "Not paired together, but you'll see a respect for the traditions of Hollywood and a welcoming of new Hollywood." And a scramble by Oscar bosses come Monday to see how the ratings went.
















David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer

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Baghdad Bombed

 Bombers launched a spate of attacks across Baghdad and in Baquba on Sunday as polls opened in a general election that Al-Qaeda threatened to sabotage, officials and AFP reporters said.
Four mortars struck Baghdad's "Green Zone" and six more rocked areas across the capital as polling stations opened, while at the same time in Baquba to the north, five blasts struck near voting stations, officials said.
The fortified "Green Zone" houses the Iraqi parliament, several ministries and the US and British embassies.
Two bomb attacks also hit areas of Baghdad, an interior ministry official said. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq in a statement Friday threatened to kill voters, days after a series of suicide attacks and bombings killed dozens.
The Islamic State of Iraq, the Qaeda front in the country, said it was imposing a "curfew" on Sunday and anyone who dared defy it would "expose himself to the anger of Allah and ... all kinds of weapons of the mujahedeen."
 












David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer

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