Reel Life Letters, August 24

Regarding Chuck McCrary's "Water Works," Bryce Bade's "Plane Talk" and others: Stop taking film reviews personally.

Mr. McCrary claims that Michael Atkinson should have "consulted someone who knew about loss" before he summed up Lady in the Water "in those terms." Mr. McCrary, I would like you to try to find someone who doesn't know about loss. Your experience is not unique, and just because you egocentrically think that Mr. Shyamalan's film was about you does not excuse weak storytelling or faulty editing. Your mirrorlike identification with the film does not make it good.

To Mr. Bade, I did not interpret Mr. Wilonsky's assertion about World Trade Center that "a viewer might easily forget the movie is set during that nightmarish day" as a negative evaluation. In fact, I thought to myself, "Thank goodness, maybe Oliver Stone has learned the art of subtlety!" Your sophomoric account of having witnessed the tragedy of 9/11 in third period was unnecessary and uninteresting. Thanks for boring me with a story I had heard like a million times and then accusing a film critic of not doing his research just because you had heard what a movie was about before you saw it.

To everybody: Get over yourselves. Movies are not about you. Paula L. Nagy Rose,
Lawrence Backwash, August 24Track Back
Sometimes progress is a real joke. Growing up in KC, I remember reading as a kid how, back in the 1930s, you could have taken the streetcar to 12th Street and Vine, grooved on Charlie Parker for most of the night and still get back home to Olathe in time to milk the cows.

Now, public transportation hardly functions and has hardly functioned for years. Kids can't get around, and the elderly need rides to doctor appointments. Our roads are more crowded every year. More sprawl, more inner-ring suburbs (like Mission) going the way of the inner-city neighborhoods as people with any money at all keep moving farther and farther out.

So now your farm in Olathe is a subdivision. And 12th and Vine? A nice park, but it sure don't swing like it used to. We need light rail! Jan Kurth, Ellington,
New York Kansas City Strip, July 27Heavy Pedal
I was glad to see some solidarity on the biking-in-KC-issue from the Strip. But as a news source, how 'bout doing a little investigating into what we can actually do about the sorry state of affairs? The Strip reminds us that election season is coming, but will there be any coverage of which candidates make it a priority to make KC streets safer for cyclists?

Or how about this: I was just run off the road by some jackass making an illegal U-turn right in front of me. I kept my senses enough to get the plates and headed to the nearest police station to report it and was told there's nothing they can do. When I asked why not, the dispatcher told me that she couldn't answer. So how about some investigating into what it would take for motorists who recklessly endanger the lives of cyclists to get busted? I'm pretty sure that's an offense already in the books. Maybe if there was a little campaign to bust some of these jackasses, people might think twice before running cyclists off the road if they knew a nice, fat ticket and points on their license might arrive in the mail.

I don't know where to begin with making a system like that possible, but it seems like the kind of investigating journalists might do. Devin Martin,
Kansas City, MissouriFeature: ³North Stars,² August 24Strange Cheese
Good article. I'm glad to see that there are folks making it on North Oak Trafficway. It's good to see that Aaron Beeman is doing well with In-A-Tub. I never could figure out that powdered cheese thing at In-A-Tub, though — I'm glad that the article covered that. Schnikeys, that stuff is just strange!

Andy Stevens,
Tucson, ArizonaFeature: ³The Blight King,² August 17Vested Interests
I am a huge fan of Pitch staff writer Nadia Pflaum. She has a great style, and my personal favorite is when the humor, irony and sassy wit peak.

Having said that, I was surprised that "The Blight King" wasn't as balanced as her usual work. The facts were undeniable but the article seemed to go way beyond that, more like a personal attack, as if there was a vested interest beyond getting weeds cut.

Why not also discuss code enforcement's responsibility to cut the rainforest on the vacant property or have Tolbert remove the "eyesores"? Certainly Tolbert is responsible for managing his property but there are codes that need to be enforced by the city so the neighbors do not have to endure the conditions. Who is protecting their interests? The fact that a rainforest continues to grow unchecked is as much a fault of the city's as it is Tolbert's. I pay taxes. The codes should be enforced and Tolbert should pay the consequences. No one is making him do what he needs to do. The fact that this didn't receive as much attention was what made me feel the article was one-sided.