RATING:

Can the pairing of a director and actor to a film be almost too perfect? Because Tim Burton is clearly the perfect man to direct a 3-D live-action version of Alice in Wonderland. And Johnny Depp, his partner in all things both innocent and grotesque, is the perfect man to play the Mad Hatter. So why was I left feeling so strangely ambivalent about the whole affair?

It certainly can’t be the visuals, which are as dazzling as you’d expect from Burton: Depp’s fright-wig-red hair and intricately painted white eye lashes pop from under his giant velvet hat; the Red Queen’s bulbous head, with its cupie-doll lips, is perched with comic perilousness on her tiny body; the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) is shimmeringly white except for a shock of garish red lipstick.

And it can’t be the performances, which feature voicework by the entire adult cast of Harry Potter (okay, it only seems that way); plus likable newcomer Mia Wasikowska as a more mature Alice (she’s 19 in the film); a miraculously restrained Crispin Glover as the Knave of Hearts; and the terminally under-appreciated Helena Bonham Carter (also Burton’s wife) as the aforementioned bratty Red Queen.

What’s missing, I suppose, is the heady rush of inspiration—it’s almost as if Burton knows that he can crank out this kind of eye-popping concotion in his sleep. He and his company never really cut loose. Depp’s Mad Hatter, for example, is less mad than charmingly dotty. (This is actually a bit of a welcome relief after his unappetizing turn as Willy Wonka.) Alice’s shape-shifting act, so disconcerting in the book, is more silly than terrifying. Even the score, by—who else?—Danny Elfman, has a been-there/hummed-it-already feel to it.

Perhaps what Burton and Depp need to do is go out on a limb and tackle some material that doesn’t seem so perfectly suited to them. It’s been a while since they partnered for the black and white biopic Ed Wood. That was unexpected—and great. Maybe it’s time, just briefly, that they stepped away from Wonderland.

To read my complete Alice in Wonderland review, check out the April issue of Baltimore.

RATING:

Tony Blair should look on the bright side. At least he’s being portrayed by Pierce Brosnan. Yes, he’s also being portrayed as an adulterous war criminal who’s a pawn of the United States—but that hair!

In fairness, Brosnan is not playing Tony Blair. He’s playing former British Prime Minister Adam Lang, whose similarities to Blair are strictly intentional. Ewan McGregor plays The Ghost, a man famous for ghostwriting zippy autobiographies. When the aid who was helping Lang pen his memoirs dies in a mysterious drowning, the Ghost is brought in to finish the job.

In Lang’s inner sanctum—the ex-Prime Minister is holed up in a coastal property somewhere near Massachusetts—the Ghost meets Lang’s sullen wife (Olivia Williams) and his fiercely loyal (maybe too loyal) personal assistant Amelia (Kim Cattrall). He also happens to arrive exactly at the time when the news of Lang’s alleged war crimes (handing over terror suspects to the CIA for torture) are exposed.

And the Ghost might be in danger. Almost immediately after accepting the job, he is mugged. Later, a mysterious and slightly menacing British man approaches him at a bar. Soon cars are following him. Is writing Adam Lang’s memoirs hazardous to one’s health?

McGregor is great as a decent (but hardly righteous) man who doesn’t want to get embroiled in the mystery of Lang’s crimes—and most certainly doesn’t want to get involved in Lang’s personal affairs—but just can’t help himself. Especially when the clues are everywhere—in one case, a programmed GPS system practically drives him to a key discovery.

American audiences may not care that much about taking down Blair and his wife, but director Roman Polanski also throws in a little George W. Bush and Ted Kennedy for good measure. And besides, America has a key role in this narrative—not just in terms of location, but as major string-pullers in an international conspiracy. Sweet!

Polanski—the film was completed shortly before he was arrested in Switzerland for long-standing sex charges—has helmed a taut and gripping thriller that actually respects the viewer’s intelligence. Wow. I’d forgotten what one of those felt like.

RATING:

A zombie film by any other name—say, The Crazies—is still a zombie film. And a pretty nifty one, at that, with an ample amount of scares and gross-outs and sly humor. But a zombie film all the same.

The film starts with a wink: a desolate, apocalyptic street scene of empty streets, burning cars, and blown out businesses. Then—cue the cheery music—we're practically in Mayberry. The words "Two Days Earlier" flash across the screen.

Sheriff David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant) is watching a high school baseball game when the town drunk, Rudy, stumbles onto the field with a rifle. Rudy has a glazed look in his eyes and David—cool and studly under pressure—can't get him to lay down his gun. Bye-bye, Rudy.

Eventually more townsfolk start acting strange and doing unfortunate things like bleeding from their eyeballs. (I don't want to tell you what one upstanding dad does to his wife and son, but it will make you think twice about hiding in a closet while being chased by a zomb. .  . I mean, a crazy.)

David begins to suspect there's a connection between the townsfolk's erratic behavior and the enormous plane that crashed in the local river. Then, the military swoops in and starts evacuating the town and quarantining anyone with a fever, including David's pregnant M.D. wife Judy (Radha Mitchell.)

The Crazies has a few great scenes—one in a car wash, one in a funeral home, and one where David stabs somebody with a knife in a particularly creative way.

But at this point, we've already seen a state-of-the-art zombie film (28 Days Later) and two state-of-the-art zombie parody films (Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead.)

And just because they called it The Crazies—in fairness, it is a remake—they can't fool me. Been there, ate that brain for dinner.

RATING:

It's actually a stretch to call Kevin Smith a filmmaker. He's a funny guy with a camera. His films always are always good for a few laughs, but they are uniformly sloppy, undisciplined, and amateurish. (He peaked with Clerks, where being sloppy, undisciplined, and amateurish actually worked in his favor.)

I thought perhaps that directing a script he didn't write (in this case, screenwriting credit goes to brothers Robb and Mark Cullen) and working with a big budget star like Bruce Willis might put a little professional sheen on his work. I was wrong.

So with Cop Out we have, essentially, a Kevin Smith film. It is both profane and sentimental. It has nothing resembling a cohesive plot. It has nothing resembling a structure. And, of course, it made me laugh a lot more than several other films that boast both plot and structure.

Smith is harking back to the old cop buddy film genre—48 Hrs., Lethal Weapon, et al—and using Bruce Willis in his taciturn tough guy mode. (No need to use the winking, mugging Willis because he has that more than covered with Tracy Morgan, who brings his patented "potty-mouthed toddler on Ritalin" persona to the proceedings.)

Willis plays Jimmy Monroe and Morgan plays Paul Hodges—they are partners, iconoclasts, and, after 10 years of working together, even friends. Bored with their work, they have a habit of recreating scenes from old movies to spice up their busts. (In one colorful sequence, Hodges manages to evoke Heat, Scarface, and The Color Purple.)

They get suspended from the force for screwing up an undercover investigation of a drug kingpin (in a bit typical of the film's silly humor, Hodges is still wearing the giant foam cell phone costume he was sporting for the job while he's being suspended). The timing couldn't be worse for Monroe, whose only daughter is getting married. His ex-wife's flashy new husband (Jason Lee) has smugly offered to pay for the pricey wedding.

Monroe decides to sell a valuable baseball card, which gets stolen and lands in the hands of the aforementioned drug kingpin (Guillermo Diaz)—so now the suspended cops have to work outside the force to get their card and their man.

Of course, one's appreciation of a film like this is often a matter of taste: For example, I found Seann William Scott's two-bit crook who has a habit of antagonzing the wrong people to be quite funny. You may find him deeply irritating.

I also enjoyed Kevin Pollack and Adam Brody as Monroe and Hodges' bickering adversaries on the force—they seemed to be having their own separate buddy cop movie off camera.

But I don't want to mislead you here. Cop Out is not a good movie by anyone's definition. But it sure made me giggle, perhaps more than I care to admit. Let's just keep this between you and me, okay?

RATING:

I love it when a brilliant director decides to make a good old fashioned genre film: Such is the case with Shutter Island, a twitchy, twisty, psychological horror film, directed with obvious glee by Martin Scorsese with nods to Alfred Hitchcock and the best traditions of film noir and pulp fiction.

In 1952, U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardio DiCaprio) and his new partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) have been sent by ferry to the Shutter Island asylum for the criminally insane to investigate the escape of a prisoner.

Once they arrive, the "no exit" aspect of this island comes into high relief. And the island becomes its own ominous character—craggy rocks and cliffs, swaying trees, foreboding stone buildings. The patients, likewise, are hunched, toothless, menacing—exactly what the genre calls for.

A film like this is all about paranoia. "You'll never get off this island," one person after the next whispers to Teddy in conspiratorial tones. Does the hospital have secrets? Are they really conducting dangerous experiments on the patients for profit? Is Teddy getting too close to the truth?

We see right away that Teddy is not a reliable narrator. He has migraines and sleepless nights, and is haunted by  memories of his dead wife (Michelle Williams) and a particularly gruesome mission at the Dachau concentration camp when he served in WWII.  But he's also a standard noir gum shoe—all overcoats and fedoras and cavalier disregard for authority. (However, when Teddy and Chuck get caught in a storm and are forced to change into hospital whites; there's a scary dynamic shift: Suddenly they look more like patients than cops.)

Likewise, how are we to feel about the courtly, but ever-so-slightly sinister head of the hospital (Ben Kingsley) who is clearly withholding information from the two Marshals? Why is his house so luxurious?  (Just for good measure, Max von Sydow is on hand as the hospital's head psychiatrist: A German! Teddy has seen up close what they can do to the weak.)

Shutter Island is thick, almost lugubrious, with dread and anxiety—but Scorsese's precise direction and DiCaprio's urgent performance keep it moving until its humdinger of a climax.

Pay close attention to what Kingsley's Dr. Crawley says to Teddy when he comes into the light tower (of course there's a light tower). It was that line—and the memory of Teddy's fate—that kept me up at night with a good old fashioned case of the heebie jeebies. Thanks, Marty.

RATING:

Are you a fan of watching couples gaze swooningly at the moonlight, uttering lines of dialogue like, "It actually doesn't matter where you are in the world, [the moon] is never bigger than your thumb"? (Followed by the inevitable scene of our lovers, now ocean's apart, holding up their opposable digits at the moon.)

Then have I got a movie for you!

Actually, I have a series of movies for you, all adaptations of Nicholas Sparks novels (see The Notebook, A Walk to Remember, Nights in Rodanthe, et al). Sparks novels all pretty much follow the same trajectory—couple meets, couple falls in love, couple is torn horribly asunder. The asundering agent is different every time—sometimes it's death, sometimes it's family intervention, sometimes it's religion—but everything else is roughly the same.

In the case of Dear John, the thing that conspires to keep hunky John (Channing Tatum) and sunny Savannah (Amanda Seyfried) apart is 9/11. Hey, if you're going to do melodrama, why go small?

John and Savannah meet on the beaches of Charleston, SC. He's an army special forces soldier on leave; she's an idealistic college student who builds houses for Habitat for Humanity and dreams of one day opening a camp for autistic and disabled children. They fall in love, mostly because they are both quite pretty—and also because Savannah seems to have a way with John's morbidly shy father (Richard Jenkins, wasted).

There are scenes of snuggling on the beach and frolicking on the beach, and a few scenes to show what a good influence Savannah is on John, who was once a bit of a bad boy. (A persistent Sparks sub-theme: damaged men saved by the love of a good woman.) Eventually, John has to go back to the army and then 9/11 strikes. Does he stay with his squad  and sign up for a second tour of duty, or go back to his one true love?

The film almost lulls you to sleep with its earnest, mopey rhythms—particularly in the scenes where Savannah and John exchange love letters (Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning they ain't). But it actually comes to life (relatively speaking) toward the very end, where a few twists save the film from being an utter snoozefest.

Still, this film is for Sparks lovers only. And they will undoubtedly give the film two thumbs (at the moonlight) up.

Bit off topic from my usual beat of movies and pop culture, but I wanted to share an amazing experience I had on Tuesday night.

I had my debut with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

Well, at least that's the way I chose to word it to family and friends.

In fact, I had been asked to participate in a unique program the BSO had cooked up to celebrate their 5th season at Strathmore Music Center—Rusty Musicians.

The premise was simple: There are a lot of people who love music, studied music, maybe even went to conservatory, but who aren't professional musicians. Those people would relish the opportunity to get on stage at the Strathmore, be conducted by Maestra Marin Alsop herself, and perform with the world-class musicians of the BSO.

Yes, it was like Fantasy Baseball Camp, only better—in Fantasy Baseball Camp, if I have my facts straight, you play with fellow amateurs as well as some retired players and coaches. With Rusty Musicians, you're on stage with the Big Leaguers, essentially backing up Brian Roberts at second base.

As you might imagine, response to Rusty Musicians was pretty swift and overwhelming. The BSO sent out an e-mail blast to its entire database and in a few days, 600 people had signed on.

"We expected a good response, but we did  not expect 600 responses in a few days!" says BSO General Manager Kendra Whitlock Ingram. "Everyone was pretty blown away by that."

To accommodate the number of Rusties, the BSO added a second night of workshops and performances.

Here's how it works: Each session lasts approximately 45 minutes. The Rusties  go on stage with actual members of the BSO as stand partners. First, there's a quick rehearsal of the two pieces—the finale of Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony and the "Nimrod" movement of  Elgar's Enigma Variations—then a run-through.

The BSO did four sessions on Tuesday and will do another four sessions tonight. A bit trying, I suppose, to play the same pieces 8 times over the course of two nights, but such is the life of a professional musician. And, according to Ingram, both the musicians and the Maestra "had a blast" on Tuesday. My guess is that every new group of Rusties brings with them a jolt of  enthusiasm and adrenaline that is downright infectious.

A bit of background into my own life as an amateur musician. I studied music pretty seriously all throughout high school and college. Like a lot of people who are really good at something, but not quite great, it took a bit of  soul searching for me to decide that I wasn't going to pursue music on the professional level. Ultimately, I decided I was a better writer and editor than I was a cellist—I'm pretty sure I made the right call.

After graduating, I tried to keep up with my instrument, playing with a local community orchestra, and even taking lessons. There was a brief period when my professional life got too overwhelming and I put down the cello—it would sit in the corner of my living room, gathering dust, judging me—but about 5 years ago, my sister, a truly accomplished amateur pianist, encouraged me to start playing some chamber music with her, and I've been  playing and performing ever since.

The BSO may have been surprised by the response to Rusty Musicians, but I'm not. There is a whole, fertile and active world of amateur musicians out there—and I'm one of them. There are music camps and workshops and retreats—and since we have actual day jobs, we often have enough disposable income to pay a pretty penny for the privilege of these experiences. (For the record, the BSO charged a meager $10 for participation in Rusty Musicians. This was very much a celebration of the music.)

I think everyone should have at least one thing in their life they do exclusivly for the fun of it—for me, that's music.

It was, indeed, a thrill to be on stage with the BSO. I've played with great orchestras before (albeit not this great). And when an orchestra is really cooking,  the propulsive energy can be downright transcendent. I'm not sure if we achieved transcendence on Tuesday night, but we sounded pretty darn good. And it sure was a kick to be part of the music making (and to be conducted by the Maestra herself).

I played pretty well. I wish I'd had more time to practice the Tchaikovsky (it's a beast!) and my arm got tired from vigorously sawing away at my instrument. (An ongoing challenge.) Also, I had a brain fart and totally played an A flat instead of a B flat at one point during the Tchaikovsky, prompting my stand partner (associate principal Chang Woo Lee) to gently correct me. Embarrassing!

As my father observed from the audience, Maestra Alsop showed "no mercy" with her tempo on the Tchaikovsky. This was the BSO's actual tempo. In a word—fast! Hey, if you want to play with the big boys. . .

Ultimately, I'd do it again in a heart beat, and based on the giddy buzz back stage, I'm certain the other Rusties would, too. The BSO is not oblivious to this fact. Ingram told me they hope to schedule more Rusty Musician events in the future, hopefully next time at the Meyerhoff. Meanwhile, they are gearing up for this summer's BSO Academy, basically an intensive, week-long version of Rusty Musicians, that also includes master classes and chamber music. The fee for the Academy? $1,650. Trust me, to the participants, it will be well worth it.

To read more behind-the-scenes coverage of Rusty Musicians, check out the April issue of Baltimore.

Photograph: Me, on stage at the Strathmore, photographed by Tracey Brown, courtesy of the BSO.

Here's my early take on the Oscar nominations.

Best Picture

Avatar
The Blind Side
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
A Serious Man
Up
Up in the Air

Who was robbed: I would've loved to have seen the haunting and emotionally lucid The Messenger among the nominees. Also, 500 Days of Summer or The Hangover would've been a kick.

Whose nomination was a stretch: I shudder at these five words: The Blind Side, Oscar nominee.

Who should win: Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire.

Who will win: The Hurt Locker, which would be just fine by me (it was my second favorite film of the year).

Actor in a Leading Role

Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart
George Clooney in Up in the Air
Colin Firth in A Single Man
Morgan Freeman in Invictus
Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker

Who was robbed: Ben Foster, for his raw and resonant work in The Messenger; Matt Damon, hilariously frantic and delusional in The Informant!

Whose nomination was a stretch Morgan Freeman in Invictus. Freeman did a pretty uncanny Nelson Mandela impression, but the film didn't give him much to work with. He just stood around being virtuous.

Who should win: Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart. He wore the character of boozy, washed up country singer like an old pair Wranglers.

Who will win: Bridges.

Actress in a Leading Role

Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side
Helen Mirren in The Last Station
Carey Mulligan in An Education
Gabourey Sidibe in Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push' by Sapphire
Meryl Streep in Julie & Julia

Who was robbed: A luminous Abbie Cornish in Jane Campion's overlooked Bright Star.

Whose nomination was a stretch Sandra Bullock. She may have the distinction of being the only actress to win a Razzie, for worst actress (for her role in All About Steve), and an Oscar in the same year.

Who should win: Meryl Streep in Julie & Julia. I think we sometimes take Streep's greatness for granted.

Who will win: Believe it or not, Bullock.

Actor in a Supporting Role

Matt Damon in Invictus
Woody Harrelson in The Messenger
Christopher Plummer in The Last Station
Stanley Tucci in The Lovely Bones
Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds

Who was robbed: I thoroughly enjoyed Brad Pitt's cracked platoon leader in Inglourious Basterds.

Whose nomination was a stretch Matt Damon in Invictus. The part was square and earnest and little else.

Who should win: Christoph Waltz, both chilling and funny as a puffed-up Nazi.

Who will win: Waltz.

Who might upset: Tucci in The Lovely Bones. He's great in this film, plus he's a likeable journeyman whose solid supporting work has often helped other actors win awards.

Actress in a Supporting Role

Penélope Cruz in Nine
Vera Farmiga in Up in the Air
Maggie Gyllenhaal in Crazy Heart
Anna Kendrick in Up in the Air
Mo'Nique in Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push' by Sapphire

Who was robbed: Julianne Moore, for her scene-stealing work in A Single Man.

Whose nomination was a stretch Penelope Cruz. Nobody from Nine should be nominated. Ever.

Who should win: Duh. Mo'Nique.

Who will win: Go'Nique! Go'Nique!

Who might upset: Frankly, I can't imagine a world where Mo'Nique doesn't win this much-deserved Oscar.

Animated Feature Film

Coraline Henry Selick
Fantastic Mr. Fox Wes Anderson
The Princess and the Frog John Musker and Ron Clements
The Secret of Kells Tomm Moore
Up Pete Docter

Who was robbed: While Ponyo was not exactly Miyazaki's best work, it was easily one of the five best animated films of the year!

Whose nomination was a stretch The Secret of Kells? Never heard of it. (And it's my job to have heard of it.)

Who should win: The droll and charming Fantastic Mr. Fox. Wes Anderson managed to make a children's film without losing any of his essential Wes-ness.

Who will win: Up. (In case you were wondering, I adore the poignant first half an hour of this film. The rest is solid Pixar fare in my mind, nothing spectacular.)

Who might upset: Up was the only animated film to also be nominated for Best Picture. There's no upset coming.

Directing

Avatar James Cameron
The Hurt Locker Kathryn Bigelow
Inglourious Basterds Quentin Tarantino
Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push' by Sapphire Lee Daniels
Up in the Air Jason Reitman

Who was robbed: Jane Campion. It would've been so nice to see two women nominated for Best Director.

Whose nomination was a stretch: None. They all deserve it.

Who should win: Lee Daniels. His unexpectedly light touch with the dark material of Precious was nothing short of miraculous.

Who will win: Kathryn Bigelow. (And how thrilling that would be—not only the first woman to win Best Director, but for an action film! You get yours, girl!)

Who might upset: Domestic drama alert! Bigelow's ex-husband James Cameron is the only one who could unseat her.

To read more of my take on Oscar, including upset picks for the Best Picture, Actor, and Actress, check out the March issue of Baltimore.

RATING:

Edge of Darkness is actually better than its lame title would suggest.

It's yet another vigilante film, this time focusing on Boston detective Thomas Craven (Mel Gibson), who has a still, mournful quality—and this is before his only daughter (Bojana Novakovic) is gunned down in front of him.

At first, Craven and the rest of the Boston PD, think he was the intended target, but as Craven investigates his daughter's murder, he finds himself neck-deep in a tangly conspiracy. Turns out, the nuclear power company his daughter was interning for was doing more than just developing alternate sources of energy for the government. And it turns out, trying to blow the whistle on them was not conducive to staying alive.

This is Mel's comeback film, after his controversial arrest three summers ago, and he's made a solid, if unambitious, choice. His Detective Craven is a stock figure—the loner with a righteous mission to defend his family—but Mel infuses him with a believable air of desperation and gravitas. The film gives him ample opportunity to kick butt (maybe too many opportunities) and several scenes with his daughter to show his softer side.

Edge of Darkness is based on a BBC mini-series, also directed by Martin Campbell (Casino Royale), and that helps to explain all the intriguing, but never fully explored, characters that populate the film's edges. There's Jack Bennet (Danny Huston), the slick and condescending head of the energy firm; wryly philosophical tough guy Jedburgh (Ray Winstone), a fixer type that the government has hired to make the problem (namely, Craven) go away; plus the smarmy and pompous Massachusetts Senator (Damian Young) whose team of advisors are an amusingly twitchy and unscrupulous bunch.

Problem is, everything is done hastily—as if the filmmakers were in a rush to include all the best bits from the mini series and make Edge of Darkness a satisfying action thriller tailored to American tastes. As such, the film is perfectly watchable, but stuck between genres—it's not sure if it's a vigilante action film (a la Liam Neeson's Taken) or a dense conspiracy thriller (a la Three Days of the Condor).

Allow me to take umbrage on behalf of the American viewing audience. We do not need excessive chases and beat downs to be entertained! (Okay, well at least not all of the time. . .).

RATING:

At the very least, I expected to cry. I mean, a movie based on a true story about a father struggling to get a drug on the market to save his two dying children? Two hankies, minimum.

But Extraordinary Measures, while certainly well-intentioned, is so ill-conceived, it doesn't even work on the most basic of levels. It's a tear jerker that is incapable of jerking tears.

One of the film's central problems is that it can't quite decide what to be: A treacly melodrama about the effects of catastrophic illness on a family or a behind-the-scenes look at the world of drug trials and pharmaceutical companies. That second premise would actually be kind of interesting, in the hands of a talented director of procedurals like Steven Soderbergh or Michael Clayton's Tony Gilroy. But Scottish director Tom Vaughan is clearly out of his league.

It doesn't help that his film stars Harrison Ford, comically miscast as Dr. Robert Stonehill, the renegade researcher who has created the drug (we know he's a renegade because he blares classic rock, drives a pickup truck, and shouts a lot). As Stonehill, Ford gives us the full Pacino. The veins on his neck bulge, spittle comes flying from his lips, he hurtles the already notorious catch phrase, "I already work around the clock!".

A puffy looking Brendan Fraser doesn't fare much better as the desperate dad-mostly because he (and the film) gets mired in negotiations and low-impact business meetings. Also, his character is practically a saint—a supportive husband, a devoted father, a tireless crusader for the rare genetic disorder that's killing his kids. He barely even breaks a sweat.

Then [SPOILER ALERT!], in the weirdest twist of all, the family doesn't even end up using Stonehill's drug to save their kids. They use a different drug from the trial. (The perils, I suppose, of making a film based on a true story.) Did they think we wouldn't notice?