Love, As Always, Pete

The Weekly Letters, by A. Pedersen Wood

June 24, 2002

Dear Everyone:

This week’s Letter is going to be much earlier (and much shorter) because I forgot to mention last week that I would be on vacation this week.  “Jeannie” and I leave for our annual pilgrimage to Ashland for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival tomorrow morning.

I also forgot one of Richard Chamberlain’s movies:  The Man in the Iron Mask which was remade a few years ago with Leonardo DiCaprio.  And if you’re thinking, “Can Dr. Kildare be far behind?”, actually, Chamberlain remade that back in 1989, in the guise of a TV series called Island Son, in which he played the kindly father figure to a new crop of medical students.

As for The Bourne Identity, it features a wild chase scene that teeters on (but never falls off) the edge of ludicrous because, while the police are driving nice, big cars, the hero and heroine are running away in the smallest European car the producers could find.  It only needed a big key on the back to turn it into a clown car.

Also in the movies…

“Jeannie” and I took in Minority Report last Saturday.  The producers cheat by not telling you until the end that it’s based on another short story by the same author of the story used for Imposter, which we saw last February.  It’s your basic “innocent man on the run trying to prove he’s not a killer”, with a lot of futuristic scenery.  And some really creepy “spiders”.  The year is 2054 and the police in Washington, D.C. have the means to predict murders before they can occur.  Of course, the whole concept of Free Will is pretty much tossed out the window, not to mention a little thing called the Constitution and due process.

Tom Cruise plays the cop who is soon running from his co-workers.  Pity the co-workers.  Tom relies less on his notable charm this time and plays the character with some real grit.  Worth the matinee price.

Also:  The Sum of All Fears (without “Jeannie” on Sunday).  Here, Hollywood has made the same mistake that I initially did with Tom Clancy novels:  Getting them out of chronological order.  First, Jack Ryan was a guy in his thirties (Alec Baldwin in The Hunt for Red October).  Then he was middle-aged (Harrison Ford in Patriot Games and A Clear and Present Danger).  Now he’s in his twenties (Ben Affleck) just starting to date his (future) wife (previously portrayed by Gates McFaddin and Anne Archer).

There are also other characters who change appearance (John Clark, who was played by Willem Dafoe in AC&PD) and even names (Morgan Freeman plays “Bill Cabot” because James Earl Jones’s character, “Admiral Greer”, died in AC&PD).

On the other hand, it’s a chance to see Jack Ryan as the untried young analyst who suddenly finds himself having to save the world.  Crazy people (aren’t they always?) want to set off World War III because they think the pieces will be worth picking up afterward.  Jack figures out what’s really going on, but he doesn’t have the “clearance” to make anyone listen to him.

The fact that we’ve seen the future versions of Jack and Cathy means there’s not a lot of suspense as to whether or not they’ll survive.  But the nuclear explosion is certainly convincingly produced by the special effects wizards.  Another good reason to sit in cool air-conditioned darkness on a hot summer afternoon.

As for the home front, I’m very proud of myself.  Here it is barely the end of June and I’ve already disposed of my 1998 files, rotated the file drawers and done all of current filing.  Until the mail arrives tomorrow.

Love, as always,

 

Pete

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