Pat Rocchi Communications

Oscar 2020: The More Things Change…

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Rocchi) — Mon, 03 Feb 2020 23:13:00 +0000

The Oscar ratings were in the toilet, so the Motion Picture Academy increased the nominated films from the traditional five to as many as ten. The ratings tanked again last year.

Oscar nominees were so devoid of people of color that the president, Cheryl Boone Isaacs (herself a woman of color), actively raised the number of female and minority members. One effect was that Moonlight, by Barry Jenkins, won the best picture award in an upset. But this year, no women or men of color were nominated as directors, and nineteen of the twenty acting nominees were white.

Are we in a feedback loop here? These are the things that make my friends wonder why I bother with this exercise every year (and believe me, I question it myself). One woman pointed out to me that this year’s crop of nominees generally reflects a male bias toward violence, battle and guns. Considering 1917, Ford vs. Ferrari, The Irishman, Joker, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, and Parasite, I agree, sadly. So why should I bother to continue promoting such a system? Well, if there are many other years like this, I will have to admit that the Oscars are an anachronism and don’t deserve attention. But for now, I’d rather honor the tradition I started more than 10 years ago. In the meantime, here’s hoping things get better.

Looking at this year’s nominees, I like many of the films on the Best Picture list. I think at least two are actually great. All but one are worthy of consideration.

As past readers know, this list is not my prediction who will win the Oscar. It’s my judgment as to who should win among the nominees. I’m just giving you some talking points at your annual Oscar party.

I rank these according to my perception of the following qualities: their entertainment value, the attention to craft, and most important, innovation and uniquely cinematic quality. I am looking for works that challenge long-held notions of cinema. As the great Roger Ebert used to put it in his annual best of list, “Which film made me look at film a new way?”

Here is my ranking, in ascending order.

The Outlier

9. JOKER — I admit that when I first saw Todd Phillips’s Joker, I found it to be powerful. Not merely a comic book "origin" story on the birth of an archvillain, it also seems to examine how the mentally ill are treated in our society. On closer scrutiny, the movie is revealed to be a superficial descent into violence. Often revolting, I had to turn my head several times, rare for this lifelong moviegoer. Due to that, I cannot understand how it is nominated as one of the best films of the year. Still, Joker has a saving grace in Joaquin Phoenix. His expressive and tortured face, coupled with his yoga-like physicality, tells the interior story of madman Arthur Fleck. (Even the way Arthur smokes his cigarettes is painful.) It is a truly great performance for the ages, filling virtually every frame of this film. Otherwise be warned: Joker is not for the faint of heart.

Worthy Competitors (and some greatness)

8. MARRIAGE STORY — Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story (which he wrote and directed) is really a divorce story about theater director Charlie (Adam Driver) and wife Nicole (Scarlett Johansson), an actress just short of her full potential. She comes to blame the self-centered, philandering Charlie for that, and this conflict drives the film. While neither the story nor its cinematic treatment is groundbreaking, the three lead performances are works to behold. Johansson abandons her comic-book roles in this nuanced portrayal. Laura Dern commands the screen as Nora Fanshaw, the divorce lawyer committed to serving her clients. Adam Driver was a particular revelation to me, conveying Charlie with a versatility I never expected. (This includes breaking into a Sondheim song at one introspective moment.) These three actors, and others in the cast, help raise this to one of the most engaging adult films of 2019.

7. FORD VS. FERRARI — In the tradition of testosterone-driven films geared to adolescent boys (e.g., The Great Escape, Bullitt, Winning), and set in an era of post-war American Male confidence, competence, dominance and arrogance, Ford Vs. Ferrari emerges as The Right Stuff for auto racing. But instead of a space race between two political superpowers, it tells how American auto magnate Henry Ford II and his Italian counterpart, Enzo Ferrari, got into a dick-wagging contest on whose cars would be the fastest. It boasts pitch-perfect performances by Matt Damon as auto designer Carroll Shelby, Christian Bale as madcap driver Ken Miles, and the overlooked Caitriona Balfe (Outlander) as Miles’s long-suffering wife. Fast, fun and furiously edited, the film is not only thoroughly entertaining, but it is one of the most technically competent of the year.

6. ONCE UPON A TIME...IN HOLLYWOOD — Quentin Tarentino can be so meticulous, creating words and images so vivid that they stay with you for ages. Yet he can also overstay his welcome on a scene or in his dialogue, making his films at least a third too long in the end. Once Upon a Time… contains that duplicity. It centers on cowboy star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stuntman, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt, in a career performance). As these “guys” face the ends of their film careers, they eke out work in TV and spaghetti Westerns. But the subtext is also the end of innocence in LA that came with the 1969 Manson Murders of Sharon Tate and other poor souls. As with Inglourious Basterds, Tarentino creates a parallel universe with an alternate ending (a conceit I did not appreciate this time; once was enough). His craft is all right there for you to savor: the production design, cinematography, casting & performances. If Tarentino had exercised some judicious winnowing in the final result, this could have been a really great film.

5. JOJO RABBIT — I heard this once: “Just because no one understands you doesn’t make you a genius.” Similarly, just because Jojo Rabbit is offbeat doesn’t necessarily make it a great film. But, damn, it sure is wonderful to see writer/director Taika Waititi be so audacious. On its face, Rabbit is about a young boy in the waning days of Nazi Germany whose mother is hiding a Jewish girl in their home. But it’s also a magical-realism fantasy about the absurdities of that time, as seen through the cockeye of our sensitive hero, Jojo. Ultimately, this film is a beautifully crafted production that has a unique vision, but labors under a substandard screenplay. (Weird, because it’s scarfing up various “adapted screenplay” awards ahead of the more deserving Little Women.) All told, it’s heartening to see the Academy recognize a quirky and imaginative movie like this.

4. THE IRISHMAN — The Irishman is the latest example of Martin Scorsese’s artistry as a cinematic storyteller. Philadelphia truck driver Frank Sheeran (Robert DeNiro) meets crime boss Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) at a roadside stop, and their ensuing journey together forms this sweeping story. Scorsese draws fine performances from his expansive cast, especially DeNiro, who does his best work in years. Pesci delivers a particularly fine and skillful performance. (One exception: I never once found Al Pacino convincing as Jimmy Hoffa.) While The Irishman is epic in a way that we have forgotten, Scorsese breaks no new ground here. It rings too much like Goodfellas or his inferior Casino. Still, the film becomes a moving elegy on the plight of many mid-20th century American men. Excluded from the opulent high life they saw from afar, they look back on their empty lives with regrets.

3. LITTLE WOMEN — Very few films have affected me as this gem from Greta Gerwig. I was skeptical, thinking we didn’t need yet one more version of this classic book. But I did not anticipate Gerwig’s innovative screenplay, which plays with time & space to reveal the inner thoughts and dreams of the main character, Jo. Combined with Gerwig’s graceful direction, the film turns out as bright and sun-drenched as a shelf of sepia photos. Kudos goes also to the cast, who flourished under Gerwig’s direction. Laura Dern glides effortlessly through the matriarchal role of Marmee (a sidebar that complements her no-nonsense lawyer in Marriage Story). Saoirse Ronan is absolutely luminous as Jo, tying together the film’s narrative with her warmth and intelligence. While I don’t normally favor adaptations, Gerwig achieves the near-impossible, breathing new life into an old, familiar standard.

2. PARASITE — Nothing prepared me for this frame-breaking masterpiece from Korea’s Bong Joon Ho. The family of patriarch Kim Ki-taek comprises poor and unemployed con artists who live in a filthy basement (literally substandard). As luck has it for them, they seize upon an opportunity to insinuate themselves in the wealthy family of Geun-se through a series of manipulations and deceits. Once ensconced in the Guen-se home, they begin living the high life that has eluded them. Then, without giving too much away, a variety of scenarios ensue, which resemble flim-flam films (e.g., The Grifters), comic redirection (e.g., Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), and escape films (e.g., Stalag 17, Cool Hand Luke) before it transforms unexpectedly into a tragic Grand Guignol. Parasite achieves what Joker attempted: a look at the have’s vs. the have-not’s, but with equally tragic results.

1. 1917 — It is April 5, 1917, the day United States will enter Word War I (WWI). The German forces have severed communication lines between British platoons. British Lance Corporals Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and Schofield (George MacKay) are given a seemingly impossible mission. They must cross No-Man’s Land (the unoccupied land between British and German trenches) to deliver a message that will halt a planned battle. If they don’t, 1,600 men will unwittingly fall prey to an ambush by the Germans.

Sam Mendes was inspired by similar stories of bravery from his grandfather, Alfred Mendes, who fought for Britain in the WWI. The result is the film 1917, which Mendes directed and co-wrote. It is both a tensely thrilling military adventure and a superior technical, and it is my choice as the best of the Oscar-nominated films from 2019.

To achieve this feat, Mendes’s team had to build approximately one mile of trenches to simulate the environment of the day. He also simulated the quotidian problems that plagued the soldiers in that time: Rats that spread disease and bit the men. Lice. Constant water that caused the condition known as “trench foot.” Perhaps worst of all, boredom. Stultifying, soul-sucking boredom.

To help give the audience the same experience as Blake and Schofield, 1917 appears to be shot in one single take of the camera (absent a period of unconsciousness, which buys some time). As used so brilliantly by Alejandro G. Iñárritu in the 2014 Best Picture, Birdman, this single-shot technique adds urgency to the film, as the viewer experiences it seemingly in real time and without filters. We witness the horrors of this first modern war with the two young men. We see a tank immobile in a ditch, soldiers who have died in the grip of barbed wire, and citizen casualties who are washed silently against the shores of a dam. We also witness some of the simple pleasures of the day, such as an unexpected rendering of sacred music that serves to entertain and calm the enervated solders.

1917 is notable on two different levels. The film itself is a testament to the human spirit and the never-say-die attitude that has made so many man and woman victors over seemingly insurmountable barriers. When the film concluded, so much tension was expelled from me that I wept.

The production of 1917 supports the notion that film is collaborative, belying the premise that it all rests on the director (the so-called auteur theory). This movie could not have been completed without the myriad contributions of production designers & art directors, the costumers, cinematographer Roger Deakin (who is likely to win his second Oscar in a long distinguished career), editor Lee Smith (oddly unnominated), and the long line of designers for the prosthetics. Even cameos by strong actors like Colin Firth, Marc Strong and Benedict Cumberbatch are integral to the success of the final product. And the soldiers were accompanied the whole way by the relentless score of Thomas Newman. (Note: This movie marks Newman’s 15th (!) Oscar nomination. After 115 movie scores, who does he need to pay off to get a statue?)

For the coordination of a wide variety of techniques to support Sam Mendes’s personal vision, and for the emotional wallop achieved by this film, I choose 1917 as the best Oscar-nominated film of 2019. I believe it, and Parasite, will be remembered as masterpieces that will influence filmmaking for years to come.

As usual, I will be firmly on my couch this weekend to watch. We live in interesting times, where the visual media are blurring the difference between theaters and online (as evidenced by Martin Scorsese’s deal with Netflix to produce The Irishman). Also, the Oscars have evolved somewhat like college football bowls; there used to be four, and now there seem to be A HUNDRED-AND-four. Similarly, the Oscars used to stand alone; now they’re the granddaddy of them all (as Keith Jackson used to call The Rose Bowl). Let’s see what happens in the long run with that time-honored tradition. In the meantime, love the movies. There is nothing like them.

The 2019 Oscars May Resemble the 2019 Super Bowl (And this is not a complimentary comparison)

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Rocchi) — Wed, 20 Feb 2019 21:57:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, I sat out the Super Bowl because I found the game to be tainted. One team got into the big game because of a blown call. The other contestant made it because they won a coin flip, their opponents never got the ball, and they always find a way to get in anyway. The result was a boring and unsatisfying game.

Similarly, as I face Academy Awards ceremony this Sunday to honor the films of 2018, I am tempted for the first time in my life to ignore that, too. This is a weak year with mediocre nominees. Many films have flawed screenplays that don’t contain an evident storyline. One script is parading as a “based-on-a-true-story” piece of fiction. Where are the Big Ideas and innovative cinematic techniques from previous years, such as Birdman, Whiplash, Inception or Get Out?

Well, in this year’s blog, I will play the hand we movie fans have been dealt. As in years past, I rank the nominated films in ascending order. This is not my prediction of who will win, but how I rank the films against each other according to their innovation and uniquely cinematic quality.

8. Green Book — The high-octane opening with its energy and crosscutting grabbed me: A faux Bobby Rydell in 1962 rocks in a New York night club while Tony “The Lip” Vallelonga exacts a violent revenge in the background. ). We soon meet Dr. Don Shirley, an African American musician (Mahershala Ali), who hires Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen), an Italian American from the Bronx, to chauffeur him during a tour through the American Midwest and the Deep South. Tony could also provide protective muscle should danger arise. Despite this ostensibly heart-warming tale, Green Book devolves into predictable ethnic clichés and, worse, many factual errors and distortions (detailed inthis recent blog). The movie is not without its charms, the chemistry between the wonderful lead actors chief among them. However, I find the misrepresentation of Shirley unforgivable, and that drops Green Book to the bottom of this year’s lists.

7. Vice — I was a fan of Adam McKay’s cheeky approach to filmmaking in The Big Short, which was about the real estate collapse of 2008. This time, he tackles the career of former Vice President Dick Cheney, and employs many of the same techniques (e.g., cutting to instructional segments, having characters break the fourth wall to address the audience, inserting a snarky roll of the credits before the film has ended, satirizing the source of Cheney’s heart transplant). But this time around the techniques feel ham-handed and even unfair. (You have to trust that I am no fan of Cheney, so that doesn’t color my disappointment with Vice.) A friend called it “look at me” filmmaking that draws attention to itself, and I must agree this time. By the way, despite all this, Christian Bale’s transformation into Cheney is utterly brilliant, one of the two best impersonations on film this year.

6. A Star is Born — Bradley Cooper should be proud of his freshman directing effort. He is nominated for actor and adapted screenplay, he guided two other performers to nominations, and the whole shebang is up for best picture. An optimistic start for this side of the camera to be sure. Still the reality is that this is the fourth version of an 82-year-old story, and it has been a pretty creaky vehicle for a few decades now. While A Star is Born is undeniably entertaining, it hardly advances the art of cinema. I look forward to seeing what Cooper does next. In the meantime, it stands out in an otherwise tepid year.

5. The Favourite — In this costumed comedy of manners with a feminist twist, a sick and mad Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) rules England in 18th century England. Her friend, Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz), assists her and becomes the power behind the throne. A power play begins with the arrival of a new servant girl, Abigail (Emma Stone). Yorgos Lanthimos is a far-from-conventional director (re: The Lobster, which is either the most inventive or the most bizarre film you have ever seen). For my money, The Favourite has a few clever ideas sandwiched between longer stretches of somnambulant cinema, along with the most random uses of a fisheye lens I have ever seen. The abrupt ending is also unsatisfying. Still, you can savor the performances of Colman (a revelation to me), Weisz (pitch perfect as she disappears into her role) and Stone (who acquits herself very well in a role that goes beyond her usual contours).

4. Roma — Okay, let me throw this out there: I do not understand the fuss over Roma. First, I’m a huge fan of director Alfonso Cuarón, with work as varied as Gravity, his space adventure, to his dystopian masterpiece, Children of Men. I also admire Roma’s gorgeous black-and-white cinematography. But given that Roma is based on Cuarón’s childhood, I was notably unaffected and uninvolved with it, especially when compared to other memoirs, such as Boyhood, Lady Bird, or The Last Picture Show. I contend that Roma has several fatal flaws. First, the film is shot so wide that we never get too close to its subjects. Yes, there is a revolution in the streets outside the shop while Cleo is looking for a baby crib. But the wide panning shot, like the many others that dot Roma, eliminates the intimacy required to make one feel involved. Also many scenes go on much too long, as though Cuarón doesn’t trust us to get their points. Yes, we see that that the patrons’ marriage is falling apart, as symbolized by the father’s distraction over his auto is too big for the carport. But did we need such a long, laborious sequence to understand that? In the end, it is only a park job.

Finally, the biggest blemish is the depiction of Roma’s central character the family’s maid, Cleo (played by newcomer Yalitza Aparicio, and despite her glowing reviews, I think it is quite obvious from her poker-faced performance that she never acted before). Again, the camera literally and figuratively never gets close enough to provide insight into her character. Other than her unplanned pregnancy, what do we know about her? Where is she from? What are her motivations in life? Why does she meander from one quotidian episode to another in her life? (This article from the NewYorker expresses my concern quite well.)

And then Roma abruptly ends, not because it has reached the end of a story arc, but because it has run out of anything to say. These are not what I consider to be elements of a “Best Film.” I have no doubt that Roma will clean up this Sunday at the Oscars. I also predict we will look back on it in a few years and wonder what the big deal was.

3. Bohemian Rhapsody — Oh, damn, this film was just too much fun to be ignored. It is the story of Queen (no, it’s NOT the story of Freddy Mercury alone) and their rise to the upper levels of the pop/rock world with their hummable, feel-good records and anthems. Yes, there are the usual perfunctory tropes, as the band members meet and congeal as a unit, the record executive who didn’t believe in them (a snarling, clichéd and amusing Mike Myers), and their burgeoning success as told through posters and stage shots. But the artistic creation of their biggest hits make for interesting and entertaining segments, and the band’s triumphant final performance at Live Aid in Wembley Stadium is a sight to behold. I expect Rami Malek to sneak past Christian Bale to win Best Actor for his re-creation of Mercury.

2. Black Panther — I have been a fan of Ryan Coogler in successive stages. He first won me over when he directed the moving Fruitvale Station, the story behind Oscar Grant’s senseless killing on a San Francisco transit platform. Coogler got me again when he reinvented the moribund Rocky franchise by creating Creed. But those smaller-scale works never prepared me for his awesome control over the many technical challenges of Black Panther. It is the most “epic” film of the year, with its wide array of special effects, the ambitious production design, and its big stable of highly talented actors (who were honored as the best ensemble by the Screen Actors Guild). I hope Coogler gets other opportunities to direct similar high-end, high-budget projects. I would have this film at the top of my list if it weren’t for the screenplay, which I found to be an unwieldy and confusing mess. Still, like Bradley Cooper, Coogler has nowhere to go but up.

1. BlacKkKlansman — You have to hand it to Spike Lee; he wants his films to be about something. Whether it is a documentary about African American children killed in a church bombing (4 Little Girls), the decline of a musical artist (Mo Better Blues) or the biography of a misunderstood civil rights leader (Malcolm X), he is not killing time tossing off rom-coms or other cinematic fast food. He wants to produce work of substance.

That is why BlacKkKlansman is such a revelatory film. Lee takes a true but absurd premise — an African American policeman actually became a member of the Ku Klux Klan? — and produces a film that is both funny and thought-provoking on the issue of race relations in our country today. That is why I chose it as the best of this year’s Oscar-nominated films.

BlacKkKlansman opens with Ron Stallworth, an African American police officer from Colorado Springs, trying to find a meaningful assignment within the department. Over time, he manages to infiltrate the local Ku Klux Klan branch, and get a membership card. Due to complications caused by a crucial mistake by Stallworth, he must employ the help of a Jewish back-up (ably played by Adam Driver) to play him in person.

The conceit that works most effectively is how the film’s style models the TV crime shows of the 1970s, which is when the film takes place. Everything from the production design, the costuming, even the score by Terence Blanchard, evoke that era. Deeper still is the portrayal of the burgeoning civil rights turmoil of that time in all its underlying rage. Stallworth (played serviceably by Jon David Washington) finds his own identity in the course of the film.

Lee’s work at the helm is exceptional here, and I think it’s his best film since Do the Right Thing. The screenplay (for which Lee is one of four contributors) moves briskly through a tangled set of events, keeping the various loose ends in play, but never becoming confusing. As a director, he gets uniformly good performances from his players, a difficult task with a cast as large as this. One standout is Topher Grace, who is unexpectedly effective in the role of David Duke. Most significant is Lee’s sense of pacing. There is a complication with mistaken identity that sets in motion a threat to the safety of several major characters. Without giving it away, I was on the edge of my seat wondering how it would turn out. (Kudos to editor Barry Alexander Brown for his Oscar-nominated contribution to the taut and suspenseful rhythms of BlacKkKlansman.)

For the ability to take a long-ago incident and turn it into a film that is entertaining while remaining relevant to today’s zeitgeist, I pick BlacKkKlansman as the best of the nominated films of 2018.

Okay, I’m all talk. I will clear a space in my living room for this personal tradition. Even as I am likely to be chagrined to see Roma take everything in sight, I also hope to see justice prevail for Glenn Close. I hope she finds that the seventh time is a charm and she wins a well-deserved Oscar for The Wife. And Queen will be part of the ceremony, too. (The Academy ain’t saying what their role will be, but wouldn’t it be great to have them open the show?) Finally, let’s see how well the show goes without a host. I hope they BEG Kevin Hart to host next year. (I’m still rooting for Tiffany Haddish to host. I think she'd be great.)

As I said once before, the Oscar broadcast is kind of like sex: even when it’s mediocre, it’s still pretty good. Enjoy the show on Sunday. Maybe we’ll talk Monday morning.

Green Book and Ham

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Rocchi) — Fri, 25 Jan 2019 00:54:00 +0000

Race Relations Made Easy and False

NOTE: This dissection of the film Green Book refers to a few plot points. If you have not seen the film, you may want to hold off on reading this until later.

There was a bet between publisher Bennett Cerf and writer Dr. Seuss (neé Theodore Geisel) in 1960. Cerf, the founder of Random House, bet Seuss that he could not write a decent children’s book with a limited vocabulary that comprised only 50 words in total. Dr. Seuss took the bet, and he won it by creating the children's classic, Green Eggs and Ham.

That book turned out to be the most popular of Seuss’s works, selling a couple hundred million copies. It also provides an important lesson: You can make a point more easily and memorably if you limit your vocabulary. Apparently, the makers of the Oscar-nominated Green Book took this principle to heart.

Set in 1962, Green Book tells a tale of racial understanding between Dr. Don Shirley, an African American musician played by Mahershala Ali, and Tony Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen), an Italian American from the Bronx. As Don embarks on a performance tour through the American Midwest and the Deep South, he hires Tony to be his chauffeur. The titular “green book” was a series of publications African Americans used in that period to find restaurants and lodging that were safe and accommodating. So Tony is required not only to transport Don from point A to point B safely, but he would also provide protective muscle should any danger arise.

Their first meeting during a job interview is inauspicious. Don (holder of a doctorate in several disciplines) lives in an artists’ colony of sorts above Carnegie Hall. He enters the scene like a spirit, dressed in a gauzelike fabric and practically floating. We learn immediately through their conversation that he is much more refined than Tony. Even after Tony gets the job, there is distrust between them. For example, when Tony gets out of the car at the start of the trip to take a leak in the woods, he comes back to grab his wallet from the dashboard. Just to be sure; after all, a guy can’t be too careful, even with an employer who has way more money.

As the movie progresses, we find that they can both be quite insufferable. Don is often imperious; Tony is quick-tempered and impulsive. But true to form in such bromides, the two bond and teach each other “important lessons.” For example, Don edits Tony’s letters to his wife back in the Bronx to make them more eloquent (and, of course, he does it condescendingly). Tony teaches Don how to be more black because the good doctor is clearly out of touch with his “own people” (Tony’s term). We learn this when Don steps out of his car on a back road. A group of sharecroppers stare at this well-dressed man as though he has arrived from another planet. (This interminable sequence is just one example of Green Book’s lack of subtlety.) Tony teaches Don about his own culture by introducing him to Little Richard, Chubby Checker, and Aretha Franklin (the last a remarkable feat in itself, as Tony is playing Respect on the radio five years before the record was even released). Don reveals that he is estranged from his brother, and Tony, being Italian, gets to school him on "the importance of family." Finally, in what the filmmakers seem to consider an intercultural triumph, Tony introduces Don to fried chicken and helps the good doctor overcome his disdain for its greasiness.

There is no denying the chemistry between Ali and Mortensen. The two leads work hard to bring more substance to their portrayals than the script deserves. Ali conveys a genuine dignity in his reading of Don Shirley. With little more than a narrowing of Ali's eyes, one can feel the weight of the ignominies Don must endure in spite of his education and talent. One incident in a Deep South police station illustrates sharply how he copes with his rank in 1960s America. Don gets along by going along, often choking back his anger, swallowing his pride. And then again, sometimes he does not, which causes a different set of problems.

What is worst about Green Book is its “white savior” trope — the idea that black characters need to be rescued by white people.

Similarly, the remarkable Mortensen once again expands his resume with his depiction of an Italian American. His blond, Nordic hair is darkened, and his normally trim and saturnine build is overweight, bulging and menacing in a way we have not seen from him before. His spoken Italian is very good. This is especially evident when he shares the screen with other actors; his pronunciation is so much better. Yet I still found the stereotype insulting. Mortensen apparently went to the Sylvester Stallone School of Acting to learn how to play an Italian American, inarticulately mumbling his way through words. Tony can’t even spell. When he drafts a letter to his steadfast wife back home, his salutation is spelled d-e-e-r, not d-e-a-r.

In the end, one may say “so what?” to these shortcomings. After all, the movie is “nice.” The two principals come to care for each other, there is peace in the valley by the end, and they respond affirmatively to the question, “Can’t we all just get along?”

There are two problems with this conclusion. One is that the underlying story is just not true, going well beyond the slack that we assign to that nebulous concept, “artistic license.” Dr. Don Shirley’s remaining family has made quite clear that they were never consulted for the film, so the perspective is strictly from the Vallelongas’ side. For one thing, the Shirleys have stated that Tony was nothing more or less than an employee. And apparently, he was an annoying one. He would not wear his chauffeur’s uniform nor did he want to lift Don’s bags. The two men also did not remain friends after this adventure was over as the film states, according the Shirley family.

Shirley’s 2013 obituary in The New York Times never mentions Vallelonga or the tour through the Deep South. The implication that Don Shirley was not involved with the African American community or his own family is also not true. He attended many of the civil rights events of the era, and he was friends with many black artists, notably Duke Ellington. Shirley’s surviving brother, Maurice, said he and his other brothers were never estranged from Don. (It is reported that Ali contacted the Shirley family to apologize for misrepresenting Don.)

What is worst about Green Book is its continuation of the “white savior” trope in American film — the idea that black characters need to be rescued from their plights by a white man (or a white girl, as seen in The Help). As you review Shirley’s obituary, he was poised to make a mark on his own terms. He was a musical prodigy who, by necessity, created a singular style that crossed genres. He composed orchestral works that were admired by Igor Stravinsky. He played at La Scala in Milan, Carnegie Hall, and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Despite these accomplishments, he would not be addressed as “doctor,” and he could not pursue the career he truly wanted because the world was “not ready” for someone like him — a black classical artist.

If you are ready to take a serious look at the racial divisions in our society, don’t turn to Green Book. Even with the film’s virtues, such as the two sturdy lead performances, handsome cinematography, and graceful editing, its content is more representative of the attitudes of the Kennedy era in which it is set than those of today. It is also hampered by the limited lexicon of a white onlooker who was a bystander in the civil rights era. In the end, Green Book is not even a meal on a par with Green Eggs and Ham. It is pabulum.

Waiting for Sweetpea -- An Embryo by Any Other Name

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Rocchi) — Tue, 30 Oct 2018 18:45:00 +0000

What do you call a baby that hasn't arrived yet, and hasn't reached full capacity?

This was my dilemma when our daughter Julia announced that she was expecting our first grandchild. I first figured that I would call it he or she. But when I asked her and husband Matt if they knew the gender, she said, "Oh, we're not finding out. There are so few surprises in this world that we'd like to have this one."

All right then. How selfish of them. Didn't they know I needed a moniker to pin on this kid?
I thought back to when she first told Marie and me that she was expecting and said the baby was the size of a lentil. Yuk! What a stupid nickname for a baby. Lentil. Sounds like a Barbra Streisand musical movie. "Grandpa, can you hear me?"

But I remembered that we live in the Digital Age, so I asked Google, "What fruits and vegetables are the size of a lentil?" There was a long litany of lentil-like names, all unappealing, one popped up that seemed just right.

Sweetpea. Yes, a veggie the size of a lentil, but more euphoric.

What a great name! It's sweet! It's diminutive! It's non-gender-specific! I announced that this would be the name for this child in waiting. a way to personify this burgeoning life, and it took hold.

Jim and Peggy embraced it, as did our son, Francis, and his wife, Angela. Soon everyone was calling the baby-to-be this name.

"How is Sweetpea doing?," we'd ask Julia ("Doing the calypso right now, I think," as she winced in pain.)

Julia used the name all the time. "I was in a business meeting, and Sweetpea got bored and started kicking my bladder. I think Sweetpea wants out!"

Julia kept up with her improvisational comedy throughout her whole pregnancy, and she could tell that the baby was getting off on her performing. "I swear, I think my adrenaline went right to Sweetpea, who thought HE was on stage. I'm sure she was saying to the audience, "Thank you everyone. I especially want to thank my mother who made all this possible."

But now that we are near the end of this long strange trip, we four grandparents want to stop using Sweetpea and give it a real name. Problem is, not only do we not know the gender of the baby, we also don't know the names that Matt and Julia are considering. That is worrisome. It could be some really stupid or outdated names like Bertha for a girl and Elmer for a boy. Or worse, Bertha for a boy. (I apologize to any Bertha and Elmers who are reading this, but hey, face it, your names belong in the 19th century.)

So now we wait. What will the real name be? More important, what will this new person really be? Sweetpea carries the genetic fingerprints of parents, grandparents, millennia of traits going back generations. Will Sweetpea be a birder like Daddy and Grandma Peg? Will s/he get the facility with words that Mommy, Uncle Francis and Grandpop Pasquale have? Organization skills like Mommy and Grandmom Marie? Considered introspection of Grandpa Jim? The possibilities are broad.

What we really know is this. We are waiting for you, Sweetpea. We are looking to see the color of your eyes, the tint of your hair (if you are born with any), and whether or not you have a cleft in your chin. (The last trait comes from me. Hey, I want to have some positive biological imprint on this kid, certainly not my clumsiness with tools or my complete lack of physical coordination.)

But regardless of any of this, you will be loved and warmly welcomed into this world. Just hurry the hell up, Sweetpea. It's been a long 40 weeks.

Waiting for Sweetpea

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Rocchi) — Tue, 30 Oct 2018 01:22:00 +0000

Part 1 -- Annunciation

In spring 2018, our daughter, Julia, and Matt, her husband of 18 months, conducted an ambush on my wife and me.

Julia and Matt drove up from Arlington, Virginia, to help Marie and me declutter our suburban home. We had sold the house a month before to fulfill a longtime dream of moving into the big city of Philadelphia. We were empty-nesters, having married off our two kids in a 10-week sweep in 2016. Now we were selling off or donating loads of goods, as we were bound not to have enough room in our (not-yet-found) new home to accommodate it. Marie had already retired, and I was hatching a plot to escape my employment in mid-June. What was the point of retirement if we were bound by the same old possessions?

So Julia and Matt rented a truck to pick up our castoff furniture, garden tools and other goods for their home in Virginia. It was a busy day. Matt did a lot of heavy lifting. Julia rummaged through the memories that Marie had dutifully saved for her throughout her life. they included cards that accompanied baby gifts when she arrived in the world. Papers from her elementary and middle school days that foreshadow her career as a writer. Books, lots of them, more than I could imagine reading in a lifetime, but Julia made short work of them. Again, that foreshadowing thing.

Reading the cards and other congratulatory notes from her many years of youthful accomplished, Julia observed that she received a lot of love over the years. Indeed she
had. Even as a little girl, Julia was loved for her loving nature and admired for her intellect and drive.

She winnowed those items by about 80 percent.

We finally sat down to eat, all four of us tuckered out from the day’s work. Marie prepared a favorite Italian American meal of pasta, meatballs and sausage, and a green salad. I presume there was wine.

Julia decided to take advantage of the fact that we were together to make an announcement. While she had us together, she wanted to tell us her plans for my wife’s annual Christmas Eve feast of seven fishes (also known by its Italian nomenclature, “La Vigilia”). The event is well attended and much anticipated. A seat at the table is a hot item, so Julia surprised us with this request.

“I want to bring a guest to La Vigilia this year,” she announced.

I was surprised, even somewhat annoyed, and protective of Marie, since the seating around the table is tight. I was a bit miffed that she would impose on her mother that way, even months in advance.

“Who is it,” I asked. “Somebody we know?”

“Well, you don’t know the person yet, but I can guarantee you it will be small and not eat very much fish.”

I got it right away. I jumped up, put one hand out to Matt who was close to me, and I put my arm around him. “Congratulations, Matt, I said. In a burst of male empathy, I added, “Good job.”

It took a few moments longer for Marie to grasp that Julia was announcing her pregnancy. (It’s not usually like that. I’m traditionally the denser of the two of us.) Still, she stood up and asked plaintively “Are you telling me what I think you are?”

Their eyes welled up (business as usual for these two). They hugged. This announcement was a moment that we were not entirely sure would come, especially this soon into Matt and Julia’s marriage. Julia did not know just how easily she would get pregnant in her mid-30s. Not that she had any reason to worry, but she was also not taking it for granted. That was why she decided to tell us so early, just four weeks into the 40 necessary to bring this child to full viability.

“I wanted you to know now,” she said, “because I didn’t want the first news from me to be that I had a miscarriage.”

I asked one of the essential questions. "How big is the baby so far?"

Julia laughed. “It’s only about the size of a lentil.”

She was right. The baby had a long way to go before being able to eat fish on Christmas Eve.

We laughed our way through the remainder of dinner. Uncertainty be damned; this was a happy occasion, goddammit. Wine flowed for Matt, Marie and me, though not for the mother-to-be. Beside laughing, there wasn’t much else to say. This was a baby in theory only. There was a long stretch of road ahead.

Marie and I walked Julia and Matt to the door, hugged them over and over again and told them how happy we were. We watched them get into the car, and then we waved as they pulled away to return home.

When they were out of sight, I closed the door and set the latch. I turned and looked at Marie. Then I jumped up and down and stomped my feet on the foyer floor, pumped my hands in a celebratory motion.

“Yea!” That’s all I needed to say to Marie.

Sold our house after a week on the market. Retirement for Marie. A planned retirement for me. A new home at some point. Now to be first-time grandparents.

Yes, 2018 was going to be a big year.

Baby Boomers -- Fools for the City

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Rocchi) — Fri, 10 Aug 2018 22:31:00 +0000

How do you like the new view that my wife, Marie, and I have? Or our new neighbor, Billy Penn, who looms over our new home in Philadelphia?

Yep, we have finally made the move that we talked about (or bored our friends with) for the last 20 years. We ditched our home in the northwest suburbs and have relocated to Bella Vista, if not the heart of the city, at least one its main arteries.

It turns out we’re part of a trend, not that we have ever been particularly trendy. Consider this stat: Between 2009 and 2015, the number of renters in Philadelphia aged 55 and older jumped 22 percent (compared to an eight percent jump among millennials). As you poll or otherwise probe our generational peers who made this move, we find that our own reasons and drivers were similar. We downsized from our modest, though still oversized, 4BR suburban home, which had at least two more bedrooms than we needed. We don’t have kids at home anymore, having successfully educated them, kept them out of jail, and made them into model, tax-paying Americans. Thus, schools aren't an issue for us anymore. (If they were, Philly would be a bad bet).

Much to Do and View

Additionally, Marie and I are culture vultures, and the city is awash with museums, theater, exhibits, lectures and the like. On the greener side of things, recent Philly administrations invested in parks and other open space, as well as parking.

Excellent restaurants have long been a given in Philadelphia. And as a follow up to them, there are many hospitals and other healthcare facilities to tend to my clogging arteries and soaring glucose levels. Believe me, I’ll be looking for a new endocrinologist there.

There is also lifestyle. The area we moved from was a lovely place to raise our two kids, but once we stepped outside our traditional Colonial for a walk, there was little to do or even see. Heck, there were hardly any sidewalks, fercrissake. But yesterday, I walked to the local hardware store in my new neighborhood, and I saw more in that five-block walk than I did in the last two decades in my burbs. Plus the walk itself was good for my aging constitution.

Despite what may be counterintuitive to city haters, Philadelphia is affordable for us. Even on a fixed income, our years of equity building and selling my soul just to have a couple of pensions have given us more money for housing than most of the poor millennials who are loaded with college debt. (Note: Data from TenantCloud, a property management software service, show that nearly one-third of all urban applications are for renters over age 60. Another sign of the influx of boomers.)

Planning is Essential

Making this move was not a piece of cake. Decluttering nearly four decades of marriage and packing up an old life to make way for a new one in smaller quarters was not easy. But we were systematic about it. We kept a large poster board in our kitchen, and we covered it with Post-its to mark the things we had to do to make this move happen. That included primarily of deciding where we wanted to go, then getting our own home ready to sell.

The second part was harder and took more time to do. It took us about 18 months to empty the four-bedroom house we owned for nearly three decades (to the day, coincidentally; we turned it over to the new owners on the day after our 26^th anniversary of purchasing it). It’s amazing what things we call “shit” you can accumulate in that time. Extra CDs and DVDs went to the local library, until they cried “Uncle!” Unwanted or ignored miscellanea, such as books, artwork and the like went to Goodwill and other organizations. We hired junkers like JDog Junk Removal & Hauling to haul stuff away either for charitable donation or just to trash. Our contribution to the growing landfill problem in the USA.

Then we had to get our home ready, and there was much to do. It’s amazing how easily you can overlook certain things in your home when you are dealing with more mundane issues, oh, say like raising a couple of kids, figuring out how to contribute to their college education and their weddings, and replacing your job during the Great Recession. So in a relatively short time, we replaced the windows, replaced the roof, spruced up the bathrooms, and repainted and recarpeted the house.

These things work great in a sellers’ market. We put up our “for sale” sign on a Tuesday, and by the following Wednesday, we had two agreements of sale at our asking price. (We chose the one that had no contingencies.)

Living for the City

Next came the critical task of planning our new location. Did you see the reference above to a “sellers’ market?” That tiny detail made our search more challenging, and it took several months. (I suggest that you pick a reliable realtor, which seems obvious but is easy to overlook or flub. In our case, we were served by Ryan Kanofsky. He came to us when he followed up an online inquiry that Marie made. He e-mailed her, asking if she was looking; she said not yet. Ryan checked in with her patiently for five years. He was our guy, always turning over stones, making himself available on weekends, and advising us when he thought we were too enamored of a particular property. In the end, he, with help from his associate Caitlin Beck, came through for us.)

We shopped several downtown Philly locations, including Fairmount, Brewerytown, Queen Village, Center City and the Graduate Hospital area. All terrific, all worthy of consideration. But we landed in Bella Vista, the section considered the original Italian-American section of the city (even though early citizens also included Irish immigrants and African Americans who were former slaves).

Bella Vista is Italian for “beautiful view,” but it’s not the original name for the area. That name was part of a rebranding campaign in the early 1970s. Though Italian Americans still make up a large percentage of the population today, Bella Vista can still boast a good deal of the cultural diversity that we couldn’t get in the suburbs, including neighbors who are African American, Vietnamese and Mexican. We are so looking forward to this aspect of our new climes.

Our new home was voted “best neighborhood to live in Philadelphia” by Niche.com in 2016. There are plenty of parks and other green space, which are supported through a multitude of volunteers. The volunteer groups also produce public events in the parks such as summer concert series, yoga, and outdoor movies. There is a permanent community garden at 10th and Kimball, and the local athletic scene includes the sport that’s just right for an aging Italian American like me -- bocce.

So excuse me, I have to drop this blog to run to John’s Water Ice up the street for a traditional lemon ice and a soft pretzel. The prices are good, and the commute there is minimal. Just don’t tell my endocrinologist.

Among Oscar’s Slimmer Pickings, (Just) a Couple Stand Out This Year

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Rocchi) — Sun, 25 Feb 2018 14:56:00 +0000

I’m getting worried. This is the second year in a row that I am unenthused about the Oscar nominees. I am starting to believe that it’s the continuation of a trend, an inexorable decline in the film industry. Last year, I believed that all the nominated films were good, though none of them great. This year, I think my top two picks among the nominees are classics, but there are others that may not have been nominated in a better year. Some are out-and-out bad!

We may be witnessing a sea change where the best works are not being produced by traditional movie studios, but by upstarts like Amazon, Hulu and Netflix. Are less worthy projects and talents getting greenlighted today in Hollywood? I suspect that is the case.
For those of you who know my annual blog, you also know the drill: These are not my choices of the best films of 2017, nor are my predictions of who will win. This is how I rank this year’s Academy nominees, from worst to best, according to their innovation and uniquely cinematic quality. I often quote Roger Ebert’s single criterion: Which movie made me feel differently about film this year? That’s what I am looking at, and for the most part, I am underwhelmed.

FIRST, THE OVERLOOKED
It’s criminal that Taylor Sheridan’s Wind River received no recognition this year. Attribute that to the producer, that major persona non grata, Harvey Weinstein. Anything connected to him is cursed in Hollywood this year, maybe forever.

As director and screenwriter Sheridan showed in Hell or High Water, he is a master at many elements of cinematic storytelling. Here, a master tracker with the Fish and Wildlife Service (played with cool efficiency by Jeremy Renner) helps to investigate the murder of a young Native American woman in Alaska. As the story unravels, so does a tale of isolation, male dominance, cultural segregation, and, ultimately and hopefully, redemption. Well-acted throughout, a special shout out goes to Elizabeth Olsen, who gives a fine supporting performance as a law enforcement officer assigned to the case. (NOTE FOR LATER: I felt much more connected to this theme of heartache over a young woman’s murder than I did months later with an ostensibly similar film, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri.)

THE UNDESERVING
9. The Phantom Thread — Mark Twain quipped that a classic book is “something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.” Same with some “prestige” films like The Phantom Thread — people feel they should see them, but most can’t sit through them. Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Phantom Thread starts well enough as a handsomely detailed character study of 1950s London fashion designer, Reynolds Woodcock (stunningly played by Daniel Day-Lewis). The film shows Woodcock’s devotion to his craft, but with little room for anything or anyone else. Then enters Alma (Vicky Krieps), who eerily and without explanation becomes Galatea to Woodcock’s Pygmalion. As we sit through Woodcock’s cakewalks, his personal quirks, and a murder plot that seems to come from another movie, the film eventually goes nowhere. The last cryptic shot of the film embodies the feelings of the audience with whom I shared this film: What was that about?

8. The Post —Director Steven Spielberg tells the story of how The Washington Post struggled to publish the Pentagon Papers, a classified document whose release helped end the Vietnam War. Meryl Streep gives a perfectly fine and nuanced performance as publisher Katherine Graham, though I never for a moment bought Tom Hanks as Ben Bradlee. As a film about journalism, we get some cinematic flourishes, like close-ups of flashing phone buttons and trucking shots through a newsroom, spicing up an otherwise static story (this is Spielberg, after all). But I feel as though I saw this movie 40 years ago when All the President’s Men was released (which received a respectful nod in The Post’s final shot). Ultimately, The Post is much like eating your broccoli. Yes, it’s good for you and much more nutritious than other sugary fare. But it’s also not particularly interesting or very much fun.

7. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri — If I could give an award for “most overrated film of the year,” this would win hands down. I admit that I liked Frances McDormand in a focused, flinty performance. Another underappreciated favorite of mine, Sam Rockwell, injects some semblance of subtlety into a role that is grossly overwritten (emphasis on gross, in view of the gratuitous homophobic violence he commits). Both performers deserved more than this hot mess of a script — a grab bag of melodramatic, cheap theatrics with no narrative cohesion. Also, I felt no connection with any of the film’s characters, which is inexcusable in a film about an unsolved rape & murder. It all leads to an opaque and equivocal ending that is less thought-provoking than it is a device for ending the film because the screenwriter had nothing left to say. This may well win Best Picture, but I didn’t like it one bit.

FLAWED COMPETITORS
6. Darkest Hour — This could have turned out to be just one more account of how Winston Churchill singlehandedly dragged the U.K. by its collective lapels into World War II. But it turns out to be more. Directed crisply by Joe Wright (a tidy 89 minutes!), we first see Churchill’s late-life rise to power as Europe begins falling to Hitler’s lust for domination. Churchill stands alone as the leader who recognizes der Fuhrer’s threat, and we see how the Prime Minister rises, falls, and ultimately triumphs in guiding Britain to leadership. The film is ultimately driven by Gary Oldman’s bravura lead performance. (Please, let’s just hand this most respected actor the Oscar he has been denied so long.) The Book of Proverbs says that “where there is no vision, the people perish.” Darkest Hour reminds us to thank our stars that Churchill arrived in time to promote a singular vision of a free world.

5. Call Me by Your Name — In its Italian pastoral setting, Luca Guadagnino’s film strikes a somnambulant tone that is sometimes too much (too little?) to bear. But look more closely to uncover its universal theme of longing and burgeoning adulthood in this story about Elio, a seventeen-year-old boy, and Oliver, a charismatic older man. In one of the most moving performances of the year, Timothée Chalamet conveys attraction, metamorphosed into love, only to lose that fleeting happiness to the realities of the world. Though the film is too languid for my tastes, there is no mistaking its tenderness, captured perfectly in the heartbreakingly long final shot. Special note: Watch actor Michael Stuhlberg performance in a poignant penultimate scene as Elio’s father. This fine actor is unrecognizable in The Post, The Shape of Water, even as Edward G. Robinson in Trumbo. Look for him in other films, if you can find him.

4. Lady Bird — More than another coming of age film, Lady Bird is a sweet memoir that felt as fresh to me as its title character, played by the wondrous Saoirse Rowan. (How does this young Irish woman play American so well?) Rowan is supported ably by the rest of the cast, particularly Laurie Metcalf as her all-too-human mother, Tracy Letts as the supportive and understanding father, and Lois Smith as Sister Sarah Joan, the Catholic school principal. (The good sister has one of the most poignant lines when she compliments Lady Bird on the fullness of her writing. The girl says, “I guess I pay attention.” Sister Sarah Joan responds, “Don't you think maybe they are the same thing? Love and attention?”) Likewise, Lady Bird flourishes under the attention of director and screenwriter Greta Gerwig, who shows us just how challenging it is to grow into adulthood. A familiar story told touchingly by the ascendant Gerwig.

3. The Shape of Water — Much to love in this magical movie about a mysterious, saturnine amphibious creature that is captured in a Cold War-era lab and subjected to a cruel study. The flawless design evokes both the time and the Silver Age of DC comics, which were awash in sci-fi settings. Sally Hawkins is luminous as Elisa Esposito, the mute cleaning woman who begins communicating with her fellow misfit. Though Director Guillermo del Toro weaves these elements into a unique vision, he goes astray in several ways: A fantasy dance sequence seems lifted from The Artist. A room flooded for a romantic encounter strains credulity, even for a fantasy. Add interspecies coitus, and this overly long (by at least 20 minutes) concoction turns…silly; no other word for it. Del Toro will likely win Best Director, and I agree he shows a gift for using film to create an otherworldly world. This movie would be at the top of my list if he had also shown some restraint.

BEST OF CLASS OF 2017
2. Dunkirk — With 2007’s Atonement and this year’s Darkest Hour (both directed by Joe Wright, coincidentally), plus this epic by Christopher Nolan, it appears the “miracle of Dunkirk” is getting new attention — a miracle because in May 1940, nearly 340,000 Allied forces were rescued from the French seaport of Dunkirk, mostly by civilian boats. (Had those troops perished, it is likely that the Nazis would have prevailed in World War II.) Dunkirk eschews the templates of previous war movies; rather than telling the story through characters, this movie places us directly in the bedlam of war, alternating between land, sea and air. Driven by highly credible re-creations of battle and anchored by powerful and compact performances, Dunkirk’s ultimate moral is how individuals can combine their forces to make a huge difference. Nolan makes large scale, larger-than-life filmmaking fashionable again.

1. Get Out — I have long admired comedian Jordan Peele’s witty takes and commentaries on race, violence, the National Football League, and other pertinent social issues as half of the Key and Peele TV show. But that insightful work didn’t prepare me for his jaw-dropping debut as a screenwriter and director in Get Out. With this film, he reinvents the horror genre in a way I would never imagine, injecting a social theme (specifically, race relations) into it, and it is not merely a perfunctory exercise. It is trenchant and powerful.

Daniel Kaluuya plays Chris Washington, an African American student and photographer, who is preparing to visit the home of his white girlfriend, Rose Armitage (Allison Williams of Girls, in an underrated performance). He asks if her parents know he is black; after all, he knows all too well the danger (or at least the discomfort) that lurks in such a situation. She assures him that all is okay. Instead, when Rose’s parents meet Chris, they are actually very accommodating, even a bit nervous. Overbearing, in fact. There are some patronizing comments from the dad, Dean Armitage (deliciously played by Bradley Whitfield). Example: “I would have voted for Obama a third time if I could have.” Mother Missy (an eerie Catherine Keener) stays more in the background, making her formidable presence known later.

Eventually, we learn that Dean, Missy and all their friends have a keen interest in black people, but for a horrifying reason. Chris’s uncovering of that secret forms the ensuing plot of this clever and fast-moving film. But don’t be misled by the chase scenes and comic relief (the latter supplied mostly by comedian LilRel Howery in a hilarious turn as Chris’s friend, Rod, proud of his stature as a TSA agent). Peele makes pointed statements about how we as American people cannot talk to each other, and also how racism causes many people to devalue others. As an auteur, he is smart, insightful and resourceful. Most important to his filmmaking aspirations, Peele is also efficient and polished: Get Out is well paced, clocking in at just an hour and 44 minutes, certainly not bloated as many first films can be. And it is economical. The film was made for just $5 million, and having grossed more than $30 million, it is profitable several times over. That alone should boost Peele’s stock in Hollywood. I can’t wait to see what new projects will come his way as a result of this success. Same for Daniel Kaluuya; he is a revelation in his role as Chris, and he was deservedly nominated for an Academy Award for his nuanced performance.

For its witty and perceptive screenplay, the integration of special effects, a uniformly high caliber of performances, and above all, its consistent vision of its theme, I see Get Out as the best film among the Oscar nominees this year.

On March 4, Oscar turns 90, and it is satisfying to see so much diversity behind the camera in many craft categories being honored this year. They are all well-deserved, adding a special touch to this year’s ceremony. I will be looking forward, past this year’s ceremony, toward the 2018 crop of films, hoping that they can raise the ante a little bit for next year’s ceremony.

Oscars 2017 — Pat’s Picks, Predictions and Potential Threats to Your Pool

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Rocchi) — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 19:52:00 +0000

Going to an Oscar party this Sunday night? If so, here is help for your Oscar pool —my fearless predictions for who will win, who should win, and the nominees who might upset the Academy’s applecart in the top six categories: picture, director and the four acting categories. (For those of you who doubt my credentials, I have a success rate above 90 percent, and even when I am not correct, I am always certain.)

Truthfully, this year’s prognostication is a bit easier because of the momentum of La La Land, the frontrunner with 14 nominations. While a backlash against the film is possible, I doubt it. The film is appealing, accessible, and it is about Hollywood’s favorite subject: Itself. So it should dominate the awards, even against more deserving competition. Here is how I see the race shaping up:

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

MAHERSHALA ALI — Moonlight
JEFF BRIDGES — Hell or High Water
LUCAS HEDGES — Manchester by the Sea
DEV PATEL — Lion
MICHAEL SHANNON — Nocturnal Animals

PREFERENCE — Mahershala Ali. I never saw Ali’s work before, but he captivated my attention in this film and also with a gentle yet commanding turn in Hidden Figures. I am a fan of his going forward, and I’m cheering for him here.
PREDICTION — Mahershala Ali. Ali won the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award, and the actors comprise the largest block in the Academy membership. Also, his lovely supporting performance in Hidden Figures allows the Academy to honor his body of work for the year.
POOL DISRUPTOR? — Dev Patel. Patel has been a reliable actor since he was in a previous best picture, Slumdog Millionaire. He also won the UK’s BAFTA award, so he could steal this. However, it’s more likely that the nomination itself is his recognition.

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

VIOLA DAVIS — Fences
NAOMIE HARRIS — Moonlight
NICOLE KIDMAN — Lion
OCTAVIA SPENCER — Hidden Figures
MICHELLE WILLIAMS — Manchester by the Sea

PREFERENCE — Viola Davis. Davis conveys a wide variety of emotions throughout this film, ranging from joy, to disappointment, to sorrow, to anger, and finally to acceptance. No actress supported a film as magnificently as she did.
PREDICTION — Viola Davis. Davis could have been submitted for lead actress but traded down to ensure a win. One of Hollywood’s most respected players, she has won everything else in this award season, and she is due.
POOL DISRUPTOR? — Sorry, but no one will upset Ms. Davis. I have as much of a chances of nabbing this award as the other four nominees do. This is as close to a lock as you will ever see in an Oscar race.

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

CASEY AFFLECK — Manchester by the Sea
ANDREW GARFIELD — Hacksaw Ridge
RYAN GOSLING — La La Land
VIGGO MORTENSEN — Captain Fantastic
DENZEL WASHINGTON — Fences

PREFERENCE — Viggo Mortensen. As the iconoclast raising his kids off the grid, forced to face the real world (literally and figuratively) during a tragedy, Mortenson gives a believable and original performance. But he is a Hollywood outsider, so unlikely to win here.
PREDICTION — Denzel Washington. Affleck had been the front-runner (which I don’t get, given his monotonous, zombie-like performance). But his recent bad behavior has reportedly turned off voters. Between that and his SAG win, the iconic Washington is poised for his third Oscar.
POOL DISRUPTOR? — Ryan Gosling. He reached outside his range by singing and dancing in La La Land. Given that the film is this year’s darling, he could possible ride its coattails to his first Oscar in an upset.

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

ISABELLE HUPPERT — Elle
RUTH NEGGA — Loving
NATALIE PORTMAN — Jackie
EMMA STONE — La La Land
MERYL STREEP — Florence Foster Jenkins

PREFERENCE — Emma Stone. Okay, her singing and dancing were passable. But when Stone emoted in this role, she showed a range most performers don’t have. She’s this year’s Jennifer Lawrence; she is already due for an Oscar even at her young age.
PREDICTION — Emma Stone. Since her breakout in Easy A, Stone has worked steadily and reliably, amassing an impressive portfolio. Given her SAG victory over much of this same field, and the way Oscar likes pretty young woman, the odds favor her.
POOL DISRUPTOR? — Isabelle Huppert. A respected and much-honored European actress, voters may feel her time has come (surprisingly, her first Oscar nod), and that younger actresses like Stone and Negga still have time, while Portman and Streep already have their Oscars.

BEST DIRECTOR

LA LA LAND — Damien Chazelle
MOONLIGHT — Barry Jenkins
HACKSAW RIDGE — Mel Gibson
MANCHESTER BY THE SEA — Kenneth Lonergan
ARRIVAL — Denis Villeneuve

PREFERENCE — Denis Villeneuve. Villeneuve fashioned an otherworldly world, portraying extraterrestrials uniquely, creating a new language, and manipulating the time/space continuum. Considering that La La Land’s Chazelle openly cribbed from a variety of past musicals, Villeneuve’s work was startlingly original by comparison.
PREDICTION — Damien Chazelle. When Chazelle made Whiplash some years back, I called him an emergent and visionary artist. Now he’s made the feel-good movie in a year when we really needed something to feel good about, and he’ll be rewarded for that.
POOL DISRUPTOR? — Barry Jenkins. Jenkins is the flavor of the month, making his first feature on a shoestring, turning a profit with it, and shining a light on a neglected segment of society. He could be a surprise winner here.

BEST PICTURE

ARRIVAL
FENCES
HACKSAW RIDGE
HELL OR HIGH WATER
HIDDEN FIGURES
LA LA LAND
LION
MANCHESTER BY THE SEA
MOONLIGHT

PREFERENCE — Arrival. Perplexing and challenging, Arrival’s cinematic qualities are unique. It moves us not only around our world and beyond, but to the interiors of its characters, exploring how we may choose to love, even in the face of preordained tragedy.
PREDICTION — La La Land. Singing and dancing, starring two young and charming performers. What’s not to love about this confection? People complain that “They just don’t make movies like that anymore!” Damian Chazelle did, establishing his future in Hollywood by mining its past.
POOL DISRUPTOR? — Hidden Figures. This won the SAG‘s “best ensemble” prize — essentially that group’s best picture award. Could there be an undercurrent of Oscar voters dying to honor this sweet movie? If any film is poised to upset LLL, this could be it.

Feel free to toast me when you astound your friends and family with your uncanny predictions. And if it turns out that I’ve misled you, just load up on the guacamole dip and enjoy the rest of the party. After all, it’s only the Oscars.

Oscars 2017 -- Slim Pickings in a So-so Year

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Rocchi) — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 02:27:00 +0000

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has suggested which movies of 2016 are the best. The result for me is that I am less interested in this Oscar cast that I have been since Driving Miss Daisy nabbed the top prize in a snoozer of a ceremony.

This is a down year for me. There are many good films here, but none that I would term great. I doubt that there are any classics here, and I also don’t think that the Academy overlooked any hidden or underappreciated gems. Simply put, I think there were slim pickings in 2016.

Still, this is a task I take on, so here is how I rank the nine nominated films, in descending order. These are not my predictions, but my estimation of their innovation, uniquely cinematic quality, and overall excellence. I have often stated that I follow the Roger Ebert rule. I think the best film of a given year should make me look at cinema differently. Only one film did that for me in 2016.

By the way, there is one common positive element among all the nominated films this year: The acting is really good, not just among the Oscar nominees, but throughout all the casts. It used to be said that film is a director’s medium while the stage belongs to actors. But this year’s crop of performances must have been hard to pare down. Bravo to all.

So here goes.

How Did That One Get In?

9. Lion — This movie has all the earmarks of Oscar bait: A pathetic child. Let’s elaborate on that: Make that “a pathetic child who is separated from parents.” Heart-rending absences. Climax of an inevitable and predictable closing. (I won’t detail the closing because I don’t want you to say I spoiled it for you. But if you operate on a mental level above Forrest Gump’s, you’ll see it coming a mile away.) The plot of this two-hour film could have been told in about 40 minutes. Instead, it is padded with B reel of train rides, Google Earth looking down on terrains, and faces filled with longing. While I am happy to see Dev Patel get an overdue acting nomination, Lion is the Filomena of 2017, a cloying film that breaks no cinematic or scriptwriting ground, but instead relies on sentimental clichés.

Worthy Competitors

8. Fences —Denzel Washington’s challenge in directing Fences was to free it from its stage origins. While the film is still more talky and “stagey” than you want a film to be, Washington triumphs in the raw emotion he conveys, thanks to the wonderful performances he elicits from his skilled cast. Yes, let’s just hand Viola Davis her Oscar now. What you’ve heard is correct; she IS that great as long-suffering Rose, wife of protagonist Troy Maxson. Washington himself is terrific in the lead, and given his recent Screen Actors Guild award, I predict he will win Best Actor. They are both ably supported by a fine cast, including Stephen McKinley Henderson, Jovan Adepo, Russell Hornsby and Mykelti Williamson. August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize –winning play (which he adapted for this movie) has created a new Death of a Salesman, replete with anguish, disillusionment and betrayal. Washington has honored Mr. Wilson’s work with this adaptation.

7. Moonlight — I admire much about this freshman effort from director Barry Jenkins. The autobiographical story of its main character, Chiron, is moving as the young man gropes for his place in the world. Moonlight is also filled with terrific performances, particularly Naomie Harris as Chiron’s crack-addicted mother and Mahershala Ali as the neighborhood drug dealer who mentors the boy. That Jenkins could shoot his film so quickly and so quickly and have it turn a profit is remarkable. However, I found that its torpid third act, which goes nowhere for the longest time, killed the momentum built to that point. I expect a well-deserved Oscar for Ali, who is charismatically electrifying in every frame he fills. I also foresee an undeserved adapted screenplay award to Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney. I predict that in a few years we will wonder what the hubbub of this film was about.

6. Hacksaw Ridge — This film tells the dramatic story of Desmond Doss, a conscientious objector during The Good War who ends up winning the Congressional Medal of Honor, not by killing a single enemy soldier but by saving 75 fellow soldiers. I found Hacksaw Ridge to be the most technically accomplished film of all nine nominees. Its cinematography, production design, editing and special effects are superb. Though the film is a little long, director Mel Gibson still manages to navigate the narrative skillfully. Along the way he gets fine performances from his actors, your typical Hollywood cast of ethnic and temperamental misfits who come together (predictably) on the battlefield. Andrew Garfield does a fine job of bringing Doss’s unlikely story to life. It is a story well worth telling, and Doss is a man who deserves to be remembered. I am grateful for Hacksaw Ridge.

5. Hidden Figures —Hidden Figures tells the story of three African-American women who worked for NASA during the nascent years of the U.S. space program. Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) is the impossibly brilliant mathematician at the center of the film. Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) takes it upon herself to guide the space agency into the computer age, wresting control of the behemoth IBM machine that lands there. Finally, Janelle Monáe is Mary Jackson, fighting in court to attend a segregated classroom to become an engineer. The trifurcated story moves gracefully under the skillful direction of Theodore Melfi. There are cliché moments to be sure (The boss crowbars the sign to a segregated ladies’ room! The snooty white male mathematician gets his comeuppance!). Still, even though Hidden Figures does not always amount to high drama, it typifies Hollywood when its heart is in the right place.

4. Hell or High Water — Such a pleasure to see this polished gem get the recognition of Oscar love! Hell or High Water is a fitting morality tale for this era of resentment against the haves of this country by their victims. Two brothers rob banks so they can get back the ranch that was once theirs — hitting the very banks that bilked their family! Solid performances abound. Chris Pine and Ben Foster as the brothers play two men searching for justice rather than revenge, with Pine measured and controlled and Foster like a pop bottle ready to explode in the hot Texas sun. Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham anchor the film with supporting performances as the sheriff and deputy hunting the criminals. David Mackenzie shows a real feel for the land and character portrayed in the movie, directing this film with an economy and focus that wastes not a frame.

3. La La Land —La La Land begins on a Los Angeles off-ramp filled with stalled cars. Suddenly the drivers dance in one of the most vibrant movie openings ever filmed. We also meet Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) and Mia (Emma Stone), who are searching for love and stardom, he as a jazzman, she as an actress. What an opening!
Apparently this film is everyone’s darling, but after this auspicious opening, it moves unevenly, charming at times, but also settling to a snail’s pace. I liked La La Land, but not as much as everyone else seems to, and not even as much as I wanted to. How groundbreaking is a musical that admittedly borrows liberally from past works? Also, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone kind of sing and dance, but not well enough to anchor a movie like this. I appreciate the chutzpah of making a musical in these grouchy times, but it didn’t make my number 1.

(As a bonus to my readers, here is a link to a Saturday Night Live sketch that I loved. It features a suspect being grilled by the police for having the impudence NOT TO LOVE LA LA LAND! It also helps explain why it didn't make the top of my list.)

2. Manchester by the Sea —Lee Chandler is a struggling laborer, suffering silently through an untold tragedy (voiced later in a heartbreaking piece of acting by Michelle Williams). Then Lee is unexpectedly tasked with caring for his late brother’s son, a role he neither wants nor seems suited to. As we slowly uncover Lee’s character in Kenneth Lonergan’s moving screenplay, there are no grand heroics. We witness the quotidian triumphs we achieve in our everyday responsibilities. Some films eschew cheap sentiment, loud music, and other tricks to move us. Better films earn our engagement by appealing to our common humanity. Manchester by the Sea is a fine example of the latter, a movie that seems populated by real people like you and me. (By the way, one negative point here: I do not get the acclaim for Affleck in the lead. I don’t believe that moping around with your mouth open constitutes great acting.)

1. Arrival — Roger Ebert once stated that film directors are “set free from the rules of the physical universe and the limitations of human actors, and can tell any story his mind can conceive.” This principle puts Arrival at the top of my list of the Oscar-nominated films of 2016. I found it to be the entry that most tested our notions of how to use film not only to tell a story but to challenge our imaginations.

Arrival is what’s known as “a thinking person’s science fiction movie.” Sometimes that phrase refers to a movie that is absent special effects and, worse, dull. But Arrival is perplexing and complicated, and it is also surprisingly moving. The story begins when spaceships from an unknown, unnamed planet land at seemingly random spots around the world. A group of linguists, including Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is gathered to determine how to communicate with these aliens. What is their mission? Are they on earth in peace or to conquer us?

To complicate matters for us, the viewer, director Denis Villeneuve has the film jump back and forth in time and place, showing Louise with a small child and then a young adult woman. Is this one and the same person? What is the story here?

I can’t say too much more so as not to give away the plot. But I will say that I have viewed great films over the years that use editing to alter our sense of time and place and also to advance several stories at one time. Examples include the great silent film, Intolerance, as well as Citizen Kane, Nashville, Crash and Inception. Villeneuve took a seemingly unfilmable short story and brought it to life on the big screen, testing our very notion of this temporal world (a key plot point) as only cinema can.
NOTE: Villeneuve is in the post-production of Blade Runner 20149, the sequel set 30 years after the original. I can’t wait to see what he does with that material.

So once again, I will take a look at next Sunday’s broadcast, curious to see who wins but not in very much suspense. I will probably not even be overly engaged. I expect La La Land to take the lion’s share of the prizes (e.g., best picture, director, actress, probably score and one of the songs, maybe even best original screenplay). But I am already holding out to see what is released in the remainder of 2017, hoping for some films that are a little bit better that this year’s crop.

My Look at Oscar's Nominees (and One More for Good Measure)

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Rocchi) — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 18:46:00 +0000

Another year, another list of nominees, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has suggested which films released in 2015 may be the best. For me, this is a down year. Twelve months ago, I wrote in this annual blog that I could make a case for any of the eight films that were nominated. And I termed my top film, Birdman, a film for the ages. This year, I am underwhelmed. I found all the nominated films good, but none of them great. In fact, I think the Academy whiffed on the truly best film of the year, and that will be my bonus selection later.

As in years past, I rank the nominated films in ascending order. This is not my prediction of who will win, but how I rank the films against each other according to their innovation and uniquely cinematic quality.

The Head-Scratcher
8. Bridge of Spies —Steven Spielberg has lately turned largely to history in his films (e.g., Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan and Lincoln, all masterpieces in my view). Bridge of Spies takes place during the Cold War, and in Spielbergian fashion, it hits the right notes at first. The film boasts two skillfully understated performances: the reliable Tom Hanks as James Donovan, the negotiator horse trading with the Soviet Union to bring home not just U2 pilot Gary Powers, but also an unjustly jailed math student, and Mark Rylance as Rudolf Abel, the Russian spy who is trade bait. Yet this film left me cold in the end, overly long, with a pace that often had me checking my watch. I found nothing cinematically outstanding about it, so it’s the one film here that has wondering how it was included.
(I would have preferred to see Ryan Coogler’s Creed get this spot. Coogler essentially rebooted the Rocky franchise for the 21st century, and that was daring. After this film and Fruitvale Station, I look forward to seeing more from this talented filmmaker.)

Worthy Competitors
7. Room — Film at its best creates an entire world that envelopes its viewers. Director Lenny Abrahamson has accomplished the impossible: He re-creates a tiny world where Ma and her five-year-old son, Jack, live — a 10-foot space, a universe Jack knows only as “room.” In short order, we learn Ma (nee Joy Newsome) was kidnapped at age 19 by “Old Nick,” a neighborhood psychopath who built “room” solely to hold her prisoner. We can infer that Jack is the Nick’s son, born and raised in captivity, yet thriving because of Ma.
Brie Larson brings the character of Ma to life admirably, including the phases of peaceful protection, planning the escape, and dealing with its aftermath. She is likely to be named best actress, a deserving honor, though I would prefer that Charlotte Rampling win for her elegance nuances in 45 Years. Still, Room is a noteable achievement; like Ma, it thrives triumphantly within its confines.

6. The Revenant — You may be surprised at my low ranking for this film, director Alejandro González Iñárritu's follow-up to Birdman, last year’s best picture. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Hugh Glass, a trapper left for dead in the woods. When he revives, he seeks revenge on his would-be murderer (Tom Hardy). DiCaprio is brilliant in a feral and virtually wordless performance, which leaves him to communicate Glass's pains, fears and hatred through his face and grunts. The Revenue has many merits, most notably Emmanuel Lubezki‘s startling cinematography. He and Iñárritu committed to shooting the entire film in natural light, and the result is a spectral tone poem that testifies to the power and beauty of nature. But I also found The Revenant to be bloated in length, at least 30 minutes too long. DiCaprio will likely (finally) get his Oscar. In addition to the awards for cinematography, I think it may capture direction and Best Picture. But it’s not at the top of my list.

5. The Martian — This is an audience favorite that is also as finely crafted a film as they come. Credit that to veteran director Ridley Scott (still without an Oscar! And no nomination this year!). In a tidy and economical piece of opening exposition, we meet astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) and his fellow explorers on Mars. Soon Watney is stranded when the crew mistakenly escapes without him. The Martian documents Watney’s survival techniques, whether it’s his protection from the elements or his ingenious use of (his own) human waste to grow food. Ultimately, the film is about our human connections, as Watney’s plight becomes a cause célèbre back on planet Earth. Though the final scenes are both emotionally overwrought and somewhat corny, they are also genuinely exciting and moving. The Martian delivers the fun and reminds us why we love the movies.

4. Brooklyn — This exquisite film is anchored by the lovely Saoirse Ronan, who plays Eilis, a young Irish woman who makes the difficult decision to move to America for a better life. The film documents her entry to the new world as sensitively as any since the Ellis Island scenes in The Godfather II. Eilis finds work through the patronage and guidance of her fellow Irish who had preceded her. She even falls in love with an unlikely Italian American (a career-making performance by Emory Cohen). But when a personal tragedy leads Eilis back to Ireland, she faces a personal crucible that teaches her the true meanings of home, country and identity. I don’t expect this flawless gem of a movie to win one Oscar, but let’s at least pay attention to its star. If you want to remember her name, just know that it’s pronounced “Ser-sha,” like inertia — indicative, I hope, of this talented actress’s momentum.

The Contenders
These last three films are my personal favorites, and I think they may also be the finalists for the top prize. If any one of these wins Best Picture, I’ll be pleased.

3. Spotlight — It’s said a picture is worth a thousand words. Spotlight proves the opposite — that a superlative script is worth a thousand gratuitous visuals. It is about the Boston newspaper team that uncovered the child abuse scandal covered up by the archdiocese.
But “uncover” may be too strong a word; the journalists more or less stumble upon the case, learning that the facts may have been under their noses for too long. On one hand, much of Spotlight is All the President’s Men for the 21st century, detailing the shoe-leather procedurals that slowly revealed the facts of the case. But on a deeper level, it is also about the complicity of so many Bostonians who may have turned their heads in an effort to leave well enough alone. That may be the illustrative point of this deceptively remarkable film.

2. The Big Short — Hollywood should just take Michael Lewis’s manuscripts and make movies from them before they even go to press. After Moneyball and The Blind Side, Lewis’s books are clearly box office gold in the right hands. Director Adam McKay — a man known for such silliness as Anchorman I and II, Talladega Nights and Step Brothers — created this smart and fast-moving film about the collapse of the real estate market and the wise guys who capitalized on it. McKay’s many clever techniques to instruct the audience include subtitles, cutaways to instructional segments (Anthony Bourdain and a fish stew analogy! Margo Robby in a bubble bath!), even breaking the fourth wall, where characters turn mid-scene and address the audience directly. Mix in the imaginative editing that adds an urgent energy, and you have what is probably the best film ever about finances. The funniest, too.

1. Mad Max: Fury Road — I tend not to like action films like these, but I was enthralled by George Miller's 21st century incarnation of his dystopian saga. This film was extremely well crafted, including the production design, the non-stop film & sound editing, and particularly the wonderful cinematography by Oscar-winner John Seale. Even though I predicted that The Revenant would be the film to beat for the cinematography Oscar, Seale's work is at least equal.
Miller, like Ridley Scott, shows that directors can maintain their chops into their seventh decade. While some may be turned off by the cacophonous energy and visual onslaught of Mad Max, I encourage viewers to look past that and concentrate instead on the imagination and superb execution that Miller and his team brought to this ambitious and stunning piece of work.

So this was the list of nominees I had to work with. But I think the Academy blew it this year, so I am going to name my own best film of the year, which is…

INSIDE OUT
If movies’ goals are to make us see a compelling message, then Inside Out is this year’s most absorbing film. This remarkable, primary-hued romp is set inside the mind of Riley, an 11 year-old whose world is turned upside down after her father’s job forces her family to move from the familiar confines of Minnesota to the alien world of San Francisco. Well, actually, many of us know that the City by the Bay is spectacularly lovely… but not to this preteen whose fragile and still-developing psyche is not yet equipped to handle such change.

The script is smart, and it brings to life and to bright light the difficulties of preadolescent youth. It would be easy to dismiss the script as an adaptation of Psychology for Dummies. That would be too easy. It takes a lot of smarts to write a movie about such an arcane subject as the interior workings of the human mind, and an 11-year-old human mind at that.
We encounter all this tumult among the avatars who live inside Riley’s head. The leader is the indomitable Joy, joyfully voiced by the perfectly cast Amy Poehler. Bill Hader plays Fear, high strung, high energy and high maintenance. Mindy Kaling is Disgust, and who else could play Anger but Lewis Black, as volcanic on screen and aurally as he is on stage. Finally, there is Sadness, played by The Office’s Phyllis Smith. In many ways, she is the sweetest character in the film, loveable in her melancholy and giving voice to Riley’s most legitimate apprehensions. Though not one of Riley’s emotions, Richard Kind does a wonderful job playing Bing Bong, Riley’s imaginary childhood friend. This rainbow-colored elephant makes a surprise return when Riley needs him most, and I found this character most poignant.

Screenwriter Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve and Josh Cooley weave the inner workings of the mind into a kaleidoscopic amusement park filled with twists, turns and hidden dangers, much as you might find when you venture off the beaten path of a circus, behind the sideshow tents. Ostensibly for kids, I felt Inside Out’s emotions and insights were strictly for adults. There are moments when we older members of the audience are reminded of when we lost our childhood innocence. If you didn’t shed a tear during the third of this film, well, then, I don’t think I want to know you.

I know that Inside Out is up for best animated feature, and maybe I should be satisfied with that. But other animated features have been nominated for best film (e.g., the Toy Story sagas, Beauty and the Beast), so I contend that Inside Out was wrongfully snubbed this year. For its combination of insight, compassion, humor and intelligence, all made possible through sheer mastery of film, I say that Inside Out is the best film of the year, easily outclassing the other nominees that the Academy put up.

Well, I will be firmly on my sofa this Sunday night to see who wins what. I also look forward to seeing what Chris Rock brings to the event, especially in light of the ongoing diversity issue at the Oscars. I know that this year’s crop is a little substandard, but the Oscars are like sex: even when it’s mediocre, it’s still pretty good. Hooray for Hollywood.

2015’s Best Picture Nominations Mirror a Good Year for Movies

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Rocchi) — Mon, 16 Feb 2015 22:15:00 +0000

Since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences expanded their nominees for the Best Picture Oscar from five to as many as ten in 2009, the list has sometimes seemed bloated to me. I mean, really, how many people remember A Serious Man from that year? But 2015 is different. I could make a case for any of the eight films that are nominated, each being worthy film achievements in their own rights. I don’t find one head-scratcher in the bunch, not a single one in which I said, “How did THAT sneak in?”

As in years past, I rank the nominated films, in ascending order. However, don’t take any individual position as a snub. Ranking these films is tantamount to comparing students who have earned an “A” with a grade of 90 versus a 99. The only distinction is my #1 film, which I believe is not only far and away the best film of this year but one that is a groundbreaker that will stand the test of time.

Again, these are not my predictions for the Oscar, just the way I would arrange them on a cinematic continuum. I’m confident that the final awards will be different, but I’m also confident that, regardless of the outcome, no selection will be undeserved, regardless of how surprising it may be.

8. The Theory of Everything — In the tradition of My Left Foot and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, James Marsh’s keenly felt and sensitive film about Stephen Hawking puts us in the center of a man’s debilitation. Marsh’s storytelling moves tidily into Hawking’s courtship of his wife, Jane (exquisitely, delicately portrayed by Felicity Jones), the discovery of Hawking’s ALS, and Jane’s decision to marry him anyway, determined to enjoy whatever time they have. As we proceed through their difficult life together, Eddie Redmayne, in the title role, gives an excruciating performance, one that I predict will get the Best Actor Oscar. Redmayne evokes nuances that only a most disciplined actor could achieve. I only wish that this film’s definition of “...Everything” included Hawking’s actual theories and how they illuminated physics for so many people. That would have made this fine film more complete for me.

7. American Sniper — Clint Eastwood shows yet again why he is one of our finest directors over the last 35 years. This portrait of Chris Kyle, the eponymous sniper, takes us into the psyche of a soldier with a specific and unique role in warfare. The combat scenes are tense at times, harrowing at others, but always realist. Bradley Cooper, bulked up for the role, can now be recognized as one of the more versatile actors of his generation with his third consecutive Oscar nomination. (By the way, how was the wonderful Sienna Miller overlooked for her portrayal of Kyle’s loving but suffering wife?) Forget the phony debate of whether this is a prowar or antiwar film. It is a look at a man who fulfilled his duty to country distinctively.

6. Boyhood — I knew a film director who, when asked what he did for a living, said “I manipulate time and space.” Richard Linklater proves this view with Boyhood. It is the story of Mason, told over 12 actual years, which lets the film’s characters age in real time. Linklater’s commitment to this innovative technique is marked by his devotion to craft. The consistency in characterization, performance, even film stock, is remarkable. Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette give loving performances as Mason’s parents, and Arquette seems to be a lock for a Supporting Actress Oscar. For me, the one downfall is the story itself, which I found wanting. Many have excused this aspect, saying Boyhood shows the ordinariness of life. Yes, a story in any medium can show the mundane, but it should also have a dramatic arc. This deficiency diminished Boyhood for me.

5. The Imitation Game — This remarkable story of how mathematician and cryptologist Alan Turning helped break the Nazis’ Enigma code unfolds in a roundabout way that illustrates the injustice shown its subject. The film begins with Turing’s arrest for homosexuality, and only as the police investigation unfolds do we learn of Turing’s titanic contribution to the Allied war effort. Benedict Cumberbatch, in a magnificent and heartbreaking performance, portrays Turing as a guy who didn’t fit in with others, even as he towered over them in intellect, leadership and achievements. Though the film’s subject of computer science could have been arcane, director Morten Tydlum makes it accessible and comprehensible to the audience (a contrast to the treatment of Stephen Hawking’s scientific work in The Theory of Everything). In the end, we are confounded with how such an important and valuable human being could have been so mistreated simply for being who he was.

4. Whiplash — Andrew Neimann (Miles Teller) is a promising young drummer honing his craft at a New York conservatory of jazz. He comes under the tutelage of Terrence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons, in the performance of a lifetime), the revered and feared bandleader. Neimann comes to be terrorized by Fletcher, whose motives are not made clear: Is he pursuing perfection at all costs? Or is he merely a controlling sadist? Miles Teller shines as Neimann, fulfilling the promise he showed as a teenage alcoholic in The Spectacular Now. But Whiplash belongs to Simmons, and he is practically assured an Oscar for his performance. Writer/director Damien Chazelle emerges as a talent as auspicious as Andrew. While the third act strains credibility (a shortcoming in the screenplay), the overall film explodes with a kinetic intensity that I have rarely seen. Whiplash is a unique vision by an emergent talent.

3. Selma —One scene defined Selma for me: Martin Luther King (wonderfully portrayed by David Oyelowo), on his way to Selma to capture the vote for African Americans, stops with his lieutenants at a friend’s home for breakfast. They savor the meal laid out for them, laughing and relaxing as only good friends do. In a single stroke, director Ava DuVernay shows the humanity of those who led the civil rights movement, making them more than plaster saints. DuVernay, a one-time documentarian, imbues Selma with a sense of authenticity rarely seen in historical films. Her King is not only regal, but flawed (his adulteries are referenced) and given to uncertainty. How DuVernay could have been passed over for Best Director in favor of Bennett Miller’s somnambulant helming of Foxcatcher is beyond me. Her work on Selma breathed new life into a story that is already a familiar part of the American canon, casting it in a fresh light.

2. The Grand Budapest Hotel — Jean-Luc Godard said “cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.” I prefer to think of movies as a place where we create exquisite illusions. Given that, The Grand Budapest Hotel was one of the most delightful films I saw all year — a concoction of artifice and whimsy, centered on an imaginary Eastern European country that must fight for its existence. The unconventional visual style of the movie unfolds more like a storyboard or a comic strip, which is the very antithesis of filmmaking, but Anderson makes it all work. I have not always found Wes Anderson’s styles endearing (The Fantastic Mr. Fox, yes. Moonrise Kingdom, no). But The Grand Budapest Hotel was a treat for me, a break from the familiar tropes of conventional filmmaking and one of the most imaginative films of 2014.

1. Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) — Film critic Godfrey Cheshire once said of Citizen Kane, Orson Welles's masterpiece, that it had “the epic collision of talent and ambition…. It exudes the wonder and thrill of artistic discovery, the giddiness of high-stakes daring, the narcissistic pull of power, fame and youthful self-regard.” I would apply these same words to Birdman, an audacious film that takes us into the state of mind of a desperate man, Riggan Thompson, an actor once famous for the Birdman superhero franchise, Today, years after he abdicated that role, Thompson is going for broke, betting all his remaining cash and the remnants of his reputation on a single roll of the dice. And like his film’s main character, director Alejandro G. Innaritu pulls out the stops, innovating story-telling techniques that will influence films for years to come.

As I watched Birdman, I couldn’t believe the long tracking shots, wondering when they would end. (Could they go on forever? They seemed as if they would.) Not merely a novelty, these seemingly inexhaustible shots informed the desperation of the main character and the chaos in the Broadway show that he was staging in this last gasp of his career. One must not overlook the practical challenges Innaritu faced in executing such shots; one error by an actor reciting a line, one inadvertent intrusion by an errant camera operator, and it all starts at the beginning. Yet the director pulled it all off, completing the film within a tight budget and a tighter deadline.

Equally daring was the unusual score of the film, a driving piece of percussion performed on a single set of drums. I haven’t heard such a choice since the 1950s (e.g., Sweet Smell of Success), and it works. Such cinematic sleight of hand hangs together on the screen through Michael Keaton, giving the most physically demanding performance I saw this year. He appears in nearly every frame, so the success of Birdman depends on him. Keaton blurs the lines between sanity and madness continuously, letting us see every stage of Riggan Thompson abjection as he strains to regain relevance. For me, Keaton’s performance is the best of the year, a tour de force that plumbs the depths of his talent and the breadth of his risk taking. (How many other actors would allow themselves to be photographed on the streets of New York in their tidy whities?)

Innaritu has already won top prize of the Director’s Guild of America, and I believe he will repeat at the Oscars. It would be just. Birdman is an exhilarating work that shows us what film is capable of accomplishing, as it cuts across time, through space, and even in and out of sanity. It is the best film of the year, the best film of the last few years, and I expect it will be viewed as the best film of many years to come.

Those are my thoughts in this excellent year. I look forward to the actual awards on February 22. The beauty of this year’s ceremony is that the auditorium will be filled with winners, regardless of whomever Oscar blesses as his final choice.

From Space to the Ocean to Nebraska: Ranking the Oscar-nominated Films

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Rocchi) — Wed, 26 Feb 2014 03:10:00 +0000

The Academy Awards are this weekend, and the Big One is up for grabs.

For the last few years, I have praised the new and improved Oscar system for nominating strong films beyond the traditional “five films” in the Best Picture category. However, I think the Academy regressed this year, as there are some real clunkers among the nominees. I think they could have cited fewer films than they did. Still there are two or three strong contenders slugging it out for the top prize, and I would be happy if any of them won.

So here is my annual ranking of the nominated films — nine this year — in ascending order. For those who are new to my annual exercise in arrogance, here are the rules:

These are not my predictions, just my choices.
This list does not necessarily comprise my personal picks for the best films of the year. I am simply ranking the Academy’s nominees. There are films I thought merited consideration as "best film" that are not on this list.
I rank these according to my perception of their entertainment value, the attention to craft, and most important, innovation and uniquely cinematic quality, challenging my long-held notions of cinema.. Or as the great Roger Ebert used to put it, a film that made him look at film a new way.

This year, I think there is such a disparity in quality among the nominees that I have grouped the nine into three broad categories: How was this thing ever considered a ‘best film;” the worthy- efforts-that-are-not-great-in-the-end; and the films that are probably already classics and will be appreciated for years to come.

THE HEAD-SCRATCHERS

9. Nebraska — I saw this film as a sneak preview at a local art house, long before the award seasons began. I thought, “Boy, director Alexander Payne really sleep-walked through this one. Bruce Dern’s initials could stand for ‘brain dead,’ as he is practically inert in this performance. This woman playing Dern’s wife (June Squibb) is a rank amateur; this must be her first film. But Will Forte does an admirable job playing Dern’s son. A nice turn by an actor we don’t know. I hope he is recognized for his efforts.”
Now imagine my reaction when the nominations came out and everyone BUT Forte received nods. This thing was a bewildering disappointment to me — a thin story brought to life in a plodding production. I think the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce should sue for defamation of character.

8. Philomena — Dame Judi Dench plays Philomena Lee, an Irish woman searching for her long-lost son. The boy was taken from Philomena by the nuns who boarded her after she became pregnant. In this movie, the sisters perpetrated innumerable sins against poor Philomena, but none as heinous as those committed by the screenwriters. There is no dramatic arc to this story, which hits its peak early with heartbreaking scenes in which Philomena’s son is taken by a rich family to America. Afterward, the film is populated by scenes in which Dench plays… well, basically, she plays the same precious, twittery Judi Dench we have seen in countless other movies over the last 15 years. I believe a Best Picture should show cinematic freshness. If not that, at least it should show exceptional craft. This film was created the originality of a paint-by-numbers work.

7. Her — This movie is an overlong, somnambulant musing on a simple premise (and to my mind, one not so profound or original): What would happen if we made a computer operating system that was so smart that we could engage with it? And what if some imminent nebbish took the bait and fell in love with said software, in this case, his smart phone? I once saw a Twilight Zone episode in which a computer fell in love with Wally Cox, and that show had more to say about human/computer love in its allotted 30 minutes than Her did in 126.
And when will this unspecified future time be? It was so similar to our current time, that I thought this vague “future” would occur in the next nine days. Woody Allen did a better job conjuring the world-to-come in his hilarious Sleeper. Her was a major disappointment for me, given the possibilities the theme presented. Additionally, it wastes a thoughtful and elegiac performance by Joaquin Phoenix

(For my money, here are three films that would have deserved a Best Picture nomination more than the three above: Fruitvale Station, Blue Jasmine and Mud.)

CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR

6. Captain Phillips — Oh, Tom Hanks, how do we love thee? Let us count the ways. Just when you think that this guy has played out his string, and there are no more decent all-Americans/ AIDS-afflicted noblemen/lucky idiot savants that he can play, and maybe, just maybe, we can't even accept him any longer as Woody in Toy Story X… well, then he plays Captain Richard Phillips, who must protect his crew of a commercial ship from modern day pirates. And once again, Mr. Hanks pulls more tricks out of his hat to give us insight into this ordinary man who overcomes an extraordinary situation.
The entire production is guided by the wonderful Paul Greengrass, the director who was able to give an urgent realism to United 93, the story of the hijacked plane that would be doomed on 9/11. Unfortunately, Captain Phillips’s script runs out of gas about three-quarters of the way through the film, and Greengrass pads the film unnecessarily. While this movie had much potential, I rank it as a a near-miss.

5. Dallas Buyers Club — Ron Woodroof is a most unlikely hero. He is a part-time rodeo rider and homophobe with poor personal habits, who also practices indiscriminate, unprotected (heterosexual) sex. The last point catches up with him when he is unexpectedly diagnosed with AIDS. In fact the disease is so advanced at the time of diagnosis that his doctor gives him 30 days to “get your affairs in order.” Ron turns out to be smarter and tougher than we think, and so begins his remarkable journey to get medicine for himself and, over time, others suffering from this modern-day plague.
Matthew McConaughey gives a career-defining (or is it career-reviving?) performance as the real-life Woodroof. Even more stirring is Jared Leto, who plays the transgender, HIV-infected woman named Rayon in a performance that has won him nearly every award except the Lombardi Trophy. He is as close to a shoo-in for an Oscar this year as I have ever seen, and I am cheering for him myself. Unfortunately, this hard-core movie has a mushy center, when Woodroof’s business dealings become too tedious to watch. Still, this is a worthwhile film about a shameful period in our recent history, a time when AIDS was running rampant in this country and few people cared because "they" were getting it.

4. The Wolf of Wall Street — I think I liked this movie when I saw it before, except it was named Goodfellas back then. Still, Martin Scorsese proves that he has the juice at age 71 with this biopic about Jordan Belfort, a financial investor scumbag who lines his pockets with the money of sucker investors he has essentially victimized.
This movie wants to rock and roll all night with scenes about cocaine, hookers, various levels of infidelity, and many more examples of wretched excess. The problem is that The Wolf of Wall Street is too long by half, and that blunts the power of Scorsese’s mastery. Still, the movie is distinctive for its energetic performances, particularly those by Jonah Hill and Leonardo DiCaprio. Hill builds upon his breakthrough performance in Moneyball , portraying Donnie Azoff, a wiseguy cipher who comes apart when ill-gotten money flows into his life. Hill can kiss his teenage "everyboy" roles goodbye, as this movie vaults him into the front ranks of modern day character actors. DiCaprio’s performance is absolutely revelatory as he brings an unforeseen energy and comic timing to his role as Belfort. Watch in particular the scene when he tries to go down a flight of stairs and drive home under the influence of Quaaludes. It was probably the best physical comedy I have seen from an actor since Steve Martin was inhabited by Lily Tomlin’s spirit in All of Me.

THE FINALISTS

I am finding it difficult to pick the one film from these last three nominees that should be named "Best Picture." They are all superb. Let it suffice to say that I will be pleased if any one of them (or even any TWO of them) picks up the top Oscar on March 2.

3. 12 Years a Slave — That this horrific story is true makes 12 Years a Slave even more powerful than a depiction of slavery may have been. Imagine that you are a free man; being sold as a slave would be just about the last thing you would imagine. That is the story of Solomon Northrup, a professional musician and middle-class citizen of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., who is drugged and awakes to being bound in a dank cell. So begins an ordeal that happened to him only because of his skin color.
While the graphic physical abuse in the film was profoundly disturbing, it was actually the ongoing indignities that affected me more, because many of us take decent treatment for granted. So imagine being slapped merely for responding to a white, low-level functionary. Or watching a slave boy who is up for sale show off his physical abilities as though he were a prize horse. There was the subtly demeaning confrontation Northrup had with his owner (a manic, irrational Michael Fassbender in another fine performance) when the possibility that Solomon could read and write is uncovered. All of these add up to a Bedlam that would have destroyed a lesser man.
Solomon’s character is made more vivid by the brilliance of Chiwetel Ejiofor, who I believe has actually been underrated for his finely nuanced performance. Consider all the changes to Solomon’s character, going from content family man, to frightened and bewildered prisoner, to a survivor. For me, Ejiofor earned my fictional vote during a scene when he is forced to whip another slave. The look on his face and his body language portrayed a man who had lost his soul along the way just so he could live another day. Ejiofor is my personal choice for Best Actor. Perhaps he would have had a better chance at the top prize if he had lost 41 pounds for his role.

2. Gravity — It is a wonder that this riveting spectacle never turned into an audio-visual cartoon. Credit for that goes to director Alfonso Cuarón. This man is not a newcomer, as he showed us his prodigious talent in the underseen masterpiece, Children of Men. In that film, Cuarón portrayed a dystopian future (one more clearly illustrated than Her, I might add) in which there is no hope because no children are being conceived. Gravity also gives us a hopeless situation when astronauts George Clooney (ever handsome, charming and commanding) and Sandra Bullock (the accessible everywoman, once again in a wonderful performance) face their destinies as a result of a space accident.
No time is wasted on exposition here. We viewers are thrust into the story at the get-go as though on booster rockets, and we hang on, white knuckles and all, until the triumphant end. As Ang Lee did last year with Life of Pi, Cuarón takes control from the beginning and never lets us go, exhibiting mastery both of his technical cinematic craft and the art of storytelling. He is sure to win a well-deserved Oscar for his direction. I also believe that this is the film that will take home Best Picture, also deserved.

1. American Hustle — This film ended up at the top of my heap after a lot of consideration for one simple reason, one I state every year in this blog: American Hustle expanded my view of the possibilities of cinema. Yes, 12 Years a Slave tackled the sensitive topic of slavery, but anyone who says a film like this has never been done before hasn't seen the classic mini-series, Roots. Gravity is an exciting space adventure, but let’s be honest. Stanley Kubrick laid down the template for this film with 2001: A Space Odyssey. And he did it in 1968 — 45 years ago — with more vision and much less technology available to him. American Hustle used the Abscam debacle of the 1970s to show the foolishness of government and the banality that lurks in the hearts of our elected officials as well as our criminals. Underneath all that snarky, sarcastic tomfoolery was some very sad truths about human behavior.
David O. Russell is not my darling as he is to so many reviewers. For example, I found The Fighter obvious and tedious, filled with overwrought acting. But as Russell showed us in Silver Linings Playbook, he is a damned good director of actors. He proves it again here, coaxing four Oscar-nominated performances from his cast (the always amazing Christian Bale; Amy Adams, who seems incapable of a bad performance; Bradley Cooper, who seems to be growing in stature before our eyes; and the luminous Jennifer Lawrence, who imbues her floozy character in American Hustle with a delightfully comic approach.) There were also countless supporting players, and I make special note of Louis C.K., who was terrific as a hapless government agent who was Cooper's character's nemesis.
American Hustle is a modern-day comedy of manners, and it does not speak well of the manner in which we conduct ourselves. The film is full of laughs, but many of them are at our own expense.

Okay, I take off my reviewer’s hat for another year. This should be another fun year. I am predicting that, other than Gravity picking up many technical awards, the honors will be spread around a bit this year. And why did I suggest above that TWO films may take home the Best Picture award? Because the voting promises to be that close. (For the record, the Producers Guild Award went to Gravity and 12 Years a Slave. Perhaps the Academy will call it a draw, too.)

I look forward to this ceremony as I almost always do. So don’t call me the night of March 2. I will be transfixed by the pomp and splendor once again, and reviving my love for the movies. I hope you will enjoy the ceremony, too.

Fulfilling that New Year’s Resolution of a New Job is Easier with Pat Rocchi's New $.99 e-Book

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Rocchi) — Tue, 21 Jan 2014 00:55:00 +0000

I'm pleased to announce the release of the following announcement tomorrow of my latest book.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Contact Pat Rocchi — patrocchi@comcast.net

610-909-7922

Fulfilling that New Year’s Resolution of a New Job is Easier

with New $.99 e-Book

C.R.A.F.T.I.N.G. a New Job Search author says that
“For less than a buck, job seekers can improve their luck.”

NORTH WALES, PA, January 21, 2014 /24-7PressRelease/ — Many of the unemployed who face longer-than-expected searches have resolved to find a new job in 2014. They now have an affordable resource in a new value-priced e-book, C.R.A.F.T.I.N.G. a New Job Search, by self-help writer Pat Rocchi, author of the acclaimed book, The Six P's of Change.

Rocchi wrote C.R.A.F.T.I.N.G. a New Job Search to fulfill a leadership requirement as a member of Toastmasters International. He offers the book for just $.99 as a public service to those who have been unemployed for an extended time. Rocchi's book has been distributed by BookBaby to the following e-book publishers: Amazon Kindle, Baker & Taylor, Barnes & Noble, Copia, eSentral, iBookstore, Kobo, PagePusher, Scribd and Sony.

“People should not be discouraged in these difficult times or in any era from finding work that meets their financial or emotional needs,” says Rocchi. “For less than a buck, job seekers can improve their luck with this book. Considering that the average price of a greeting card is between $2 and $3, $.99 for a 20,000-word book with job-hunting advice is a real bargain.”

Dr. Bill Lampton, nationally recognized communication consultant and speech coach, has already given C.R.A.F.T.I.N.G. a New Job Search a five-star review on Amazon.com, “If you are job seeking, you'll want to consult Rocchi's recommendations right away,” writes Lampton. “His ‘been there, done that’ perspective magnifies his credibility on this topic.”

The word “C.R.A.F.T.I.N.G.” in the title is an acrostic for eight guiding principles that are detailed in the chapters of the book:

CELEBRATE the Possibilities of Every New Day!
REVIEW Your Passion and Purpose
ACQUIRE a Mentor
FORM Measurable, Meaningful and Achievable Goals
TEND Your Time to Accomplish Your Goals
INCENTIVIZE Yourself
NURTURE All of Your Needs
GIVE BACK After You’ve Succeeded

About Pat Rocchi Communications

Pat Rocchi, principal of Pat Rocchi Communications, is an author of self-help books and a communicator whose award-winning work crosses all media. Rocchi also provides services in presentation coaching, speechwriting and as a keynote speaker. Learn more about Pat at www.patrocchi.com.

XXX

Incentivizing Yourself During a Long Job Search

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Rocchi) — Mon, 12 Aug 2013 02:16:00 +0000

A job hunt is one of those times when we are inundated by responsibilities, tasks, schedules and deadlines. What can be very discouraging it that you are working at least as hard as ever, and you are not getting paid for it. How do you keep yourself motivated as you were before? The answer is that you need to reward yourself.

The Psychology of Reward
First of all, it’s important to understand that at a time like this it is not frivolous to be thinking about rewards, as though it is too selfish under the circumstances. Actually, quite the opposite: It’s absolutely critical that you reward yourself regularly for achieving your goals along your job search. One of the reasons a job search stalls amidst hopelessness, lethargy and a creeping loss of motivation is the lack of reward. On the other hand, if we reward ourselves during this process (or during any extended endeavor), we will begin to feel like as though we’re making progress. A gift also becomes a material reminder of the efforts we are making. And when you feel better, you will maintain your enthusiasm.

Another important point to keep in mind is that this notion of incentivizing yourself is not about rampant materialism, greed or selfishness. This is about a psychological reward. As much as we would like to think we can’t be manipulated, in truth we can be influenced easily. Human beings are taught to crave appreciation as well as a reward. So if material rewards during this job search bother you, then think of something else you can use to compensate you for your efforts. Because it is your reward system, it is entirely up to you to decide on the reward.

The research I have conducted indicted that that there are several types of incentives, but we will consider only three that we can give realistically generate for ourselves:

An economic incentive that results in some form of material reward, such as money or a gift certificates.
moral incentive to behave in a particular way when it is perceived to be the "right" or "worthy" thing to do. This usually results in personal self-esteem.
A physical incentive results in a contribution to our physical health and well-being.

We can receive some form of these incentives in our jobs. Economic incentives come in the form of pay, benefits, paid time off and more. But we may also derive personal satisfaction about the product of our work, such as building a road or administering medical care in some capacity. A person in the military may rightly feel pride as a defender of the country, a teacher can be cited for contributions to shaping young minds, and the head of a financial institution can claim to disperse funds that allow citizens to start businesses or purchase houses or cars. When your job requires you to move around, such as a police offer, postal carrier, stock keeper, or even an office manager, it exercises the various parts of our bodies.

I understand that incentivizing yourself is easier said than done. While you are in the middle of this maelstrom, facing so many tasks and responsibilities, it may be fatuous to say, “I am going to indulge myself.” I still encourage you to do so. Even though I have advised you to make the most of your time, I also wish that you resist the urge to be productive all the time. There are rates of diminishing returns, and since you cannot be truly fruitful in all of your moments, you should plan some off time just to recharge. Here are some easy ways to take care of yourself from each of these three broad categories of incentives that we mentioned.

Economic incentive

Spend money to fight a feeling of scarceness. Theologians generally agree that when Jesus proclaimed “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” he was not encouraging people to be materially impoverished. Instead, he was encouraging them to be humble. Similarly, I encourage you to consider spending money at times to fight off “feeling poor.”
True-life Story! Several years ago, my wife and I had planned a trip to Italy to visit our families during Ferragosto, which is a holiday celebrated on August 15, a summer bacchanal that is not dissimilar to America’s Independence Day. We booked the flights, contacted our relatives and were set to go. Months earlier, my consulting business hit a wall, and we could have just as easily canceled the trip. One day, as our departure approached, Marie said to me, “I know that you have not mentioned calling this off. I would understand if you did.”
I said, “Marie, I don’t want to do that. If we don’t go, we will feel poor, and I don’t think that will be good for our spirits.” We went; we had a great time and received a lot of loving from our families, and we were able to say that we were in Italy for one of its most popular holidays.
While I was there, I posted photos of the trip on Facebook and my social media, and that maintained everyone’s interest in what I was doing. Furthermore, I received phone calls about a possible job at a company back home. All of this helped keep us in a positive mood; there is no telling what the effect on our mental health had been if we stayed home and wallowed in pity and regret. It remains one of the best events in our long marriage.
Think about this for yourself. Were you scheduled for your own vacation, a remodeling job on your home or some other outlay of money? If so, weigh the hidden and real costs if you cancel.
Though it may be counterintuitive at this time, it may turn out to be the best decision you ever make.

Moral incentive
Give your time to the community. Figure out the amount of time you can spare from your job of searching for a job, and give at least some of it to someone else. Volunteer at the public library. Tutor a student in the area you know best. Drive seniors to their medical appointments. You will be surprised at the mutual benefits derived.
Give away material goods. This may be a good time to clean out your closet or attic to the benefit of others. You may be tempted to wear your oldest clothes to an interview, but rid yourself of that lure by giving the clothing away first. Then see what old but functioning appliances are hanging around, and consider how others can make use of them. At a time when you are not drawing a regular pay, you may discover just how rich you truly are.

Physical incentive

Take time to laugh. We learned a lot about laughter therapy from Norman Cousins, the famous editor of Saturday Review. In his revolutionary book, Anatomy of an Illness as Described by the Patient, Cousins described the effect of emotions on his own health. In 1976, he had been diagnosed with a very painful, life-threatening form of arthritis called ankylosing spondylitis. Doctors gave him little chance of recovery. Eschewing traditional medical treatments, Cousins took megadoses of vitamin C and watched Marx Brothers films and TV sitcoms. He found that good old-fashioned laughter, out-and-out guffawing would relieve his pain and allow him to sleep. He eventually recovered from the disease and wrote extensively on the links between humor and health.

We know today how laughter relaxes the whole body and relieves our physical tension and stress. Laughter also boosts the immune system, decreases stress hormones and improves the function of the entire cardiovascular system. So turn off the TV and find things that make you laugh. (I have several comedy stations on my Pandora list, so I turn on comedy whenever I take a break, when I am up in the morning, and before I go to sleep each night. It has made demonstrable differences in my own physical and emotional health.)
Take the weekends off as you would any job. As I have written, this job hunt is your job right now. But as with any job, you need time off. So let up on yourself and keep your weekends completely open for a movie, time in the mountains or at the shore, and perhaps most important, a date with your significant other. Turn off the e-mails and cell phone and just unwind.

These are just a few of the ways we can keep our sanity during a job search. I will be discussing more in future posts and in my upcoming e-book on how to rejuvenate a lagging job campaign. The book is untitled at this time.

My Next Book, All for a Worthy Audience

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Rocchi) — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 02:53:00 +0000

I am excitedly approaching the last step in my goal to become a Distinguished Toastmaster, the highest designation awarded by this global speaking organization. I have given all my speeches over many years, and I've held the requisite leadership roles. But my last step is one of the most ambitious -- the High Performance Leadership Project (explained here in this video). There is a wide range of projects I could take on, but the one I have chosen is aimed at solving, or at least ameliorating, an endemic condition in our world that is taking a toll on many of us. That goal is to help lift the spirits of people who are out of work.

For anyone who has not been unemployed, I will start with the most obvious point: The job search process sucks big time. It is ever present, and it can grind down the spirit. Time magazine had a cover story titled "Whatever Happened to the Great American Job?" The article is an unsettling and depressing amalgam of material. There are the usual anecdotes of fruitless searches by people who were swiftly and unexpectedly jettisoned by major corporations after decades of service. The article also includes data gleaned from both public and government agencies. For example:

• A telephone poll shows that two-thirds of respondents believe that job security is worse for Americans now than in the two previous years. Of those who describe the situation as “worse” when they were questioned, 53 percent say the situation will be bad over the long haul, for many years to come. Fifty-eight percent say they have friends who have lost jobs since the economic recovery began.
• A U.S. Labor Department study shows how a full 30 percent of new graduates will be underutilized over the next 12 years. Also, these graduates are likely to earn less — in inflation-adjusted dollars — than their graduating predecessors did a generation ago. This includes graduates of many top colleges.

Labor analysts describe the bleak future of the job market. Here are their suggestions for dealing with it:

• They say don’t count on big companies for employment. These companies have learned that it’s more efficient and profitable to operate as contracting centers and outsource the talent they need. Instead, turn to small- and medium-sized companies.

• Be prepared to work for a foreign company, as many corporations outside the U.S. are investing in this country’s manufacturing. The flip side to that is that many American companies are outsourcing their services to operations outside of our borders.

• Get as much training and education as possible and keep upgrading your skills. Workers can expect to change their careers, not simply their jobs, three or four times during their working lives.

So those are some of the takeaways of this article. By the way, I am not citing a recent issue of Time. It was published in November, 1993 — nearly 20 years ago. So challenges in employment have been with us for a long time, even in past economies, and yet it stays with us today.

In my book The Six P’s of Change, my first piece of advice to readers is to develop the PERCEPTION, the recognition, that change is a reality. Nobody is immune from this change. You and I were either born into an America or adopted into an America that is so fortunate and wealthy that perhaps we began to think that our opportunities were limitless, as though trees could grow to the sky. But my periods of job search gave me lessons that informed my life philosophy of being prepared for change.

I come by these lessons honestly. I had several tours of duties in various outplacement agencies because my jobs were eliminated several times. It was in those times that I learned one key fact: It’s necessary to maintain an optimistic and hopeful attitude. Job searches are more likely to die on the vine from hopelessness than they are from ineffectiveness. And so I adopted this this mission statement for my High-Performance Leadership Project: To create an affordable and accessible tool to help job seekers maintain their spirits and their momentum as they advance toward their job goals.

To fulfill this mission, I am currently writing an e-book on how to lift your spirits in the face of an otherwise demoralizing search and how to arm yourself with the optimism, energy and momentum that will help lead you to success. In this way, I can publish it relatively inexpensively, as the barrier to entry for e-publishing is fairly low. In that way, I can make it available at a nominal price, probably 99 cents — a price that is easily affordable for people who are out of work.

I hasten to mention that this is not another how-to on finding a job. There are already many books on the market to cover that topic. Frankly, those authors do the job so thoroughly that I doubt I can improve it. Instead, my book is about how to lift your spirits in the face of an otherwise demoralizing search and how to arm yourself with the optimism, energy and momentum that will help lead you to success.

I am currently writing an e-book on how to arm yourself with the optimism, energy and momentum that will lead you to success in an otherwise demoralizing job search.

Like my previous book, this one began as a speech. I often give pro bono presentations to people who are seeking employment in the hopes of helping them deal better with the change in which they're embroiled. The woman who managed the last outplacement office I attended contacted me and asked me if I could speak to their current crop of candidates. But she did not want me to speak about The Six P’s. She told me that many people in her office were searching for so long that they were discouraged and lethargic. She asked if I had a speech about maintaining enthusiasm and momentum in a job search.

I thought about her request, and I said, “No, I don’t.” But after drawing a long breath, I added, "Let’s set a date six weeks from now. I promise you I will arrive with a presentation.”

And so knowing that I committed a speech to her by a specific date, I created a presentation that has now evolved into the outline of this book. I looked over my own successful searches, and I devised several guiding principles. I can't tell you too much about the book right now. First of all, I am in the process of writing it. Secondly, I don't want to give away the details. I would hate for someone to come to market with my book sooner than I did simply because I spilled the beans.

Author Louisa May Alcott once wrote that “I’m no longer afraid of the storm for I am learning how to sail my own ship.” That is what I want to teach my readers and audiences: To exercise control over this process during a difficult time. I know we’ll never completely eradicate unemployment. Even so-called “full employment” is achieved at about five percent. But I do hope that the tool I am creating will help inspire the hope and direction many people need for a fruitful job search.

Stay tuned. I look forward to telling you more when there is more to tell.

Taking a Product to First from Worst

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Rocchi) — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 20:37:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, I was quite proud, and more than a little amused, when I read the 2012 "Annual Best" awards from KLAS, a research firm in the healthcare industry. KLAS* gathers data and the opinions of thousands in the industry on software, services and medical equipment, choosing their best of the year. ("The best of KLAS," is a commonly accepted term in the industry.)

I chuckled because the results showed that a laboratory information system from one of my previous employers, Siemens Health, was chosen as one of the best of the year. I remembered the time when the product, now called Novius Lab, was quite the opposite of "best." Or even "good."

I was working in marketing for the company (then known as Shared Medical Systems, before Siemens* acquired it) when management declared that their lab information product known as OpenLab was a loser. Lab information systems manage the ordering, testing and results reporting of lab orders in a hospital. This particular system was designed to integrate the patient's clinical information from a variety of facilities and then turn around the test results quickly. It reduced costs while raising efficiency.

However, the salespeople said that they couldn't sell it because "everyone hated it." They said that OpenLab had a terrible reputation. The company wanted to drop it and get out of this product line altogether. My boss, the head of sales & marketing, did not want to concede this market. He came to me and said that a big lab conference was coming up. How could we save the product at that event?

The first thing I did was NOT presume the sales force was correct. Instead, I conducted a marketing survey of both the current customers and the market place. Well, the current customers did NOT hate it; in fact, they LOVED OpenLab. They thought it worked great. What we found was that others in the medical lab market who did not even own OpenLab thought it was a bad product. (We believed that this reputation could be traced back to a former sales employee who bad-mouthed the product, though we could not prove it.) But the challenge remained: How could we get new customers if they all believed the product was no good?

I advised rebranding the product altogether...essentially take OpenLab off the market and replace it with a new name. The upcoming lab show was in Dallas. An internal copywriter and I brainstormed and thought a cowboy theme would work for a new campaign. She came up with a slogan similar to the old Western movie cliche that there was a new sheriff in town. But instead, she wrote that "there's a brand new new lab system in town!" At the time, SMS was renaming their newest offerings with the prefix "Novius,"derived from the Latin word for "new." I advised that we rename this project Novius Lab, wiping out the previous, besmirched name as the final step in creating a new impression.

When visitors came to our booth at the conference, we gave them a blinking badge that had this slogan. We encouraged them to wear it, because a "sheriff" from our booth would be walking the floor occasionally, and if he saw their badge... well, he would just invite them back to the booth for a prize!

People were pleased to wear the badge and were excited when he "sheriff" (really, just one of us guys in a big Stetson) collared them and brought them back to our booth. The prize, a horse doll for their kids, was a big hit. More important, we made an impact at that trade show, beginning the introduction of a new product and replacing what was for many a bad memory.

My manager and I have since left the company for other opportunities, but we still laugh about that campaign over a drink every now and then. When the company was ready to abandon this product, we believed in it. We got to the root of the problem and solved it. A product that was losing hundreds of thousands of dollars each year today is one of the company's biggest, most reliable money makers. It also continues to serve its market, much to the surprise of many in the company. And to top it off, this product is consistently rated at the top of its class by acclimation among the decision makers in healthcare.

Shakespeare once asked, "what's in a name?" Apparently, there's money. And vindication.

*References to KLAS, Siemens and SMS should not be inferred as an endorsement of my work by these entities.

Baseball Writers Stand Up for Baseball's Brand and More

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Rocchi) — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 15:47:00 +0000

The Commissioner didn't do it.

The players union didn't do it.

God knows that Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa didn't do it.

But the baseball writers did it. They stood up for the game that so many others profess to love yet in fact denigrate with their behavior. They did it by refusing to honor an entire generation of ball players that included many who cheated and soiled the game. They kept these players out of the hallowed halls of Cooperstown, and with that action, they showed more integrity than many others in the game.

My son, who is a pretty fair sportsman himself, said to me, "When are we going to stop the pretense that athletes are role models?" Fair question. But there is one difference with the Baseball Hall of Fame. Like it or not, the criteria for admission to the Hall has always included "character, sportsmanship and integrity." Has that clause been overlooked in the past? Certainly. In fact, right from the beginning, when the reprehensible Ty Cobb was among the first inductees. Yes, Ty Cobb, who used to sharpen his spikes so he could injure opposing players when he slid into them, was enshrined. Ty Cobb, who went into the stands to confront a heckler and when he discovered was an invalid beat the tar out of him anyway, is synonymous with baseball's freshman class. But we were all taught as kids that two wrongs don't make a right, and why not stand up for the integrity of the game now?

We have had too many instances in society of how we shave our principles to fit them into our particular and immediate needs. The revelations that reveal the speciousness of our entry into war. The backroom deals that grease the political gears but rob the citizens ultimately paying the bills. Don't report the child abuse or it will hurt the university. Or the Church. All executed with a nod and a wink, dismissed with phrases like "boys will be boys," and "everyone does it." In the meantime, the ones who played clean suffered in terms of reduced pay and lesser fame.

Tom Verducci of SI.com, who votes for the Hall of Fame, states his case more eloquently and with more authority than I can. He sees his vote as a sacred trust that few are honored to exercise. Baseball players and others involved should also feel such honor with all the fame and riches that the game bestows on them. But unlike Mr. Verducci, they have generally chosen to look the other way as the game was diminished by a steady drip of mendacity.The baseball writers focused their attention with this well-deserved slap in the face. Maybe we should all pay attention and shine a similar light into other quarters.

How to Accomplish Your New Year Resolutions

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Rocchi) — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 19:18:00 +0000

Okay, it's 2013, and if you are like most people, you have a set of new year resolutions. (Come on, admit it: One of them is to lose weight and get in shape, isn't it? My son is irritated how the gym parking lot is overcrowded until mid-February, when most of those people will give up on their fitness program.) However, when 2014 rolls around again, how many of the items on your list will you have accomplished?

I speak to many organizations about dealing with change or rejuvenating their job searches, and both topics involve accomplishing goals. I make to-do lists every year, and I fulfill a fairly high percentage of my goals. For example, over the last five years, I built a new website, read a number of new books each year, published my own book, earned two advanced Toastmaster designations, created two new keynote speeches, learned to speak Italian on a conversational level, and got a solo with my singing group (singing in Italian, incidentally). I'm not exactly Tim Ferriss, but I can claim to have done many of things I set out to do. Here are the steps that will help you reach your annual goals.

1) Presume that time management is achievable.
Don’t let anyone tell you “no matter how organized we are, there are always only 24 hours in a day.” I find that thinking limiting and negative. While it’s true that each of us have the same number of hours, we can always optimize them.

2) Find out where you're wasting time and eliminate them.
What are your time-bandits? Don’t spend too much time surfing the Internet, reading e-mail or social media, or making personal calls. Tracking your daily activities will disclose what you are actually accomplishing, which is an important step in time management. (Example: I don’t turn on the TV during the day unless I see that an important event has happened.

3) Use a time management tool.
This is the most important step. To physically and actually manage your time, you need to know where it's going now and then plan how you're going to spend your time in the future. You can use a calendar or a software program, such as Outlook, to schedule events know in advance what you will be doing. I'm low-tech, so I use an ordinary to-do list.

4) Set Your Priorities.
No matter which tool you use, it is still important to set realistic expectations, or else you are bound to be disappointed. That is the problem with to-do lists or other lists of goals: They may enumerate all the things you need to do, but they don't actually help you accomplish them. If you simply make lists of the things you need to do, odds are that they will remain unfinished far longer than you think they will. There are two reasons for that. First, we need to break down our projects into specific actions that will help us reach our goals. For example, if your goal is "write an article," don't just have "write an article" as your goal. First, set your objective. Then, set a deadline to write your outline. Next, set a goal of writing each day. And have a deadline to have the final draft completed.

I use the A, B and C priority system. A's are things you need to accomplish ASAP. I try to do as many A's each day as I can. B's are "nice to do" things, like cleaning the bathroom or buying a new in basket for the office. These can wait. C's are low priorities, but they are often the things we use to fill our days to make us feel as though we really accomplished something, yet they make no meaningful impact on our lives. Push the C's off as much as possible.

5) Establish routines and stick to them as much as possible.
Know each day which tasks will help you meet your long-term and short-term goals as described above. If you have 20 tasks for a given day, how many of them do you truly need to accomplish what you want to do? Prioritization will help you with that. Get up at the same time every morning. Exercise and eat breakfast at the same time. Take a break around the same time. End the day at a prescribed time and get to sleep at the right time every night. Rinse and repeat.

Setting a routine includes limiting the things you shouldn't do. Distractions to avoid includes e-mail, social media, eating meals, and needless appointments. Either avoid these things altogether or schedule them so they don't get in your way.
6) Learn to let go.
My most simple advice are these five words: You Can’t Do It All! And you should not expect to do it all. For effective time management, you need to let other people carry some of the load. Is it really that important that the bathroom is dirty when you are preparing for a critical job interview? Clean the bathroom after they make you the offer!

I wish you luck in all you do and all you want to do in the coming year.

A Christmas prayer for 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Rocchi) — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 23:19:00 +0000

Each Christmas Eve, my wife and I host a traditional Italian "Feast of the Seven Fishes" for family and friends. Marie creates a masterpiece every time. However, as the father of the household, I like to lead guests in prayer before we start. Well, 2012 was a challenge for us with illness, the death of Marie's father, the death of one of my most long-timed friends, and more, including the tragedies in our national community. I composed a special prayer for the occasion; I hope you find meaning in it.
Merry Christmas and happy new year.

Prayer before Christmas Dinner 2012

We are grateful for the many ways we are blessed this night.

In a world where many walk in hunger; we’re blessed to have an abundance of food. And so, may we eat with humble and grateful hearts.
In a world where many walk alone, we're glad to have each other.
At a time when many are in sorrow, having had their children and other loved ones taken from them unexpectedly, we're grateful for this moment of joy and to be together, especially in the light of an extraordinary year.

Having survived a year of illness, we hope that God's compassions never fail us,
and that his mercies are new every morning.
We give thanks for the relief from the sickness of this past year and for the hope of renewed health.

On this night of joy and in this moment of togetherness, we also feel the absence of people we loved.
Let us remember the Christmas celebrations of the past and be grateful for having had them.
Let us soften our hearts and be more compassionate with everyone we meet and be in harmony with one another.

And finally, let's remember the central reason we are here. The beauty of this table tonight is that we gather as people with a wide range of beliefs. Yet whatever we believe, one fact is indisputable:
Jesus Christ, who was born this night, said that the two great commandments that contain the whole law of God are to love your God with your whole heart, with your whole soul, with your whole mind, and with your whole strength. And also to love your neighbor as you love yourself.

So in light of all what we believe, what we have endured and all we face ahead,
may this food restore our strength, giving new energy to tired limbs and new thoughts to weary minds.
May this drink restore our souls, giving new vision to dry spirits and new warmth to cold hearts.
And may this time together restore our souls as we head into a new year with the opportunity to be renewed.

Climate Change May Have Abetted the Wrath of Khan (Genghis, that is)

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Rocchi) — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 03:28:00 +0000

One of the world's greatest conquerors seems to owe his success to global warming. Still think this phenomenon is inconsequential?
According to The Economist, two academic researchers have uncovered evidence that it was changes to the climate that helped Genghis Khan take over half of Eurasia. Data found through tree-rings indicate that during his rise to power, Khan's world was wetter and warmer than in millennia past. This led to richer grazing than normal, which powered his horde's most powerful asset: their horses.
These finding are not conclusive. The researchers, Amy Hessl of West Virginia University and Neil Pederson of Columbia University, are consulting with other scientists and a historian to test their theories. But regardless of the outcome, this theory further supports the notion that climate change does indeed alter history in ways that we would not normally imagine.

Trucking Companies Drive Home Point: Indices Can Be Misleading

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Rocchi) — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 13:20:00 +0000

Charles Dow, the first editor of The Wall Street Journal, had many prescient investing theories. One stated that a breakdown in transportation stocks presaged a downturn in the overall economy.

However, Dow's observation is being test right now. The largest players in the trucking field -- J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Heartland Express and YRC Worldwide -- should see revenue gains between 5 and 13 percent. Yet while these large trucking companies are doing well, there is still a buildup of inventory at wholesalers, manufacturers and retailers, and this does not bode well for the entire economy.

So why the anomaly? It turns out that ONLY these large trucking companies are doing well; they are largely meeting the withered demand for trucking by themselves. Smaller companies have not been able to invest in the newer vehicles and the people needed to meet the demand. So manufacturers and retailers will be paying higher transportation prices because the trucking industry is short about 20,000 drivers (according to industry analysts).

So the lessons to be gleaned from this:

Old theories should be heeded, but not blindly.
A rising tide does not lift all boats. Sometimes the better maintained boats do better.
The principle of supply vs. demand certainly applies to talent: Members of the trucking industry are competing for quality drivers, which are in short supply right now.

In the Category of "What Was I Thinking?"

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Rocchi) — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 16:58:00 +0000

My friends and I got into a discussion on Facebook today on several Presidential campaign snafus that were entirely avoidable: Mitt Romney's heartfelt but vocally challenged rendition of "America the Beautiful" is now an Obama ad. Barack Obama tone deaf remark that "the private sector is doing fine" has been a Romney ad for weeks. Perhaps the biggest self-inflicted wound of all time was by Michael Dukakis when he got into a tank and... well, let the ad speak for itself.
But, really, don't our organizations do the same things when they take actions or make announcements without thinking them through? Here are some examples:

A company makes record profits but employees' salaries are frozen.
Health benefits are cut with out a rationale.
U.S. Olympic uniforms are made in China.
New Coke. (Really, do I need to elaborate on that one?)

Here's a simple example of preemptive media management: An industrial TV organization I belonged to gave a "Communicator of the Year" award to a local broadcaster. As the dinner was underway, a local TV station -- indeed, the one where he worked -- sent a crew in to get some footage for that night's newscast. As soon as they entered the room, his beer bottle quickly, discretely went under the table. He enjoyed it again after they left.

That really wasn't so difficult. We should all give our actions that much consideration.

A Recipe for Insularity

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Rocchi) — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 12:09:00 +0000

To close yourself off from the public and limit your accountability for your actions, do the following:

Prepare a large and loyal following.
Coddle your organization's insiders.
Blacken anyone who disagrees with you.
Blanch over the slightest interference from outside authorities.
When it all comes to a boil, cry prejudice.
Stew over the results of your actions.

This winning recipe has been done to perfection for such institutions as Penn State University, The Catholic Church, The Democratic Party, The Republican Party and most big-city police departments.
Warning: The final dish when left out loses its taste over time.

Learning Inspiration from Jack Nicholson

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Rocchi) — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 01:32:00 +0000

I was watching the 1997 movie As Good As It Gets when I heard one of the most memorable lines, and one of the best sentiments, written for a movie over the last 20 years.

Jack Nicholson played Melvin Udall, a writer with OCD, who falls in love with waitress Carol Connelly (played by Helen Hunt). While he is awkwardly wooing her over dinner, she requests a compliment from him, mostly to counteract the insults he inadvertently inflicts on others as a result of his condition.
Melvin thinks it over, and he informs Carol that since he met her, he is controlling his OCD with medication for the first time. Carol, bewildered, asks what that has to do with her.

Melvin draws his breath and announces to Carol, somewhat gallantly, that "You make me want to be a better man." (See the scene here.)

It is one of the best compliments that Carol has ever received in her hard-knock life. And well it should be.

Who is the person for whom you want to improve? To do your best? It could be a loved one, a teacher, a coach, a boss, a colleague.

There must be a person for whom you want to give more than a passable effort. You could write a brochure that looks like the others in your marketing department, or you could create a breakthrough document. You can lay brick to collect your daily pay, or you could help build one of the most beautiful walls ever.

But who is the person YOU want to make better? Maybe that is the more pertinent question.

In Memoriam: Robert D. "Bob" Reif

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Rocchi) — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 02:57:00 +0000

Bob Reif smiles proudly upon his
family: (from left) Eric, Amy and Melissa.

A little backstory: My friend since age 13, Bob Reif, died of complications from a lung transplant on June 24m 2012. At the request of Bob's wife, Amy, and his children, Eric and Melissa, I proudly delivered this eulogy for Bob at at Temple Rodef Shalom in Falls Church, VA on June 26. I spoke these words when I stepped to the lectern and was impressed by the size of the crowd gathered.

Wow! From this vantage point, I am able to see so many people who were touched by Bob. From where you are, I ask that you look quickly to your left... your right... behind you and in front of you.

Do you see all those people with us today? I guarantee that you all have one thing in common. I'll bet Bob made every one of you laugh and be happy at one time or another.

My wife, Marie, and I share a favorite memory that illustrates Bob audacious sense of humor. It was at the funeral of his father, Martin. When Marie and I came up to the casket to express our condolences, Bob's mother, Annalise, looked wistfully around at the crowd -- the many people in attendance -- and she said, "Look at all these people. Isn’t it nice? Marty would have enjoyed seeing them."

Bob looked at the casket, smiled at us and said, "Yeah, in fact he would have preferred it."

He had few filters, no sense of shame and little sense of propriety. And that was because he understood that it is not the years in your life that are important, but rather the life you give your years.

Bob's mind operated at the speed of light. He was so fast and he had stored so much information that he could make a pun or a joke or an incisive and insightful observation seemingly instantaneously. It was hard to keep up with him. But along with a fast mind, Bob had persistent values. Those of us who knew him, as I have for more than 45 years, know that that he saved his biggest barbs for politics. He was unabashedly, unapologetically and unilaterally liberal. And Democratic. Bob is the only person I know who could have his son wear a T-shirt that read, "Friends don't let friends vote Republican."

By the way, if you are Republican, please don’t take offense at this. I have been on the opposite side of Bob’s politics, and I am left of center myself. By the time Bob was done with me, I looked like Rush Limbaugh to him. If you’re offended, we can blame Bob today.

But I also understood that Bob's values came from the wellspring of charity and altruism that has been the hallmark of modern American Judaism over the course of the 20th century through the present.

You see, even as Bob grew more successful in his life, material things never really possessed him. Instead, he continued to care genuinely for others who were less fortunate than he was. And he believed that we needed to care for another. He lived the words of Psalm 82: "Defend the cause of the weak; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked."

It speaks well of Bob to say that these qualities are considered old-fashioned today. As the chairman of Epstein Becker Green so beautifully expressed in an e-mail to the firm yesterday, Bob was loyal, fair, committed, and an eager mentor to new members of the firm. In the tumult of everyday life, it was not often about him. Amy, Eric and Missy, his brother Gerry, his mother and father, his mother-in-law Kitty, and we, his friends... all of us came first.

I can attest to this from personal experience. During the course of his fight with pulmonary fibrosis, Bob learned that I was also ill. From his hospital bed, he wrote a message to me that encouraged me to fight and beat the disease. Even in his most challenging time, it was not about him.

No words that I or anyone will give you today can remove the hurt, the betrayal we all feel after such a promising period after Bob’s transplant. But here in the presence of God, we can choose, over time, to thank Him that the life of Bob’s years was so abundant with the virtues of
joy and wit…
benevolence and selflessness…
honor, idealism and integrity…
his ongoing wonder and curiosity for all the world has to offer,
and in the end, courage.

And God, please take Bob with the open and generous arms that he extended to so many of us. But however You take him... please don't take him too seriously. I guarantee You; he can make YOU laugh, too.