I admit it.  One of my many vices is a love for all things Miami Vice.  When the show originally aired, I watched it faithfully.  I had a couple Miami Vice posters and even bought the “series” (only about 20 episodes were made available) on VHS tape.  I remember in junior high school, we had a semi-formal dance and all the guys in our class bought Sonny Crockett-style blazers and wore colorful t-shirts underneath.  If I could’ve grown stubble, I’d have perpetually worn a five o’clock shadow.

Michael Mann was the executive producer and creative genius behind Miami Vice.  Previously he had written great crime stories such as Thief, starring James Caan, and Manhunter, the precursor to Silence of the Lambs, but has since perfected his writing with Heat, starring Robert Deniro and Al Pacino, which he also directed.  He has also directed Collateral, starring Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx.  Both films feature explosive scenes, vibrant colors, and panoramic camera angles that only Mann could provide.

So, when I heard Jamie Foxx in an interview discuss that Michael Mann had tapped him to act in yet a third Mann film (the second being Ali with Will Smith) and play the role of Rico Tubbs in a big screen adaptation of Miami Vice, I took particular notice.  The movie also stars Colin Farrell as Sonny Crocket and is set to be released this summer.  The web site features a great teaser trailer that you can download and see what all the fuss is about.

http://www.miamivice.com/main.html

"It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.”
Abraham Lincoln

On a recent episode of The Office, while the staff waits in the parking lot for the fire department to extinguish a fire in the kitchen, Jim proposes a game of “Desert Island.” Each staff member was asked to pick their favorite movies and books that they would like to have with them if deserted on an island.  If I were faced with the same decision, I’d have to agree with Pam, the office secretary, on her picks.  At the top of my list would be the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski.

Jeff Bridges, son of Lloyd and brother of Beau, stars as Jeff Lebowski, known as The Dude, an aging hippie who floats though life while causing as few ripples as possible.  His motto is: “The Dude abides.” It’s great to see Jeff Bridges able to bring to life a character who is the antithesis of Bridges himself.  Bridges started acting at nine years old on his father’s television program, Sea Hunt, has had starring roles in such major films as King Kong, Against All Odds, The Fisher King, Blown Away, and Seabiscuit, and has been married for nearly thirty years, a rare feat by Hollywood standards.  He has a knack for capturing and mimicking the sometime eccentric traits of his characters: dogged determination and confidence in Tucker: The Man and His Dream; unusual speech pattern and cadence in The Vanishing; quiet strength in White Squall; unfamiliarity with the ordinary in Starman.  It shouldn’t have been such a surprise that he could step into The Dude’s sandals so well, but the result is even more convincing than I could have expected.

The Dude is a man of simple needs and desires.  He likes to bowl, drink White Russians, and smoke pot.  However, his simple life is suddenly interrupted by two thugs, who mistake him for a millionaire who shares the same name as the dude: Jeffrey Lebowski.  After discussing it with his friend, Walter Sobchak, hysterically played by John Goodman from TV’s Roseanne and another Coen brothers’ movie, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, The Dude decides that he can’t just abide and seeks reparations from the intended target, the Big Lebowski.  David Huddleston plays this Jeffrey Lebowski, a mean-spirited, manipulative, and petty man, which is a far cry from Huddleston’s previous role as Grandpa Arnold on The Wonder Years.

Although initially rebuffed, The Dude settles things his own way and considers the matter to be closed, only to be pulled back in by the Big Lebowski’s manservant, Brandt, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, a veteran character actor with recent starring roles in Owning Mahowny and Capote, for which he won the Best Actor Oscar.  Hoffman seems to have as much fun playing the quirky Brandt as it is to watch him.  After accepting Brandt’s invitation back to the mansion, The Dude is pulled into a nefarious plot when it is revealed that the Big Lebowski’s wife, Bunny, played by Tara Reid, has been kidnapped.

WARNING: SPOILER. If you have not seen this movie and are interested in it, do not read further.

At its core, The Big Lebowski is an old-fashioned detective mystery complete with a beautiful kidnap victim, a powerful and wealthy client, a hapless hero, and a gruff police chief who wants the hero to just butt out.  It is filled with deceptions and self-interested parties who twist and turn the plot before the hero finally makes sense of it all in the end.  However, what distinguishes this film from the hard boiled detective stories of the 50’s is the influence of Ethan and Joel Coen themselves.  The Coen brothers have a knack for creating characters and scenes that are so bizarre that they somehow seem real.  With The Big Lebowski, they’ve taken this knack to a new level.  Even the few instances where you can correctly guess what’s going to occur, the Coens manage to surprise us with how it occurs or how the characters respond.

To me, the funniest moments in the movie occur when I have a pretty good idea what’s going to happen, but don’t yet know how it’s going to happen.  One scene that typifies this feeling is when The Dude stops by Walter’s house on the way to the ransom drop.  From the moment the loud-mouthed, overzealous Walter gets behind the wheel of the car, you just know that he is going to screw up everything.  Even though Walter knows that the kidnappers had demanded that The Dude deliver the money alone, he continues to shout “amateurs” even as The Dude answers the kidnappers’ phone call.  Then, just before The Dude is supposed to make the drop, Walter shouts, “Your wheel, Dude! I’m rolling out!” rips open the plain brown wrapping that was concealing an Uzi, and jumps out of the moving vehicle!  Walter hits the ground, the Uzi crashes and slides along the pavement, spraying bullets back into the car, and The Dude drives off the road into a guardrail.

Another source of humor throughout the film is the frequent repetitions of words and phrases.  Some of the funniest lines take place between The Dude and Maude Lebowski, played by Julianne Moore, who between this movie and Boogie Nights (also featuring Philip Seymour Hoffman) revealed more than her acting talent in the late 90’s.  In these exchanges, Maude usually introduces a word or phrase into her conversation with The Dude that he picks up as if his own.  Maude asks, “Do you like sex, Mr. Lebowski?” to which The Dude responds, “Excuse me?” “Sex.  The physical act of love.  Coitus.  Do you like it?” repeats Maude.  The Dude corrects, “I was talking about my rug.” “You’re not interested in sex?” asks Maude.  The Dude answers, “You mean coitus?”

Ben Gazzara, who had made a career of playing Italian bad guys from Al Capone in John Cassavetes’ Capone to Brad Wesley in Road House with Patrick Swayze, plays Jackie Treehorn, a Hugh Hefner-like pornographer.  A quick laugh occurs when Jackie Treehorn sends his thugs to pick up The Dude for an impromptu meeting at Jackie’s mansion.  After raising The Dude’s suspicions, Jackie takes a phone call, writes some notes on a pad of paper, and leaves the room with the slip of paper.  Invoking his detective skills, The Dude hurries over and rubs the pencil on the pad of paper to reveal what Jackie had just written.  Like The Dude, we think it must have some significance to the kidnap plot and most likely reveals Jackie’s complicity.  However, The Dude is surprised and we are amused to find that Jackie had merely sketched a cartoon of a nude man.

The Big Lebowski is filled with one laugh after another.  I’ve watched it often and it hasn’t lost anything since the first time I saw it.  In fact, I think it gets even funnier now that I know the characters so well and can recite the lines along with them.  If I were to be deserted on an island and could only pick five movies to take with me, The Big Lebowski would definitely be there.  Now, if only I could figure how to watch it with no television, DVD player, or electricity…

"Look, nobody calls me Lebowski. You got the wrong guy. I’m the Dude, man.”
The Big Lebowski

Here are a couple of independent science fiction films available for download for free.

http://www-fi3.starwreck.com/

Star Wreck is a full-length science fiction parody created by five Finnish student filmmakers, featuring over three hundred cast and crew members.

http://www.panicstruckpro.com/revelations/

Star Wars Revelations is a non-profit Star Wars fan film featuing studio-quality CG effects that was produced entirely by volunteers.