Category: selected scenes

Selected Scenes: The Bone Collector

Spoiler Alert!

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Lincoln Rhyme is a living legend among the NYPD elite, and it’s a wonder he’s still living. The brilliant homicide detective-slash-criminologist has written the book – several in fact – on investigating crime, but since a tragic accident left him quadriplegic and bed-ridden he has lost the will to live. How can he do what he was born to when, along with being isolated, his colleagues think he’s more of a washed-up celebrity then the force of nature he was? A new serial killer is prowling the streets. When Rhyme is consulted on the crime scene photos, he sees a way to work from home: by letting the photographer, rookie Amelia Donaghy, be his eyes-and-ears on the ground. With his almost-supernatural ability to deduce and the cop’s instincts she inherited from her father, the duo grind the case out together but not quickly enough to save this murderer’s victims from the tauntingly-complex time-sensitive contraptions he has them hooked up to. Rhyme and Donaghy find out the killer is using a crime novel as his template and with the last murder in the book completed, he turns his attention to Rhyme. Turns out, the killer is not only one of Rhyme’s medical orderlies but a corrupt ex-cop who Lincoln slandered in one of his true-crime books, who was then “used as a human toilet” in prison and released with a taste for elaborately-plotted vengeance. How will Lincoln get himself out of this jam? Can he count on the new friends he made along the way? Will their kindness inspire a new joie-de-vivre in this crippled husk of a man? Am I digging for character depth too deeply in a movie where the lead actor got to lie down on a bed for ninety-nine percent of the time?

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Selected Scenes: Erik the Viking

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It isn’t easy being a viking, especially when you’re young and just learning the ways. Erik is one of this new generation: jaded and disillusioned, he’s in line for his clan’s throne but can’t bring himself to participate in his family’s history of pillaging and carnage. There has to be more to life then violence, but what is peace after Ragnarok? The land has been shrouded in overcast and rain for so long that it couldn’t be anything but the Age of Ragnarok: the end of the world – couldn’t it? Erik isn’t sure of anything, other then he has never seen the sun, and the weight of his first kill (a woman he refuses to rape during a raid) weighs heavily on him. This needs to stop: the Gods must be awakened from their slumber to bring back blue skies and the promise of a future of genuine change. A chance encounter with a seer gives him the push he needs: if he could find the Gjallarhorn – or, the Horn Resounding – on the mythical island of Hy-Brasil and blow it, the rainbow road to the Gods’ home of Asgard will open and the sound could end their quietus. Joined by the other able-bodied men of his tribe, Erik sets sail to uncharted territory and his destiny. Days pass. The men are restless for action and begin to doubt the validity of the stories they grew up with, which isn’t helped by a converted Christian priest who joins them and questions the old legends. They enter a fog patch and think they see a light in the sky. Is it the sun? Does it really exist? But it isn’t a sun at all: it’s a bauble hanging from the fearsome Dragon of the North! If this beast exists then surely their expedition cannot be in vain. Can our heroes escape?

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Selected Scenes: Suits 904

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Happy 50th Cumulative Post!

Faye Richardson, a Stormtrooper for the New York State Bar, has been called in to housekeep a messy law firm that has been working against protocol: their Senior Partner Robert Zane, removed for contempt, still has his name up on the wall. Maybe you’ve heard of the Firm by its old name? Pearson Spector Litt? Yes, that Firm: the one that hired a college dropout with a photographic memory as Junior Partner without taking the Bar first; the one that promoted a glorified Secretary to act as their Chief Operating Officer; the one that’s been in all the papers lately on corruption charges and their low standards-of-practice. There can be up to five names on the wall at any given time but none are founding Partners. It makes no difference to Faye: the Firm is still a mess, and rightly so. Without a stable leader for months and discord within the Name Partners it doesn’t seem like anyone can make up their mind what direction the Firm should take. With the organizing body behind her, Faye uses her power to demote COO Donna and Acting Managing Partner Louis; not to mention emasculating Louis in front of his Associates, but nothing seems to be working. Their resolve cannot be broken. Frankly, the group of them are just too damned close: they would rather run the Firm their own way then have an outsider tell them what to do: stay the course and go down with the ship, so long as their values and their pride are intact. Louis’ secretary Gretchen being claimed by Faye, and Donna’s reprimand for being romantically-entangled with Harvey, are the last straws. The four remaining Partners corner Faye in her office and tell her that they have gone over her head and amended the Code Of Conduct to allow for inter-office relationships. Maybe Faye can’t take them all on together. Maybe she would get more flies with honey. She releases Gretchen back to Louis as a sign of her commitment to compromise, as opposed to integrity.

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Selected Scenes: Doctor Dolittle

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Dr. John Dolittle, MD is sick and tired of the human race: an entitled and ignorant lot they are. It isn’t like he, too, hasn’t feasted on the wealth that being a small-town physician has offered him: he lives on an opulent compound in a clean mansion, and he never wears sweatpants. But enough is enough. Animals don’t talk back the same way humans do, nor do they demand so much from him. Animals don’t demand anything except the same compassion they offer people. If he could somehow learn to talk to the animals then maybe he could achieve the fulfilled and peaceful life that he seeks. He enlists the help of a talking parrot, whose gift for mimicry helps him translate (he still speaks English, but the animals don’t). Of course, being Planet Earth’s premier veterinarian-slash-pet therapist isn’t without its challenges. Among his adventures, he breaks a seal named Sophia out of a circus prison so she can be reunited with her husband in the wild. He dresses her up Weekend At Bernie’s-style and passes her off as his infant-sized grandmother to the unsuspecting passengers in his taxi-slash-horse-drawn carriage. FOOLISH HUMANS! By the way, did I mention this all takes place at the turn of the last century? And before he releases her, he looks into her eyes and sings her a hypothetical song about if the two of them could be together. Can he connect with animals where he cannot with women? Will he ever find love? IS THE UNION OF MAN AND SEAL POSSIBLE IN TODAY’S POLITICAL CLIMATE? THE PUBLIC DEMANDS AN ANSWER.

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Selected Scenes: The Mustang

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Roman and his horse Marquis are like twins: both are stubborn and prone to anger; both have to hit themselves over the head a hundred times until they make any progress; and both are incorrigible, wild beasts, out of place in their respective worlds. Roman has been in prison twelve years for a crippling assault on his wife; in and out of solitary confinement and unwilling to rehabilitate consciously, the horse training program is maybe his last opportunity as a normal life. But what is normal? To Roman, normal is living with the pain of what he has done, and a debilitating hostility that could explode into violence at any moment. Marquis (pronounced Marcus) is a brutish mustang, part of a cull to help control the wild population and to rear the captured for auction. Marquis is resistant from the very beginning, even leading a frustrated Roman to physically beat the horse in resentment, but a bond forms between the two on a mutual understanding and of course the unconditional love of this horse to his human (like Roman’s unconditional love to his estranged daughter). The ten week program is over and it’s the day of the auction. Roman and Marquis are last on the block, and Marquis is restless, unable to stay in formation for the national anthem and now uncontrollable on the reins. He throws Roman from the saddle and drags him, before head butting him, giving him an injury much like the one he gave his wife all those years ago. Are we able to reform if we are already congruent to our faults? Is the choice between physical and emotional freedom as cut and dry?

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