Ocean's 13

I'm pleased to say that Ocean's 13 is definitely an improvement over the far too lazy Ocean's 12. The plot is more coherent this time around, the heist has lots of different parts that need to connect at just the right moments, and the actors all have a role to play (unlike Ocean's 12 where half the cast seemed to be along just for a trip to Europe).

But, the film still suffers from a case of sequelitis, a not so rare disease in which subsequent films, in an attempt to capture the magic of the first film, essentially gives us the first film all over again with a few changes here and there (see Home Alone 2 and Ghostbusters 2 for other examples of sequelitis).

There's no reason for this movie to exist, and while I was entertained by it, I was also annoyed by its lack of novelty. The characters are the same at the end of the movie as they are at the beginning (only they have a far greater appreciation of Oprah).

Since the formula hasn't changed all that much, the audience waits for the plan's different elements to click into place, is given a few scenes where the plan looks like it's in danger of failing, and then watches as Danny Ocean's crew cleverly sidesteps each small hurtle. At no point is there any doubt that the plan won't work, and as the movie winds down, I found myself checking off the inevitable twists and turns. There are no surprises.

The movie also rushes by at a breakneck pace, speeding through plot points at such a ferocious speed that many important elements are glossed over. I'm still trying to figure out what the deal was with the slot machines...I know it's in the movie, but everything was coming at me so fast that I missed it.

What there is, is a talented cast having fun, and the movie does provide some humourous scenes. I liked how their infiltration of a Mexican dice factory (in order to fix the craps dice) leads to a worker's strike. Matt Damon's seduction of Ellen Barkin provides some great moments, and Pitt and Clooney certainly have a natural chemistry together.

It's an entertaining flick, but even the laughs are somewhat hollow since the jokes are basically recycled from the first two movies.

I guess I'm moderately recommending the movie. It's certainly fun, but fleeting. I can only hope this is the last in the series - these folks are far too talented to regurgitate another caper flick.

Star Rating - **1/2 out of 4

Tv Shows I'm Watching - The Sopranos Series Finale

Don't read this article if you haven't seen the second half of Sopranos season 6, the series finale or care about the series finale. I'm giving you time to turn back now.....

Still time.....

Okay, you've been warned, here we go.

After six and a half seasons, The Sopranos has finally ended, and in the final episode....well....nothing really happened.

I have my thoughts, and I'll share them in a bit. First though, I just want to state that for the most part, I loved the last nine episodes of the show which finally seemed to embrace David Chase's mid-series change of pace. It appeared that Chase grew quickly bored of the ultra-violent, tightly paced, comic mob drama after season three and slowly transformed it into a slow, pondering, often brilliant, often frustrating meditation on violence and family in its last three seasons.

I felt like seasons four, five, and 6.1 were tonally inconsistent, abandoning the clear, suspense laden storytelling of the first three seasons by adding multiple open ended plot threads (that were often never resolved or wrapped up so quickly there was little time to develop any tension), a growing labrynth of paper thin mob associates (who were instantly forgettable, especially considering the show's year long breaks), and occasionally diving headfirst into the bizarre realm of esoteric psychobabble through elaborate, often baffling dream sequences.

It became clear by the second half of season six, that the transition was complete, and the final nine episodes were the mournful cries of a show exploring abandonment, loneliness, and the sad truth of the world these mobsters live in. Each episode provided closure to a particular character, sometimes shockingly, sometimes inevitably.

Perhaps the key scene of the last episode involved a conversation that took place in Little Italy. As a tour guide explains at the beginning of the scene, Little Italy, at its height spanned forty blocks of New York City. Today, it is a fraction of the size, and as one mobster finishes his short phone conversation he finds that he has traversed the entire breadth of the neighbourhood in a matter of seconds.

These final episodes, taken as a whole, depict the death of the mob.

As the older mobsters succumb to health issues (Johnny Sack, Junior), the young ones succumb to greed and addiction (Christopher). The next generation, having lived a life of wealth and abundance, doesn't have what it takes to move into the business.

And as the final episode wraps up, with half of Tony's associates dead or dying, with Paulie, in his own mind, signing a death warrant, and with Junior losing himself completely to dementia, Tony decides to have a family meal at a diner.

He sits down, and turns on the jukebox - Journey's Don't Stop Believing. As the tune starts, Carmela sits down and talks family matters, then A.J. shows up and talks about focusing on the good times (clearly a step away from the depressing thoughts he has recently had). Meadow has trouble parallel parking outside. A shady figure at the end of the bar heads to the bathroom. Meadow parks and runs toward the diner. The door clangs. Tony looks up, the song says "Don't stop"....complete cut to black. The Sopranos is over.

Theories have been popping up all over the place from - "the last episode was all a dream" to "Tony was killed by the man in the washroom", but personally I think it's much simpler.

The show just ends.

Yep.

That's it. No bang, no whimper, just a quick cut to black midway through a perfectly normal moment in Tony's life.

Journey's song claims, "Oh the movie never ends. It goes on and on and on and on", and that incapsulates the feeling of the finale; knowing that despite that cut, things go on. Tony's life continues, but Chase's cut kills the relationship between the viewer and the characters.

David Chase doesn't try to hide this. The final line of the previous episode reiterates Bobby's assertion that "you don't even hear it when it (death) happens." And like that, The Sopranos is over, dead, a complete unexpected surprise. For us, Tony's story is finished, the mob's story is finished.

At first, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I thought the final seconds had been mistakenly broadcast. Then I was angry, pissed off at David Chase for taking me through six seasons of a show only to end it like THAT!!! Then I went on the Internet and tried to see what people were saying...everyone was trying to say...it's not over, it's just making room for the movie. Then people were sad....and then the reports started coming in from the major publications about how brilliant the ending was.

At this point I realized the brilliance of the ending. Chase had created an ending so shockingly similar to death, that I, and most of the viewing population, was experiencing the five stages of grief used in the Kubler-Ross model.

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

What better way to depict the death of the mob than to actually kill the entire show.

Another key to understanding the ending seems to lie in Goodfellas, the Scorcese film referenced frequently, and admired by every single character in The Sopranos universe. In Goodfellas the final shot shows Joe Pesci's character firing a gun directly at the audience. It's a direct homage to The Great Train Robbery, a 1903 silent film, that used a similar final shot. There a man pointed his gun to the audience and fired. Because movies were so new, legend has it that audiences were scared out of their minds thinking that somehow they were going to be shot.

So, Goodfellas apes a technique originally designed to make an audience think they were about to be shot. And The Sopranos, never one to shy away from Scorcese references, playfully throws in its own technique to simulate murder.

I can certainly understand why the ending is so frustrating, but in recent years, The Sopranos has trusted its audience to work through some complex, often difficult-to-understand moments. The ending is certainly no more difficult to analyze than the bizarre episode, The Test Dream, where Tony had a twenty minute dream sequence, or the episodes after Tony is shot where, in his camatose state, he imagines that he is living the life of another person.

Chase provides an ending that is open for interpretation, and I think it's fair to say that The Sopranos will be analyzed and discussed far more because of its final moments, than if the show had ended with a typical bloodbath.

What I Rented - Tideland

Terry Gilliam's Tideland is a colossal failure, a movie so misguided and ugly that it is a chore to sit through the first ten minutes let alone the entire two hours. There is the hope that some of Gilliam's enormous talent will shine through later on, but aside from the occasional fantasy scene he seems more interested in surrounding his lead character with bizarre whackos who engage in acts more at home in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The story, or what little story there is, follows Jeliza Rose (Jodelle Ferland), who moves with her father to a deserted house in the middle of the prairies after her mother dies from a drug overdose. Soon after, dad follows suit, and Jeliza is left to fend for herself, communicating solely with four severed doll's heads. Eventually she meets up with some more characters and they form a disfunctional family unit. Lots of bizarre sexual situations, violence, and depravity follows.

Tideland is first and foremost an exercise in excess. Without any restraints, it appears that Gilliam was allowed to do whatever he wanted, and while there is certainly an abundance of ideas, there is no sense of pacing, story, or even visual grace. A little girl simply walks around and finds herself in troubling situations, but unlike Alice in Wonderland (a story Gilliam repeatedly references), Jeliza's journey is witless, satire-free, and dull.

One of the main problems is that the Gilliam never allows the audience to truly get inside Jeliza's head. According to Gilliam's bizarre intro, he claims that he wants the viewer to see the world through the innocence of a child. Fair enough, but why then does he constantly show the reality of the scene?

For example, in Jeliza's world, Dickens, her neighbour, is a heroic submarines captain who hunts and kills sharks. Yet, aside from one extremely over-the-top fantasy scene, the camera consistently shows the grim reality of the situation. Dickens is a mentally disabled boy who spends most of his time in a tent where he plans to blow up trains and other moving vehicles. Jeliza simply wanders into his world, mumbles a lot of childish nonsense, and we're supposed to accept that Jeliza's imagination is working overtime to create a wondrous fantasy.

Every scene in the movie is essentially the same. Jeliza is innocently placed in a potentially traumatic experience, and instead of watching her interpretation of the event, the audience is treated to the gritty, hard-to-stomach reality. Because she is a child, and the plot would disintegrate if she actively tried to improve her lot in life, she is essentially reduced to a powerless protagonist, and the movie never lets her be anything more than a passive observer. Sure she occasionally takes action; freeing a squirrel, or putting two doll's heads inside her dead father's open carcass (yep that's the kind of movie this is), but more often than not Jeliza simply is in the right place at the right time and has an "encounter". Over the course of two hours, Jeliza's inaction becomes downright annoying. I know she's a child, but Gilliam spends so long trying to prove that she is a bright child, so it's thoroughly unconvincing when Jeliza is unable to sense that the people around her are downright insane.

Tideland is a terrible, terrible movie, made even worse by the fact that this is potentially fascinating material, placed in the hands of the one man who could have actually made it work. Gilliam's film is a depressing slog, an unrestrained mess, and one of the worst films I have had the displeasure to sit through.

Star Rating - O out of 4