Free Frank Warner

North Korea wins the day; Sony cancels showing 'The Interview'

The Carmike movie theater chain is canceling its showings of the "The Interview," after defenders of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un hacked into Sony's computers and objected to the movie's insults of Kim and its fictional depiction of Kim's assassination.

Then, as threats were reported and investigators confirmed that North Korea is behind the Sony hacking, Sony canceled showing the movie at any theater, which was supposed to open Christmas Day.

The turn of events shows just how daring Charlie Chaplin was with "The Great Dictator" in 1940. How often do we see a motion picture mocking a living dictator?

Frank Warner

Movie review: 'Super 8' not so super

Like many movie-goers this weekend, I had high hopes for "Super 8," the new movie directed by J.J. Abrams and produced by Steven Spielberg. The early reviews were lavish with praise, telling us we were back to "E.T." and "Close Encounters" quality summer films.

So I was sadly disappointed. "Super 8" has its moments of virtuosity, but it just doesn't come together in the end. It probably will be popular enough to make some money, but it's no classic.

The film has two very good scenes -- of the kids making an amateur movie at the train station and, later, of young Joe running an old home movie of his mother. The trouble with "Super 8" is, the pace is uneven and it wraps up in a pointless rush. (It might have helped to show us how the kids' amateur film turned out. And you know, I missed what happened to the dog; now I just don't care.)

"Super 8" is a quart of "E.T.," a cup of "Jurassic Park," a teaspoon of "Jaws" and a pinch of "Back to the Future." A tasty recipe, but not prepared well enough to satisfy the appetite for films like the old Spielberg masterpieces.

Frank Warner

New bin Laden death story: Back to ‘Star Wars’ first version – ‘Han shot first’

The changing stories on the demise of Osama bin Laden are the 1997 George Lucas edit of his 1977 “Star Wars” movie, in reverse. The Obama administration, which first told us Greedo bin Laden shot first, now is telling us that Han Solo, represented by the Navy SEALs, shot first.

Greedo: “I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.”

Han: “Yes, I’ll bet you have.”

Boom! (Greedo drops dead.)

The “Han shot first” version always was best.

Frank Warner

‘The King’s Speech,’ well spoken

Jeff Bridges, it seemed to me, was sure to win the Academy Award for best actor this year for his performance as Rooster Cogburn in “True Grit.” But that was before I saw “The King’s Speech” with Colin Firth as King George VI.

I saw “The King’s Speech” last night, and Firth is a worthy contender. Geoffrey Rush also is compelling as Lionel Logue, the king’s speech therapist. Meanwhile, the Golden Globe award for best actor last night went to Firth.

“The King’s Speech” is not only a well-told story. For people like me, it is the first good look at the king who led Britain through World War II but for some reason is omitted from many history books. (I remember just one sickly picture of him, looking like a dying smoker.)

The 1939 speech. King George VI was monarch from 1936, when his more famous brother King Edward VIII abdicated to marry divorcee Wallis Simpson, until George VI’s death of lung cancer in 1952, when his daughter Elizabeth became the queen.

The movie lets us see how difficult it was for him to speak publicly, and in particular, how difficult it was for him to speak on live radio, Sept. 3, 1939, just as Britain entered the war with Germany.

One Oscar already has been awarded for the Rooster Cogburn part. For that reason and for a solid performance in “The King’s Speech,” this year’s best actor Oscar is likely to go to Colin Firth.

Frank Warner

'True Grit' with Jeff Bridges

Saw the new "True Grit" late last night. It's an excellent picture, with Jeff Bridges playing John Wayne's old part as Rooster Cogburn. Bridges is so good that this could be the first time the Best Actor Oscar is given to two guys playing the same part in separate versions of the same story.

Hailee Steinfeld also is damn good as the girl who hires Cogburn to hunt down her father's killer.

Frank Warner

Wikileaks: Cuban Communists banned Michael Moore’s ‘Sicko’ because Cubans would be sickened by its lies

When Michael Moore’s pro-dictator film “Sicko” was shown to Cuban doctors in 2007, some became so “disturbed at the blatant misrepresentation of healthcare in Cuba that they left the room,” according to a U.S. diplomatic cable revealed by Wikileaks.

So the Cuban Communist Party banned the film from most Cubans, the Wikileaks memo reports. The memo was sent a few months before the egomaniacal Fidel Castro overruled his lackeys and had the film shown to let his slave population know how much the world -- or at least Michael Moore -- loves him.

Moore’s movie pretended to show that Castro’s universal health care for Cubans was doing wonders for that nation, when in fact it is a medical system with lots of doctors, but with low-quality care, little medical equipment and almost no medicine.

Castro’s doctor. Remember when Castro got sick in late 2006? He called in a doctor from Spain, and the doctor flew in equipment not available in Cuba.

Castro loves to hear foreigners ignorantly praise his health-care system because the accolades deflect attention from his political illegitimacy and his tyrannical abuses. But Cuban doctors and Communist bureaucrats didn't want the Cubans to see and hear Moore’s lies.

The Jan. 31, 2008, U.S. cable from Havana said the Cuban government initially banned “Sicko,” which was released in June 2007, because it “knows the film is a myth and does not want to risk a popular backlash by showing to Cubans facilities that are clearly not available to the vast majority of them.”

Real Cuban hospitals. The secret cable came from the U.S. Interests Section (USINT), which is a de facto U.S. embassy housed inside the Swiss embassy in Havana. The memo described what a foreign service health practitioner (FSHP) found in Cuban hospitals.

From London, The Guardian reports on the Wikileaks document:

The cable describes a visit made by the FSHP to the Hermanos Ameijeiras hospital in October 2007. Built in 1982, the newly renovated hospital was used in Michael Moore's film as evidence of the high-quality of healthcare available to all Cubans.

But according to the FSHP, the only way a Cuban can get access to the hospital is through a bribe or contacts inside the hospital administration. “Cubans are reportedly very resentful that the best hospital in Havana is ‘off-limits’ to them,” the memo reveals.

According to the FSHP, a more “accurate” view of the healthcare experience of Cubans can be seen at the Calixto Garcia Hospital. “FSHP believes that if Michael Moore really wanted the ‘same care as local Cubans’, this is where he should have gone,” the cable states.

A 2007 visit by the FSHP to this “dilapidated” hospital, built in the 1800s, was “reminiscent of a scene from some of the poorest countries in the world,” the cable adds.

Magnet therapy. When I was in Cuba with a group of Americans in 1999, our official Communist-approved Cuban tour guides took us to one of their showcase health clinics, where in one room after another, patients were being treated with toaster-size magnets set upon whatever parts of their bodies they said were ailing that day. I kid you not.

For long-oppressed Cubans, Moore’s failure in “Sicko” to mention Castro’s Spanish doctor or the health-care magnets was the dead giveaway the movie was the sickest fiction.

Frank Warner

Washington Post: 'Fair Game' is a Valerie Plame fantasy

We've all be through the many deceptions of Joseph Wilson and his CIA wife, Valerie Plame. We'd all rather not go through it again, but with the release of the completely dishonest movie "Fair Game," even The Washington Post could not resist:

In fact, "Fair Game," based on books by Mr. Wilson and his wife, is full of distortions - not to mention outright inventions. To start with the most sensational: The movie portrays Ms. Plame as having cultivated a group of Iraqi scientists and arranged for them to leave the country, and it suggests that once her cover was blown, the operation was aborted and the scientists were abandoned. This is simply false. In reality, as The Post's Walter Pincus and Richard Leiby reported, Ms. Plame did not work directly on the program, and it was not shut down because of her identification.

The movie portrays Mr. Wilson as a whistle-blower who debunked a Bush administration claim that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African country of Niger. In fact, an investigation by the Senate intelligence committee found that Mr. Wilson's reporting did not affect the intelligence community's view on the matter, and an official British investigation found that President George W. Bush's statement in a State of the Union address that Britain believed that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger was well-founded.

Real whistle-blower. No one in the White House blew Plame's CIA cover as punishment for any of her husband's baseless criticisms of President Bush. Richard Armitage, a deputy secretary of state who was no Bush supporter, gave her name to columnist Robert Novak because everyone in Washington was wondering why in God's name the Bush administration's CIA sent a Democratic political hack like Wilson to Africa to ask questions about Saddam shopping for uranium. It was Plame who suggested her husband be sent, and then the CIA sent him.

Armitage was the real whistle-blower in this whole episode. He blew the whistle on a CIA employee getting her husband sent to Africa on a taxpayer-funded vacation he didn't even write a report on. You won't see that in the movie. Saddam's appeasers play all the parts in "Fair Game."

Frank Warner

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See also: Reward to prove Joseph Wilson right: Safest $5 in the world.

See also: CNN March 8, 2003, interview in which Wilson says Saddam is involved in nuclear arms trade.

See also: Wilson's July 15, 2004, letter stating he never claimed to have debunked anything (See page 2).

James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5 is sold for $4.1 million

The Aston Martin DB5 that Sean Connery drove as James Bond in “Goldfinger” and “Thunderball” has been sold for $4.1 million to Harry Yeaggy, an American businessman no one has ever heard of.

The 007 car has a real bullet-proof shield and revolving license plates, but its ejection seat doesn’t work.

Yeaggy bought the famous spy car at a London auction last night. The Cincinnati man is only the second person to own the Aston Martin. Broadcaster Jerry Lee bought it from the car maker for $12,000 in 1969.

Face it, that car is the real James Bond car, and Sean Connery always was the real James Bond.

Frank Warner

Map of Cong, Ireland, the Inisfree of ‘The Quiet Man’

Before a trip to Ireland last month, I searched the Internet in vain for a decent map of Cong, the village where John Ford filmed “The Quiet Man,” one of my favorite films. The maps are sketchy or unusable, as if we’re not supposed to find “the way to Inisfree.”

For Cong, Google maps show a false street name, a misplaced county line and no detail. Very mysterious.

So when I visited Cong on Sept. 13, I took some notes. For all of you “Quiet Man” crazies planning your own trip to the imaginary Inisfree of Connemara, here’s my map of Cong with a few hints at where you’ll find the movie’s most familiar locations.

My map is your map. Feel free to copy it, transmit it, print it, hand it out by the score. And if it guides you to the bar in Cohan’s pub, tell them Frank sent you.

Frank Warner

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Click on the map for a larger version. (This might be temporary.) The map may suddenly look smaller, but click it again, and it should be large.

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“QUIET MAN” SCENES ON THE MAP OF CONG:

Cohan’s. That’s the Pat Cohan Bar at the northwest corner of Main Street and Abbey Street. It’s where we saw Sean Thornton enter Inisfree with Michaeleen Oge Flynn, where Sean and Mary Kate Danaher passed on a tandem bicycle, and where Sean’s big fight scene with Will Danaher ended.

Clarke’s. The pub across Main Street from Cohan’s. Cong’s market cross stands in the middle of Main Street, beween Cohan’s and Clarke’s.

Curran’s. The P. Curran pub was supposed to be in Castletown, five miles (“and maybe a half more”) from Inisfree. On the east side of Main Street at the end of Riverview, Curran’s is where Will Danaher drank outside with his farmhands after auctioning his sheep. Today it is the Fennel Seed Restaurant, connected to Ryan’s Hotel.

O’Connor’s. Emily O’Connor’s shop was behind Mary Kate and Sean as they pulled into Castletown in their horsedrawn trap (buggy) and saw Will Danaher across the street at Curran’s. O'Connor’s actually is a block north of Curran’s, on the same side of the street. O’Connor’s remains, but the old attractive sign is gone.

Dying man’s house. This is three houses in from the west end of Riverview, on the north side of the street. It’s where old Dan Tobin lay dying until the excitement over the Sean Thornton-Will Danaher fight brought him out of his bed and into the street.

Bishop’s car route. This is along the Cong River at the southern section of Circular Road, where the Anglican bishop was hailed by local Catholics cheering “like Protestants” in the movie’s finale. Driven by the Rev. Mr. Cyril Playfair, the bishop’s car went north, followed by Michaeleen Flynn’s horsedrawn jaunting car carrying Will Danaher and Sarah Tillane.

St. Mary’s Catholic Church. Toward the northern end of Church Road, it’s where we saw Sean and Mary Kate inside Inisfree’s Catholic church. In the low light of artist Harry Clarke’s stained-glass windows, John Ford slowed the camera speed to film here.

St. Mary’s Church of Ireland. At the south end of Church Road, this Protestant church served as the movie’s Catholic church exterior. With its steeple in the distance, we saw Inisfree women walk to Mass as children ran across Corcoran’s Field. At a font outside the church door, Sean offered Mary Kate a handful of holy water.

Lonergan’s fishing hole. On the west side of the Cong River, this is where Sean and Mary Kate did some “walking together” during their courtship. It’s also where Father Peter Lonergan was fishing for salmon when Mary Kate stopped to ask for marital advice “in the Irish.”

Ashford Castle. The castle, where much of the cast stayed during the making of “The Quiet Man,” is not in the movie, except in the opening titles. However, when Sean first saw Mary Kate, she was herding sheep on what is the third fairway of the castle golf course. The third fairway is just east of where this map ends.

Widow Tillane’s house. Sarah Tillane’s house, which was across the Cong River from Ashford Castle, has been demolished to make room for a car park -- that is, a parking lot. It's in an area called Strandhill, the hill over the river shore (strand).

The Playfairs’ house. It’s not shown on the map, but it’s across Church Road from St. Mary’s Catholic Church and along the stream. Not only did the Rev. Mr. Cyril Playfair and his wife, Elizabeth, live here, but Sean and Mary Kate borrowed the Playfairs’ tandem bicycle that sat outside.

OFF THE MAP: Danaher’s house. Will Danaher’s house, where Mary Kate lived before her marriage to Sean, is just southwest of the southwest corner of this map.

 

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See also: ‘The Quiet Man’ soundtrack: Victor Young’s music for a happy St. Patrick’s Day.

See also: ‘The Quiet Man’ and the secret of the wedding toast to freedom.

See also: ‘The Quiet Man’: Maureen O’Hara and Ward Bond speak the Irish.

See also: ‘Connemara Days’ and ‘The Dead Republic’: Fiction revives John Ford’s summer of ‘The Quiet Man.’

And note: In the movie, “Inisfree” has only one “N.”

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This is a map of Cong in 1838, a dozen years before the Guinness beer family tried to build a canal from Lough Mask on the north to Lough Corrib to the south. The local joke is that water runs under, over and around Cong, but it never ran through the Cong Canal. County Mayo's limestone just absorbs the water, and it would have been too expensive to build a canal that didn't leak. So 160 years later, the canal just sits there, doing nothing.

You can see a bit of the abandoned canal in the first map, between Corcoran's Field and the golf course.

Lough Mask and Lough Corrib. Look at them as twin lakes. Only the tip of Lough Corrib is shown in these maps. Corrib is so large it contains 365 islands, one for each day of the year.

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‘Inception’ review: Notice what was missing

Saw “Inception” today. Went into the theater when it was bright, sunny and hot outside. Came out to cool air, thundering clouds and a pouring rain.

The abrupt change in the weather was so much like the movie I looked around for huge buildings rising on the horizon.

I won’t mention the plot, but it works well. The visual effects are dazzling. And Leonardo DiCaprio finally has some gravitas.

Little electronics. I’ll mention two things that are played down in the film: Computers and cell phones. They are there, but they are hardly there.

When Saito fills Cobb in on Maurice Fischer, the dying oil billionaire, he doesn’t go to a computer screen or a Power Point presentation. He shows Cobb a paper dossier, with glossy paper photographs like we used to see on “Mission Impossible.”

There are a couple cell phone calls, but they are quick. And if I recall correctly, the people on the streets -- real and dreamed -- have no cell phones at all. Imagine.

Search for beauty. This tells me two things I’ve suspected for a while:

(1) Computers and cell phones are intrinsically not pretty things. Movie directors and other artists have figured this out, and they no longer want to see these ugly distractions in their art.

And (2), in the real world, we’ll probably see a continued evolution of computers and cell phones that eventually makes them as invisible as they were in “Inception.”

It will be harder to get rid of the annoying ringtones and loud cell-phone conversations of strangers. But I can dream. Right now, I can plant the idea.

Frank Warner