Author Archives: Jay

Now, Voyager

Bette Davis stars as a frumpy old-maid type, possibly in the midst of a nervous break down because her domineering mother has orchestrated every moment of her paltry life up until now, and has created a culture where the whole family feels entitled to pick on her. One day her sister brings home a renowned psychologist who believes that if only Charlotte could escape her mother’s clutches, she could regain her sanity through independence. He convinces her to come be treated at his sanitorium and when she eventually leaves there, she is suddenly the more sophisticated image of Bette Davis we all know and love. She embarks on a cruise where she has a brief love affair with a married man, Jerry (played by Paul Henreid).

When she finally returns home, the mother is horrified by Charlotte’s assuredness and immediately starts to break it down. They argue, and the mother dies of a heart attack. Charlotte’s grief and guilt send her fleeing back to the sanitorium, but a fellow patient whom she takes under her wing keeps her from yet another breakdown.

A weird movie filled with “mommy issues” but gives real insight into not just the Vale family but the world in which this wealthy family lives, the kind of repression and sheltering done to a certain kind of woman, the ugly fate of those unmarried, and the strange salvation that only a nervous breakdown can bring. It really highlights the importance of a mother’s nurturing to her child’s self-worth. The iciness between these two is legendary and the mother-daughter melodrama is juicy AND neurotic. So classic.

Although the movie hints at adultery, it does not reward the behaviour. Everyone must ultimately stay in his or her miserable marriage, and this kind of self-sacrifice is deemed heroic, even romantic. No wonder nervous breakdowns were so popular! Defining line: “Oh, Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars.” Slay me.

And can we take a moment to discuss the beautiful woman disguised as an ugly duckling later revealed to be – gasp! – a beautiful woman all along! Why does this continue to happen in movies all the time? It’s ridiculous, and insulting, and degrading. Bette Davis is given thicker eyebrows, glasses, and a less defined waist and is called an ugly spinster. But was there a single moment she stopped being Bette Goddamned Davis? Of course not! This reminds me of so many nerd makeover movies where all you need to do is remove the glasses to discover she was a hottie all along. It’s gross. Anne Hathaway gets contact lenses and a hair straightener in the Princess Diaries. Olivia Newton-John gets some leather and spike heels in Grease. Sandra Bullock only needed some shorter hemlines in Miss Congeniality. Brittany Murphy just needed to spend money on designer swag in Clueless. All of these women clearly gorgeous in the before and the after, inducing agonizing eye-rolling and discrediting the movie’s intentions. But Bette Davis? Bette Goddamned Davis? There’s no unibrow in the world that can unmake such a goddess.

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

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“Why die here when I can die there?” – a dubious tagline is ever there was one.

I can’t pretend that even the first one was a complete pleasure for me, but I am ever so charmed by the golden oldies in the cast and that was excuse enough, more than enough, to give it a watch.

The second one has mostly the same cast of Britain’s finest senior citizens. Bill Nighy, a particular favourite of mine, does his brilliant little grimace right off the bat, and I am gratified: almost worth the price of admission. Maggie Smith and Penelope Wilton are at their cattiest, delightfully. Judi Dench is as strong and charismatic as ever. But this movie tries so hard to recreate the first one’s magic by basically just regurgitating it when in fact what it needed most was some fresh blood. Richard Gere, you say? Yes, he makes an appearance, but it stinks. He makes his grand entrance, grey hair flopping boyishly away, bringing with him the ugly whiff of American romcom. He’s like a virus, infecting what was already a perfect cast, a full complement of the world’s best that didn’t need or want improving upon. And Gere doesn’t – no fault of his. He just stuck out like a sore thumb.

The elderly each have their own romantic subplots, but the story’s meat is that Sonny (Dev Patel) is looking to take on a second property to expand his hotel “empire” while neglecting his wedding plans. Actually, the wedding bits were probably the most dazzling – the colours, the flowers, the brightly lit lanterns, the beautiful saris. But I didn’t remember Dev Patel being such an awkward, borderline racist caricature. A bit of a buffoon maybe, but now he’s a downright fool. His florid, over the top communications wore me out quickly. And the constant “jokes” about death – (I hesitate to call them that though I do believe that’s the spirit in which they were intended) – painful. Not a single one landed with the audience, most of them there on a discounted senior’s ticket. Crickets.

Even the title tells us this will be the second best, but it doesn’t suggest just how far from the first it has fallen. Second rate is more like it.

The Trip to Italy

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This is really neither movie nor documentary. It’s just two guys, two friends, obviously, who happen to be a little bit famous, taking a road trip, eating some food, and cracking some jokes.

The first one, The Trip, features the pair (Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon) driving all over England and chatting about their excellent dinners while trying to one-up each other with impersonations (the Michael Caine is a personal favourite). In The Trip to Italy, the same is attempted, but this time the food is completely forgotten. Some of the film takes places incidentally in restaurants, and there are a couple of obligatory kitchen shots, but not a single dish is named, and none are commented upon other than perhaps a raised eyebrow if something is particularly good. So if you’re looking for recommendations, look elsewhere.

I love Steve Coogan. I could listen to him carry on literally all day long. I don’t know his parter in crime as well; I think Brydon is primarily known on the other side of the pond. However, it is important to note that they are playing “lightly fictionalized” versions of themselves. I don’t know why, and I don’t care for the device. If you don’t want to incorporate your genuine personal lives, then don’t. Brydon’s Hugh Grant impression is much better than his I’m-having-an-affair impresion. Coogan pretends to bring along his fake son (same fake son for the first one, so at least the continuity’s there) but I’m not sure to what end. These two are comedic talents of the first-rate. They can sit and improvise and entertain each other (and us) like nobody’s business. They riff off each other enormously well, and it reminds me so much of great dinners with my own friends, the whole thing just dissolving into something absurd. Coogan pretends to be an egoist with a superiority complex, and Brydon this time is less the stool and more ambitious for his own self.

There are some prepared bits as well (though there’s no credit for a script) – Alanis Morissette’s 1995 album Jagged Little Pill is apparently the only CD in their Mini convertible, and when they’re not singing along in earnest, they’re coming up with new, improved lyrics for her most famous songs.

I don’t think it’s likely to be just anyone’s cuppa, but I like these films. The Trip to Italy doesn’t quite manage to recapture the magic (but don’t worry, there’s more MIchael Caine) and I did miss actual commentary on the food – because wasn’t that the “fictionalized” point? At any rate, they make with the funny, and they make funny well. And maybe that’s point enough.

Movies Based on Novels for Young Adults

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It’s Thursday again, and we’ve got some real beauties lined up! Our friend at Wandering Through the Shelves had us tackle Fairy Tales last week, and black & white movies the week before. This week we’ve been tasked with listing our favourite movies based on books for young adults. And so, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado-

Jay

I felt really repelled by this week’s topic, which is kind of okay with me. I like a challenge. But the young adult genre is just not my thing. I can’t even claim that Hunger Games, Harry Potter, and Twilight are bad because I haven’t and won’t give them the time of day. They’re not for me, and they don’t need me – there are plenty of teenage girls to keep these franchises going.

I think it’s a little weird how franchises like Hunger Games and Divergent seem to put teenagers in mortal danger, in order that they may save the world. It’s sort of asking a lot from people who, by and large, don’t get out of bed before noon. It made me remember movies from my own teenage years, the 90s, a time when teen movies featured parties, prom, and the gosh darned mall. And the occasional nerd makeover. But then I thought about our own teen franchises – Scream, and I Know What You Did Last Summer – and realized that maybe we’re not so different after all. We had teens running for their lives as well.

So for my first pick, I’m going with an even older selection that pit teenager against teenager, putting them in intense mortal danger: The Outsiders. I remember reading this book for the first time in the 7th grade. Our teacher followed it up with an in-class viewing of the movie and my teenaged hormones selfishly hijacked the situation, forcing me to weep buckets, turn purple, and lock myself into a horrible washroom stall until I could ‘compose myself’, whatever that means to a white girl with a perm so bitchin she needed a pick comb. To this day I can never decide if the casting was brilliant (Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, all in their peach-fuzz glory) or if it totally missed the boat (everyone else went on to amazing careers while the lead totally fizzled after a controversially racial comedy flopped – Leonardo DiCaprio auditioned for but didn’t get the part). In any case, it tells the story of two teenaged gangs (if they can be called that), really just right side of the tracks vs the wrong side, the Greasers and the Socs, as they tussle and rumble and occasionally kill each other. SE Hinton wrote the book when she was just 15 years old (and what have YOU been doing with your life?) and it took a class full of junior high fans of the book to elect Francis Ford Coppola the most eligible to direct, and sent him a copy of the book. He agreed, shot the movie with Hinton’s help, and 20 years later restored all the scenes got cut when his own granddaughter was about to study it in school.

The old white men who reviewed Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist didn’t much care for it, but what do they know? They didn’t get the excellent soundtrack, couldn’t relate to the nonchalant inclusiveness, and didn’t tap in to sarcastic chemistry between the two leads. Based on the novel of the same name by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, it tells the story of Nick, the token straight guy in an all-gay band, freshly heartbroken by bitchy ex-girlfriend Tris, and Norah, the girl who falls in love sight-unseen with the guy sending frenemy Tris all those great breakup mixtapes. They meet up one night and run all over the city in pursuit of an elusive indie band called Where’s Fluffy. It’s got all the makings of great teenaged shenanigans: live bands, party rockin, neglectful parents, unlimited allowance and no curfews.
Another more recent pick, The Perks of Being A Wallflower, I somehow find charming despite my advanced years, probably because the three leads are so earnest and bright and perfect. Youth is infuriating. The fact that they don’t know a David Bowie song is double infuriating. But the teenage trappings are all there: angst, awesome dance routines, riding in cars with boys, and even Paul Rudd – although this time, he’s (tragically) not playing the heartthrob but the teacher. Oh, I feel sick to my stomach. This story is a real testament to its time – the three leads are all outcasts but get this – they’re actually cool. I know. It’s strange. Counterintuitive, even. Goes against pretty much every teenage movie we’ve ever seen. But in 2015 (and apparently as far back as 2012), it’s cool to be weird. What a revelation. John Hughes was eyeing this as his next project before he died, but in the end it was directed by the novel’s author himself (which almost never happens), Stephen Chbosky, who also got to write the screenplay.

Matt

The young adult novel is an elusive concept. When I asked Wikipedia, examples seem to include books for children (Harry Potter), teens (Twilight), and twenty-somethings (The Notebook). When I first heard about this week’s Thursday challenge, I was worried I would be choosing between Divergent and The Hunger Games but, after working on it all week, I have managed to find 3 movies worth celebrating.

Coraline- Adapted from what I just found out was a novel by Neil Gaiman, this 2009 stop-motion fantasy is as different from Disney as American animation gets. My local video store even had it filed under Horror. The bizarre alternate universe to the already bizarre regular one isn’t as perfect as it first seems when a young girl discovers that her Other Mother, although more attentive and permissive than her real mother, wants to sew buttons over her eyes. Eye phobics beware. Darkly funny, oddly beautiful, and genuinely unsettling.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy- I’m still not fully convinced that this counts but who am I to argue with Wikipedia? I’ve never read J. R. R. Tolkien’s epic trilogy but have always assumed them to be a more demanding read than most in this genre. Peter Jackson’s ambitious nine and a half hour adaptation certainly expects more of its audience than anything else I’ve watched this week. I’m counting the whole trilogy as one movie to make room for other films on the list. Besides, I am not sure I trust myself to remember what happened in which film well enough to be able to write about them all separately. Together they make up one of the great American films of this century.

The Spectacular Now- It’s hard to find a movie like this from a young adult novel. There are no vampires, wizards, or dragons. The Spectacular Now is a story of young love without the usual gimmicks. Miles Teller (Whiplash) and Shailene Woodley (Divergent) showed great promise in this adaptation of Tim Tharp’s novel in 2013 and it’s no surprise that they both got to star in higher profile movies the next year. Teller is especially good as a superficially charming teen alcoholic.

Sean

Hugo – this is a very nice love story film, fittingly brought to us by Martin Scorsese. It meanders a bit but it is an enjoyable ride, and the whole thing has a fantastical sheen. Having been to Paris and passed multiple times through Gare Montparnasse, where the movie is set, I will be watching this movie again in the very near future (I did not get to it this week because we were too busy sifting through typical apocalyptic YA filler).

Holes – it is sad that all that has gone on with Shia Leboeuf takes the focus off the movies he is in. I feel he retroactively takes something away from this movie but if you can get past that, Holes is an enjoyable story about family curses. Things wrap up a little too neatly (which I can’t believe I said because I usually love a tidy ending) but it’s an enjoyable movie nonetheless and one worth checking out.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World – we have had a ton of comic book adaptations recently and of all of them, Scott Pilgrim feels most like a comic book (and that is a very good thing). It’s a fun movie with a ton of recognizable faces. I feel I’m stretching the category a bit with this pick but it has been tough this week to find anything halfway decent, and Scott Pilgrim is a favourite of mine!

Mommy

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This movie is as challenging as it is rewarding. Undoubtedly difficult to sit through, I found myself really turned off by the characters and I had to coach myself a little in order to keep going. Just last week I was defending a movie to Sean and I found myself saying that a movie doesn’t have to have likeable characters or a happy ending in order for it to be ‘good.’ I believe this to be true, but I’d forgotten how tedious a film can be if you have no one to root for.

And I don’t mean to call this movie tedious by any means (although I’d say it’s overlong) because once I forgave the characters for being nasty human beings, I could relax into the theme of the movie, which never for a moment claimed otherwise.

First off, director Xavier Dolan wants you to know that the film’s set in an alternate Canada where a new law has just been passed enabling people to wave their parental rights and surrender “problem children” to the government at any time, no questions asked. So keep that in mind. Diane is a single (widowed) mother with a teenaged son named Steve who’s prone to hyperactivity and violent outbursts. He’s been institutionalized since his father died but having recently maimed a kid in a fire he set, he’s being kicked out and mommy dearest must bring him home. This kid’s behaviour is immediately repulsive, but our introduction to his mother isn’t much better and right off the bat it’s clear there’s a strong case of apple-doesn’t-fall-far-from-the-treeism at work. Home school him? That’s a joke. Try just not getting choked out by him. His mother, despite her faults, is trying hard to keep him away from the system, and it’s clear that she does love him. The surprise of this movie is that she doesn’t just chuck him at the nearest hospital. She tries. And the trying is painful to watch because we see how futile and unending it will be. And then a mysterious neighbour named Kyla lends a hand, but there aren’t enough hands in the world to save this kid from his attachment disorder.

Mommy has a very distinct style, the director choosing to go with an almost unheard of 1:1 aspect ratio, which means we actually view the movie as a perfect square. Dolan chose this deliberately to highlight the emotions of each scene, and he reinforces this again with his tight shots, up close and personal, intimate certainly, sometimes claustrophobic. When Steve is at his most inappropriate, your skin crawls because you, like the characters, cannot escape. There is little breathing room – literally, figuratively – what a thing to be able to communicate through film! Steve is a trial, and even at 2 hours, the burden feels almost unbearable at times, and you begin to walk in his mother’s shoes. Mommy isn’t much for the bigger picture, but it’s an immersive experience that pushes your limits, makes you wish for bad things, and then leaves you feeling slightly ashamed for having wished them: quite a feat for a little Canadian film.

If you can’t cope with a movie with unlikeable leads, then this one’s not for you. It’s tough even if you think you can. Steve pushes against boundaries and is continually in a state of having gone too far. He’s alive on screen, visceral and so real he’s scary, scary because you know he exists, and that he’s somebody’s son. The kid who plays him must be really well-cast because I loathed him, loathed his face, loathed every grimace he would make. Do you see how it got to me? This movie demands a lot of its viewers, not just in terms of bearing witness, but also in looking away when the rest of the story isn’t really fleshed out. Kyla, for example, appears on scene with a disabling stutter that’s a fresh result from some unnamed trauma, but we never get to know what it is. She exists to help mother and son and her back story is just a tantalizing black hole. But Diane, on the other hand, is given such a shockingly non-judgemental treatment that you won’t believe it can originate from a 25-year-old director. It’s a compassionate and stark look at caretaking, and the breaking point of the maternal bond.

I’m not sure if you can really enjoy a movie like this, at least not int he way you might enjoy a popcorn movie with a talking racoon. This is a movie that requires digestion, possibly even mastication, but I do believe it will leave you satisfied.

The Music Never Stopped

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Henry & Helen hadn’t heard from their son Gabriel in 20 years until they get a phone call from the hospital – their son has a humongous brain tumour and even if the operation is successful, it’s already erased his short-term memory and a lot of cognitive function. There are two components to this story: the ongoing medical issue, which they try to resolve through the use of (and love of) music; the second, the family’s past issues, which is told through flashbacks.

I picked this movie because of JK Simmons, and he’s the reason to watch it. The movie’s predictable and sentimental, but Simmons’ performance really rises above. He’s just a father trying to bridge the gap between himself and his son – the brain tumour is actually the least of it.

It’s actually based on a true story and had the potential to be more than it is, but the newbie director plays it safe, injecting very little in the way of artistry. And there are holes in the narrative: what have any of them been up to in the intervening 20 years? But I enjoyed this movie, and was moved by it, in the expected places but also along the edges. JK Simmons has been trying to tell us for ages now that he’s capable of so much more than Hollywood’s been handing him, and I’m glad he’s getting his due. Character actor my ass. I hope to see his name front and centre on the marquee for a long, long while.

Accidental Love

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Fellow movie buff Dan over at Dan the Man’s Movie Reviews wrote a tepid (at best) piece about a film he’d watched recently called Accidental Love.

Dan didn’t much care for it, and I respect his opinion, but felt compelled to see it anyway. Isn’t it funny how we do that? I wrote a review on a terrible movie called Freeway, but because it’s Reese Witherspoon doing the terrible, that review managed to garner someone else into watching it. So, that being said, I knew because Dan told me, that this would be a bad movie, and it was. But I still watched it, and here’s why:

a) David O. Russell directed it. Now, if you know me, you may realize that this is not normally a selling point for me. Silver Linings Playbook did nothing for me; American Hustle did even less. But I did love The Fighter and I hearted I Heart Huckabees. But sometimes even David O. Russell hates David O. Russell movies, such is the case with Accidental Love. This movie has been collecting dust on the shelves since 2008. Russell removed himself from the project in 2010. Somebody has just decided to release it, so it bears the “director is embarrassed” pseudonym Stephen Greene. Russell normally excels at satire. It’s the heart of Huckabees. So I imagine he saw the potential for a hell of a political satire in the script, but let me assure you, it never pops in this movie. It never works, not even for a second.

b) The cast. Jessica Biel doesn’t have any bank with me, but James Marsden does, and so does Jake Gyllenhaal after his brilliant turn in Nightcrawler. I most possibly most impressed with Catherine Keener, whom I love but seems to be typecast as these blowsy, hippie types, but gets to play a conservative astronaut-turned-congresswoman complete with bucket hair and power suits in this one and does a really, really good job. But then the cast had to walk out on filming because the producers failed to show they had enough money to actually pay them, and even worse, pay the below-the-line crew members.

c) The satire. It’s easy enough to poke fun at the health care system in America; it pretty much lampoons itself. Why then does the whole thing fail to gel? If principal photography was never really completed, you can understand why a movie might not meet its potential. But they’ve cobbled together a beginning, a middle, and an end, and at no point does it feel like you’re watching something smart or funny or worthy. This movie may have been plagued with production difficulty, but it was also plagued with pure suckage. If Kirstie Alley lands more laughs than Tracey Morgan, ABORT! Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. And do not stick in Peewee Herman as straight man just to see if anyone notices. Kristin Gore is credited for her screenplay – as in, daughter of Tipper and Al, a family not known for their comedic stylings, but alas, she has written for Futurama and she’s got politics in her blood, so how can we forgive her for so completely missing the boat?

So, Dan was right, as we knew all along he would be. But sometimes you have to roll around in the slop just to enjoy the bath afterward. Amiright?

The Orphanage (El Orfanato)

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Warning: there’s a near-instant creepy vibe about this movie, and if you’re a big feathered chicken like me, you might want to find a buddy to watch it with.

A woman returns to the orphanage where she grew up, hoping to open it as a home for special-needs children. Her husband and young son, Simon, make the move along with her. Simon has imaginary friends who tell him secrets: that he’s just like them, without father or mother (he was secretly adopted), and that he’s going to die (he’s HIV+ but doesn’t know it). And then one day he disappears.

It’s hard for me when watching a subtitled movie to really pay attention to anything else, but this movie really got me. The young actor, Roger Príncep, is very good. Love his little curls and his long-lashed eyes. He’s young but well-cast and capable. Belén Rueda, as his mother, plays against him very well and the relationship feels genuine.

There’s some classic horror movie elements here, strange noises and loooong, eerie hallway shots that do nothing but disturb while heightening the anxiety. I had LOTS of anxiety watching this movie and usually stay away from the genre altogether, but our weekly theme of ‘fairy tales’ gave me the push I needed to give this one a try.

The home is too beautiful and interesting to be an orphanage but it’s lovely to look at. The wallpapers are magnificent, the architectural details, the chair rails for goodness sake! I had to rewind a few times because I was so busy taking in all the lovingly layered details that I occasionally forgot to read! And then during scary parts, I tried to watch indirectly, hoping to minimize the impact of sudden, scary things that still felt sudden and scary nonetheless. And try as I might, I don’t speak Spanish. I understand resort words learned from vacations in Mexico, and the occasional bits and pieces that share roots with French. But you know what? If the director’s any good, there’s a lot being communicated in a movie aside from the spoken words. The music tells a story. The angle of the camera tells a story. The point of view does, and the tension in the silences does, and the shadows on an actor’s face do.

I barely made it through this but I’m so glad I stuck it out. There’s nothing cheap about this movie; it rises above its genre, darkly mixing fairy tale with horror, and it’s a really satisfying watch, if you have the nerves.

Boy

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Last week I blogged about watching What We Do in the Shadows, the latest endeavour from Taika Waititi, whose work in my opinion cannot be missed. This week I went back in time to watch 2010’s Boy.

“Boy” is 11 years old in 1984. He loves Michael Jackson and girls, employing the former’s dance moves to lure and impress the latter. He lives on a small farm with his grandmother, his younger brother Rocky, and several young cousins. When grandma has to go away for a funeral, Boy is in charge of the household. At home he’s a grown up, cooking and cleaning and caring for the little ones. At school he’s still just a kid, making up stories about his jail-bird dad and getting into fights when those stories aren’t believed.

But then one day his dad shows up, along with two friends. They’re only intended to stay long enough to find the stolen money they buried before being pinched by the cops, but Boy sees it as potential bonding time.

It’s clear that the father is even less mature than his sons. He doesn’t know how to join them in grieving their dead mother, doesn’t know how to make up for lost time, doesn’t know how to put others first, and certainly doesn’t know how to give a decent haircut (though this doesn’t stop him from trying).

Watching this movie, I was struck by how Waititi feels a bit like a low-budget, New Zealand version of Wes Anderson. I don’t mean this in a copycat way, but rather that his movies share a certain randomness paired with an attention to detail that makes for a delightfully off-kilter movie going experience.

Waititi is bursting with talent, but he doesn’t spread himself too thin. He’ll workshop a script for years just to get it right, which means that there’s far too little of this innovative filmmaker to be had. I first came across him with what has become one of my favourite laugh-out-loud, painfully awkward comedies, Eagle vs. Shark. Turns out, he was already an Oscar nominee by then, having received a nom for his live-action short, Two Cars, One Night (he lost but famously pretended to doze off as the list of nominees was read). He’s written and directed stuff for Flight of the Conchords (Jemaine Clement is a longtime friend and collaborator; the pair toured together as award-winning comedy duo The Humourbeasts). He’s also had a taste of big Hollywood, having starred opposite Ryan Reynolds in Green Lantern. But it’s these three movies (Eagle VS Shark, Boy, and What We Do in the Shadows) that are GOLD. You can’t ask for better than that. But I am asking for more.

Paddington

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Is Paddington the cutest little movie I’ve seen in a long, long time? Why, I do believe it is.

I was charmed by the bear the moment I met him. He’s cuddly and fluffy and of course you’d take him in! But he’s not a one-note character. We know this because the books have been around for decades, children love the mischievous adventures, his irreproachable manners, and his sweet nature. It’s always nerve-wracking to watch somebody make a go of your fondest childhood memories, but this is one (exceptional) case where you won’t be let down. Paddington’s essence travels with him from Peru to London, where he’s adopted by a family of humans, the Browns, who need rescuing from him just as much as needs to be rescued by them.