Ashdoc's movie reviews you missed

[ashdoc]

Players---

Go for gold !!---says one of the promos of the movie......

Thats what the moviegoer goes for---to the theater , I mean.....

Hyped and overhyped movies come and go---hyped movies sink fast and overhyped movies sink faster......

And the bechara moviegoer---he is in search of a good movie , only to be disappointed time and again.....

Only once in a while he strikes gold......

Thats what I did too---searching for a good movie among the mediocre stuff I was being forced to watch , Ashdoc finally struck paydirt.....!!

For this is a movie that lives upto the expectations created for it , and its publicists wont have to run away to Lonavala or wherever they are said to run away to escape from the uncomfortable questions posed by the press after their overhyped movie expectedly flops.....

So what gold are these players after ??
Its the gold owned by Romania being shifted back to its home country after being given to the Russians for safekeeping long ago .
......And the players mean to strike it on the train that carries it from Russia to Romania .

First lets make good and evil clear.....
Actually none of the players are good.....
For they plan to snatch the gold belonging to a sovereign nation......
But above all they kill ( or have to kill ) innocent Russian guards whose only mistake is to be guarding the train carrying the gold......
For example , Bobby Deol , who is supposed to be a nice guy who is stealing the gold only for raising money to make his paralysed daughter's life more comfortable actually coldbloodedly shoots a Russian guard trying to stop the robbery.....

But directors Abbas-Mustan pull off a coup by convincing the audience that some of these players are nice guys....
This is of course something they have pulled of even more successfully in the past , when in their movie Baazigar Shah Rukh Khan goes on a spree of killing innocent people in his quest for revenge and yet wins the sympathy of the audience .

The filming of the robbery is a coup in itself , for it has some genuine heart-pounding nerve-wrenching moments as the players bring another train parallel to the gold carrying train and steal the gold while both trains are still moving fast.....

......And the photography is excellent throughout as the movie moves from the icy winter of Russia to the warmer climes down under in New Zealand......

For the movie doesn't end with the heist in Russia , as predictibly there is a twist....
Typically for a crook , the bad guy then reveals himself , raking the moolah all for himself and leaving the others high and dry while he scampers off to New Zealand.

Thats not gonna stop our intrepid players---they track him down and plan to steal what the director has led us to believe is rightfully theirs ( all stolen gold belonging to someone else , but sshhh....its just a movie....) .

Not so easy, guys---the bad player has an accomplice working for him among the good guys ; an accomplice telling him the good guys' every move.....
.......All twists and turns as the movie goes along.....

And the twists and turns do deliver the surprises at key moments , giving some sound entertainment.......

So go watch it......

Verdict---good.

 

[ashdoc]

J Edgar---

This movie shows the life story of J Edgar Hoover , the legendary director of the FBI---the man who built it into the formidable organisation that it is today .

It shows how little power it had in the beginning , and how Edgar built it step by step to fight the internal security threats to the land of the free---America , what else.....

And even in 1919 , before the era of the cold war has begun , the threat that Edgar perceives to the American way is that of communism.....
For the bolshevics have taken power in Russia and are hellbent on spreading communism everywhere......
From giving radical speeches to bombblasting people , they are trying to foment revolution across the world.....

It is upto people like Edgar to protect the Americans from this danger.....
And protect them he does , by taking risks to his career as he has to bend the official rules many a time .

.......And as the great depression of 1929 strikes , Edgar moves onto facing the next danger , that of rising criminality among the population which has turned to crime as they have lost their jobs due to the collapsing economy .
What makes his job even more difficult is the fact that unlike the contempt they have for communism , common people regard the gangsters as heroes in the depressed economic times . But Edgar triumphs over the gangsters too , catching many and teaching many a lesson they will never forget.....

And as always , he bends the rules to do so.....
Which prompts some Presidents to think of removing him.....

No problem for our intrepid hero......
He uses the FBI to keep tabs on their personal lives , and if threatened with removal , he subtly threatens to expose the personal lives of the high and mighty , like President Roosevelt's wife's affairs or President Kennedy's romp in the bed with an East German communist woman......

So presidents come and go , but J Edgar Hoover is a constant , a permanent factor in the security system of the world's most powerful democracy......

And he keeps his image in the mind of the American public as a larger than life hero , by creating photo-ops and planting fictitious stories in the press about how he caught such and such criminal or how he personally fought and arrested such and such lawbreaker......

All this is fine , but there is a major flaw in the film.....
And the flaw is that the movie concentrates too much on Edgar's personal life.....

But what is so fascinating about his personal life that the movie has to change gear ??
It is the fact that the final protector of western democracy from the scourge of communism , the pillar of America's much vaunted security apparatus , his homoness....err.....his highness J Edgar Hoover is....is gay !!

And the movie spends way too much of its time in showing Edgar's lack of interest in women and his affair with his aide Mr Tolson .
And this ruins the movie as the parts showing all this move very slowly and reduce it to a personal story rather than how Edgar was in the thick of fighting America's enemies .

Also way too much time is spent in showing the kidnapping of the baby of American hero Charles Lindbergh and its investigation and aftermath .

In the end Edgar dies in office during the presidency of Richard Nixon .
But as Nixon's agents move to scour Edgar's office to find out what secrets he has kept from them , they find it empty......
All his secret files have been destroyed by his faithful secretary Miss Grandy---the old cocksucker ( as Nixon calls him ) has outwitted the president one last time.....

And the director of the film ( Clint Eastwood !! He should have stuck to western movies , really ) has outwitted me too---out of my money.....
......For frankly , I didn't like the film at all....

Verdict---not good .

 

[ashdoc]

The dogs of war---

The tin-pot republic of Zangaro---typical specimen of the hellhole that is Africa.....

Its ruled by a typically brutal dictator called Simba....oh actually it is Zimba....

But Zimba Simba who cares......they are all the same in the banana republics of Africa arent they.....

He's come to power by killing all his enemies , and to make sure no one entertains any future thought of enemity to him , he kills them before they have such thoughts.....

And he lives lavishly with his harem in the midst of his garrisoning troops in their barracks while his country is awash in a sea of crime and injustice.....

Into this godforsaken place comes our hero---posing as a wildlife photographer.....

He's instantly suspected for what he is---for who would come to this hellish place taking photographs if he is not sent by Zimba's enemies for taking measure of Zimba's power and the potential of destroying it.....

......And so he is packed off to jail where amidst myriad tortures , he meets the leader of the democratic movement of Zingaro who is cooling his heels in jail for the past 4 years for preaching democracy.....

But our hero's a white man---a citizen of the United States , and that country wont take the death of its countryman so lightly.....

So he cant be killed and has to be sent home.....

A home where the people who have sent him are waiting for his report on the situation in Zingaro......

For them he is just a mercenary , a dog of war......

.....And such dogs are expendible.......

But before such dogs are expended they have their uses.....

And his use to his handlers is to assemble a pack of dogs like himself and start a revolution in that little corner of Africa called zingaro.....

.....And their plan is to prop up a suitably black president who allows them to loot the mineral resources of his country and make money.....

But our dog is a dog with a mind of his own.....

And above all he's a good dog.....

He's not got long to live due to a fatal disease, and so has no use for the money his handlers are offering him.....

And at the end of his life he wants to do something good for humanity.....

But firstly , does he succeed in bringing revolution to Zingaro ??

Happily he does , and the director torches alight Frederick Forsythe's dull novel by moving away from the script and showing some real action unlike the novel which concentrated only on the planning of the coup and disappointingly stopped before some fighting broke out.....

As President Zimba's palace is swept by a hailstorm of firepower and the invaders fire grenades , rockets and bullets into the garrison protecting Zimba , the question is not whether Zimba will go but in how short a time will Zimba's power collapse.....

But the bigger question is---what is our hero's plan to put idealism in action in Zingaro ??

And will the people who financed him take his betrayal lying down ??

For answers to it , watch THE DOGS OF WAR.....

I found it a decent watch.....

 

[ashdoc]

The last viceroy---

The last viceroy tells the story of the last but momentous chapter in the history of British rule over India---of the end of the empire in a bloodbath of epic proportions .

Lord Louis Mountbatten arrives in India with his wife Edwina to close the 175 year old rule of Great Britain over the Indian subcontinent---the jewel in the King's crown .

He arrives just as a sea of violence is about to erupt in India---for led by the ambitious and powerhungry Muhammad Ali Jinnah , the muslims in the subcontinent are not only demanding the carving out of the nation of Pakistan , but they are also baying for the hindus' blood.....
......For the nation of Pakistan has to live upto its name---pak means pure in urdu , and what better way to make it pure than to ethnically cleanse it of all the infidels who dared inhabit it......

The hindus on the other hand , are led by the apostle of nonviolence---the ' great soul ' mahatma Gandhi who has made himself great by teaching a pacifist ideology and taught the hindus to bow and acceed to the muslims' every demand , including the creation of Pakistan .
But Gandhi has such a hold over the mind of the hindus due to his saintly behaviour that it is said that the capital of India is not at Delhi , but at wherever Gandhi is camping !!

......And this Gandhi is not there to greet Mountbatten as he alights from his plane ,for he has gone to bihar in one of his hopeless attempts to create communal amity between hindus and muslims---a fact which erks Edwina Mountbatten .

On the other hand , she is mightily pleased with the reception given to her by the future prime minister of India Nehru , and this leads to not only mutual attraction between them but a fullscale affair.....
All this happens under the watchful eye of Louis Mountbatten , who not only takes it all in his stride , but also develops a liking for Nehru himself !!

On the other hand , Mountbatten is not impressed by the personality of Jinnah , whom he grows to detest....
While Nehru is all charm , Jinnah is cold and forbidding , and the viceroy finds him quite extravagant in his demands for his new nation .

But first things first , and Mountbatten has to make a tour of the north west frontier . Here on landing , he is confronted by savage pathans in the thousands , all well armed and screaming for being given the Pakistan they want.
Mountbatten is well prepared for this , as he disarmingly waves at the barbaric horde wearing a muslimtype green dress , making them think he has acceeded to their demands and they are appeased without violence !

As everywhere Mountbatten tours he sees scenes of muslims butchering hindus , he not only concludes that Pakistan must be given , but also feels that the British must pull out of India before mayhem is unleashed and thereby makes a fatal mistake---he brings forward the date of declaration of independence from june 1948 to august 1947 , leaving the state machinery no time to cope with the mammoth task of partition .
......For not only is the nation to be partitioned , but govt property has to be divided ; but above all no proper arrangements are made to garrison the state of punjab , where post partition violence is expected .

Mountbatten does make a last attempt to convince Jinnah of the cabinet mission plan of a united by loosely federated India , but Jinnah is unrelenting.....
The ' great soul ' Gandhi goes one step forward by offering Jinnah the prime ministership of undivided India , but Sardar Patel simply refuses to entertain this idea ( thank god !! imagine Jinnah as India's PM..... )

The friendship between the Mountbatten couple and Nehru increases in the cool climes of Shimla , the summer capital of the British raj , where Nehru and Edwina find time to romance......
But Nehru's temper explodes when Mountbatten shows him the future plan of India---it envisages total balkanisation of the subcontinent as the princely states are left to choose to remain independent . Mountbatten has to sooth Nehru by removing that option , leaving them to join either India or Pakistan .

Jinnah is another matter altogether---he is unwavering and says that the Pakistan given to him by Mountbatten is divided into two wings with no link to east Pakistan---he calls it motheaten.....
But Mountbatten proves a tough negotiater and forces Jinnah to accept his partition plan at the meeting of representatives of all religions by forcing him to nod slightly in acceptance of the plan .

The die is cast , and Sir Cyril Radcliffe is given 5 weeks to draw the map diving the nation , giving precious little time for minorities on both sides to shift to the nation where their community is in majority .

The day the Indians have been waiting for a thousand years arrives as the nation awakes to life and freedom at midnight when the world is asleep---in Nehru's words , at least .
Mountbatten invites the press to take photos as the Indians blow conches of triumph , and to his surprise Future president Rajendra Prasad toasts King George with a glass of wine on this august occasion.....

But independence unleashes a torrent of violence as trains carrying dead hindus and sikhs come to India---and hindus and sikhs unleash bloody revenge . Mountbatten's mistake of bringing the independence date forward has produced terrible results......
Gandhi's attempt to save muslims in India only makes them spit on him....

But Nehru sees no choice but to ask Mountbatten to continue as governor general . This is opposed by Edwina who feels she might get too deeply involved with Nehru if this sojourn in India continues .

But Mountbatten's continuance proves lucky for India as he answers Nehru's desperate plea to save his home state of Kashmir from pathan irregulars sent by Pakistan to invade it by sending the Indian army after the maharaja signs the instrument of accsession .

When Mountbatten confronts Jinnah over the rape of scottish nuns by his pathans in Kashmir , Jinnah candidly admits to his hold over them by offering to pull the pathans back if India pulls back its forces .

Back in India , Gandhi has paid for his appeasement of Pakistan by his death at the hands of an assassin---sending Nehru into grief . Mountbatten consoles Nehru and asks him to speak to the Indian people on radio that very night . Nehru responds by making one of the finest speeches in his life .

And its time now for Mountbatten to leave India---his work is over.....
This time Edwina asks him to stay on---as Mountbatten himself admits , she has found love here......

But time and tide wait for none , and the time of the British is over.....
As they leave , the Indian public crowds the last viceroy's motorcade in a moment of brief nostalgia for the raj......

Most nostalgic of them all is Nehru , who gifts a rose to Edwina to cherish the bygone days of love before she ascends into the aircaft that will take her away....

An era has passed......
The halycon days of empire are over.....

And so is the movie....

Verdict----good , if you are a history buff .

 

[ashdoc]

Contraband---

Chris Farraday was a smuggler par excellence ; a man who is a past legend in that business .

But he has left crime to turn legitimate , and has married and had kids .

All right , but a man may want to leave the underworld , but does the underworld ever want to leave him ??
The brutal answer to this question is no.....

His wife's brother loses his cargo trying to smuggle drugs , and the supernastypeople who he was running drugs for now threaten Farraday that if he does not do a smuggling operation of counterfeit currency for them to return the money they lost on his brother in law , they gonna kill Farraday and his family.....

So Farraday has to go to panama to do the job they tell him to do.....

And he leaves his wife and sons in the care of his friend.....

But the supernasty people are even nastier than he thought......
For their real intention is to make him smuggle drugs , something that he's loathe to do......

And his friend is in league with them , keeping tabs on his wife and kids for them and even having lecherous intentions towards his wife......

As Farraday has to mingle with brutal drug lords in panama he realises what is going on......

But his enemies manage to rope even the captain of the ship he's sailing on into their gang to close the trap around him.....

So one brave man has to draw all his energy and resourcefullness and his cunning and daring to triumph against all odds to save his family , his kids and his future.....

And what his enemies havent reckoned is that he's smarter , gutsier and has more chutzpah than they could ever imagine......

And he is capable of bringing revenge onto them just as they are counting their unhatched chickens......

Just how does he do that ??

Go and watch the movie for that.....

Verdict---good .

 

[ashdoc]

Agneepath---

Agneepath.....phew !! This is really the path of fire........

For violence drips through the entire narrative , and I wasn't surprised to see a few women walk away from the theater within the first hour itself , inspite of paying 350 rupees ......

What surprised me however , was the fact that a girl gave me tickets for free !!
She said she had got the tickets for free herself and wasn't interested in seeing the movie.....

For the first hour , and also the last , the movie is filled with crude and barbaric violence and also some rough language .

You have to enter the theater with a particular mindset , that you have to see , and more particularly be unmoved by the extreme roughness of the film .

Having made up such a mindset , you can enjoy the film , especially if you are a male.

So whats the story ??

Master Deenanath Chauhan ( the surname should have been Chavan , considering the fact that he is shown as ghati ) is an extremely principled teacher who tries to rouse his villagefolk against the plans of Kancha Cheema ( played by Sunjay Dutt ) to establish a cocaine producing plant in his village Mandwa . But he is framed in a rape case and hanged by Cheema , forcing his son and pregnant wife to flee to Mumbai .

The son decides to work for a goon cum maha-pimp Rauf Lala ( played by Rishi Kapoor ) who plys the female sex slave trade , auctioning young girls in barbaric open market where the screaming writhing girls are pulled out of underground cages and dragged by their hair to be examined by lecherous buyers for their beauty and ' physical fitness ' for sex . Not surprisingly , the mother kicks the son out and does not want to meet him again . The son grows up to be---who else could it be---Vijay Deenanath Chauhan , the Hrithik Roshan wanting to be the modern day Amitabh......

And to cut a long story short , he manages to get the better of Rauf Lala and his son and become the master of Rauf's empire ( inspite of Rauf's goons all being muslim !! Hindu muslim bhai bhai anyone.....) and then use his power to get to Mandwa to take bloodsoaked revenge against Kancha. Actually much of the blood that flows is Hrithik's , the way Kancha mauls him in Mandwa , but finally Hrithik does get to hang him in the same manner Kancha did his father .

Oh yes ,there are also other characters along the way like commissioner Gaitonde ( On Puri ) who wants to but never could destroy the criminal rackets , and also Priyanka Chopra as Hrithik's girl.....not to forget Sallu's exgirl Katrina in the chikni chameli item song .

But does Hrithik Roshan's mother have to deliver her second child ( a girl ) in the middle of the randbazaar by the hands of prostitutes , and does Hrithik have to grow up with and fall in love with the daughter ( Priyanka ) of a randi ?? Oh , I forgot , crudeness is supposed to be the hallmark of this film , and the director wants the situations to be as sleazy as possible .

And only if you understand the august intentions of the director to make a film as sleazy , rough and crude as possible , will you like the film . I did . You decide for yourself.....

Verdict---depends , really.....

 

[ashdoc]

Ek main aur ek tu---

With this movie producer Karan Johar takes us back to the world he's familiar with ; indeed , the world he's lived in and still lives---the world of high class high brow people whose lives are sheltered by money , who live prim and propiah lives , and for whom things like foreign travel , cutting big deals and attending society parties are day to day affairs .

And into such a family is born hero Imran Khan---our poor little rich boy....

Poor little rich boy's life is utterly controlled by his parents , who decide everything from his haircut to his career choice to the type of daughter-in-law they have in mind to what kind of job he will do in the US of A......

Needless to say , its a stifling existence which needs a breath of fresh air , and it needs it pronto.....!!

And what better than a beautiful girl like Kareena Kapoor to lease some fresh air to a dull existence.....

And what a touch of colour to a colourless life !!---She's a kiristao ( christian ) girl , drinks alcohol till she pukes , has had multiple relationships with men , and the icing on the cake is that she's not a virgin.....

Yippeeeeee !!! Just what the doctor ordered to bring disorder to Imran and his parents over-orderly existence !!!

Yeah , a free spirit whose high spirits and vivacious conversation brings light to our hero's life !!

And as I watched the movie I wished I was in the hero's shoes.....

And when I was in the hero's shoes Kareena married me while she and I were in a drunken stupor.....

.....And next day I woke up to see Kareena Kapoor lying on my bed......

And she took me back to India to meet her her equally free sprited parents......

.......And they were wonderfully understanding about the whole thing---the father even asking whether we were sleeping together ( blush blush ).......

And she took me to her former school and talked about her childhood dreams of being a ballet dancer.....

......And then she took me to the spot where she and her first boyfriend used to kiss in school.....

But when my lips rose to kiss her on that very spot , I was in for a shock !!

But never mind , she had given me the courage to fight my parents and change my life.....

But just after I had changed my life , the lights in the theater came on.....

The movie was over......and I had only been dreaming of romancing Kareena when the actual romancing had been done by the hero Imran......

For me , it was back home to my dull colourless existence.....

But wait !!! There was still this review to be written.....

And while I write this review I will remember every moment of this movie and will relive all the time I dreamt of being with that lovely girl....

In fact , at exactly this moment , I am doing just that......

Verdict---good .

 

[ashdoc]

The woman in black---

In the 19th century came the novel ''The woman in white '' and in the twenty first century comes the movie '' The woman in black '' , and predictibly its a horror movie---horror movies being the favoured flavour of the 21st century as much as suspense novels were of the 19th......

But as if in tribute to '' The woman in white '' , there is a considerable amount of suspense mixed with the horror too......

And to lift the lid off the suspense comes the hero---Daniel Radcliffe---from London to a small English village , as a representative of a law firm sent to handle the sale of a remote house situated in a marsh .

His sheer presence in the village is unwelcome to the villagers , as he discovers.....and his trip to the remote house is even more unwelcome.....

.......For the house has been struck by tragedy , as he learns , and anyone who goes into the house is liable to encounter a mysterious woman in black there , who brings revenge-laced tragedy in the village anytime anyone sees her.......

Dismissing this stuff as superstition , he goes to the house alone---only to be confronted by the sight of that very woman , and also a series of mysterious happenings......

Now I myself dont believe in ghosts , but I wouldn't dare go to such a remote house alone , and certainly woudn't dare to stay a full night alone there---especially after encountering such dreadful happenings......

But nothing's gonna stop our intrepid hero---after he hears every mysterious sound , he actually follows it ; after he sees a terrifying sight or sees a shadow , he lights a candle and goes after it.......
What would have left us breaking out in cold sweat actually rouses the curiosity of this young man as he searches the whole house going deeper and deeper into the mystery......

.......And as strange happenings and piercing sounds emanate in the ghost ridden house , we are left squirming in our seats cursing the hero for having the chutzpah to wander in such a terror inspiring place and increasing our blood pressure , when if confronted with such a situation we would have taken to our heels at the first opportunity.......

But our hero's daring does pay off---though at terrifying cost as his sighting of the woman in black sets off more tragedies in the village . But he thinks he discovers a way of ending these tragedies as he gets what the woman in black wants for herself......

So does the hero succeed in his self-appointed mission to save the village ?? Go and watch the movie for that---it does give you some real jitters along the way......

But the ending is a tragic and a disappointing one---one is left wondering why the woman in black was not less rentless in her pursuit of revenge than she was , and why she was so cruel.....
Why didnt she have some more womanly qualities ??---That of mercy , that of forgiveness......
Or maybe that was the mistake of the film's director.....

Verdict---inspite of the flaws , its still a good one.....

 

[ashdoc]

Question mark---

Welcome to the expectation of a long boring sunday morning on which you have nothing to do except sleep.....

.......But how to go to sleep on sunday mornings ?? Simple..... Remain sleepless on saturday nights !!

But how to spend a long saturday night sleepless when the drinking companions have abandoned you for a weekend.....??

Simple.....spend the night jittery with fear after seeing a good horror movie preferably at night show to increase the fear....

Thats what I did....

So I am here writing this review hoping to quake in my boots as the night gets deeper and deeper and it gets more chilly and eerie.....

So whats the movie ??

Its nothing but our desi version of Paranormal activity suitably adapted for Indian audiences......

These films are cheap to make because of new actors who take hardly any money as pay , have no costly foreign locations and do not even have any costly sets---and thus deliver more bang for the buck , earning quick profits with least investment on whatever meagre run they have at the box office .

But while the original '' Paranormal activity '' relied upon subtle sound effects and an eerie quiet in between to create the tension , this film is for the primitive and presumably illiterate Indian audience.....

And keeping this audience in mind , the film is loud , garish and relies on creating a lot of noise in its attempt to create fear in the mind of dimwit desi......

And yeah , typically for the desi audience whose intelligence quotient is supposed to be low , there is the ubiquitous '' possessed woman '' spinning her head round and round and making shrieking noises all the while .

In fact , like a typical desi spirit , the spirit attacks women more of the time , and some of the actions they make while being '' possessed '' make you think that as usual the desi ghost is some lusty rapist who is raping them......but you soon realise it isn't raping them but only is in their bodies......no , not the way you think ( naughty , like a typical desi ) but only controlling their bodily actions .

And yeah , there are some guys too , in fact more in number than girls , and all of them have come to a remote bunglow in some remote hilly region to film a low budget film.....

The mornings are full of mist in these mountains , but its the darkness thats more scary.....

For the spirit comes to full action in the evenings.....

Just like Paranormal activity , the film is filmed by video camera , which has a night mode to keep on at night......

And none of the people who have gone to the mountains are going to make it alive.....

The film really comes alive after the interval , and one by one all the young people are affected by the spirit which resides in the house.....

......And their attempt to escape from there comes a cropper as they mysteriously lose the keys of their jeep which is their only way to get out of this place which is remote and has no contact with civilization and no other means of transport.....

......And so they know there is no escape from here or from death.....they only have to wait.....

......while we wait for the movie to end.....the end of our audiovisual torture.....

Verdict---not good .

 

[sob]

Welcome back...

 

[W.G.Ewald]

J Edgar

And the director of the film ( Clint Eastwood !! He should have stuck to western movies , really ) has outwitted me too---out of my money.....
......For frankly , I didn't like the film at all....

Verdict---not good .

I thought it had some good historical perspective. Hoover has been maligned by the Left since before his death, and in a way this movie is an extension of that, with the innuendoes about Clyde Tolson. Eastwood has been co-opted by the progressives, and you can see that in the Super Bowl ad he did for Obama. Oh, did I say Obama? I meant Chrysler Motors, of course.