Pop The Culture

This is my first foray into blogging. No frontin'. This is scary but not quite as scary as Katie Holmes becoming Tom Cruise's baby mama. Or Paris Hilton having a serious thought in her head. I figure life is about taking plunges (not out of planes because I ain't about to ever do that) but you get my meaning.
What this blog is about is my obsession on all things pop culture. I read Entertainment Weekly weekly and about every weekend has me sitting in a movie theater either mesmerized by a film's brilliance or horrified that anyone had the audacity to proudly come out with something so pathetic.
Sunday, for example, I watched A History of Violence, my second time doing so. From the first shot to the last, I was fascinated by this twisty tale that bounced between hilarity and pathos, a rare action film that forced one to consider what happens after blood is spilled (in often gruesome ways, I might add) and the hero is not quite as heroic and noble as we were led to believe. Life is complex and the movies that move me are the ones that recognize that singular fact, that every once and a while smack the audience with the unexpected instead of the easy and predictable.
So it was with A History of Violence and wasn't with Animal, a wasted opportunity for Ving Rhames and Terrence Howard, the recent star of the critically acclaimed Hustle & Flow.
Rhames is Animal, who has built a menancing reputation on the lives he has taken. Sent to prison, he finds redemption with the help of a jailed revolutionary played by Jim Brown.
Newly reformed, he leaves prison to find that his son, played by Howard, has fallen into the same patterns that have defined his life and it is up to him to steer his son onto the right course.
Good premise but poor execution. Rhames' transformation comes too quickly, and though Rhames and Howard manage to infuse their scenes with a hard-to-ignore energy, their efforts are not enough to salvage a rudimentary plot and stilted dialogue.
All in all, a disappointment. Howard is way too good for this, and by the end of the movie, you're begging and pleading Ving to find better roles, any role than this.