TWO MOVIES

I know that I promised some rants but I’m going to deliver some raves. That’s life.

Marcia and I actually went to the movies this holiday weekday – twice!

We saw “Up in the Air” with George Clooney on Friday. Great movie and probably a multiple award winner and I think a leading candidate for best movie. It hit me especially hard because it’s about a guy who travels the country firing people for companies without the guts to do it themselves. In case you didn’t know, I got fired last week. Oh, I expected it. It’s very simple – I have a political job and my guy (for novices, he’s called your rabbi) lost. And even though the news of my pending unemployment was not a surprise, I wasn’t told about it for five days after it became official. I look at it as testimony to the courage of our political leaders.

But that’s only part of what “Up in the Air” is about. What it really goes after is a favorite rant of mine - the demise of American business and the suicide of capitalism. It’s about the belief by Americans who was educated in business but have never actually participated in it that companies can be run like a science. These misguided and over-educated schmucks think the key to success (profit) can be guaranteed by following mathematical equations, or algorithms, that can solve any business problem using numbers, therefore taking emotions, or human failures, out of the solution. Such things as pity, gratitude, sympathy, humanity, compassion and concern almost always screw with the bottom line and must be avoided at all costs.

This kind of thinking has made American business, once the greatest economic power on the planet, the laughing stock of the third world. Personally, it meant to my soon-to-be-former office was taken apart with explosives by a new political machine who never even gave anyone a change to speak of their ideas or fears and simply issued a blanket order to clear out in a fortnight – a few days after Christmas. But the sad part is that the new guy really believes he’s going to win his battle with the bureaucrats those tenured and protected civil servants who do the work and eventually devour every pol who tries to fight the real power in city hall. That’s how the new guy gets aligned with the over-educated schmucks and becomes one himself.

But let’s get back to the movies.

The other flick we saw was “Avatar” and we saw it in IMAX 3D. I've been pretty tough on new movies lately and had modest expectations for the over-hyped flick. I was wrong. Before we left for the theater, I told Marcia I was in the mood to have my socks knocked off. About half way through, I said to her: “I don’t even know where my socks are anymore.”

The movie is pure genius and a true milestone in entertainment history. The love (and money) put into the telling of this story is obvious from start to finish and steals every scene in between. Don't be put off by nit-picky reviewers like me who search for flaws. “Avatar” might very well have some flaws but my dropped jaw blocked my view of the list I was keeping, my tears blurred my 3D glasses at times and there were more than a few times I was so entranced in the action I simply forgot I wasn’t in the story myself. If there wasn’t any story at all, the movie would have floored me with just its visual appeal. It is really that good.

 This flick might have cost $500 million, but not a penny was wasted. “Avatar” is the reason to go back to the movies -- at least until they bring out an IMAX 3D home unit with 40,000 watts of surround sound. See it. See it again. I know I will until I find my damn socks."