Quadsville

A winter storm bore down on 10 states, bringing with it snowdrifts, bitterly cold temperatures and wind gusts, in the Quad Cities, of close to 40 mph. In New Mexico, a 100 mph wind gust tore the roof off the Los Alamos police station, and in Nashville (TN) the Christmas tree in front of the state capitol was broken in half by the wind.

Parts of Interstate 80 were closed near Des Moines (Newton area) and anything west and north of us was getting hammered all day.

I ventured out on Wednesday, December 9th, and took some pictures, but first let me post some from Des Moines, which got more snow than we did:

This photo represents my friend’s car, parked outside their house in Des Moines. To begin with, the car could not be driven to their house and a neighbor had to push it with his four-wheel drive vehicle. Why? Because the snow and wind was so bad in Des Moines that road crews had been pulled and their (relative) side street had not been plowed. Secondly, as luck would have it, their snowblower was broken. They eventually grabbed shovels and, with a neighbor’s help, were able to unearth the car lurking under all the snow in this picture.  And now for a few other snow shots:

This photo happens to have been taken of the fir tree

right next to my garage entryway. Needs Christmas

lights.

For this one, go back to the top of the page and take a look at “Big Blue,” as I call the 300 lb. ceramic frog that sits on the edge of our back yard ravine. Right now, “Big Blue” looks more like “Big White.” The ravine is quite beautiful, with drifts around the wrought iron lawn furniture (right in the photo) and frosted trees, but it’s really too cold to stand outside admiring it for long.

This one is a picture of the Celebration Belle, one of the riverboats (or riverboat replicas) that sit alongside Ben Butterworth Parkway in Moline, Illinois. The boat has a paddlewheel, and the paddlewheel was rotating vigorously in the 37 mph wind(s). I almost got hit by the car behind me as I attempted to pull into the parking lot to take this shot, because the parking lots have not been plowed and it turned out to be a hopeless project to try to get close to the boat on that side of the river. (This is taken from across the street.)

If you look closely at this Moline sign, you can see that    snow was still falling and the wind was in full force. The sign sits near the railroad line that cuts through town, and it establishes that this snow was, indeed, hitting the Quad Cities area of Moline, East Moline, Bettendorf (IA), Davenport (IA), and all the many other smaller cities that make up an area with the misnomer “Quad.” LeClaire (IA), up the river, was without power for several hours (from 9 a.m. on) and over 6,000 homes lost their power in the snow and wind. Jane Addams Elementary School in Moline (IL) lost its power and heat. They sent the students home but required the teachers to come to work.

I saw one woman in a red car crash into a snow plow, and I heard reports of over 260 tickets being issued in Davenport (IA), tickets telling the driver that the car must be moved from the city streets so that snow plows could operate. The tickets are $35 each. Someone calculated that the city was going to reap a windfall of $9,100 from the tickets, alone. Add to that Davenport’s disputed camera system at intersections, which send you tickets by mail if you are photographed going through the yellow portion of a red light, and the winter white becomes green for the cash-strapped city.

In the Quad Cities, the best snow removal trophy always seems to go to Silvis and East Moline. Moline: not so much. Davenport: really horrible. Rock Island: ditto. I don’t know why this is, but c’est la vie. Also, in the Homewood area of Moline…a chi chi area that predated Wildwood as the city’s finest, the streets are narrow and winding. On top of that, telephone lines and power lines were strung through the ravine/woody areas that surround the homes. Jane Addams is near Homewood. I have friends and relatives who live in Homewood. They lose their power all the time because the power lines run through the heavily wooded area and, whenever a tree branch falls on a power line during a storm like this, power goes out. I’ll bet money that this may have been a factor in the loss of Jane Addams’ power. (No other elementary schools were released, I heard on the news.

Another thing that has come to light as a result of this snowfall, which seems new, to me, is Channel 6’s “new policy” of NOT running news of cancellations in a crawl on their screen unless it is a school closing. The announcers on KWQC gave a very long (and involved) explanation and directions to rush to your computer, sign in, kiss your elbow 3 times and a lot of other complicated directions to find out if a meeting is being canceled as a result of the storm. What if, like my 91-year-old mother-in-law, you don’t HAVE a computer? What if, like me, it sounds like waaaay more work than it should be, just to find out whether the bridge game at the local meeting place has been canceled or if the musical performance at the River Music Experience is “on” or “off”? Whatever happened to informing the community? Why is it just schools, now, that are going to be allowed to have a crawl at the bottom of the screen? If I were Channel 6, which has been having some financial problems of late, I hear, I’d rethink this policy. Anyone with a clicker will change to Channels 8 or 4, which seem to still care if their viewers stay tuned in and will provide a crawl with informatino about cancellations other than schools. Think about it.

(* This report, written in October of 2004 about the Vote for Change concerts that various artists undertook during the 2004 Presidential campaign in support of John Kerry and John Edwards. The concert was in Ames. I am reprinting it from www.blogforiowa.com, where it is in the archives, because it is pretty funny.)
Connie submits this report from her cross-state Democratic Road Trip with “the daughter.”

The daughter and I returned from our SIX-HOUR concert about 1:30 a.m. last night.  I cannot remember a concert where I drew Snoopy on the left ankle of the young man behind me (in red ink) and then, on his right ankle, played tic-tac-toe with my daughter.  (It was a draw.) Plus, I sprayed BOTH of the young man’s feet with Burberry perfume (from my purse) since they were really smelly feet, which he insisted on parking on the arms of MY chair. At one point, he grabbed my notebook and wrote in it, “I have no idea what you are doing here. I can’t see sh-t, but keep this. Thanks and bye.” Earlier, I heard him and his friends discussing how I had “probably remembered every President back to Lincoln.” The sad thing is, they are right. He kids me about “growing up in the seventies” and wants to know if I ever “smoked reefer.” I feel flattered that he thinks I “grew up in the 70’s.”  That makes me much younger than I am, so I am enjoying that comment. As for the reefer question: allergic, you know. Only contact highs. I respond, “Yes, but I never inhaled,” thinking he will get the joke. He does not.

In the parking lot afterwards, while waiting for the cars to move out to the road, the car ahead of us contains a fake snake. One of the young college men in the party puts the snake between his legs and gyrates (like a Chippendale Dancer).The snake looks very real, so I roll my car windows up. The daughter, who is beginning to sound a little like Typhoid Mary, says, “Why are you rolling up the windows?” I pretend it is for her health. It is really because I fear that the kid with the snake might gyrate over to us and do God-knows-what.

Neil Young (of the old days…Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young) comes onstage at one point with the Dave Matthews Band and plays (a “surprise” performance). My notes, at that point: “They are holding this guitar note for so long that pain will soon ensue. They are all watching Neil, for a ’sign.’ He has, apparently, forgotten the sign. I am beginning to think that the “sign” is that your ears begin to bleed.  Neil looks like Howard Hughes on a bad day. He is engaged in some sort of guitar death throe. Some blonde woman comes onstage with him, but I don’t think anyone has a clue who she is (I know I don’t). I ask, but the boys behind me have passed out, and nobody else can hear me over the guitar punishment. Yikes!

The new camera (Olympus digital), which was fully charged before the concert, only ran for 2 hours. The concert lasted 6. [Thank God for my trusty little Canon]. The daughter got pictures of “My Morning Jacket,” “Jurassic5,” and “Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals,” but where was my digital camera when the Main Act came onstage? Why, dead, of course. As I fear I will be after this six-hour marathon.

At one point, Ben Harper plays a song called “Burn One Down,” which either has to do with forest fires or smoking marijuana. Other lyrics I hear, but don’t know: “Kick your b-tt.” “Plastic.” “F— the pResident.” “I always have to steal my kisses from you.” “This is a song about freedom. There’s some people who smoke a lot of weed, cause some of those [bleep] haven’t gotten off the couch for two years. Then, that [bleep] wanders out in to the street holdin’ his remote and getting his groove on. If you ain’t where you want to be in your life, put the bong down, Homey.” This brings on “Burn One Down,” which seems to involve a haze of illegal smoke. “Your choice is who you choose to be. We are gonna’ burn one down.”

Good to see that our college students are becoming more articulate every day. Gives one hope. I hope they don’t burn anything down while I am inside it.

Back to lyrics: “No lives for bu—sh–.”  “He offered life in sacrifice, so others could go on.” Neil Young sings (if you can call it that), “It was just a legend. War was never known. The people were together, and they lifted many stones.” I’m thinking this might be “Along the Watchtower,” but I really am not “into Neil Young. He looks like the Crypt-Keeper, from television, at this point in his career. None of the young kids there know who he is, or who the old blonde with him is. Then there is something about dancing across the water. Neil seems somewhat uncoordinated, so I don’t think he will be doing any dancing across water or any other surface any time soon. It is as though Bigfoot has been taking guitar lessons and has been unleashed upon us.

I know three songs all night long,  including the Dave Matthews Band encore song “Too Much” from the “Crash” album; “Keep on Rockin’ in the USA” and a version of Buffalo Springfield’s, “There’s somethin’ happenin’ here; Stop, Baby! What’s that sound? Everybody look what’s goin’ down.” This is repeated about 20 times. I remember it was used in a documentary about the Vietnam War that I used to show my 7th grade students.  At one point, trying to be friendly, I say, to the black guy next to me, “I took her to her first Dave Matthews Band concert when he had “Under the Table and Dreaming” out. She was ten.” The guy says, “Oh. Yeah. I remember that concert. I passed out halfway through it.” O………K.

Now, Neil plays TAPS on his guitar. Why? We don’t know. Dave and the others are sort of glassy-eyed, mesmerized, staring at Neil. This concert has lasted a Looooong time. Someone please make Neil quit!!! The drunk guys from St. Joseph’s, Missouri, or Joplin, Missouri, have all passed out, which is when and why I draw Snoopy on one of their ankles.

The girl ahead of me is wildly flailing her arms like a windmill. Too much caffeine, I’m thinking. This girl is known, henceforth, as “Hyperactive Girl,” or HG. Every time I try to take a shot, she pumps her fist in the air just as I shoot. I have a lot of photos of her fist(s).

As usual, I attempt to pick out “bobbleheads” in the arena, which are people who are making absolute fools of themselves. My God! This must be the Bobblehead Convention. The violin guy onstage is going nuts, and the guy wearing the Number One jersey with the page boy bob haircut is doing something that I can only describe as NOT likely to  impress anyone.

The drunk or stoned guy behind me (”Max”, says his NAME TAG) keeps trying to bump my arm as I take notes, and, at one point, he actually tries to relieve me of my notebook. But I’m too quick for him.

Ms. Hyperactive is now resorting to rabbit-like punching in the air. The guy she is with is very tall and looks like the one who once played Claire’s boyfriend on “Six Feet Under.” He is wearing a shirt that says “America’s Music Festival to End All Festivals” while his girlfriend has on a “Farm Aid, September 18th” shirt. I fear for Ms. Hyperactive’s safety, as she is so out-of-control that I think she is going to fall over the balcony railing any minute.

Neil (Young) is doing some kind of geriatric jig.  Someone make Neil quit. Please.

I’m going to come right out and say I liked the smash blockbuster movie of the season, using a direct quote from “2012:”  “Oh, baby! Bring it on!”

 I put off going to the opening weekend of the Roland Emmerich-helmed CG extravaganza because I thought that it would be as boring as I found Will Smith’s last ill-advised foray as super-hero Hancock (opposite Charlize Theron), but I’ve got to say that “2012” was fun to watch, and the world apparently agrees with me.

 “2012’s” domestic gross was $65.2 million, but that was just 28% of the story, as it took in $230.4 million worldwide over the weekend. It smashed the competition (primarily Jim Carrey’s Disney movie “A Christmas Carol” in England and, in the United States, where the take for “2012” was almost 3 times what Scrooge was able to muster ($65.2 versus $22.3).

I’ve got some thoughts about why this movie from the creator of “Independence Day” and “The Day After Tomorrow” is doing so well. It is cleverly constructed to prey on all the gloom-and-doom news stories of the day. About the only topical disaster that doesn’t weigh in is H1N1 or a virus-to-be-named later. But the movie works, and works well, primarily because it has colossal special effects and who doesn’t want to see Las Vegas, the Santa Monica Pier, Washington, D.C., and New York’s Times Square blown to smithereens. It’s fun seeing Vatican City collapse on the faithful and the Washington Monument almost take the President out, even if the movie does run a tad long at 2 hours 38 minutes. But who cares? It’s “Earthquake,” “The Perfect Storm,” “Towering Inferno,” and “The Poseidon Adventure” all rolled into one. (*I once took a busload of 8^th grade students to see a double-bill featuring “Earthquake” and “Towering Inferno,” which we dubbed “The Shake-and-Bake Special.”)

This film cost a quarter of a million dollars and 1,000 people at 15 separate special effects companies used 500,000 tons of steel and a blue screen 60 feet long to come up with some of the fun stuff. Fun if you like Mayan calendar predictions of disaster and cheesy dodging of cracking highways in a limo driven by John Cusack (much like the boulder chasing Harrison Ford in “Indiana Jones”) and all kinds of conflict set up for the ‘bad guy,” whose name is—rather cleverly in an obvious way)—Mr. Annheuser. (So, class, what do you automatically think when you hear the word “Annheuser?”)

One reason I liked the flick is that the cast is a very good one, even if the script really just takes us along for the CG ride. John Cusack is a familiar face (especially to those of us with Chicago connections) and he is the center of the film, playing struggling author-turned-limo driver Jackson Curtis for a Russian billionaire. He and his wife, Amanda Peet, are apparently separated and she has a live-in boyfriend, played by Tom McCarthy, a plastic surgeon and, coincidentally, the director of “The Visitor” and “The Station Agent.” McCarthy is coming at us again as an actor in “The Lovely Bones” next month.

Chiwetel Ejiofor, who played Huey Lucas in “American Gangster” and will soon be onscreen opposite Angelina Jolie in “Salt”, plays the black scientist, Adrian Helmsley. Two child actors round out the original Curtis family, one played by Morgan Lily, who was the lemonade-stand girl on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and one played by Liam James as Noah Curtis. People old enough to remember George Segal in his prime will enjoy seeing him again, and we must mention Thandie Newton as Laura Wilson, President Wilson’s (Danny Glover’s) daughter.

Oliver Platt gets to do the honors as the self-serving Annheuser, who provokes a debate on whether we mere peons down in the valley deserve to be told that the largest tidal wave in history is on its way, so batten the hatches! Annheuser, of course, is much more interested in “saving” the mucky-mucks, including the government and anyone with one billion Euros to buy a seat on one of the Arks being built in China. Annheuser’s attitude provokes debates between his character of a party-line politician and the good-hearted Dr. Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who asks, “When do we let the people know?” and “I think people have a right to know.” Other lines suggest that, “The moment we stop caring for one another, that’s when we lose our humanity,” and “we mustn’t start our future with an act of cruelty.”  Annheuser takes a much more hard-line approach (“What did you think? We were all just going to join hands and sing Kumbayah?”)

Woody Harrelson as the Dr. Demento of Yellowstone, radio’s Charlie Frost, predicting the Armageddon that is about to occur, is a hoot, but he’s much better served by his recent turn in “The Messenger,” where he plays straight. [I fear that Woody is going to become typecast in roles like “Zombieland” and this, with fewer serious roles in the mix, if he isn’t careful, but I’m sure the payday for this film was worth it. I remember thinking that Gary Busey would have done the part proud, as well.]

Sure, there are things that seem very inauthentic, like the limo driving as the road collapses and the plane making it off the runway as the runway disappears and the “it’s a suicide mission” bit aboard the Ark, but it’s a fun CG movie. Its awesome special effects should garner Oscar nominations come March.

Here are some other things that I found interesting, besides the bogus charge that the Mayans thought the world would end in 2012 because their calendar ended then (there have been active denials of this by official Mayan spokesmen, …whoever they are.)

A long list of “wrong” things or anachronisms in the movie exists on the Internet data-base IMDB, including the fact that aircraft carriers don’t paint the name of the ship on the ship’s deck, as appears with the carrier USS JFK that is swept to its doom.  Besides that, the USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67 was decommissioned and mothballed in 2007, residing in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard now. The keen-eyed also noticed that, when Vegas is destroyed, there is a sign advertising Bette Midler’s Show, which is scheduled to end in January, 2010. I noticed that the Virgin Records store sign is still up in Times Square in New York City, although the last store closed in June of 2009 (in Los Angeles).

The script is ponderous, of course, with bad Russian accents to boot, and much pontificating (“Our culture is our soul and that’s not dying tonight.” “The moment that we stop caring for one another, that’s when we lose our humanity.”) The science, (for someone who dropped out of Physics after one day) was basically mumbo-jumbo, and I feel fairly certain that 1,578 miles of the Earth’s crust displacing because of temperatures rising across the globe is not my biggest concern.

But the thing that this film does so expertly is weave the rampant paranoia abroad in the land into a maelstrom of “fear and chaos spreading throughout the land,” (as the film’s own script puts it). Only 400,000 people can be saved. “I’m comin’ home, Dorothy” may or may not be a reference to the Wizard of Oz, but it’s definitely the case that one producer is from Wisconsin, so Cheeseheads everywhere will be happy to learn that there are at least three references to Wisconsin, including the fact that, after the Apocalypse, either the North or South Pole has relocated there.

And let’s give credit to Graham Hancock who wrote the novel “Fingerprint of the Gods” on which all this craziness is based. The scripting by Roland Emmerich (the director) and Harald Kloser leaves a lot to be desired, but who cares when we’re ramming speed in the race to self-destruction. (“We caused this thing; it was us!”)

I’m going to come right out and say I liked the smash blockbuster movie of the season, using a direct quote from “2012:”  “Oh, baby! Bring it on!”

 I put off going to the opening weekend of the Roland Emmerich-helmed CG extravaganza because I thought that it would be as boring as I found Will Smith’s last ill-advised foray as super-hero Hancock (opposite Charlize Theron), but I’ve got to say that “2012” was fun to watch, and the world apparently agrees with me.

 “2012’s” domestic gross was $65.2 million, but that was just 28% of the story, as it took in $230.4 million worldwide over the weekend. It smashed the competition (primarily Jim Carrey’s Disney movie “A Christmas Carol” in England and, in the United States, where the take for “2012” was almost 3 times what Scrooge was able to muster ($65.2 versus $22.3). 

I’ve got some thoughts about why this movie from the creator of “Independence Day” and “The Day After Tomorrow” is doing so well. It is cleverly constructed to prey on all the gloom-and-doom news stories of the day. About the only topical disaster that doesn’t weigh in is H1N1 or a virus-to-be-named later. But the movie works, and works well, primarily because it has colossal special effects and who doesn’t want to see Las Vegas, the Santa Monica Pier, Washington, D.C., and New York’s Times Square blown to smithereens. It’s fun seeing Vatican City collapse on the faithful and the Washington Monument almost take the President out, even if the movie does run a tad long at 2 hours 38 minutes. But who cares? It’s “Earthquake,” “The Perfect Storm,” “Towering Inferno,” and “The Poseidon Adventure” all rolled into one. (*I once took a busload of 8^th grade students to see a double-bill featuring “Earthquake” and “Towering Inferno,” which we dubbed “The Shake-and-Bake Special.”) 

This film cost a quarter of a million dollars and 1,000 people

at 15 separate special effects companies used 500,000 tons of steel and a blue screen 60 feet long to come up with some of the fun stuff. Fun if you like Mayan calendar predictions of disaster and cheesy dodging of cracking highways in a limo driven by John Cusack (much like the boulder chasing Harrison Ford in “Indiana Jones”) and all kinds of conflict set up for the ‘bad guy,” whose name is—rather cleverly in an obvious way)—Mr. Annheuser. (So, class, what do you automatically think when you hear the word “Annheuser?”)

 One reason I liked the flick is that the cast is a very good one, even if the script really just takes us along for the CG ride. John Cusack is a familiar face (especially to those of us with Chicago connections) and he is the center of the film, playing struggling author-turned-limo driver Jackson Curtis for a Russian billionaire. He and his wife, Amanda Peet, are apparently separated and she has a live-in boyfriend, played by Tom McCarthy, a plastic surgeon and, coincidentally, the director of “The Visitor” and “The Station Agent.” McCarthy is coming at us again as an actor in “The Lovely Bones” next month.

Chiwetel Ejiofor, who played Huey Lucas in “American Gangster” and will soon be onscreen opposite Angelina Jolie in “Salt”, plays the black scientist, Adrian Helmsley. Two child actors round out the original Curtis family, one played by Morgan Lily, who was the lemonade-stand girl on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and one played by Liam James as Noah Curtis. People old enough to remember George Segal in his prime will enjoy seeing him again, and we must mention Thandie Newton as Laura Wilson, President Wilson’s (Danny Glover’s) daughter.

Oliver Platt gets to do the honors as the self-serving Annheuser, who provokes a debate on whether we mere peons down in the valley deserve to be told that the largest tidal wave in history is on its way, so batten the hatches! Annheuser, of course, is much more interested in “saving” the mucky-mucks, including the government and anyone with one billion Euros to buy a seat on one of the Arks being built in China. Annheuser’s attitude provokes debates between his character of a party-line politician and the good-hearted Dr. Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who asks, “When do we let the people know?” and “I think people have a right to know.” Other lines suggest that, “The moment we stop caring for one another, that’s when we lose our humanity,” and “we mustn’t start our future with an act of cruelty.”  Annheuser takes a much more hard-line approach (“What did you think? We were all just going to join hands and sing Kumbayah?”)

Woody Harrelson as the Dr. Demento of Yellowstone, radio’s Charlie Frost, predicting the Armageddon that is about to occur, is a hoot, but he’s much better served by his recent turn in “The Messenger,” where he plays straight. [I fear that Woody is going to become typecast in roles like “Zombieland” and this, with fewer serious roles in the mix, if he isn’t careful, but I’m sure the payday for this film was worth it. I remember thinking that Gary Busey would have done the part proud, as well.]

Sure, there are things that seem very inauthentic, like the limo driving as the road collapses and the plane making it off the runway as the runway disappears and the “it’s a suicide mission” bit aboard the Ark, but it’s a fun CG movie. Its awesome special effects should garner Oscar nominations come March.

Here are some other things that I found interesting, besides the bogus charge that the Mayans thought the world would end in 2012 because their calendar ended then (there have been active denials of this by official Mayan spokesmen, …whoever they are.)

A long list of “wrong” things or anachronisms in the movie exists on the Internet data-base IMDB, including the fact that aircraft carriers don’t paint the name of the ship on the ship’s deck, as appears with the carrier USS JFK that is swept to its doom.  Besides that, the USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67 was decommissioned and mothballed in 2007, residing in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard now. The keen-eyed also noticed that, when Vegas is destroyed, there is a sign advertising Bette Midler’s Show, which is scheduled to end in January, 2010. I noticed that the Virgin Records store sign is still up in Times Square in New York City, although the last store closed in June of 2009 (in Los Angeles).

The script is ponderous, of course, with bad Russian accents to boot, and much pontificating (“Our culture is our soul and that’s not dying tonight.” “The moment that we stop caring for one another, that’s when we lose our humanity.”) The science, (for someone who dropped out of Physics after one day) was basically mumbo-jumbo, and I feel fairly certain that 1,578 miles of the Earth’s crust displacing because of temperatures rising across the globe is not my biggest concern.

But the thing that this film does so expertly is weave the rampant paranoia abroad in the land into a maelstrom of “fear and chaos spreading throughout the land,” (as the film’s own script puts it). Only 400,000 people can be saved. “I’m comin’ home, Dorothy” may or may not be a reference to the Wizard of Oz, but it’s definitely the case that one producer is from Wisconsin, so Cheeseheads everywhere will be happy to learn that there are at least three references to Wisconsin, including the fact that, after the Apocalypse, either the North or South Pole has relocated there.

And let’s give credit to Graham Hancock who wrote the novel “Fingerprint of the Gods” on which all this craziness is based. The scripting by Roland Emmerich (the director) and Harald Kloser leaves a lot to be desired, but who cares when we’re ramming speed in the race to self-destruction. (“We caused this thing; it was us!”)

“Pirate Radio” (also known as “The Boat That Rocked”), written and directed by Richard Curtis, is the true story of a pirate radio boat operating on frequency 203 in the North Sea off the coast of England, a floating radio station that broadcast rock and roll to England, in defiance of  the government. Ninety-three per cent of the British public liked the music, but the authority in charge, assisted by a character named “Twatt,” is determined to pass a new law, called the Marine Offenses Act, to outlaw the format and the station.

Cast as the man who is determined to stomp out the affront to civilization that rock and roll represents is Kenneth Branagh as Sir Alistair Dormandy. (Branagh’s ex-wife, Emma Thompson, also has a small cameo as the glamorous Charlotte, mother of Young Carl, played by Tom Sturridge.)

The log line for the movie is “1 boat. 8 DJ’s. No morals.”

Philip Seymour Hoffman plays The Count, an American DJ whose prominence at the station is challenged by the reappearance of popular disc jockey Gavin Cavanagh, played by Rhys Ifans, whom fans will remember as Hugh Grant’s kooky side-kick in “Notting Hill.”

Also recognizable from “Flight of the Conchords” is the actor playing Angus, Rhys Darby, who provides some—but not all—of the comic relief. The funny lines are numerous, so Angus is only a tiny part of the overall humor.

It’s a  bit disconcerting to view Rhys Ifans (formerly seen primarily in comic roles such as the Brit who attached helium balloons to a lawn chair to go airborne) as an irresistible chick magnet who says things like “This is Gavin, tweaking the nation’s nipples.”

One of my favorite lines from the movie was Philip Seymour Hoffman declaring “Why am I so fat?” while challenging Gavin Cavanagh to a “chicken” contest involving mast-climbing, a contest designed to  punish Cavanagh for an offense to fellow DJ Simon (Chris O’Dowd). When Gavin (Ifans) first returns to the floating radio station, he character says (to Hoffman), “You’re the Count: what does that make me? The King?” To which Hoffman responds, “Or the Joker.”

Oh, it’s on!

The film has a subplot (which is a bit like a Maury Povich episode), involving determining which member of the ship may (or may not) have fathered Young Carl. There is still more humor from a character called Thick (misspelled on his cabin door as “Thikc”) Kevin (Tom Brooke).

The soundtrack for the film is outstanding. It was supervised by Nick Angel and features songs like “My Generation” from “The Who.” There’s also a bit part played by January Jones as Elenore. (Jones plays Betsy on “Mad Men.”)

It’s a film you might miss, because it doesn’t have the huge advertising budget of “2012,” but it is going to be infinitely more satisfying and way funnier.

In looking for the “Most Romantic Films for Audiences Over 50,” I couldn’t narrow it down to 10, but went for 25 and The Films of Richard Gere. Hope you like it. Let’s hear your nominees!

1)      “The African Queen” (1951) – Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart are Charlie Allnut and Rose Sayer in a Jon Huston-direcxted film based on a C.S Forester novel.

2)  “The Quiet Man” (1952) – John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara in a John Ford film.

3)      “From Here to Eternity” (1953) – Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster in the surf on the beach, with an all-star cast including Montgomery Clift, Donna Reed, Frank Sinatra in a come-back role, Ernest Borgnine and Jack Warden in a film directed by Fred Zinneman.

4)      “Sabrina” (1954) – Audrey Hepburn in a love triangle with Humphrey Bogart and William Holden.

5)      “Picnic” (1955) Who can forget the sexy dance performed by William Holden and Kim Novak?

6)      “Marty” (1955) – Misfit butcher Ernest Borgnine won an Oscar as a less-than-handsome man looking for love, and finding it in Betsy Blair’s Clara Snyder. Paddy Chayefsky story and screenplay.

7)      “The King and I” (1955)- Deborah Kerr as Anne Leonowens and Yul Brynner in the role of his life as King Mongkut of Siam.

8)      “An Affair to Remember” (1957) – Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant as Tory McKay and Nickie Ferrante, and a great theme song.

9)       “Raintree County” (1957) – Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift.

10)   “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961) – Audrey Hepburn as Holly GoLightly in a Blake Edwards-directed film from the Truman Capote novel, with George Peppard as Paul and Buddy Ebsen as the ghost of her past.

11)  “Splendor in the Grass” (1961) – Natalie Wood as Wilma “Deanie” Loomis and Warren Beatty as Bud Stamper, in an Elia Kazan-directed film from writer William Inge.

12)  “Love with the Proper Stranger” (1963) – Steve Mcqueen is Rocky Papasano and Natalie Wood is Macy’s shopgirl Angie Rossini, struggling with the fact that abortion is highly illegal in 1963.

13)  “Dr. Zhivago” (1965) – David Lean directed Omar Sharif as Dr. Yuri Zhivago and Julie Christie as Lara.

14)  “This Property is Condemned” (1966) – A Syndey Pollack film from a Tennessee Williams screenplay, which Francis Ford Coppola scripted and which starred Natalie Wood as Alva Starr and Robert Redford as Owen Legate.

15)  “Barefoot in the Park” (1967) – Jane Fonda and Robert Redford are Paul and Core Bratter in this Neil Simon play, and thenlove breaks out between Charles Boyer, as Victor Velasco, and Mildred Natwick as Ethel Banks, the mother-in-law.

16)  “Love Story” (1970) – Arthur Heller directed this film from Erich Segal’s book (and screenplay) starring Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw.

17)  “Ryan’s Daughter” (1970)- Sarah Miles and Christopher Jones in another David Lean film, from a script by Richard Bolt.

18)   “Grease” (1978) – John Travolta as Danny Zuko and Olivia Newton-John as Sandy Olsson made summer romance fun.

19)  “The Postman Always Rings Twice” (1981) – It was hot the first time, with Lana Turner, and Jessica Lange and Jack Nicholson did  this Bob Rafaelson screenplay project justice, even if it does involve scheming to kill Jessica’s husband.

20)  “Dirty Dancing” (1987) – Patrick Swayze is Johnny Castle and “nobody puts Baby in the corner.” Jennifer Grey played Frances “Baby” Houseman (pre-nose-job) and Jerry Orbach was her dad.

21)  “No Way Out” (1987) – Kevin Costner and Sean Young getting it on in a limo. Hot, hot hot.

22)  “When Harry Met Sally” (1989) – Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan. The most romantic thing about the movie is/are the cameos at the end with real-life couples who have been together for decades.

23)  “Ghost” (1990) – Demi Moore and the late Patrick Swayze as Sam Wheat and Molly Jensen.

24)  “Sleepless in Seattle” (1993) – Nora Ephron directed Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Later they’d try “You’ve Got Mail,” but not as successfully.

25)  “The Bridges of Madison County” (1995) – Richard LaGravenese wrote the screenplay based on the Robert James Waller novel, and Clint Eastwood was Robert Kincaid, the roving photographer who catches the eye of Iowa farm wife Francesca Johnson (Meryl Streep).

And last, but certainly not least, no list would be complete without the category: The Romantic Films of Richard Gere (at least those that worked). “Yanks” (1979); “American Gigolo” (1980); “An Officer and a Gentleman” (1982); “Breathless” (1983); “No Mercy” (1986); “Pretty Woman” (1990); “First Knight” (1995). There’ve been a couple of others from Richard that I won’t mention, but “Unfaithful,” where Richard plays the cuckolded husband to Diane Lane’s unfaithful wife, was romantic…just not for Richard.

I would have mentioned “It Happened One Night” (1934) and “Casablanca” (1942), but I added 10 years to someone who is “over 50” (meaning born in 1959) and, while those films definitely belong on the list, you’d be definitely “over 50” and probably over 80, if you saw Clark (Gable) and Claudette (Colbert) when that Oscar-nominated film was new. For today’s movie-goers (of which I am one), let’s not forget the very recent Best Picture of the Year, “Slumdog Millionaire,” a love story for the ages.

The answer? They lead the list of The 10 Worst Actor/Actress Onscreen Pairings

It is going to become painfully obvious that I have spent waaay too much time in a darkened theater as I share with you some horrible screen pairings it has been my misfortune to suffer through, first as an avid filmgoer since birth and second, as a film critic for 15 years. These are in no particular order, and the reasons I feel these were horrible pairings are subjective, to be sure, but let me begin.

In no particular order, the films are:

1)  “The Human Stain” – Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman

2)  “Eyes Wide Shut” – Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman

3)  “Dracula” – Gary Oldman and Winona Ryder

4)  “Harold and Maude” – Ruth Gordon and Bud Cort

5)  “The Way We Were” – Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand

6)  “The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea” – Kris Kristofferson and Sarah Miles

7)  “6 Days, 7 Nights” – Harrison Ford and Anne Heche

8)       “Fair Game” – Billy Baldwin and Cindy Crawford

9)      “A Star Is Born” – Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson

10)   “At Long Last Love” – Cybill Shpeherd and Burt Reynolds

Let me explain.

There are some very great actors/actresses on this list who, nevertheless, had absolutely no onscreen chemistry with their leading man or leading lady. Sometimes, I fear, it is because that actor (or actress) is simply better suited to character actor parts. Other times, it is quite surprising, because the individuals in question were actually “an item.”

Take Nicole Kidman on this list, for example. I have listed her starring role in Stanley Kubrick’s last complete film, “Eyes Wide Shut,” where she starred opposite her then husband Tom Cruise as Alice Hartford (1999). I have also listed her opposite the much-too-old-for-her Anthony Hopkins in her role as the semi-literate Faunia Farley, opposite Anthony Hopkins’ Coleman Silk in “The Human Stain,” a 2003 Robert Benton-directed film (script by Nick Meyer, an old college classmate) based on a 2000 Philip Roth novel. Casting Anthony Hopkins as a (secretly) black man and Nicole Kidman as a cleaning woman (semi-literate, as well) was just the beginning of this film that garnered some “rotten tomato” awards. It was as thoroughly miscast as it is humanly possible to be, and the premises upon which the film rested were also dated. (Coleman is railroaded from his job as a university professor for asking, of some MIA African-American students, in his class, if they were “spooks.”) The idea that Welshman Hopkins is secretly black was hard to swallow. (The younger version of Hopkins was well-played by “Prison Break’s” Wentworth Miller, but even that did not help.) But Nicole was also bad opposite Tom Cruise as Shannon Christie in the 1992 epic “Far and Away” and even before that, in “Days of Thunder” in 1990. Let’s face it. While Nicole Kidman (and certainly Anthony Hopkins) are great actors, everyone has their limits, and when you’re miscast, you’re miscast. Since three of these films involve Kidman opposite Tom Cruise, it would seem that they were a mismatch in more ways than one. No onscreen chemistry. Zip. Zero. Nada.

Second-highest scorer on the “no charisma as sexy lead player in a romance” might go to Gary Oldman, who is a very competent character actor but lacks in the romance department. Following Frank Langella’s mesmerizing role as “Dracula,” he was very disappointing opposite Winona Ryder in that Francis Ford Coppola film, and he wasn’t much better in “The Scarlet Letter” (1995) opposite Demi Moore as the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, nor in the film “Romeo Is Bleeding” (1993) as Jack, opposite the sexy Lena Olin. Where Oldman shines is in work such as his spot-on impersonation of Lee Harvey Oswald in Oliver Stone’s 1991 film “JFK.” As a romantic leading man? Not so much.

Barbra Streisand makes the list twice, once opposite Kris Kristofferson in “A Star Is Born” and once opposite Robert Redford in “The Way We Were.” I blame the lack of “sparks” more on Kristofferson in the first, a role that was first offered to (but turned down by) Elvis Presley. Kristofferson has all the charismatic acting ability of a board. He reminds me of an old Keanu Reeves. This is also by way of explaining why “The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea” floundered and sank. More Kristofferson; less Sarah Miles.  In “The Way We Were” Streisand/Redford proved that the ugly duckling does not always grow up to become the beautiful swan, and that the saying, “opposites attract” can only carry you so far. It only carried this movie so far, despite Marvin Hamlisch’s best efforts.

“Harold and Maude” is a cult classic, and I loved the flick, but the plot is about a romance between a 20-year-old youth obsessed with death and suicide (Bud Cort) and a 79-year-old woman, played by the indomitable Ruth Gordon. I’m all for cougars, but there are limits.

“6 Days, 7 Nights” was a plot that paired  Harrison Ford with Anne Heche, who, at the time, was an ‘out” lesbian. There were absolutely no sparks of any kind between the leads and do we wonder why? Harrison Ford recreating Humphrey Bogart’s role opposite Julia Ormond in “Sabrina” (with Greg Kinnear in the William Holden role) was also not  a hit, although the film’s score was awesome.

“Fair Game” had William Baldwin (the thin Baldwin) cast as Detective Max Kirkpatrick and model Cindy Crawford of Dekalb, Illinois trying to segue successfully to the big screen from her lucrative modeling career, playing Kate McQuean. The film is horrible, and Crawford was awful in it.

Last, and perhaps least, Burt Reynolds and Cybill Shepherd somehow got the idea that they could sing and carry a musical in the much-maligned “At Long Last Love” and the less said about that, the better.

The book signing at “Centuries & Sleuths” in Forest Park on October 31, 2009 from 2 to 4 p.m. went quite well, and two 9-month old granddaughters, dressed as sunflowers, Ava and Elise Wilson, graced the store with their presence as the readings were winding down.

My “ghostly” story submitted to the Chicago “Tribune’s” scary story contest was also printed, one of only 24 from over 800 entries (top 3%) that were published.

Many thanks to store owner Augie Aleksy at 7419 W. Madison St., who assisted with arrangements and put up the lovely store window display you see in the photos.