L.A. Confidential

Ray: "There's a word people have started using to refer to on-line journallers..."

John: "On-line journallers?"

Ray: "No, no. A single word, I can't quite remember..."

Me: " 'Geeks' ?"

(John doubles over laughing.)

Boy, it's been a hectic week at work already. I've got a big project to work on, and I've also got these high-priority bugs to fix. I've spent the last day and a half on the latter, and will probably spend a chunk of tomorrow working on them as well. It's been a little nutty, juggling a whole bunch of stuff at once, but I think it's turning out okay, and it will shore up part of our system, so that's pretty good.

On the spur of the moment yesterday, I bought a switcher for my TV.

You see, I live in one of those annoying areas where there are two sets of Cable TV stations; Cable A and Cable B. I own two VCRs, so I run one cable into each of them. This way I can watch both sets of stations, and also tape off of both of them, and dub tapes (as when I edited the commercials out of my Babylon 5 collection).

The problem is, I can't easily watch a tape from one VCR while taping something off the other. Which is a pain since I seem to be taping something every night lately, as I try out some of the new TV shows.

So I bought a switch so I can get input to the TV from either VCR, so I can do exactly that. And it works perfectly and only cost about six bucks - including cables! Yay! All praise Fry's Electronics!

Something faintly ridiculous: I didn't receive a newspaper on Sunday. It turns out this is because they had a printing problem and a shortage of papers.

Well, I didn't receive a paper Monday either, so I called to complain.

Busy signal.

All morning.

I finally got through in the afternoon, and it turns out that in my area the paper delivery people for the Mercury News are on strike! An interesting conundrum: How to learn that the delivery people are on strike if you don't receive a newspaper? Okay, okay: Television or the Internet. Although since I mainly rely on the paper for local news... sheesh! Well, it seems kind of funny.

So I'm buying my newspapers by hand now. Which might just persuade me to discontinue my subscription and get my news from the Web. We'll see. Since I don't have DSL or a cable-modem, dialing up is a bit of a pain for that.

And a brief footnote to that: I went to the paper vending machine at Apple this morning to buy my Merc, and lo and behold there was a dead pigeon lying on top of it! Yick! I was bold enough to actually get the paper, and then I told the receptionist who went "Yick!" and called facilities. She said it seemed like an omen of some sort. I replied, "I hope not about our stock price."

Anyway, you probably didn't need to know that.

Tonight I watched L.A. Confidential (1997), which I taped off network TV a couple of weeks ago. I'd heard terrific things about it, so I figured I ought to check it out. (I don't see many recent films, you know.)

Taking place in Los Angeles in the 1950s, L.A. Confidential is the story of police corruption and three officers in the force at the time: The "good cop", Ed Exley (Guy Pierce, who reminds me an awful lot of Kyle Secor's Tim Bayliss on Homicide: Life on the Street), who's trying to live up to his father's memory, and who fights for what he feels is true justice, and clean justice. The "bad cop", Bud White (Russell Crowe), who believes in getting his hands dirty if the ends justify the means. And the "gray cop", Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey), who basically tries to live up to his job, but isn't above making a little questionable money on the side, including giving scoops to muck-raking reporter Sid Hudgens (Danny DeVito, who out-acts nearly everyone else in the film in his brief scenes).

The big mob boss has recently been sent up the river. A beat-down in the holding cells results in Exley and Vincennes testifying against some of their fellow officers, resulting in White's partner being expelled. Soon thereafter, said partner is among those killed in an apparent robbery at a diner, which all three cops investigate. One of the victims was a hooker working for millionaire Pierce Patchett (David Strathairn) made up to look like a famous actress. Investigating this angle, White meets and falls for her fellow call girl Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger). Exley gets a citation for hunting down three young black men fingered as the triggermen. And Vincennes discovers some dirty laundry that the late cop had in his background.

It all ties together in a way none of them see coming, of course, though the viewer gets tipped off a few minutes ahead of time. Cleverly, the film uses the fact that the viewer has put it together to build suspense up to one of the hard-hitting moments in the story.

L.A. Confidential starts off slowly, setting up its characters with loving finesse. It doesn't quite pull it off, as it takes a quarter of the film for it to actually get exciting. But it does get rolling, and it's as you'd expect a pulls-no-punches film with a lot of violence and blood, because that's what a film like this has to be like.

The plot holds up pretty well, although there is one moment which is rather unbelievable, when one of the characters falls for an obvious set-up. It's not that the set-up is so obvious, but that there isn't a whole lot of reason to believe that this character would be suckered into this kind of set-up. Other than that it's entertaining and putting all the pieces together makes for a nice ride.

The acting is not as good as I'd somehow expected, given the cast. Many people gush over Kevin Spacey; I haven't seen enough of him to really have a good feel for him. He was fine here, but nothing to gush over. (To be fair, most of those I've seen gushing have been women, so I might just not be the target audience...) I actually thought Pierce - probably the least well-known of the main actors - did the best job, maintaining a balance between holding and losing his composure through the whole film. (I wonder what sort of a man the character would turn out to be ten years later?)

The setting is also effective, looking and feeling like the 1950s (or so I imagine) without using its setting and era as the star of the production.

Overall, it's a solid film, worth seeing. I mean, you've gotta like a film where one of the characters is hired muscle named "Johnny Stompanato"!

Update 10/19: A reader named Kris notes of L.A. Confidential that Johnny Stompanato was a real figure in the L.A. mob scene of the 1950s, and he was killed in a scandalous event involving Lana Turner and her daughter. (Ceej's friend Kieca pointed out the same thing.)