Film

Flower Power in the Black Rock Desert - High Rock Canyon

The diverse habitats in the Black Rock Desert High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area (NCA) support hundreds of species of wildfl owers. Many are attention-grabbing and dazzling, with large blossoms and stunning colors, while others reward only the most observant eyes. Generally, wildfl owers are most abundant at lower elevations early in the season, and are abundant right now at higher elevations. Every spring, some part of the Black Rock Desert NCA puts on a colorful wildfl ower show. Generally, wildfl owers emerge in April and continue blooming into August, but this varies with annual rainfall and elevation. This year, the rainfall has been good and fl owers abound. One of the best places to view wildfl owers is in the low sagebrush plant communities near Stevens Camp during late May and early June. There is always something blooming here, including brilliant yellow buckwheat, blue lupine and white bitterroot. Although not as dependable, in wet years the barren hills surrounding the Black Rock Desert Playa are awash in the vibrant colors of bee plant, Indian paintbrush, and yellow daisies. Visitors to the hot springs at Soldier Meadows should be on the lookout for basalt cinquefoil, a low-growing herb with bright yellow fi ve-petalled fl owers that grows in the moist, alkaline soil near hot springs. This is the only place in Nevada where the basalt cinquefoil is found, so take care enjoy their charm without damaging them or their habitat. From Reno: Take I-8- East to 447 North to Gerlach, take Highway 38 North and continue towards Vya. The scenery is majestic and the fl ora speaks poetic verse. Artists come to paint and photograph these vast scenic by-ways and it’s something not to be missed. Ensure your tires are in great shape and enjoy! Visit Friends of Black Rock High Rock’s Visitors Center: 320 Main St, Gerlach for maps and more information or call 775.557.2900

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The lowest Depp

The Lone Ranger

At one point during it’s journey to the screen, Disney halted production on The Lone Ranger because it was costing too much and they weren’t sure a Western-themed summer tent pole movie was a good idea. Then, they caved into the likes of Johnny Depp and director Gore Verbinski, producing it for a reported $225 million. This will now go down as a huge, massive, hilarious, unthinkable, crazy, job-killing blunder. The people who had the good sense to initially halt production should’ve stuck to their guns. What a misguided, uncomfortable, sickening clown act this movie this is. Johnny Depp allowing himself to appear onscreen as Tonto, with his face painted to mask the fact he isn’t Native American, is a travesty. His movies have been mediocre at best lately, but this goes beyond the likes of The Tourist when it comes to poor career choices. The movie is some sort of odd parody of The Lone Ranger, or at least it comes off that way, with strange comedic undertones and clichés exaggerated to the point of intolerability. Remember how the comedy Back to the Future: Part III paid homage to the West by exaggerating it in a semi-funny way? The Lone Ranger makes Back to the Future: Part III seem authentic in comparison. How bad is it? The framing device for this movie has a very old Tonto telling some kid dressed as the Lone Ranger the story of his meeting the masked man and their travels together. Tonto, looking like anything but a human being in tragic old age makeup, is making a living posing as a Native American in a museum exhibit, right next to a grizzly bear. Depp and Verbinski (Depp’s Pirates of the Caribbean partner in crime) choose to play this depressing storytelling angles for laughs, with Depp mugging more than a heavily armed homeless guy in the Manhattan subway. Depp wears a dead crow on his head throughout the film, with his face covered in war paint in the flashbacks. He takes some sort of odd, Buster Keaton physical approach to the role that makes him look desperate, lost, and straining for the laughs that

don’t come. His line deliveries are stilted and unimaginative. It represents a career low for a guy capable of great things. It’s a bad career move reminiscent of such travesties as John Travolta in Battlefield Earth, Louis Gosset Jr. in Enemy Mine and Sylvester Stallone in Judge Dredd. It’s a choice that will haunt him for the rest of his career. by Bob Grimm As for the Lone Ranger himself, Armie Hammer doesn’t seem to know what movie he bgrimm@ is in. He sports an inconsistent Western movie newsreview.com accent, and plays the virtuous John Reid as a stooge to Tonto’s voice of reason. He is, in no 1 way, prepared to handle a role of this magnitude. As the title character, he makes no impression, and is second fiddle to the top-billed, masquerading Depp. Depp and Hammer aren’t even close to being the worst things about this movie. William Fichtner, an actor I usually enjoy, is unwatchable as bad guy Butch Cavendish, a scarred, goldtoothed monster who eats the heart of the Lone Ranger’s brother. This is in direct contrast to the comedic, goofy nature of the rest of the film. OK, you are going for something dark with Cavendish, but watching him wipe the blood off a still beating heart from his lips is a bit much. It’s the sort of thing that leaves you too aghast to laugh the next time Depp makes one of his stupid funny faces. In my head, when Depp mugged shortly thereafter, I was thinking “Yeah, well, I just saw a man die in a fashion that made that moment where the priest pulled a heart out of somebody in the Indiana Jones movie look like Mary Poppins. Laughter isn’t coming from me for a while, Johnny. Sorry.” Everything in this movie is taken too far, from the dirt makeup, to the crazy beards and chops, to the caricature accents. Even the sound of a kid eating a peanut is turned up to an extent that becomes gut churning and abrasive. I often complain about PG-13 horror movies that should just go for the R and turn up the dread and gore factor. Well, I get even more annoyed by PG-13 movies marketed to kids and families that contain the kind of violence on display in this crap. Heart eating, horse trampling, multiple gunshots, stabbings, and the threat of sticking a duck foot up somebody’s ass should not be on the viewing agenda for the entire family. Disney is going to take a major bath on this one. And, as for the summer, it’s another major blockbuster disappointment after misfires like Man of Steel, World War Z, The Hangover Part III and After Earth. This is officially turning into a summer of wasteful, total trash movies. I was truly embarrassed for Depp watching The Lone Ranger. The mere idea that what he was putting up on the screen is entertaining or useful in any way seems ludicrous. Remember before Jack Sparrow, when he was a boutique move star, an actor who chose interesting and scintillating projects like Cry Baby and Ed Wood? Ω

“What does ‘Tonto’ mean in Spanish?”

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2Fast & Furious 6 This franchise could’ve ended about five films ago, and I would’ve been fine with that. Vin Diesel mumbles his way through another fast car movie, this one with some admittedly fine driving stunts. The plot involves some nonsense about Vin and his crew (including Paul Walker) going after some other bad guy driver who’s threatening the world. He also has Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) working for him, even though she blew up in a prior movie. Dwayne Johnson is in there, too, as a badass lawman, and future installments will involve another one of my least favorite action stars if the post-credit footage is any indicator. I like to watch good pyrotechnics, but I hate it when just about everybody in these films opens their mouths. It looks like these movies will never end, and Michelle Rodriguez will never die.

3The Heat Sandra Bullock might get top billing, and she’s pretty funny in the latest from Bridesmaids director Paul Feig, but, and there’s no doubt about it, this is Melissa McCarthy’s movie. McCarthy plays a vulgar Boston police detective whose world is turned upside down when an FBI Agent (Bullock) starts sniffing around her precinct and meddling in her cases. McCarthy and Bullock are good together, with Bullock taking the obvious, tightly wound route while McCarthy just unloads expletive after expletive. McCarthy is so natural when she delivers put downs in this movie, it’s a wonder she gets along with anybody in real life. The movie does succumb to some of those buddy cop film clichés, and it sags a bit in the middle, but when it’s on, it’s really on. I got a few good laugh-out-loud moments, a lot of chuckles, and a lot of smiles out of this silliness. Considering some of the big budget garbage coming your way this summer, McCarthy and Bullock provide one of the season’s more pleasant movie experiences.

2Man of Steel Director Zack Snyder and co-producer Christopher Nolan reboot Superman, and the result is a little disappointing. Henry Cavill puts on the tights—minus the red underwear—and does little else, giving us the dullest Superman to date. The whole endeavor is an effort to take Superman to darker Batman-like territories, and that’s a big mistake. Superman can be in a dark flick, but he must rise above the darkness, not whine about his mom all of the time. There’s a lot of whiz-bang in this film, and some of it is impressive, but lots of it is just noise and things smacking into one another. Michael Shannon provides a terrific villain in Zod, while Russell Crowe and Kevin Costner do well as Superman’s two dads. I just couldn’t get into the depiction of Superman as a joyless, humorless stud. As for Amy Adams as Lois Lane, she isn’t given much of anything to do. This is going to make tons of money, and Snyder is lined up for a sequel already. I hope he gets it right the next time.

3Much Ado About Nothing The Bard gets a stripped-down treatment from one of the most unlikely of candidates: Joss Whedon, recent maker of massively expensive geek extravaganzas. The man who gave us The Avengers got his buddies together at his house to shoot a rather reputable and very pleasant blackand-white take on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, just to show us that things don’t have to explode all of the time in his cinematic forays. The result is intimate, funny and even unique for a play that’s been adapted many times. The film was shot in less than two weeks, an extension of parties Whedon hosted with friends and colleagues that featured Shakespeare readings. Consequently, it has the look of a quaint dinner party, with women in sundresses and men in tailored suits. It’s a breezy experiment that works for most of its running time. Having impressed Whedon at one of his shindigs, Amy Acker and Alexis Denisof are awarded the plum parts of Beatrice and Benedick, the reluctant lovers who fall for each other in the most whimsical of ways. 2 Now You See Me For those of you hankering for another magician movie after The Incredible Burt Wonderstone … here it is! A Vegas magician act called the Four Horseman (Jesse Eisenberg, Isla Fisher, Woody Harrelson and Dave Franco) concludes their show by seemingly robbing a bank in France through teleportation. An FBI agent (Mark Ruffalo) and an Interpol detective (Melanie Laurent) investigate, and we snore. Morgan Freeman is on hand as a man who makes a living debunking magic, as is Michael Caine as a millionaire bankrolling the Horseman. It all amounts to nonsense, with a lot of swirling cameras and stupid fights involving playing cards and paper cuts. The big reveals are silly, and much of what happens on the magic side is never explained. Eisenberg delivers one of the year’s more annoying performances.

4This Is the End Seth Rogen and writing partner Evan Goldberg make a strong directorial debut with this crazed stoner comedy in which Rogen and a bunch of his pals play themselves as the world faces the biblical apocalypse. When Jay Baruchel comes to LA to hang with Rogen, he finds himself reluctantly attending a party at James Franco’s new house. The Rapture happens, the ground opens up, and a bunch of celebrities go to Hell, leaving Rogen, Franco, Baruchel, Craig Robinson, Jonah Hill and Danny McBride to fight for the leftover Milky Way candy bar. All of the participants are in top form, with the laughs never slowing down. The movie is also a pretty good horror film in its own right, with lots of gore for those of you who like that sort of thing. Among the oddities are Michael Cera as a coke-snorting pervert, Hill getting possessed after a romantic evening with Satan, and Danny McBride eating people. The film is as crazy as anything to come out of mainstream Hollywood in a long time, and a welcomed return to form for Rogen and Franco.

1White House Down Director Roland Emmerich has made watchable, fun trash before (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012). He’s the new Irwin Allen (producer of The Towering Inferno), and I often get a kick out of his silly disaster movies. This one, starring Channing Tatum as a lawman who happens to be touring the White House when terrorists take over, is a complete bust. It’s too stupid to be fun, and it doesn’t offer enough cool special effects devastation to offset the moronic storytelling. (The Capitol getting destroyed is the only memorable moment of carnage.) Jamie Foxx plays the President, an Obama clone, taken hostage in a homeland terrorist scheme that’s beyond impossible. Throw in a precocious daughter (Joey King) and James Woods doing his James Woods routine and you have a movie full to the brim with useless clichés. Tatum, so much fun in 21 Jump Street, is left stranded in a movie that couldn’t be dumber if it tried, and Emmerich has given us one of the summer’s worst movies and likely biggest bombs.

2World War Z With this, we get two-thirds of a decent movie. The movie has a helluva start, and an even better middle, making it seem like it’s going to deliver the big summer goods. Then, in its final act, it totally craps out. Too bad, because I was looking to Brad Pitt’s zombie movie as relief from the mediocre big budget blockbusters we’ve gotten this summer (with the blessed exceptions of Iron Man 3 and Star Trek Into Darkness). The much troubled production shows every one of its scars, especially in its bungled, positively ridiculous finale. The opening sequence in Philadelphia is a winner, and the zombies attacking Israel and going nuts on an airplane score good thrills. The movie doesn’t know where it’s going in the end, and it just sort of putters out. Pitt gives it his best, but the movie seems afraid of itself. A zombie movie with no blood and no ending does not a good blockbuster make.