My anti-social life continued this past Friday night with a robot romp, a made-up autobiography, and crime among drug dealers in Southern California. I rented from Redbox, "The Hoax" with Richard Gere; "Alpha Dog" with Justin Timberlake, Sharon Stone, and Bruce Willis; and "Transformers". While The Hoax and Alpha Dog are based on true events (whatever that means), Transformers is clearly fiction.
During the 1980's when the Transformer cartoon showed on Saturday mornings, I never saw the show. My parents did not have a television and the only opportunity I had for watching television, in particular Saturday morning cartoons, was at my grandmother's house when she would have my brother Jake and I stay overnight. Some of my best memories growing up was watching television those rare mornings while eating multiple bowls of cold cereal.
Richard Gere plays Clifford Irving, failing writer needing some recognition of his writing skill and talent, becomes a literary con artist in the Hoax. Irving fabricates an autobiography of Howard Huges. I enjoyed this film and I learned that Irving's book contributed to Richard Nixon's paranoia leading to Watergate. Nixon trivia always interests me, being a child of the 70's and all. Nixon was born exactly 60 years before I was (January 9th, 1913) and he was a Quaker (like me).
Alpha Dog showed that Justin Timberlake can somewhat act, but I wasn't wowed by his performance as some of the reviewers of this movie were (see Salon's review). One problem I have is that I don't know what is a "real" event and what is dramatic fiction especially when the characters are not real matches with their real-world counterparts.
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