Author: Christian Sauvé

  • Titan A.E. (2000)

    Titan A.E. (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, June 2000) A terribly frustrating film on several levels. First and foremost is the script, of course, which is a mishmash of fun situations and botched execution. Some of the set-pieces are impressive, and compelling on a teen geez-wow level, but the screenplay is marred by ordinary character development, trite dialogue and an episodic nature that doesn’t cohere very well. Each details that shows that someone has been paying attention (“Exhale!”) is followed by an inanity that destroys the illusion. But beyond the words, there are also several problems with the pictures: The state-of-the-art in Computer-Generated Imagery has advanced so much in recent years that the subpar 2D character animation as practiced by Don Bluth Studios now clashes vividly with the background 3D CGI. This jarring lack of continuity remains through the film, dogging any viewer’s suspension of disbelief. Still, it’s worth a look. Even though it doesn’t approach anywhere near the levels set by The Iron Giant, Titan A.E. is entertaining for its whole duration and should provide adequate entertainment for the whole family. Your inner early teen should appreciate even if you don’t.

  • Shaft (2000)

    Shaft (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, June 2000) The danger with iconic movies -such as this remake of a classic seventies film- is that the hype, the mystique of the characters is always invariably bigger than the end product. In this light, Shaft does a creditable job at re-creating the innate coolness of John Shaft. A large part of this (and a suitably large portion of the film’s appeal) comes from Mr. Badass himself, Samuel L. Jackson. He clicks, and so does the film. As for the story, it’s an average cops-versus-baddies script, with enough fun quirks to make it modern and interesting. Pretty good? Ya damn right!

  • Rear Window (1954)

    Rear Window (1954)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, In theaters, June 2000) Seeing this justifiably-lauded masterpiece on the big screen again not only re-affirmed this film’s presence on my top-100 film list, but demonstrated many things I didn’t quite remember. It’s easy to remember how insanely great the premise is (what with the single set, limited perspective and particular protagonist), how masterfully the story is developed (great script, superb dialogues, seamless directing) and how suspenseful the whole thing is, but it’s all too easy to forget how darn funny this film is, and how great you feel after watching it. Rent it now, and enjoy every second.

  • Me, Myself & Irene (2000)

    Me, Myself & Irene (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, June 2000) After Jim Carrey’s newfound acting reputation (after more nuanced turns in The Truman Show and Man On The Moon) and the Farrely Brother’s unexpected mega-hit with There’s Something About Mary, there were considerable expectations about their first reunion since Dumb & Dumber. Unfortunately, Me, Myself & Irene would have been a failure even if it hadn’t been hyped. In their rush to bring to screens a bigger, nastier, grosser comedy, The Farrelys have forgotten that There’s Something About Mary‘s biggest strength wasn’t the gross-out gags, but the solid romantic underpinning and the constant comedy (which was funny throughout, with occasional peaks of good-natured outrageousness). Conversely, Me, Myself & Irene goes for the gross-out without any reason to do so. It mixes kind of a serious plot (what with murders, criminals and amputations) with attempts at being funny and the mixture doesn’t hold. Granted, the premise is fantastic (Carrey as fighting against himself? Wasn’t that just great in Liar Liar?) and the three rude black geniuses simply steal every scene they’re in (gotta love that quantum physics discussion!), but overall, Me, Myself & Irene misfires far too often, and the result is simply… not that funny. (As an aside, your reviewer notes that with the accumulation of gross-out humor, he finds myself not repulsed nor amused, but annoyed and left curiously unaffected by the more extreme gags in this vein -see Scary Movie-. Hopefully the pendulum of moviegoer’s tastes will soon swing back.)

  • Rogue Star, Michael Flynn

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1998, 667 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-812-54299-1

    With 1997’s Firestar, Michael Flynn officially Arrived in SF. Formerly known as an author of a few rather good short stories and co-author of the fannish homage Fallen Angels (With Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle), Flynn flew under the radar of most SF fans until he published his monstrous 800+ pages tome. Firestar was the opening volume of an ambitious near-future saga in which Flynn looked as if he’d be showing all other authors how near-future Hard-SF is done. With its huge cast of characters, deep character development and often exasperating attention to details, Firestar gathered a lot of interest and got some critical attention.

    At the time, your reviewer begged to differ. Firestar‘s very ambitiousness dragged down what might otherwise have been a fine hard-SF tale. The huge cast of characters seemed too diffuse for its own good. Flynn’s character development seemed to specialize in making life hard for everyone. There was no happy ending. Not a lot happened, and whatever happened wasn’t worth 800+ pages. Many Messages were passed. Add to that the decidedly libertarian convictions of Flynn’s future (in which governments were evil and only corporations could save the world, yada-yada-yada) and you had an overpadded, somewhat unpleasant book.

    Why read Rogue Star, then? For the sheer masochist pleasure of it, maybe. But a strange thing happened on the way to the ending: While still overly long, Rogue Star started to be engrossing, interesting and even -yep- enjoyable.

    Rogue Star is where the investment made in the first volume starts to pay off. All these useless, unpleasant characters of the first volume start interacting in a conflicting fashion, and for some reason, this seems rather more interesting than in the first volume. Marissa’s financial empire is in jeopardy; a mission to an asteroid finds more than it bargained for; a blue-collar construction worker confronts sex and violence on an unfinished space station. Fascinating stuff, and more accessibly-written too. Not a whole lot of plot for 600+ pages, though. Someone at Tor better grab some scissors for the next volume.

    Still, the result is worth the long read. The space-rigger subplot itself rivals Allen Steele’s similar Orbital Decay in sheer fascination. (Plus, it takes the rather reasonable position that being stoned in a high-risk environment is not a very smart thing to do…) The political and financial shenanigans do seem less naive than Firestar‘s simplistic libertarian positions. The series moves in a more outlandish science-fiction, after the quasi techno-thriller atmosphere of the first volume.

    Plus, Flynn sends a neat little curveball in mid-book to all the readers who by now had been softly settling in a very rational hard-SF environment. Suddenly, things get far more interesting. But that’ll have to wait until the next volume, right?

    In fact, Rogue Star is a bit worrisome, because it shows that Flynn isn’t nearly finished with the series, which is looking more and more like a future history than a simple trilogy. How many more volumes to go? And how will both the “surprise” and the “expected” (come on; all that foreshadowing about planet-killing asteroids for nothing?) will play? As we might think they will ,or differently? (This is not a glib remark: If we end up with a 2000+ pages series in which the climax is what one can expect after reading Rogue Star, then all the good will established by the book will disappear in a puff of angry smoke. It’s hard to say more without spoiling the book.)

    Without being a must-read, Rogue Star is decent hard-SF. Worth a look, especially for those who wondered why they read the first volume of the series.

  • Flubber (1997)

    Flubber (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, June 2000) I was prepared for the worst -what with Robin Williams in a remake of a Disney kid’s movie with cute special effects- but was finally entertained decently by this film. As long as you focus on the sight gags, the good special effects and never worry too much about the dumb plotting, saccharine moments and out-of-place adult elements in a kid’s film.

  • Eddie (1996)

    Eddie (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, June 2000) What armchair sports fan hasn’t said to himself “Hey, I could coach that team!”? Eddie plays heavily on this wish-fulfilment fantasy by throwing uberfan Whoppie Goldberg as the coach of the New York Knicks. Pretty much everything you could expect from this premise actually happens: The players gradually coming to accept the coach, the increasing tensions between coach and owner, the last climactic game, yada-yada-yada. Goldberg rescues the film from complete worthlessness. Terribly manipulative, not exceptionally funny, but hey, it’ll do one Sunday evening when there’s no real basketball on TV.

  • Chicken Run (2000)

    Chicken Run (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, June 2000) Every self-respecting Wallace And Gromit fan only needed to know that Nick Park was doing Chicken Run in order to rush out and see the film. Great news: Chicken Run more than meet the expectations set by Park’s three most famous shorts films. Chicken Run is a constant delight, a comedy with considerable amounts of wit and intelligence, with the added attraction of some fun action sequences. Keep your eyes open for tons of delightful film references. One could easily dwell on the technical prowesses of the film, but the storytelling is so good that it preempts any attempt at a technical analysis. Run, chicken, run!

    (Second viewing, On DVD, December 2000) This survives a second viewing admirably well, which is always an achievement for a comedy. The novelty of claymation fades somewhat, and the various character quirks emerge more strongly. I was annoyed at the gratuitous romantic angle, but the script shows how well written it otherwise is. The DVD is a lot of fun, with two making-of features, commentary tracks, various extra as well as three trailers (including the hilarious Gladiator and Mission: Impossible parodies.) Unquestionably one of the best films of 2000.

  • Boogie Nights (1997)

    Boogie Nights (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On VHS, June 2000) Note to director Paul T. Anderson: You frickin’ show-off. Okay, so you can write and direct a pretty good film about the porn industry in the late seventies/early eighties. Sure, you can coax exceptional performances from your actors. Great, so you can move the camera like a god and make us say “Damn, we’ve found a new auteur!” But next time you do a film, why don’t you remember that brevity is… wit? Why don’t you take another pass at that script, and remove those little scenes that leads nowhere and do nothing? Why don’t you tell your actors to stop playing to the camera? Why don’t you hire a good editor, one who could tighten your self-indulgences to something approaching narrative unity? Do that, and we’ll love you. Otherwise, you’ll get worse and worse, and Magnolia isn’t a step in the right direction. Even geniuses directors need some good direction.

  • Wise Guy, Nicholas Pillegi

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pocket, 1985, 308 pages, C$5.95 mmpb, ISBN 0-671-63392-9

    Hopefully, most readers of these reviews aren’t career criminals. Not that it’s a hard thing to do: Despite the distorted picture presented by popular media, lives of crime aren’t at the reach of every common layman: They demand, like most specialized professions, a certain set of skills, mindset and training. Needless to say, this type of training isn’t commonly offered to the average suburban white middle-class male statistically most likely to be reading these lines.

    But, living as he was in Italian New York in the 1950s, Henry Hill was uncommonly well-placed to ascend the ladder of crime. (“and slide down the slippery path of eternal damnation!” adds the preacher) Hired as a common job-runner, Hill quickly shows a flair for the quick buck. As Pillegi explains,

    For Henry and his wiseguys friends, the world was golden. They lived in an environment awash in crime, and those who did not partake were simply viewed as prey. Anyone waiting his turn on the pay line was beneath contempt. Those who did were fools. [P.36]

    To escape from the drudgery of the common American man, Hill saw an easy solution: go deeper in the underworld. And indeed, Hill would become one of the top men in the New York mafia. Upon his arrest in 1980, FBI agents would be stunned at the extent of his knowledge. Unlike other top criminals who only specialized in a few selected areas, Hill -despite a position roughly in the middle of the criminal hierarchy- has involved in everything: Drugs, gambling, theft, murders… Hill knew where the bodies were buried, often literally.

    Don’t feel surprised if you’ve heard this story before: Wise Guy is the basis of the award-winning 1990 Martin Scorsese film GOODFELLAS, considered by many critics to be among the best films of the nineties. Reading the source material, it’s not hard to find the elements that, properly handled, would form the basis for a great film: An interesting protagonist not that far removed from the typical viewer, an epic crime story spanning decades, a wealth of fascinating details and plenty of narrative hooks on which to build great scenes.

    But, as good as GOODFELLAS was, Wise Guy is even better: it deepens the anecdotes, explains some of the film’s seemingly most fanciful liberties (such as the high-class life of top mafiosos in prison) and is somewhat clearer on the path from runner to gangster. Even though Scorsese was no slouch at creating a well-rounded portrait of criminal motivations and the resulting life in constant potential violence, Hill truly completes the picture and the result is very convincing.

    Obviously, half -if not more- the credit for the book must go to journalist/interviewer Nicholas Pillegi, who manages to tighten up Hill’s words in a taut, compulsively readable narrative. That he was able to do all that under difficult interviewing conditions (Hill is currently, and will forever remain, under the protection of the Witness Protection Program) is nothing short of admirable. His work is for our benefit; this is the closest that most of us will come to a personal interview with a monster.

    Interestingly (or unfortunately), the overall impression given by Wise Guy is one of nostalgic charm for the gangster era. Mafia members come to form a relatively sympathetic group of criminals with honor. Far from being despicable serial killers or contemptible petty thieves, Hill’s testimony paints a portrait of rather decent guys despite the pesky murders and police bribery.

    Fascinating how the view from the other side is often more compelling that ours. But I’m still not giving all away for a life of crime. The hours are just murder.

  • Margin of Error: Pollsters and the Manipulation of Canadian Politics, Claire Hoy

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Key Porter, 1989, 234 pages, C$24.95 hc, ISBN 0-55013-172-9

    Politics have changed considerably during the last century, and nowhere is this more true than in the now-omnipresent usage of polls. Media use them to boost viewership, establish predictions and build up front-page stories. Politicians use them to gauge the popularity of policies, track down their popularity and plan campaign strategies. Regular polls have become a regular part of the process, protected by an aura of scientific respectability in a field where impressions can often be more important than facts.

    Claire Hoy is a well-respected Canadian journalist who, in 1988, reached his boiling point regarding this issue. How is it that the methodology of polls is never questioned? What is the impact of regular polling on Canadian politics? What are the implications of media/pollster relations when some pollsters are obviously biased in favor of political parties? Margin of Error is an attempt to answer these questions, and it makes for fascinating reading.

    If you’re like this reviewer, Hoy’s central thesis -that pollsters have enjoyed uncritical admiration for too long, and that they now occupy a central position as decision-shapers- is initially suspect, if not outright paranoid. How can these friendly people with the Numbers be in any way dangerous to the democratic system?

    The first section of Margin of Error paints an historical portrait of polling in Canada. Beginning during World War II by way of exiled American specialists, polling quickly established itself as an instrument of knowledge, and soon as a replacement for decision-making; Hoy traces the evolution of the usage of polls from being simple indicators for politicians, to smoke-screens behind which true vision can disappear and where the “best” politicians simply follow the polls.

    Ah, but if only it stopped there… As Hoy demonstrates through chapters about the largest Canadian pollsters, the very perception of pollster impartiality (“just the numbers, ma’am”) is ludicrously absurd. Pollsters have long been associated with political parties, courting leaders to become official party pollsters.

    It gets worse. Hoy clearly demonstrates, through example and a bit of logic, how questions can be slanted to obtain desired results, how precise formulation can affect results and how special-interest groups can, for a relatively low price, get “official” validation for their viewpoint by hitching a carefully-worded questions onto a “general survey”. Pollsters, despite their reputation as number wizards, can independently skew results with bad survey methodologies in an effort to save a few dollars. (Margin of Error shows, dollar-figures in print, just how expensive a good survey truly is, and how badly results are affected by skimping.)

    Not only does it stop there, but as Hoy shows -again through several mind-boggling examples-, media outlets who report this information are most often than not incapable to make an accurate usage of these statistics. They’ll often misrepresent the question (forgoing the precise wording for a more audience-friendly “meaning”), ignore the shaky methodologies and try to buy results on the cheap, resulting in news that are, at best, not paining an accurate picture of reality.

    Your reviewer, somewhat of a stats geek himself, started the book with a decidedly skeptical mind. But Hoy does his job properly, and the overall accumulation of facts, citations and -yes- statistics are simply too revealing to ignore. The misuse of polls represented in Margin of Error borders on the actionable, and yet, with eleven year’s insight, things have most probably gotten worse, not better.

    In any case, Claire Hoy has produced, with Margin of Error, an essential piece of reading for anyone too easily trusting of polls. As it is showing significant age, an update might be in order. But don’t let that stop you from picking up the book and getting an eye-opener on statistical abuse.

  • Reliquary, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1997, 464 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-812-54283-5

    Something is loose deep under New York. Again.

    Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s first collaboration, Relic, was an unqualified success. Their thriller received good reviews, sold well and was adapted to cinema under the direction of Peter Hyams. (Okay, so the film wasn’t all that great and tanked at the box-office, but that’s not fault of the book itself.) It was inevitable that they’d eventually write a sequel.

    The logical premise, of course, is to expand the action. Relic had one monster, why not have more in the sequel? The original was confined to a Museum, why not let the monsters loose under the entire New York in Reliquary?

    As I said, obvious but effective. In this volume, the remnants of the monster, glimpsed in Relic‘s epilogue, surface some time later as a wave of creepy homeless death occurs under New York. The novel opens as the crisis reaches a boiling point: This time, no mere bum has been killed, but the daughter of a wealthy socialite was mysteriously murdered. Socialite raises hell, policemen investigate, creepy evidence is brought to Relic‘s heroine Margo Green and here we go again…

    Fortunately, Reliquary not only does thing slightly differently than its predecessor, but does them better. This time around, the characters are more clearly defined and more sympathetic. The writing is snappier, even improving upon the lean style that was so successful in The Relic. Scenes are more spectacular, belief is more easily suspended… in short, Preston and Child have improved since their first novel, and it shows. Reliquary is in many respects a more enjoyable book than Relic.

    Special mention should be made of the eeriness of subterranean New York so effectively used here. A relatively old city by North American standards, Preston and Child easily populate New York’s underground with forgotten subway tunnels, service tunnels, multi-level outposts and entire underground populations. They state that most of it is true… who knows? Sort of the setting for that old TV show, “Beauty and the Beast”, adapted for a horror tale.

    Fans of the first volume will be delighted to find more about Margo, Penderghast, Smithback, D’Agosta and Frock. New characters also join them, including a delightfully feisty NYPD officer named Hayward.

    Plus, the novel packs the required chills. There are dead bodies, creepy dark places, riots, carnage, last-minute twists, the promise of world-wide destruction and other sort of fun stuff.

    Through it all, one can’t really shake the prefabricated feel that also plagued The Relic, but then again it’s better to have a professional but mechanical thriller than an incompetent one. Preston and Child might build their novels with flowcharts and mathematical models, but the end result is good enough that it doesn’t really matter.

    What is a bit more annoying is the unwillingness of the narrative to truly use all the elements it so lovingly sets up. At one point, there’s a congregation of wealthy bourgeois, police squads, monsters, bums and oodles of water all headed for the same point. What happens next isn’t quite as spectacular as what you might think.

    Nevertheless, Reliquary exemplifies the type of novel which gave rise to the expression “beach reading”. Undemanding, exciting and unusually readable, Reliquary gets top marks as a thriller. If you liked the first one, don’t miss it.

  • The Making of a Cop, Harvey Rachlin

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pocket, 1991, 302 pages, C$5.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-671-74740-1

    For most North American citizen, all contacts with policemen are limited to the occasional speeding ticket (if that), for which cops are seen as annoyances at best.

    That’s too easily forgetting that cops are there for things that are in fact quite a bit more dangerous than simple traffic regulation. And nowhere is this truer than in New York City.

    “In 1988 there were 1,915 murders and manslaughters (10 percent of the U.S. total, and more than Great Britain and West Germany combined), 45,824 felonious assaults, 3,412 forcible rapes, 86,578 robberies, 128,626 burglaries, 110,717 grand larcenies, 119,659 grand larceny car thefts, and 43,434 other felonies involving drugs, forgery, arson, prostitution, gambling, and kidnapping” [P.2] If New York isn’t the most dangerous city in the world, it must be close.

    [July 2001: After a particularly pleasant trip to New York City and some knowledge of recent statistics, I am pleased to report that this isn’t true any more. Mayor Guiliani’s reforms of the nineties have truly had an effect. In fact, New York doesn’t even rank in the top-100 per-capita most dangerous American cities list!]

    Against this tide of crime, acting as public defenders, exists the New York Police Department. 28,000 policemen, making the NYPD larger than most national armed forces in the world. But these policemen come from somewhere. They must be trained. Ordinary civilians from all areas must be re-modeled and re-educated so that they can wear a blue uniform, a badge and a gun.

    The Making of a Cop is a meticulously detailed documentary on this training process. Author/journalist Harvey Rachlin was granted unprecedented access to the NYPD training academy during one such training session which turned out 650 candidates into pure true NYPD blue. Through the eyes of four very different students, we follow the whole process, from the first to the last day.

    There is the expected fascinating chapter on the gun range, but that’s only a small part of the training to become a police officer. They must also follow classes in Law, Police Science, Social Science, Physical Training, Driver training, Car-Stop workshops… and all of these subjects, from the most academic to the most physical, are essential to a policeman’s training.

    But The Making of a Cop is not only a dry affair of academia. The world of a police officer is made of difficult decisions that -for the most part- are completely alien to civilians. What is a crime? While that decision is clear when a crime has been committed, it is far more murky when a police officer is witness to potentially suspect behavior. The book details such an occasion, which starts by a policeman watching a bum trying out car doors, and ends with a life-and-death struggle.

    But these finer points of conduct are nothing compared to the training aspirants are required to go through in preparation to busts. While civilians may be put off by the behavior of police officers in day-to-day operations, it’s worth remembering that if we don’t reasonably expect police officers to shoot us in their work, policemen must allow for a degree of definite danger in their line of duty. The Making of a Cop is adept at pointing out the delicate balance between self-protection and service to the public.

    Technically, this book is nearly perfect, giving a compulsively readable account of almost all facets of training from beginning to end, with plenty of tasty anecdotes and first-person testimonials to hook us into the narrative. Rachlin wisely stays in the background, only directly integrating himself in the narrative in the introduction and the conclusion, letting the policemen speak for themselves during training.

    But most significantly, The Making of a Cop is a splendid testimony to the often-ungrateful, often-dangerous job of policemen. It’s nearly impossible to read this book without coming away from it with a renewed respect for police forces, with the types of dangers and decisions that is their daily workload.

    Remember that the next time you get a speeding ticket.

  • San ying hung boon sik [Return To A Better Tomorrow] (1994)

    San ying hung boon sik [Return To A Better Tomorrow] (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, May 2000) This exemplifies the uncharacteristic weirdness of Hong Kong cinema, where the usual “rules” of Western movies are irrelevant, and where genres might turn on you in an instant. This one starts off as a conventional brothers-against-mafia story with a touch of dark comedy, veers in court drama, becomes full-blown tragedy, skips two years and end in heavy cop drama once again. You won’t be able to predict where it’s going. There are a few good action scenes, but make no mistake, it’s the twists and turns of the plot that will keep you going. Not bad. Not bad at all.

  • The Whole Nine Yards (2000)

    The Whole Nine Yards (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, May 2000) As a French-Canadian, this film is more than a pleasant surprise, explicitly featuring a Montreal-area setting as a background to a big-budget dark comedy. Never mind Patricia Arquette’s amateurish French accent; the other details (the house styles, the cars, the Re-Max real estate signs) sell the film. Bruce Willis is in there, practically playing a parody of his hitman character in The Jackal. Amanda Peet bares her chest to the camera and provides most of the film’s charm with her role as a spunky… er… dental assistant. Matthew Perry’s befuddled dentist is the straight core of the film, though his various pratfalls underscore his ability to play the comic role. The script is not without a few problems (what’s about the undercover agent?) but the direction keeps things moving briskly. As with most comedies, this one isn’t a must-see, but fills a slow evening quite decently.