Two Words, One Answer.
hit ball
 Kenny Ball - Greatest Hits $10.98 Some of the best of Kenny Ball's music and songs. A good mix for a Jazz party  Dalton McCrary's How to Hit the Golf Ball as Straight as you Can Point... Guaranteed $49.98 A very entertaining look at some new thoughts on the golf swing. Fairly easy to pick up on Dalton's fundamentals. Comes with about 4 tapes including secrets of the flat stick, and a written manual, and a small guide to drills, etc that you can take with you to the range. I would recommend this to anyone and I've probably seen just about every decent intructional package.  Monster's Ball $14.98 We all know that I love depressing, and I love dark depictions of human suffering. I love to have my emotional core tapped, drained even, but harsh realities of humanity in its rawest form. This very year (2001, the year in question) was dominated in my eyes by the very bleak and very raw `In the Bedroom', a film that tapped into the most brutal depictions of grief and loss and vengeance I've ever seen on film. It may be concluded that, since I am so incredibly head-over-heals in love with `In the Bedroom' that my sentiments would be mirrored for the equally bleak and maybe ever more gritty depiction of depression `Monster's Ball'. The issue I have with this film is that it is uneven and forced. Don't get me wrong; there are many facets of this film that work brilliantly. For the most part the acting is very strong and the script, while definitely brutal (almost to a fault) is written with a layer of depth that makes the overwhelming feel forgivable. My complaint here is that the film could have been something truly remarkable if it had found its footing without resorting to complete and total devastation. I like my depressing, but there comes a point within a film where you sink so low that you cannot fathom a resolution. The thing is, `Monster's Ball' isn't the kind of film that requires that absolute lowness. The film revolves around the unlikely romance between a prison guard named Hank and a single mother named Leticia. Hank is a white borderline racist (he's more conditioned that way by an oppressive father than truly headstrong in that conviction) who happens to have a part in the execution of Leticia's husband, Lawrence. Leticia has a lot of things wrong with her life. She is struggling financially to take care of an overweight child she views as a burden, until he is hit by a car and killed and she realizes how empty she is on her own. She strikes up a drunken fling with Hank that leads to a mutual bonding over the loss of family (Hank's tormented son Sonny recently took his own life) that is tested by the truths behind Hanks' involvement in Lawrence's execution, not to mention Hank's father's outlandish racism. The film is shot in a very grainy almost yellow overtone (an aspect of the film I absolutely adore) that gives you an instant sense of misery and emptiness. The performances by the cast elevate this mood. Heath Ledger deserves `best in show' mentions for his BRILLIANT supporting performance (cameo if you will) as Sonny. He evokes such pure emotional response to the situation, the line of work weighing in on his conscience and the emotional weight of his background and apparent emptiness crushing down on him. Billy Bob Thornton takes that same emotional deterioration and muddies it a bit to elongate the performance. He is essentially the same character, but Sonny's fatal explosion really makes his performance pop. Thornton is just as marvelous (in my opinion) just in a different way. I thought the Peter Boyle was serviceable in a caricature that really only simplified the films promise and took it down a notch. This brings me to Halle Berry (OSCAR winner Halle Berry). I admit, when she won I cheered. It was such a milestone and her acceptance speech was SO heartfelt and beautiful and just mesmerizing. Even if I felt that a few of her fellow nominees were more deserving (Kidman, Zellweger, Spacek) her win made me very happy. That said, her performance is quite uneven and actually sets the tone for the film itself being uneven. She manages to nail quite a few scenes, but she comes off desperate in some, unsure in others, and this takes away from the character. Her quieter scenes tend to work better than her loud ones, but even in those she has moments where she almost seems forcibly subtle, as if she has been studying over actress's quiet depictions of grief and trying to emulate. In her louder moments she comes across manic and desperate and overreaching for attention. Sometimes it works (that drunk scene, regardless of what some say, was flawless) and other times it just doesn't (the scene where she attacks her kid seemed overreaching for me). I love her and am happy for her and for her `moment', but in all honesty one cannot consider this a fully realized and deserving performance. The films grittiness is almost to a fault in that it layers on the darkness without backing it up with a real sense of inner depth. Where it tries to make a statement on the legal systems death penalty, it misses the mark that the masterful `Dead Man Walking' hit. Where it attempts to connect with the effects of instilled racism, it misses the mark that films like `American History X' really connected to. Where it makes strides towards the grief and guilt ridden depiction of a parent outliving a child, it misses the mark that `In the Bedroom' completely nailed. It has a lot of avenues it tries to cover but it lacks the finesse to cover each one thoroughly. It is a worthy viewing, but it doesn't reach the perfection that it could have found with a tighter script and a little more tailoring of Berry's performance. That said; the final scene on the front porch stairs with Hank and Leticia is the perfect way to end and still haunts me today. |
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