>> The Switch
>> Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
>> The Other Guys
>> Salt
>> Inception
>> Cyrus
>> The Last Airbender
>> Grown Ups
>> Toy Story 3
>> The Human Centipede

Opening 9.1.10
>> The American (R) [trailer]

Opening 9.3.10
>> Going the Distance (R) [trailer]
>> Machete (R) [trailer]
>> Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1 (Limited) (R) [trailer]
>> The Winning Season (Limited) (PG-13) [trailer]
>> White Wedding (Limited) (Not Rated) [trailer]
>> A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop (Limited) (R) [trailer]

Coming To DVD/Blu-Ray 8.31.10
>> Sons of Anarchy: Season Two [buy]
>> House, M.D.: Season Six [buy]
>> The Vampire Diaries: The Complete First Season [buy]
>> Once an Eagle [buy]
>> Brothers & Sisters: Complete Fourth Season [buy]

Las Vegas: Satan Vacations Here
by Victoria Alexander
September 7, 2009

The Men Who Stare At Goats: Jim Channon, Ecuador Retreat Photos, Movies This Week, Play the Game Review, The Machete Season, and more...

Movies I Saw This Week. “Play the Game” (YES), “Final Destination” (YES), “Extract” (NO), “Gamer” (NO), and “The Time Travelers Wife” (NO).

Brief comments: Mike Judge’s “Extract”, starring Jason Bateman, is dull and boring. “Final Destination” has the same stories as the previous FD’s. A group of teens are on death’s list. The deaths come in highly imaginative and cruel ways. No one lives. “The Time Travelers Wife” is based on the incredible blockbuster book. The movie, starring Eric Bana as Henry the Naked Time Traveler, is sloppy and never explains a thing. Bana fails as a romantic lead. And he wears a bad wig. “Gamer” starring “300” sensation Gerard Butler is so loud I got a severe headache. Butler is an innocent death row man inside a video game. And he’s fighting calories as well.

Play the Game. Smart screenplay, good directing. Except for Griffith, casting is wrong.

I have several women friends over 80 years old. I know this from talking to them: Men over 80 want sex even if they are incontinent.

David (Paul Campbell) thinks he’s a player because he has a worshipful married “wing” man who accompanies him on his prowl nights. To us, he’s awkward with a distrustful, sharp-angled face. Maybe he’s got girth working for him?

David’s (via Campbell) sex appeal is thriving only in his head and the director’s (Andy Fienberg). Having a lousy relationship with his mean-spirited, recently reconciled father, who happens to be his boss at a car dealership, David has financed his grandfather Joe’s (Andy Griffith) apartment in a retirement community.

When David sees that Joe has lost the zest for life and women, he decides to teach his grandfather the “player’s code” to snare some ladies.

Joe misses companionship, but the warrior-women of the retirement village want sex and plenty of it! It takes wise-woman Edna (Liz Sheridan) to slyly introduce Joe to the miracle of Viagra and an unfamiliar sex act. Joe has found the Holy Grail of sex. Joe gets an erection and becomes the retirement community’s resident stud!

Meanwhile, David falls hopelessly in lust for a young woman, Julie (Marla Sokoloff), who has absolutely no interest in him. He is now obsessed since no woman has ever passed up a chance to bed him. Julie happens to be the granddaughter of demure Rose (Doris Roberts), who, for no apparent reason, is Joe’s unattainable love interest.

Writer/director Fienberg has written a funny, clever movie and directed it with tons of extreme close-ups. Griffith is game and so is Sheridan but Roberts cannot shake her sharp-tongued persona. Roberts has a tough time playing coy and demure.

The problem with “Play the Game” lies, unfortunately, with Campbell. He’s miscast (so is Roberts!). While he has lots of facial expressions, we don’t see him as a smooth operator. His face is all wrong for this type of role. Since the entire premise of the story is David’s ability to be an effective womanizer with rules and successful plays who then becomes husband material with a soul, Campbell doesn’t deliver.

What I’m Reading. “Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak” by Jean Hatzfeld and “When Victims Become Killers” by Mahmood Mamdani. With the systematic, state-supported murder of 6 million European Jews by the Nazis during World War II, the world said “Never Again”. So what happened in Rwanda? In 1994 an estimated one million Tutsi men, women and children were savagely murdered by ordinary Hutus.

“Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak” is a shocking and highly descriptive telling of exactly how Hutus – many joyously - killed their Tutsi wives, children, friends and neighbors by swinging machetes. (Photo of a machete attack survivor)

A substantial number of women, and even girls, were involved in the slaughter, inflicting extraordinary cruelty on other women, as well as children (according to one report, 800 children aged seven to seventeen) and men. Women of every social category took part in the killings. The extent to which women were involved in the killings is unprecedented anywhere in the world. Some women killed with their own hands.

The "low-tech" means by which the killing was carried out -- the murderers used machetes or hoes -- required the involvement of a large proportion of the Hutu population. Videotapes of the killings show that three or more killers often hacked on a single victim. There were many more killers than victims.

Scholars place the racial hatred solely on the European colonists. The Tutsis were willing collaborators to the Belgian colonization. The Belgians, in turn, gave the Tutsis privileged positions in politics, education, and business. The Belgians empowered the Tutsis so much that their exploitation of the Hutu majority reached new heights.

The killers used physical characteristics as a guide -- the Tutsi were generally taller by the historical 12-centimeter difference, thinner, and with slimmer noses than the shorter, stockier Hutu. The Tutsi, with their more 'European' appearance, were deemed the 'master race'.

The 'master race'. Sounds familiar.

As Mahmood Mamdani points out, “Unlike the Nazi Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide was not carried out from a distance, in remote concentration camps beyond national borders, in industrial killing camps operated by agents who often did no more than drop Zyklon B crystals into gas chambers from above. The Rwandan genocide was executed with the slash of machetes rather than the drop of crystals, with all the gruesome detail of a street murder rather than the bureaucratic efficiency of a mass extermination.”

Mamdani continues: “The technology of the holocaust allowed a few to kill many, but the machete had to be wielded by a single pair of hands. It required not one but many hacks of a machete to kill even one person. With a machete, killing was hard work, that is why there were often several killers for every single victim. Whereas Nazis made every attempt to separate victims from perpetrators, the Rwandan genocide was very much an intimate affair. It was carried out by hundreds of thousands, perhaps even more, and witnessed by millions.”

The Men Who Stare At Goats. Our dear friend Jim Channon (creator of the First Earth Battalion), technical advisor on the new George Clooney starring film, The Men Who Stare At Goats, saw it and thinks it’s hilarious. Jeff Bridges plays Jim in the movie. (Photo of Jim with John at our home in 1994 in Santa Fe, NM)

Here is the film’s synopsis:

In this dark comedy inspired by a real life story, astonishing revelations about a top-secret wing of the U.S. military come to light when a reporter encounters an enigmatic Special Forces operator on a mind-boggling mission. Reporter Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) encounters Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), a shadowy figure who claims to be part of an experimental U.S. military unit.

According to Cassady, the New Earth Army is changing the way wars are fought. A legion of “Warrior Monks” with unparalleled psychic powers can read the enemy’s thoughts, pass through solid walls, and even kill a goat simply by staring at it. Now, the program’s founder, Bill Django (Jeff Bridges, pictured), has gone missing and Cassady’s mission is to find him. Bob decides to accompany him on the search. When the pair tracks Django to a clandestine training camp run by renegade psychic Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey), the reporter is trapped in the middle of a grudge match between the forces of Django’s New Earth Army and Hooper’s personal militia of super soldiers. (Photo of Jim in his 1st Earth Battalion t-shirt)

The Men Who Stare at Goats was inspired by Jon Ronson’s non-fiction bestseller of the same name, an exploration of the government’s attempts to harness paranormal abilities to combat its enemies.

The Men Who Stare At Goats will be in theaters on November 6th, 2009.

Ecuador Retreat Photos. Just a few photos from our Power of the Waterfall retreat. The rustic accommodations were not perfect and I wisely brought my own food (only instant oatmeal twice a day). However, my objectives were met: I was only interested in the shaman and the strength of the ayahuasca.

I spent a year researching and emailing ayahuasca retreats in Peru and Ecuador. I found the right one. http://www.feathercrown.com/

There are many types of ayahuasca vines: yellow, red, black, etc. I was promised strong ayahuasca. I will let you evaluate: There were 7 drinkers and 2 non-drinkers. We were scheduled for 4 ceremonies with an optional 5th. No one took the 5th and only two participants took the 4th. That was due to the strength of the medicine.

Don Lucho is a very powerful shaman. I will be back.

Photos are of Feathercrown facilitator “Wancho” (in straw hat), Don Lucho’s wife Ines preparing the ayahuasca, serving the medicine at ceremony, and Don Lucho’s family.

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