Film

PROTECTING NEVADA FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS

FRIENDS OF BLACK ROCK-HIGH ROCK & NATIONAL CONSERVATION LANDS

Black Rock Desert - High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails

National Conservation Area

National Conservation Lands are our nation’s newest public lands – 28 million acres that include National Monuments, National Conservation Areas (NCAs), wilderness, wilderness study areas, wild and scenic rivers, and scenic and historic trails.

These protected lands stand in stature with National Parks, National Forests, and Wildlife Refuges. They reflect a modern understanding that truly protecting and preserving our natural and cultural resources means keeping complete ecosystems and archaeological sites intact.

The Black Rock Desert-High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trail National Conservation Area, in northwest Nevada, is part of this strategy. Chosen for its historical and ecological significance, this unique trail corridor and its viewsheds give you a glimpse of a landscape little changed since wagon trains of emigrants rolled through on their way west.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages the National Conservation Lands strategy and is striving to be a world leader in conserving and protecting landscapes, applying evolving scientific knowledge and bringing people together as stewards of the land.

But the challenge is that all 28 million acres of these lands are funded at just $2.40 per acre, compared to $30.56 per acre spent on National Parks. Volunteers to assist in field work is more important than ever, as a result.

Friends of Black Rock High Rock is working together with the BLM to steward and advocate for our nation’s newest public lands in northwest Nevada – ensuring that they remain cultural, ecological, and scientific treasures for generations to come. Your volunteer support is needed.

That’s where you come in. Support Friends of Black Rock High Rock as a donor or conservation project volunteer, and play a crucial role in Nevada’s history.

Contact Friends: info@blackrockdesert.org or call 775.557.2900

Conservation - Protection - Restoration

Jack’s off

Oblivion

Tom Cruise spends most of Oblivion in a goofy, impractical looking leather space suit getup that clashes with his 2013 hairstyle and reminds me of Captain EO. It’s silly to notice these things, but Oblivion is the sort of film that causes you to notice such trivial matters, for the movie surrounding that goofy outfit is not very good. Cruise himself is in typically fine form as Jack, a scout/worker for the surviving human race after an alien attack 60 years previous in 2017. The population of Earth has been sent to a Saturn moon, and Jack’s job is to make sure Earth’s energy resources are properly mined. He lives in a very stylish outpost with a hot partner (Andrea Riseborough), their work being monitored via video by Sally (Melissa Leo), an over nice boss. Jack is haunted by dreams of a past Earth world that he is too young to have really experienced. In his dreams, he meets up with a woman (Olga Kurylenko) atop the Empire State Building, just like Sleepless in Seattle. He’s found a cabin in the woods where he wears a Yankees cap and listens to Led Zeppelin. He seems very at home for a guy who supposedly never set foot on pre-invasion Earth. Of course, there’s more to Jack’s universe than meets the eye. He eventually comes faceto-face with Beech (Morgan Freeman), a wise old, cigar-smoking man—those cigars must be 60 years old and awful—who is going to turn Jack’s world upside down. The movie has some significant twists and turns, and some of them are not at all surprising. One particular twist caught me off guard, and is pretty clever. I won’t talk of these twists anymore.

As for the action, it’s subpar. I actually stumbled upon Cruise on Jimmy Kimmel the other night before I saw the film. I turned it on during a clip showing Cruise in a funny looking little spaceship, shooting a drone type thing out of the sky with a pistol and crashing in the desert. I thought it was a filmed Jimmy Kimmel gag because it looked a little cheap. by Bob Grimm Turns out it was the movie’s major action set piece. Not too impressive. bgrimm@ While the Cruise performance is good, he newsreview.com does slip into that “Tom Cruise is determined and yelling!” mode, often reminding of his 2 interrogation of Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men. Tom Cruise yelling is, sometimes, unintentionally funny. Oblivion is derivative of many sci-fi films that came before it, including 2001: A Space Odyssey, Planet of the Apes, Total Recall, etc. A little bit of all of those movies and more can be found among the plot threads and visual effects. As for those visual effects, they aren’t too spectacular. I did like seeing the top of the Empire State Building protruding from gray Earth, the ground having risen to the famous landmark’s observatory deck. Otherwise, there are some weak CGI recreations of demolished landmarks, including the Statue of Liberty. The film sort of drags itself to its inevitable conclusion, providing no real surprises or excitement. The last scene involves something that is supposed to be triumphant, but is actually quite weird. It’s a head scratcher. Joseph Kosinski whose only other directorial credit is Tron: Legacy, directs. Oblivion is a marked improvement over that fiasco. As with Tron, Kosinski is far more preoccupied with his visuals over substance. In both cases, the visuals aren’t anything to get excited about, and the stuff coming out of people’s mouths is even less compelling. Cruise is in a sci-fi state of mind lately. Up next, Doug Liman’s All You Need is Kill, where he plays a soldier caught in a time loop repeatedly getting killed by aliens (Cruise haters will probably get a kick out of seeing their nemesis getting repeatedly smoked). Then, it’s Yukikaze, based on yet another alien invasion scenario. In his last three films, Tom Cruise has played three similarly titled characters: Stacee “Jaxx” (Rock of Ages), Jack Reacher (Jack Reacher) and just plain Jack in this film. Another useless factoid I fixed on while being mildly bored by the ho-hum Oblivion. Ω

“I am out here for you. You don’t know what it’s like to be me out here for you. It is an up-at-dawn, pride-swallowing siege that I will never fully tell you about, OK?”

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342 Spike Lee tried to get a movie about American hero Jackie Robinson, starring Denzel Washington, off the ground for many years, but couldn’t make it happen. I get a feeling that Lee, who made one of the great biopics with Malcolm X, would’ve done something really special with the subject. This effort from director Brian Helgeland (Payback) is OK, even really good at times, but gets awfully hokey in too many moments. Chadwick Boseman is a great pick to play Robinson, as is Lucas Black as Pee Wee Reese. Harrison Ford delivers big time as Branch Rickey, the man who brought Robinson to the majors, and Christopher Meloni leaves the movie all too soon as Dodgers manager Leo Durocher, who was suspended the year Robinson made his debut. Boseman shines, even when the movie doesn’t, and it’s a lot of fun to see Ford do something this craggy and different. I’m thinking Robinson went through some major hell during his baseball times, and this movie only scratches the surface. It’s good, but it should’ve been great.

3The Company You Keep Robert Redford directs himself as an upstate New York lawyer with a past who must flee his life when a nosy journalist (Shia LaBeouf) discovers his true identity. The film gives us fictional characters that were former members of the very real Weather Underground, and they are played by the likes of Susan Sarandon, Nick Nolte and Julie Christie. LaBeouf does much of the heavy lifting, and it’s some of his better work in quite some time. Redford is just OK here, as is his movie. I can’t say it blew me away, but I didn’t dislike it either. It’s just one of those movies that gets by with semi-competent directing and acting without truly wowing you. Others in the cast include Stanley Tucci, Chris Cooper, Terrence Howard, Richard Jenkins and Sam Elliott.

3Evil Dead The low-budget classic horror film gets a slick new remake and loses the iconic character of Ash in favor of a girl trying to kick heroin. Mia (Jane Levy) is trying to sober up, so friends and family take her out to a secluded cabin. They find a mysterious book in the basement, somebody reads it out loud, Mia goes for a walk in the woods, the woods treat her badly, and gore aplenty ensues. While Levy is fine in the central role, and Lou Taylor Pucci is good as one of the guys who should’ve gone to a hotel instead, the film has a few too many uninteresting characters. Shiloh Fernandez is a dud as Mia’s brother, and Elizabeth Blackmore is only there so somebody can cut her own arm off. Let it be said that moments such as the arm-cutting are well done. The film is a true gore fest. While it is OK, and doesn’t slander Sam Raimi’s original trilogy, it’s not a horror classic by any means. Like most good horror these days, it’s just good, and that is all.

2G.I. Joe: Retaliation Yes, the sequel is an improvement over the original, but don’t get your hopes up too high. Dwayne Johnson joins something like his 18th franchise, as does Bruce Willis, in this confusing yet sometimes entertaining follow-up to G.I. Joe: The Sucky First Movie. There are some good action sequences, including a snowy cliff sword battle and the destruction of London. There’s also a lot of clatter about Cobra Commanders and Snake Eyes and a bunch of other toy names I simply lost track of. Channing Tatum and Johnson have a great rapport, and a whole movie with them together could’ve been fun. Unfortunately, Tatum makes an early exit, making way for The Smirk. Willis is OK here, but he doesn’t add all that much. Jonathan Pryce is fairly menacing as two characters: the President of the United States and his evil imposter. I’d tell you some plot details, but that would be a waste of space. Just know that if you plunk down for this you will see a couple of good action sequences and a whole lot of mindless crap.

1The Host From the toxic pen of Stephenie Meyer comes this atrocity about an alien race of psychedelic sperm “bonding” with humans and taking over their bodies and minds. In the future, the planet has been overrun excepting for pockets of resisters, one of them being Melanie (Saoirse Ronan). Melanie’s luck runs out, she’s bonded with an alien and becomes Wanda. Wanda starts hearing Melanie’s voice in her head, begins arguing with herself, and the film becomes just about the dumbest thing you will ever see. Wanda makes it out to a desert commune where her uncle (William Hurt) is harvesting wheat in a rock. She has two boys after her, one of them being Melanie’s ex and the other being somebody who just doesn’t mind getting it on with an alien as long as said alien is inhabiting a hot American girl’s body. Seriously, I can’t even believe this thing even happened. Stay away, for the good of your health and all of mankind.

4Jurassic Park 3D Steven Spielberg’s dinosaur fantasy is still one of the best adventure films ever made, but the new 3-D retrofit winds up muting the presentation rather than expanding it. Unlike, say, James Cameron’s Titanic, which looked and felt like it was meant to be shot in 3-D, the presentation here feels forced. The color is diminished, and the scope seems “squished.” It’s not awful, and I’ve seen worse 3-D, but it fails to enhance the film much. Some theaters are offering the movie in its original 2-D presentation, and I would recommend revisiting it in one of those theaters for sure. The combination of practical and computer effects to create the dinosaurs has easily stood the test of time. The dinosaurs continue to look amazing. Watching the 3-D version, I did notice that Jeff Goldblum sticks his tongue out a lot when he speaks. It’s creepy.

2Olympus Has Fallen Gerard Butler stars in one of the more ridiculous action films you will see this year. He’s a Secret Service agent on duty the night something very bad happens to the president (Aaron Eckhart), and he winds up with a desk job. When some nasty North Koreans hilariously infiltrate the White House and hold the president and his cabinet hostage, it’s time for Gerard to dispense with the paper clips and pick up an automatic weapon! This movie has some tragic flaws, including terrible CGI and mawkish patriotic crap that distracts rather than making the heart swell (Melissa Leo screaming the Pledge of Allegiance as she is dragged to certain death comes to mind). You aren’t going to catch me calling this a good movie, but I won’t fault you for enjoying it to some degree if you choose to see it.

2Oz the Great and Powerful James Franco is in over his head for Sam Raimi’s mostly lame prequel to The Wizard of Oz. The title character calls for somebody with that old school Hollywood charm like Robert Downey, Jr., or Johnny Depp. Franco looks like a kid playing dress up here, and he’s not even the worst thing about the movie. That would be Mila Kunis looking completely lost as the witch who will become that witch we all know from the original Oz. I’m sorry—that witch isn’t supposed to be all corseted and hot. As for Rachel Weisz, she fares best as yet another witch, while Michelle Williams is just serviceable as Glinda the Good Witch. Raimi relies heavily on CGI effects—big surprise—and they look pretty crappy for the most part. This is an underwhelming movie in much the same way his Spider-Man 3 missed the mark. It’s overblown, misguided and odd.

4The Place Beyond the Pines Derek Cianfrance follows up his brilliant Blue Valentine with a film bigger in scope but still starring Ryan Gosling. Gosling plays Luke, a motorcycle stunt guy who finds out he has a kid and wants to be a part of his life. Problem is, the kid is the product of a one-night stand, and the mom (Eva Mendes) has moved on. Luke resorts to robbing banks, which culminates in a meeting with a rookie cop played by Bradley Cooper. The film then focuses on Cooper’s character for a segment before dealing with Luke and Avery’s kids (played by Dane DeHaan and Emory Cohen) when they are teens. The movie is long, but never boring, and it crackles most when Gosling is on screen. It’s all about the sins of the fathers, and Cianfrance presents it in a way that resonates. Also stars Ray Liotta and Ben Mendelsohn.

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WALK TO CREATE A WORLD FREE OF MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS

WALK MS: Reno/Sparks Saturday, May 4, 2013 Idlewild Park Terrace

Southern California & Nevada 2013

Presented by BE INSPIRED. GET CONNECTED. WALK MS. Walk MS connects people living with MS and those who care about them. It is an experience unlike any other — a day to come together, to celebrate the progress we’ve made, and to show the power of our connections. REGISTER & START FUNDRAISING TODAY: WalkToEndMS.org or 775.827.4257

2013-Walk MS_PSA Square.indd 1 2/4/13 9:45 AM

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