Author Archives: laurn larson

Survive This

9 November 2017 By in Movies Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Jungle  (2017)  Rated: R  Runtime: 115 minuteM Jungle 2017

Genre: Action-Adventure-Drama-Suspense

els – 5.5/10

IMDb – 6.7/10

Amazon – 4.5/5 stars

Rotten Tomatoes Critics – 5.5/10

Rotten Tomatoes Audience – 3.7/5

Metacritic Metascore – 48/100

Metacritic User Score – 7.4/10

Directed by:  Greg McLean

Written by:  Yossi Ghinsberg and Justin Monjo

Produced by:  Todd Fellman, Mike Gabrawy, Gary Hamilton

Music by:  Johnny Klimek

Cast:  Daniel Radcliffe, Thomas Kretschmann, Alex Russell, Adrian Rawlins

B Jungle 2005Jungle, the movie, based on the 2005 autobiographical memoir:  Jungle: A Harrowing True Story of Survival by Yossi Ghinsberg; illustrates the fateful adventure, through the Bolivian jungle, of 3 young, adrenaline seeking friends and their enigmatic guide.  The guide (Adrian Rawlins, of James Potter fame in the Harry Potter movies) convinces a gullible and naive Yossi, played by Radcliffe, to join him on an ill-defined quest for lost villages and gold; through uncharted mountainous terrain of sheer cliffs and rugged slopes, networks of clogged vegetative mazes, deep-valley rivers of contesting demeanor; lethargic, sleepy flows metastasizing to rabid, boiling waters jetting past plane sized boulders in a few accelerated heartbeats; matching ones physical and psychological endurance against a wild, relentless, and unsympathetic jungle.

One of the many weak and feeble points in the screenplay and direction is how Yossi manages to convince his mates to join him on this expedition of folly with an unknown guide of dubious qualifications. It was definitely an unconvincing sales pitch while watching the film. Being a true story I’ll acknowledge that it happened, however the suspension of disbelief could have been strengthened tremendously with the use of artistic license, maybe having all involved brain addled by booze and drugs, rather than relying on Yossi’s Harry Potter smile to reach a unanimous agreement to commit trekking suicide.  The guide is easily the most interesting personality in the movie, but his character development and origins are glossed over; using him merely as a tool to get the show going.  Too bad. A final mention of a perceived flaw was the filming of the death inducing rafting through the river’s rapids. I can create more convincing white-water in my bathtub than what I observed on the screen.

Radcliffe’s acting ability has improved leaps and bounds since the days of Harry Potter, but he still can’t present raw, unbridled emotion worth a damn. The scenes of fist pounding angst should have been left on the cutting room floor, to the vast improvement of the film.  Radcliffe will never be a great lead actor; a supporting role will provide him well through his career though, if he wisely choses to go that route.

Jungle is a tolerable flick, not a must see, but worth a few hours of your time on a lazy rainy day.

 

Illuminati for Dummies

7 November 2017 By in Books Fiction Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

The Damnation of Theron Ware

Written by: Harold Frederic

Originally pPublished by:  Stone and Kimball

Original Copyright:  © 1896B Theron Ware

Harold Frederic, 1856-1898, photographer, journalist, and author, son of Presbyterians, practicing their religion in the churches of Methodists, growing up among immigrant Catholics in upstate New York, adopted a skeptical view of all religions in adulthood. He lived an idiosyncratic life as an unbuttoned, avant-garde individualist, stating near his untimely end in 1897, “I live wholly to myself because I like to live an unshackled life…”. In 1884 he moved to London, bringing along his wife, Grace, and their 5 children, working as a correspondent of the New York Times. He later set up a second household in London with his mistress, Kate Lyon and had 3 additional children by her. His premature death in 1898 left both families in financial difficulty.

Frederic wrote 10 novels, 23 short stories, 2 volumes of non-fiction, and countless newspaper articles over his short life time, but he did not achieve critical acclaim until the publication of his seventh novel: The Damnation of Theron Ware in 1896.  Two other novels followed, Gloria Mundi and The Market Place, cementing his legacy as an accomplished author, on par with, but better known, contemporaries Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Henry James, and Stephen Crane. The posthumously published, The Market Place, was a financial success, alleviating his family’s financial duress.

The Damnation of Theron Ware, likely not autobiographical, but certainly expanding on the author’s experiences growing up in Utica, New York, is a story of a young, naive, married Methodist preacher: Theron Ware, who is posted by his bishop, to a small, conservative, poor congregation in a fictional town in the very real and ancient hills and forests of upstate New York.

Through his witnessing of an Irish worker’s fatal injury, he is innocently introduced to a beautiful, intelligent, but wild, Irish-Catholic young woman named Celia. This encounter sets off a series of faith questioning episodes with this woman and her friends: a priest and a cynical and urbane Catholic scientist; accelerating the protestant minister onto the fast, yet short, road to perdition.  His ensuing infatuation with Celia separates him from his wife. His education at the hands of the Catholic trio separates him from his faith and church. His conversion to religion without god and comprehension separates him from the Catholic trio or more precisely, the Catholics separate from him.

His innocence is gone but his education is incomplete. He is damned.  He concludes that his salvation lies in politics.

Gerard Bertrand Grand Terroir Les Aspres 2013

6 November 2017 By in Red Wine Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

W Gerard 2013Rhone Red Blends from Languedoc-Roussillon, France

50% syrah

40% mourvedre

10% grenache

14.0% alcohol

Opened 3 Nov 2017

els 9.1/10

Wine Advocate 90-92

Gerard Bertrand, living a charmed life, grew up in the vineyards of southern France, a rugby union flanker for 10 years, captain of the team in 1993-1994, winemaker, owner and manager of 13 estates in the region of Languedoc-Roussillon; not exactly a Dickens’ Pip, but one who has reached heights of achievement likely unimagined by his father, Georges.

The vineyards for this Rhone Red are located in sun setting shadows of Mont Canigou, one of the lofty peaks of the Pyrenees along the French-Spanish border, 30 miles from the Mediterranean coast. The area around the mountain is known as Les Aspres, meaning arid in Catalan, forested at higher altitudes, barren scrublands occupying the lower, flatter altitudes.

Les Aspres, officially delimited, as a red wine only, viticultural area in 2004, is a sub-region of the Cotes du Roussillon appellation, in Languedoc-Roussillon, southern France. The Les Aspres label is reserved for Roussillon’s higher-quality red wines.

The land rises gently from the Mediterranean coast in the east to the Pyrenean foothills in the west. Most wineries and vineyards are located at altitudes around 330 feet. The climate for Les Aspres is definitively Mediterranean, with long, hot, dry summers; temperatures ranging from the low 80s during the day to the low 60s, Fahrenheit, at night; delivering rains of less than one inch per month from June through August. The

W Mount Canigou

Vineyards below Mount Canigou in France. Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

poor soils within Gerard Bertrand’s Les Aspres vineyards are generally Tertiary, detrital and alluvial schists, ranging in size from pebbles to silt.

 

The Syrah and Mourvedre, the primary grape varieties, along with secondary grenache, are used to produce these rich, full-flavored Les Aspres wines. The area, recently, is undergoing a ‘wine revolution’; fine wines replacing the past production of sweet table wines.

This wine has a splendid garnet-brick color. The bouquet brings forth visions of plums, prunes and cloves. The acidity and tannins are smooth producing a full-bodied wine with a long finish.  Serve with lamb. Decant and aerate for at least one hour.

$16.99 wine.com

 

Family First

5 November 2017 By in Movies Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Shot Caller  (2017)  Rated R  Runtime: 121 minutesM Shot 2017

Genre: Action-Mystery-Suspense-Thriller-Crime-Prison

els – 7.0/10

IMDb – 7.4/10

Amazon – 4.5/5 stars

Rotten Tomatoes Critics – 6.2/10

Rotten Tomatoes Audience – 3.9/5

Metacritic Metascore – 59/100

Metacritic User Score – 7.1/10

Directed by: Ric Roman Waugh

Written by: Ric Roman Waugh

Produced by: Jonathan King, Michel Litvak , Gary Michael Walters , Ric Roman Waugh

Music by: Antonio Pinto

Cast:  Nikolaj Coster-Walau, Jon Bernthal, Lake Bell

Jacob ‘Money’ Harlon, played by Nikolaj Coster-Walau, destroys his life, his family, and his friend, in a split second of inebriated inattention, tumbling him towards the gates of hell and hell’s masters. Harlon evolves from a successful stockbroker to a calculating gang member inside the go along or die, walls of prison.  Jacob on the outside; handsome, kind, likable, becomes Money on the inside; branded, stoic, brutal, shrewd; ultimately resolving all consequential moral issues bichromatically, there is no grey in staying alive, no grey in protecting his estranged wife and son from the callous wrath of the gangs; who operate with impunity, mockery, and charter, inside and outside the profane houses of correction.

Coster-Walau (whatever happened to the studios giving actors simple, pronounceable names) plays his part with feverish intensity, a resoundingly believable act dramatizing the ruthless lack of humanity that is our prison system.  He realistically reveals the absolute horror of living a life bound to a criminal tribe’s hellish code of control, unchained from any sense of compassion or mercy.

Ric Roman Waugh, as director and writer, brings a flawless, no tricks, script to life with a dual track film that unfolds Jacob’s trek to Money, and Money’s odyssey to redemption. A story of a lost life, a story of finding honor, a story of emancipation, a story of family.

Good Ape — Bad Ape

4 November 2017 By in Movies Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

War for the Planet of the Apes  (2017)  PG-13  Runtime: 140 minutesM War Apes

Genre: Drama-Action-Adventure-SciFi-War

els – 7.0/10

IMDb – 7.6/10

Amazon – 3.5/5 stars

Rotten Tomatoes Critics – 8.1/10

Rotten Tomatoes Audience – 4.1/5

Metacritic Metascore – 82/100

Metacritic User Score – 8.1/10

Directed by: Matt Reeves

Written by: Mark Bomback, Matt Reeves

Produced by: Peter Chernin, Dylan Clark, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver

Music by: Michael Giacchino

Cast: Andy Serkis, Woody Harrelson, Steve Zahn

M Ape 1968War for the Planet of the Apes is the third, and unlikely the last for Cornelius is just a young monkey, installment of the Planet of the Apes reboot series, or if you are keeping track, the eighth movie since the original 1968 Plant of the Apes film. Keeping the story front and center, director-writer Matt Reeves, and co-writer Mark Bomback have created a compelling drama with just enough action-adventure-war added to maintain the tempo and interest in this 2 hour and 10 minute epic about biblical-type survival, family, and revenge.

Caesar played by Andy Serkis delivers a compelling performance of a compassionate angry ape, succumbing to baser instincts of survival, eventually finding peace through the delicate innocence of a mute little girl; enabling him to assume the mantle of Moses, leading his people from bondage. It might be a tad much to have both Caesar and Moses on the same stage, but it does seem to work.

Woody Harrelson, playing the hard, single vision, blinders on, Colonel, finally has found a role, post Cheers, to showcase his talents. Harrelson produces a highly believable persona of a driven man that allows the survival of his species to obscure the other options available to this other-wise intelligent character.

Bad Ape played by Steve Zahn provides the comic relief that so far has not entered into this franchise.  A short 2007 song by Bad Religion seems to provide some predictive pathos for Bad Ape and the movie as a whole.

Murder
Bad Religion – written by Brett W. Gurewitz and Greg Graffin – 2007

If you didn’t know your world’s a pile of s—
Listen to a riddle that’ll tickle every bit of it

Ha ha ha!

Ape shall not murder, ape wasn’t so sure
Bad ape, you made a mistake
Annihilation in a cannibal war
Well, cultivation might have served you
Might have raised you up unscathed
If you had called that f—– by its name…

Did you listen to the arbiter’s beck and call?
Did you find what you were looking for or not at all?

Not at all!

Ape shall not murder, ape take the cure
Bad ape you made a mistake
Annihilation in a cannibal war
Culture might have cured you
And raised you up unscathed
If you had called that f—– by its name…

Say the name!
Say the name!
Say the name!

The film is not a must see, but it is a worthy addition to the trilogy.  The title sells the movie as something that it isn’t: a war movie; it’s a drama about survival-family-revenge with some battle scenes thrown in to quicken the pace.

Hewitson Miss Harry G.S.M. 2013

3 November 2017 By in Red Wine Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

W Miss Harry 2013Rhone Red Blends from Barossa Valley, Barossa, Australia

47% grenache

31% mourvedre

12% shiraz

7% cinsault

3% carignan

14.0% alcohol

Opened 31 Oct 2017

els 9.0/10

Australian Wine Companion  95

Wine Spectator 90

The Hewitson’s vineyards and winery are located in the heart of Australia’s famous wine-producing region, Barossa Valley, about 35 miles northeast of downtown Adelaide, along Australia’s south-central coast. The Barossa Valley, named after the low, rounded mountains of the Barossa Range, was formed by the North Para River, para meaning river in the local dialect. The river provides the vine loving soils and water to nourish the extensive vineyards in the area.

The Barossa Range is named after the British-French, 1811, Battle of Barrosa near Cadiz, Spain, where the British, outnumbered 2-1, routed the French. The different spellings are attributed to a clerical error when the names were registered from the survey records.

The Hewitson’s vineyards contain some of the oldest vines in Australia. Their Old Garden vineyard contains 8 rows of Mourvedre, planted 164 years ago in 1853. The roots of the vines reach down 30 feet into the sandy soils, keeping the plants cool and refreshed even on the hottest, driest days.

The continental climate of Barossa Valley produces summer days reaching past 100 degrees Fahrenheit with the nights dropping down into the low 50s. Rain, during the growing season, has a scanty range and output of less than 1 inch to 1.5 inches per month.

This is a clear ruby-red wine redolent of cherries and spice.  The acidity blends well with the tannins producing a delightfully smooth and balanced wine.  This wine pairs well with just about anything, marbled steaks to pasta to cheese to a solitary glass, or two, enjoyed in the shade on a hot summer day. Decant and aerate the wine for an hour or two, it will help immensely.

$18.99 wine.com

Explorations 7: Excrescence — Pulchritude — Taqiya

2 November 2017 By in Trivia Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Looking up the definitions of 3 words before 7 o’clock in the morning suggests that my education may be incomplete or my memory was erased.

Excrescence:  noun from the Latin excrescentia meaning to grow out

  1. An outgrowth or enlargement, especially an abnormal one, such as a wart.
  2. A disfiguring, extraneous, or unwanted mark or part
  3. A normal outgrowth on the body such as finger nails and hair
  4. A usually unwanted or unnecessary accretion: a bulge on a building

Mushrooms are excrescence of an underground fungus network.

Pulchritude:  noun from the Latin pulchritudo meaning beauty

  1. physical comeliness, beauty, loveliness

Her pulchritude required effort not to stare.

Taqiya:  noun from Arabic meaning prudence or fear

  1. The Islamic practice to be ungrateful to, and or cheat non-Muslims
  2. Islamic religious dissimulation, concealment, while under threat or persecution
  3. Islamic legal exemption to lie when there is an extreme danger to lose ones life or property

Taqiya allowed her to drink wine with her non-Muslim neighbors.

Trivento Malbec Reserve 2015

1 November 2017 By in Red Wine Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

W Trivento Malbec 2015Malbec from Mendoza, Argentina

100% malbec

13.5% alcohol

Opened 29 Oct 2017

els 8.9/10

Decanter 95

Guia Descorchados 90

Bodega Trivento, the Three Winds Winery, sources its Malbec grapes from the Andean alluvial and colluvium soils of Lujan de Cuyo and Uco Valley, south of Mendoza, Argentina. The vineyards are at an altitude of approximately 3400 feet, soaking up 250 days per year of intense sun, in the dry, thin air; temperatures ranging in the summer growing season from highs of 95 degrees Fahrenheit during the days to 55 degrees at night. The semi-arid climate sparingly doles out less than 1.5 inches of rain per month during the growing season, forcing the growers to add drip irrigation to  assuage the vines thirst.

This inexpensive wine has a wonderful, clear, ruby-red color begging you to further investigate its aromas of cherry and strawberries, its soft tannins, and velvety, favorable finish. Chocolates and pasta will pair well with this Malbec.  Remember to decant and aerate the wine for an hour or two, it will help immensely.

$8.99 wine.com.

Grand Forks, ND Housing Market

1 November 2017 By in Real Estate Tags: , , Leave a comment

Trends from the previous month:

  1. The overall market compared to last month is cooling.
  2. There are fewer homes on the market.
  3. All houses are priced lower, the price per square foot is lower, the square footage per house is higher, and the days on the market has increased.
  4. Houses less than $500,000 are priced lower, the price per square foot is lower, the square footage per house is higher, and the days on the market has increased.
  5. Houses equal to or more than $500,000 are priced higher, the price per square foot is higher, the square footage per house is lower, and the days on the market has increased.RE Housing Oct 2017

Confronting Demons

31 October 2017 By in Movies Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

The Book of Henry  (2017)  PG-13  Runtime: 105 minutesM Henry 201`7

Genre: Drama-Mystery-Suspense-Thriller

els – 6.0/10

IMDb – 6.5/10

Amazon – 4.0/5 stars

Rotten Tomatoes Critics – 4.1/10

Rotten Tomatoes Audience – 3.5/5

Metacritic Metascore – 31/100

Metacritic User Score – 4.4/10

Directed by: Colin Trevorrow

Written by: Gregg Hurwitz

Produced by: Carla Hacken, Jenette Kahn, Sidney Kimmel, Adam Richman, et.al.

Music by: Michael Giacchino

Cast: Naomi Watts, Jaeden Lieberher, Jacob Tremblay

Henry, Jaeden Lieberher, an adolescent genius, is unable to convince the adult world that there is a monster living next door. Running where the adults will not tread, he takes the only road available —until he can’t. Lieberher in Midnight Special was competent, but I simply loved him as Henry in this movie. He is fated for greatness if Hollywood doesn’t totally mess this kid up before he reaches adulthood.

The critics see this movie as a jumbled mess of genres, an excess of ideas smashing into one another, phony and boring, poorly written, directed, and acted: I saw an emotional and passionate presentation of difficult issues that took the movie in unexpected directions, a satisfactory finish, acted and directed superbly, with only the writing coming up short. The writing stumbles mainly with presenting a prodigy capable of doing anything and everything,  amazingly, and then developing, in the end, a rather pedestrian solution to a complicated problem.

Ignore the critics, ignore the written bumps in the road, and see this movie.  Bring a box of Kleenex.