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So, I went to bed just after yesterday's post and either forgot to turn my computer off, or thought for some reason it made ssense to leave it on; no one tried to ping me so no worries, heh.
woke up at 1 am, got some water, noticed it and turned it off; woke up at 5: 30 am and went back to work on "Ill met By Moonlight." Watched "A Civil Action" and became rather annoyed.
wound up going to lie down for a minyte at 11:30 am, and napping for five hours. apparently being awake for six hours after sleeping for 13 was justy too much for me. : P
...that, or its because I havenn't taken my iron supplement in two days...
and for some reason, LJ and TGS pages don't want to upload, though LJ will if I refresh three or four times. : P : P
Lyn Rants about a crappy movie, LJ cut for your protection:
“A civil action”
I went into watching this movie fully expecting to love it (since I love “Erin Brockavitch”) and wound up being so disgusted by its poor plot, dialogue, and general inanity that I could hardly finish it. Well, it’s based on a true story, but that just brings the stupidity involved to a new height.
From the opening scenes in which a female juror *cries* because a young man is in a wheelchair- not missing limbs or anything mind you, not trapped in a wasting body, but simply a partially-paralyzed man confined to a wheelchair- to show how coldly our lawyer manipulates the jury and how good he is at forcing out-of-court settlements, the whole movie was over-dramatized.
Erin Brockovitch, a movie that I adore, has a similar “Big Bad Company Poisons Small Town For Decades and Only Now Does The Truth Come Out, But Can We Prove It?” premise, but covers more time, plaintiffs, and main characters and makes you *care* about all of them, unlike anyone involved in “a civil action”, where you don’t particularly care about any of the cardboard characters. There are repeated long periods of silence connected with John Travolta’s character where we are supposed to know what he is thinking, and yet we haven’t enough basis of his character to do so. Is he just coldly calculating new angles, or is he doing it because he suddenly cares? The latter seems to be what is stressed despite his characterization in the set-up…and yet…if he was in such a hurry to get in and out of the town that he got a speeding ticket both ways, what logic is there to his taking the time to go meander down by the stream upon the woman’s request, when he so plainly dismissed her plea not five minutes earlier? And since when do lawyers drive out to meet with clients face-to-face when they already know they are turning the case down??
Moving right on to the end, because the middle of the story is mostly taken up by the audience (me) realizing what a massive moron the character of one of the defendants is…I don’t know how the movie got away with showing him like that, the guy came across as too stupid to even notice what was going on around him. The CEO if a multi-million dollar corporation does not come to a breakfast meet of all sides of a case, listen absently to the requested settlement, then have his only question be if he can keep the hotel’s pen, which he finds to be high quality. Play hardball and refuse the offer, yes, but this guy came across as not a cold, ruthless person but an absent-minded dink. We should have been hating him for not caring about the deaths and the court case, but instead we were baffled as to how such a moron could become such a success to begin with. We couldn’t hate him because he seemed lamed in the mind, literally unable to follow what was going on for half the movie instead of simply being cruelly dismissive of the events.
Anyway, towards the end our lawyers fail, because they go completely broke, and the opposition does settle- for 8 million, instead of the 30-odd mill asked for. John Travolta and our other three lawyers go back to the six families who have dead kids- we never see anything of five of theses families, and next to nothing of the sixth family, in which the mother is the one who brought the case to the lawyers. Nothing of their home lives, if they have any other children, if anyone else is sick. We know that one of the good guys who still works for one of the companies at fault has eight kids- none dead- and three which are sick somehow, but he isn’t a plaintiff. The point being, after the four lawyers wave nearly a third of their fee, accepting only 28% instead of their standard 40%, each family is awarded something like $350, 000 dollars. In the beginning, the main woman said it wasn’t about the money- she just wanted an apology. And for the land to be cleaned up. Since our boys lost, she gets neither, and is very upset. “I said at the start of this all I wanted was an apology. You said that money was how they apologized.” (that second bit must have happened off-screen.) and she is unhappy about the settlement.
Now, I should point out that, if the movie is to be believed, the four lawyers were 3.5 million dollars in the hole, had emptied their bank accounts, sold their houses, cashed in their life insurance and retirement policies, and had shit left. The movie shows them selling off everything down to the carpets and desks in their offices. They gave up EVERYTHING for this woman and her case. They wanted to keep going forward but literally lacked any funding to do so. And their lowered fee only covers 2.2 million- if they’d kept their agreed contract, they would have been about .4 in debt, instead of 1.3 million, and where they blimey fuck do you find any other lawyers willing to do that??
And when John Travolta says the only sincere apology she will get is from him, for failing, but he is broke and can’t do anymore, she bitches, “what, you think you understand loss?” and storms out of the room. It isn’t enough that these men have ruined their lives, credit, reputations…now have nowhere to live and no income…to get her 350, 000 for a dead child when they couldn’t even prove in court that the companies were responsible. Oh no, that was nowhere near good enough for her. I honestly don’t know how much more she could possibly expect from them- they are shown as literally giving their all for her, for the case. And since we never see any other sick kids or family members- unlike in Erin Brokavitch when we knew most of the settlement money was going towards paying off hospital bills, both past incurred and the future ones we knew would come because so many families, whole families, were chronically - this is money they have on hand. And I’m not saying that it is necessarily worth the lives of their kids, but the *movie* hadn’t even shown beyond a reasonable doubt that the defending companies were even at fault. It suggested it, but hadn’t shown it clearly as the truth to the audience even.
But wait. In the last 15 minutes, after being kicked out of the firm for bringing them to ruin, living in a crappy studio apartment and working out of a basement office for months, John Travolta has an epiffany, and goes back to the main woman and her husband, and it is revealed that THE GODDAMN HUSBAND HAD THE PROOF THE WHOLE TIME THAT WOULD HAVE WON THEN THE CASE, KNEW THIS, AND HAD WILLFULLY STAYED QUIET. There had been nothing done to threaten him. Back in the summer of ‘81, when he admits to being ordered by the company head to load up several dumptrucks and dump tires and waste that had been rotting on the land for twenty years INTO THE RIVER THAT JOHN TRAVOLTA COULDN”T PROVE HAD BEEN CONTAMINATED BY THE COMPANY, they gave him some knicks tickets or something and told him to keep quiet about it.
And this is supposed to be based on real life events- just how much, I have no clue. But the Husband was hardly out of the loop when it came to knowing what info was needed to win the trial, and still kept quiet. And you couldn’t tell from the actress who played the bitchy wife whether she was horrified by this being a secret, or if she’d known about her husband’s involvement the whole time and had likewise stayed quiet. It was her husband’s own fault they had lost, and yet we never see her angry at him for not doing enough when they are now living better than John Travolta, not including their 350,000 which doesn’t need to go to medical bills or anything.
…and lastly, ending a movie’s closing credits with “Take me to the river/ drop me on the water” after a plot involving the toxic poisoning of the local river and wells…just…ew.
Bad taste, to say the least.
woke up at 1 am, got some water, noticed it and turned it off; woke up at 5: 30 am and went back to work on "Ill met By Moonlight." Watched "A Civil Action" and became rather annoyed.
wound up going to lie down for a minyte at 11:30 am, and napping for five hours. apparently being awake for six hours after sleeping for 13 was justy too much for me. : P
...that, or its because I havenn't taken my iron supplement in two days...
and for some reason, LJ and TGS pages don't want to upload, though LJ will if I refresh three or four times. : P : P
Lyn Rants about a crappy movie, LJ cut for your protection:
“A civil action”
I went into watching this movie fully expecting to love it (since I love “Erin Brockavitch”) and wound up being so disgusted by its poor plot, dialogue, and general inanity that I could hardly finish it. Well, it’s based on a true story, but that just brings the stupidity involved to a new height.
From the opening scenes in which a female juror *cries* because a young man is in a wheelchair- not missing limbs or anything mind you, not trapped in a wasting body, but simply a partially-paralyzed man confined to a wheelchair- to show how coldly our lawyer manipulates the jury and how good he is at forcing out-of-court settlements, the whole movie was over-dramatized.
Erin Brockovitch, a movie that I adore, has a similar “Big Bad Company Poisons Small Town For Decades and Only Now Does The Truth Come Out, But Can We Prove It?” premise, but covers more time, plaintiffs, and main characters and makes you *care* about all of them, unlike anyone involved in “a civil action”, where you don’t particularly care about any of the cardboard characters. There are repeated long periods of silence connected with John Travolta’s character where we are supposed to know what he is thinking, and yet we haven’t enough basis of his character to do so. Is he just coldly calculating new angles, or is he doing it because he suddenly cares? The latter seems to be what is stressed despite his characterization in the set-up…and yet…if he was in such a hurry to get in and out of the town that he got a speeding ticket both ways, what logic is there to his taking the time to go meander down by the stream upon the woman’s request, when he so plainly dismissed her plea not five minutes earlier? And since when do lawyers drive out to meet with clients face-to-face when they already know they are turning the case down??
Moving right on to the end, because the middle of the story is mostly taken up by the audience (me) realizing what a massive moron the character of one of the defendants is…I don’t know how the movie got away with showing him like that, the guy came across as too stupid to even notice what was going on around him. The CEO if a multi-million dollar corporation does not come to a breakfast meet of all sides of a case, listen absently to the requested settlement, then have his only question be if he can keep the hotel’s pen, which he finds to be high quality. Play hardball and refuse the offer, yes, but this guy came across as not a cold, ruthless person but an absent-minded dink. We should have been hating him for not caring about the deaths and the court case, but instead we were baffled as to how such a moron could become such a success to begin with. We couldn’t hate him because he seemed lamed in the mind, literally unable to follow what was going on for half the movie instead of simply being cruelly dismissive of the events.
Anyway, towards the end our lawyers fail, because they go completely broke, and the opposition does settle- for 8 million, instead of the 30-odd mill asked for. John Travolta and our other three lawyers go back to the six families who have dead kids- we never see anything of five of theses families, and next to nothing of the sixth family, in which the mother is the one who brought the case to the lawyers. Nothing of their home lives, if they have any other children, if anyone else is sick. We know that one of the good guys who still works for one of the companies at fault has eight kids- none dead- and three which are sick somehow, but he isn’t a plaintiff. The point being, after the four lawyers wave nearly a third of their fee, accepting only 28% instead of their standard 40%, each family is awarded something like $350, 000 dollars. In the beginning, the main woman said it wasn’t about the money- she just wanted an apology. And for the land to be cleaned up. Since our boys lost, she gets neither, and is very upset. “I said at the start of this all I wanted was an apology. You said that money was how they apologized.” (that second bit must have happened off-screen.) and she is unhappy about the settlement.
Now, I should point out that, if the movie is to be believed, the four lawyers were 3.5 million dollars in the hole, had emptied their bank accounts, sold their houses, cashed in their life insurance and retirement policies, and had shit left. The movie shows them selling off everything down to the carpets and desks in their offices. They gave up EVERYTHING for this woman and her case. They wanted to keep going forward but literally lacked any funding to do so. And their lowered fee only covers 2.2 million- if they’d kept their agreed contract, they would have been about .4 in debt, instead of 1.3 million, and where they blimey fuck do you find any other lawyers willing to do that??
And when John Travolta says the only sincere apology she will get is from him, for failing, but he is broke and can’t do anymore, she bitches, “what, you think you understand loss?” and storms out of the room. It isn’t enough that these men have ruined their lives, credit, reputations…now have nowhere to live and no income…to get her 350, 000 for a dead child when they couldn’t even prove in court that the companies were responsible. Oh no, that was nowhere near good enough for her. I honestly don’t know how much more she could possibly expect from them- they are shown as literally giving their all for her, for the case. And since we never see any other sick kids or family members- unlike in Erin Brokavitch when we knew most of the settlement money was going towards paying off hospital bills, both past incurred and the future ones we knew would come because so many families, whole families, were chronically - this is money they have on hand. And I’m not saying that it is necessarily worth the lives of their kids, but the *movie* hadn’t even shown beyond a reasonable doubt that the defending companies were even at fault. It suggested it, but hadn’t shown it clearly as the truth to the audience even.
But wait. In the last 15 minutes, after being kicked out of the firm for bringing them to ruin, living in a crappy studio apartment and working out of a basement office for months, John Travolta has an epiffany, and goes back to the main woman and her husband, and it is revealed that THE GODDAMN HUSBAND HAD THE PROOF THE WHOLE TIME THAT WOULD HAVE WON THEN THE CASE, KNEW THIS, AND HAD WILLFULLY STAYED QUIET. There had been nothing done to threaten him. Back in the summer of ‘81, when he admits to being ordered by the company head to load up several dumptrucks and dump tires and waste that had been rotting on the land for twenty years INTO THE RIVER THAT JOHN TRAVOLTA COULDN”T PROVE HAD BEEN CONTAMINATED BY THE COMPANY, they gave him some knicks tickets or something and told him to keep quiet about it.
And this is supposed to be based on real life events- just how much, I have no clue. But the Husband was hardly out of the loop when it came to knowing what info was needed to win the trial, and still kept quiet. And you couldn’t tell from the actress who played the bitchy wife whether she was horrified by this being a secret, or if she’d known about her husband’s involvement the whole time and had likewise stayed quiet. It was her husband’s own fault they had lost, and yet we never see her angry at him for not doing enough when they are now living better than John Travolta, not including their 350,000 which doesn’t need to go to medical bills or anything.
…and lastly, ending a movie’s closing credits with “Take me to the river/ drop me on the water” after a plot involving the toxic poisoning of the local river and wells…just…ew.
Bad taste, to say the least.