journal features

movie review - The Gift

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Toronto, 2002.09.28

I seem to see this movie fairly regularly; this is at least the third time. But that's because I keep recommending it to people and they wind up renting it when I'm around. I recommend this one due to the fine acting all-round. I mean, Keanu Reeves does what I think is the performance of his career, so far; his good-ol-boy is spot on. Needless to say, Cate Blanchett and Giovanni Ribisi and Katie Holmes are superb, as well. Also, the story is fairly unique, revolving around Blanchett's character - a fortune teller who has real "second sight" - is asked to help find a missing woman. And some people would really rather that she stay missing. At the same time, one of her regular patients is having a melt-down and cuts a swath through the plot while on his own trajectory.

A favorite. Strongly recommended.

rand()m quote

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

—Michael Crichton