the omnivorous mediaphile

The Wrestler

2009-01-18T13:02:00.011-05:00

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WARNING: From this point forward, I shall proceed to ruin the first-half plot of the movie. Thereafter, I intend to prevent your first-time enjoyment of a significant number of its riotously funny moments. This doesn't make me different from any other reviewer, but I want to admit it to you first because The Wrestler deserves better than your reading my opinion before a viewing. If you haven't seen it and intend to, or if by some freak coincidence you haven't seen it, don't intend to, and count yourself able to enjoy anything of complexity in life, PLEASE do not read this review. And go to the Fandango or the theater or wherever it is you go, and get you some tickets. Do not give this blog, other reviewers, or the forthcoming DVD jacket the chance to take a little piece of life from you. Thank you.

* * *

The Wrestler is the kind of movie you walk away from awestruck and speechless. It's an ambitious look at a certain pattern of destructive behavior, taking the form of a person putting up self-deluding psychological armor against the world and boxing out life's real, meaningful situations in favor of dealing with the world through a hollow dream that is projected onto oneself and those with whom one exists. Compulsive fantasy role-playing, if you will.

The titular character is Randy "The Ram" Robinson, played excellently by Mickey Rourke. Randy, or just "Ram" (he's addressed with both names at various points in the movie) is a professional wrestler, some twenty years removed from the peak of his career, in which he fought a spot-on caricature of the offensive wrestling characters and events of old, this one waving an Iranian flag with bad intent and calling himself "The Ayatollah." It was a glorious high, as made clear by the film's introductory perusal of its fliers and taglines, as well as the existence of an 8-bit Nintendo game that's used at one point to re-enact the match. Now, in the twilight of his years and despite financial difficulties and an inability to draw quite the crowd he once could, Ram is a happy enough guy who juggles low-key wrestling events and a part-time supermarket job.

In his free time, Ram frequents a local strip club and cozies up to Cassidy, also known by her real name, Pam, at some points in the movie. Played by a constantly naked Marisa Tomei (no complaints; just sayin'), she engages conversation with Ram in a way befitting real friends at the very least, and practices her craft for his entertainment. Theirs is a bond between two different kinds of dancers with two different kinds of audiences, and their relationships with themselves and with those audiences track and intersect one another throughout the film. At the end of every day, though, he's still just a customer to her, and as such, pays Cassidy for her time.

Things are OK for Ram until he has a heart attack and learns he can't wrestle any more. He finds himself struggling for meaning in the world, deprived of the one way he was able to grope through some sort of existence, and the artificial construct of the world he's built inside his brain implodes. The green spandex pants, the posters reminding him of his day in the limelight with the Ayatollah, the '80s hair metal music played at deafening volumes while cruising down the highway, the random hookups with younger girls -- none of them are fulfilling without the mental fuel he always needed to make them jibe. Precisely, this was an innate ability to tune out an honest approach to events and people in his life and to hide inside of a superstar image he projected on himself.

Looking for direction, he goes back to Cassidy after leaving the hospital, thinking she might represent his one chance at filling the resultant loneliness in his life. After all, he doesn't really know anybody else. Except when Cassidy balks, signaling that Ram should probably know better than to ask and that maybe this is a time for him to call family, it turns out he has an estranged daughter, Stephanie. Stephanie leads a very different lifestyle than Ram, and he doesn't know her very well. Worse, he probably didn't want to until it turned out he might not have much time to live.

When he looks her up and meets her, it turns out the new feelings aren't mutual. Stephanie can't forgive his complete absence during her youth -- an absence he admittedly forced upon their relationship because to do otherwise would have been too difficult given his demanding schedule and emotional inability to connect with her. Stephanie thinks she sees right through a grubby attempt by a long-absent father to suckle a few years of elderly care off his daughter, and throws up her armor with full vigor. His challenge for the rest of the movie is to build this connection before it's too late, and by asking for the occasional spot of help from Cassidy, to transform the nature of that connection, as well.

Director Darren Aronofsky successfully captures Ram's approach to the world and subtly suggests what our reactions as both adoring fans and pitying observers should be. A large amount of the film is shot by cameras directly trailing the characters, combining a celebrity-obsessed followership with the blunt reality of some very unglamorous daily lifestyles. There is an arc of shot distances, too, that follows the storyline and the worldview changes initiated by Ram. Note the emphasis on uncomfortable, twitchy close-ups and piercing, intense sound effects at both the film's beginning and end, and the tendency toward harmony Aronofsky suggests through more relaxed shot distance and smoothed sounds at the center of the film.

There's also a lot of clever, ironic humor in this very tragic story. Aronofsky and writer Robert Siegel portray the amount and types of violence to which the wrestlers in the film subject themselves as ludicrously excessive, fairly turning their characters into crash test dummies. One is encapsulated in a trash can and battered with a nearby fan's prosthesis. A walking crutch wrapped in razorwire is deployed. At one point, while the camera is closely following Ram, he takes a steel chair from an audience member and smashes it into his own head, boosting his adrenaline and jarringly confronting the film's audience with the impulsive and destructive self-abuse required in order to entertain a particularly sadistic audience. The audience's whims are also subject for parody; their see-sawing between cheers for a face and boos for a heel (to say nothing of the chants' substance) is rife with instantaneous demands and emotions, suggesting that it's all pretty meaningless, anyway. Ram is made up at one point in the movie to look not-so-unlike a little girl with blond pigtails, and his technique at the grocery store deli counter is a thing of beauty. Particularly subversive is a brief series of cuts where Aronofsky moves from the farfetched and ridiculous to the poignant in drawing connections between the things people of different age and maturity levels hold in reverence. By moving quickly and deliberately from a young girl's room full of fireman posters to the '80s hair metal poster in Ram's trailer to an American flag in his bedroom (and holding the latter in the frame for a few cuts thereafter), Aronofsky finds at least a little bit of eye with his grasping thumb.

All said, Aronofsky & Co. put on a clinic with The Wrestler. If it gets the nomination for Best Picture, I'll have no problem with its winning for sheer quality, based on everything I've seen this year. I'm still partial to The Dark Knight for other reasons (overall, I think its victory would benefit the film industry and community to a greater extent), but The Wrestler is the superior pic. Besides, I was content with No Country for Old Men's victory last year despite my preference for There Will Be Blood. This is a movie to be seen in a theater, though, especially considering the use of uncomfortable close-ups and a soundtrack loaded with unsettling loud-volume effects. Don't miss the chance (provided you ignored my instructions above, in which case, jolly good show).

Blue Velvet

2009-01-17T12:45:00.002-05:00

***

This was my second David Lynch movie, after Mulholland Dr. I saw the Drive a few years back and honestly the whole thing is a blur to me at this point. At that time, I was rapidly and intentionally expanding my film tastes and wasn't wholly prepared for a movie like that. Blue Velvet now presents the requisite argument for my giving it (and many other David Lynch movies) another chance in the near future.

You've got your American Beautys. You've got your Little Childrens and your Edward Scissorhandses. To some degree, Blue Velvet fits right in there with these more-or-less dark tales of suburban dystopia. But more convincingly, it's a wild and bipolar film, vacillating between a deadpan mockery of that lifestyle and an unrelentingly intense look into the carnal essence boiling underneath.

There's a main character, a college kid named Jeffrey who finds himself called home to be with and care for his aged and newly disabled father. He's a curiosity of earnestness; every one of his lines throughout the movie comes across as entirely straightforward and without guile. You learn to trust the guy.

It's the same with all the characters inhabiting Side #1 of Blue Velvet's insistent duality. This first "side" is set up at the beginning of the movie. When Jeffrey gets home, he meets up with the local police detective, and later, his daughter. He encounters his own mother and some of her friends. All of these characters' lines are written in platitudes and filmed in a deadpan style. Although you learn that nothing from the filmmaker's perspective is everything-as-it-seems, it is literally impossible to lose even a kernel of trust for any of these bright, happy, daytime characters.

Furthermore, Lynch starts with bright colors and relaxing imagery. At the very outset, he shows some picket fences, flowers, and other idyllic shots. Crisp and clean colors: yellow and red flowers, green grass, white fence, blue sky. A red fire engine. Serene folk in beautiful, geometrically satisfying structures (cages?) whiling away the days. No cause for alarm, aside from a few juicy hints dropped by Lynch regarding the approaching Side #2. Taken in sum with the deadpan verbal delivery, Lynch puts forward a lacerating and unflinching case for the falsity of this entire existence.

The edges start to peel back on Side #1 when Jeffrey finds a disembodied human ear in a field and, after walking away from the aforementioned police detective with his curiosity unsated, determines to unravel its mystery himself. When asked to explain why, despite the danger and the fact that there are policemen working on this, he proclaims his belief that, in life, there is a finite number of occasions where one may greatly enrich himself through new and challenging experiences that are not necessarily comfortable, and that finding the ear had presented one too great to pass up.

And so, the colors and the scenes and the characters change, and we are introduced to Side #2. A world of crimsons and blacks and rich, deep blues becomes known to Jeffrey. As he pursues the chain of events and characters caught in the ear's story, he finds types of hurt and longing unknown to the people from Side #1. There is a world of profanity, interpersonal violence, police corruption, sexual sadomasochism, and a general dehumanization of others by the characters in the nighttime side of Blue Velvet.

There is very little overlap between the two sides, and that's just the way the folks from Side #1 like it (one gets the impression the nighttime people couldn't care less; maybe they've actively rejected the first lifestyle after having experienced it for some time). When Jeffrey's curiosity occasions a few of these undesirable interactions between the sides, the daytime folk are unnaturally perturbed. The police detective's daughter recoils in intense agony when she sees her Jeffrey may be romantically involved with one of these people. The detective maintains a granite veneer trying to fend the other world's encroachments from his home and family, and when the situation seems as if it may spiral out of his control, he provides what may be the one serious bit of menace from anyone of this side throughout the entire movie. Things that would seem grave to a person inhabiting Side #1 turn out to be illusory; dress exercises abandoned as mere play when confronted by the real thing. Take, for example, the scene in which Jeffrey is chased with ill intent by a few football players in a car when one of them thinks Jeffrey's stolen his girl. Even after a successful pursuit and verbal throwdown, everything is summarily forgiven and apologies even ensue when the intensity of Side #2 jarringly presents itself.

Put simply: one side is real, honest, and alive. The other, despite its superficially seeming to be more of each of these things, is in fact none of them. It's a joke, to be laughed at and not to be regarded seriously. What's worse, the characters in Side #1 may in their hearts know this to be true, and if so, they're even more despicable for their willful ignorance.

Blue Velvet is a rich and textured experience, as its title suggests. It's a real thinker and is not a movie for a late night spent dozing on the couch. It's not easy to find too many films that match this one in terms of intensity, and its certainly worth considering whether or not this is treated with unfair glibness. Irregardless, it's got loads to say, and if movies like the ones I mentioned in my second paragraph are what you consider essential viewing, then queue this one up.

RoboCop

2009-01-15T22:39:00.003-05:00

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Seems this one may be up for a remake in the near future, and it looks to be by the guy who was turned down for the 2005 Batman reboot because his take was too dark.

With that in mind, I desperately needed to catch up and see what source material was attracting this kind of creative mind to do its very damnedest. What I found struck me first and foremost as an horrifically violent film, but in as cutesy and '80s of a sense as possible. In RoboCop, director Paul Verhoeven finds time to bathe screen-lovin's on a man's hand being exploded from something to nothing. He luxuriates in an era when a single human being would accept dozens of high-powered bullets before having the good graces to pass on. He shows a severe prejudice for hitting his characters with the biggest, hardest thing around, and at one point even has a roving gang of flunkies and their druglord searching for the titular character while armed with cannons that fire what must be explosive dark matter.

The violence is ever-present and it is oppressive, but not in any way that degrades the caliber of filmmaking. Rather, it convincingly establishes the need for a character like RoboCop -- a humanoid Juggernaut for the crime-fearing, drug-fighting, Nancy Reagan days of old. Not to say Verhoeven is in any degree connected with the sappiness of the afore-referenced administration, but you kinda have to admit: even RoboCop's voice sounds a little bit Eagle Scout.

So: the premise. It's dangerous, gritty Detroit, and there's a lot of money to be made through the ostensible purpose of slum clearance. And there's even more money to be made when this public relations front is actually hiding a murky iron triangle of profiteering arranged between law enforcement, big business, and illegal drug racketeering. It's a cynical world, and the little guy (remotely represented here by two honest grunt cops in the beginning of the film) has no place at the table. The elite interests at the top control all and have little regard for the corruption and pain they've let loose on the world. The film's excessive violence -- it's been called "desensitizing" -- helps to reinforce this feeling.

In the name of dozing a low-value area of Detroit and replacing it with a gleaming new sector of buildings, big business (represented by a company called O.C.P.) has developed an experimental crime-fighting technology to soothe investors into believing the area is safe. O.C.P.'s intention with this technology, as evidenced by reactions to a rival and failed internal experiment, is utterly misanthropic; it seems the company might even be willing to commit a genocide, of sorts. The end result is to create RoboCop, with a mandate for having a test program up and running as soon as possible.

Back to those two hapless little-guy cops. One of them ends up getting killed. Slowly. But then, flush with that mandate, big research brings him back to life as a barely human sentinel with awesome destructive power, and he's sent out into the world as the prototype RoboCop. As such, he's the most public and invincible member of the Detroit police force. Unfortunately for O.C.P. plans, his former partner solves the puzzle of his creation, and ends up feeding him just enough information to trigger the shards of his human memories. What's left of his psyche then becomes obsessed with finding justice.

The whole while, RoboCop runs into a despairing set of obstacles that seem intrinsic and permanent to both his construction and that of the world he inhabits. But he stays ever the Boy Scout, and gradually, everything that should be standing up to entrenched, evil interests backs away from the challenge and turns on him, culminating in his pursuit at the hands of the Detroit Police. And so, this unstoppable force soldiers on with a gun as big as a normal man's arm, having little positive recourse but to dispatch every single evildoer with relentless abandon.

To me, RoboCop is a success for a few reasons. One, it's a lovingly-made snapshot of pop artifice at its time of creation. The soundtrack, the noises RoboCop makes, the way people talk, the fake newscasts; all are hopelessly dated and yet feel so alive even in 2009. Two, the movie paints a convincing portrait of a desperate and irredeemable world. Finally, RoboCop is a damn interesting character. He's got very little that's his own, and the film deals intensely with what happens when you take everything from a person and turn him into a caged beast.

But there's that little something of a bittersweet tinge to this one. Without knowing too many of the details of its making, I can say it feels a little more compromised and "Hollywood" than some other films. Two things, and these are spoilers: one, I don't believe RoboCop's honest-man-with-both-guns-blazin' style is really enough to change the world he lives in. Although the film stands up in 2009 as it was made, it would never be made with the same exact character and message today. People are too cynical for this sort of thing. Stemming directly from that is my second reason for finding this one a little cheapened: the ending. Not only does he save the day, but his last word is a smiling and upbeat "Murphy" when asked his name. Like all is forgiven. Really?? Truth be told, it only circles back to my first reason; I just thought the ending deserved its own separate emphasis.

On a scale of 1-10, RoboCop is somewhere near the very top. There's a lot to love, and then there's some more. However, after having adopted the worldview of American man circa 2009, I'm waiting to see a revised and darker take on the subject matter.

Frost/Nixon

2009-01-03T13:45:00.006-05:00

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SPOILER ALERT

Frost/Nixon is one of many, many movies sandwiched into a few weeks' worth of release schedule that seems increasingly unbearable to miss. Unfortunately, the successful advertising campaign that made me feel this way about the film also had the effect of cueing me into a larger-than-necessary number of the its plot points as they were happening, and consequently rendered stillborn a chunk of the movie's potential emotional resonance for me. For a feature made with as much love as this one was, I'd advise strongly against seeing that trailer.

Despite its having been slightly blunted on me, though, Frost/Nixon remains one of the true standouts I've seen this year. Phenomenal acting all around; in fact, I'd say Frank Langella's Richard Nixon is secondly only to Heath Ledger's Joker in quality of supporting performance. And after seeing Michael Sheen play David Frost here and reflecting briefly on his acclaimed turn as Tony Blair in The Queen (2006), I checked out his IMDB page and was shocked to see his first image file be that of some werewolf creature in a January-release slasher (or whatnot) movie. Not having seen many of his other movies, this worries me. Isn't this sort of beneath Sheen? If it's as bad as it sounds, is it reflective of a difficulty he has finding work, or of a personal preference in choosing roles? I could be jumping to incorrect conclusions; this article makes him seem largely a serious actor, and I haven't seen The Deal. In any case, here's hoping Sheen's well-deserved star grows and his work remains of its caliber in Frost/Nixon.

To me, Frost/Nixon is a boxing movie, reformatted into a different competitive scenario. David Frost is Rocky Balboa for the creative youth class: full of promise and talent, but also perceived as quite enjoying his youthful years and being unserious. He's sure he's got what it takes to get to the next level of success as a television interviewer, which for the arguably fictionalized version of his character is to achieve respect as more than a softballing "talk show host" and to permanently revive the brief taste of success he once enjoyed in the American media market (unlike any other in the world, he confides to an associate). Particularly haunting is the fear in Frost, which is so successfully manipulated in this film's writing and direction, that he really only has one chance left, and that his very dream is in danger of being plucked from him by forces more powerful and nimble than he.

Frost's path to realizing his dreams comes in the form of big game: the recently-resigned and disgraced former President of the United States, looking for a one-and-done interview to refresh his legacy with the American people, and make top dollar in the process. To Nixon, there's a lot of good that happened in his time in office, and it isn't right that Watergate is the only thing the world remembers him by. The President comes across as truly human in this movie; we are inside his mind to a greater extent than many other recent film characters, and he is drawn with great empathy and personal sadness. For him, as well, the interview represents a crucial moment in life. David Frost seems ideal, in his own masterful calculations: a soft personality; an entertainer more than an interviewer; a playmate more than an opponent. Surely not a person on the level of Nixon himself, and an ideal opportunity to get what he wants with minimal chance of failure.

These two competitors have their teams of coaches and advisers, and there are traces of training montages for both sides. Then, the interview itself is broken into something like the rounds of a fight, with time in the corners after every round. And, just like most fight movies, the Champ comes out swinging harder and faster than the challenger ever could have expected. A particularly fervent and loyal Nixon adviser, played by Kevin Bacon, even clearly articulates the analogy.

The drama with which these two men mentally feel one other out and drastically adjust their impressions of one another is striking and entirely satisfying. The sense of the interviews' gravity to Frost, Nixon, their respective aides, and to the era itself never abates. And the portrayal of the complex set of character traits in and events perpetrated by Nixon, himself, presents a useful meditation on our own time.

Despite all this, I couldn't help but feel a trace of what I remembered thinking leaving W. (a topic I now regret not committing to print). After seeing a depiction of a presidency and the preceding personal biography that was curiously simultaneous with the real-life version of events, I wondered where Oliver Stone was getting his source material, and just how much could be trusted. Was this historical fact, or was it a highly personalized interpretation of a set of current events important to the filmmaker's life? As such, should it be viewed with ethical expectations based on the constraints of a fictional work like Jurassic Park, of an earnest documentary like Sicko, or of one of the in-betweens like Borat?

After Frost/Nixon, I watched a few segments of the actual interviews (available on the film's official website, conveniently enough) and was disappointed to see that they were far less dramatic than the ones in the movie. From what I'd seen (which did not include some of the end moments shown in the film), gone were most of the introspective pauses on Nixon's part, and the sense of shame or contrition. Instead, from the selection visible here, there seemed to remain a chilling sense of self-righteousness and a stoic resolve to succeed on the same path that had so forcibly forsaken his derelict choices. Admittedly, I need to watch the whole interview. I'm sure the film relies far more in fact and less in conjecture than does W. But what seems particularly subject to filmmaker interpretation is Nixon's psyche during the interviews, and his set of mental character traits, as expressed in his non-recorded words and in all of his physical mannerisms. I want to be a believer, but it's hard not to feel a little skeptical towards the case for absolute fact in Frost/Nixon.

And yet. Frost/Nixon is a tremendously rewarding moviegoing experience, and the thoughts I've expressed in the previous paragraph shouldn't be ones that bother you too much with respect to any aspect of the film's craft. When making a movie partially or mostly based in history, it's impossible not to run into this set of issues. Besides, I didn't think of them until after I'd left the theater (whereas I struggled to put these thoughts aside for the entire duration of W.). Despite it all, Frost/Nixon remains an utterly captivating film, and one that should stimulate much reflection on the leadership of our own times and the possibility that it, too, has after-office obligations pending with the American people. Surely this was among the filmmakers' goals in this project, and I hope their effort succeeds as wildly as that of their film's subject.

MGMT: Oracular Spectacular

2008-12-29T23:08:00.003-05:00

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This album reminds me of the Killers' Hot Fuss for odd reasons. It doesn't sound like the Killers. It's not a new-wave redux, and it isn't trying to capture nostalgia for the 80s (or much else). But like Hot Fuss, it's relentlessly good at what it does and it's goddamn happy, and it's both of these things from front to back. It's really happy, in fact--there are times where it seems to be just walking down the sidewalk whistling to itself at how great life is (see the melody lines on Time to Pretend and Kids). But underneath the pop veneer, there's a lot going on. I catch traces of the things that make David Bowie and Radiohead great. Compare the latter band's A Wolf At The Door and MGMT's The Youth, and pay attention to what happens with the high-range instrumentation in the background. Also see the change in tone that happens around 2:37 in The Youth. MGMT doesn't have to do these things to get great pop across. They have an amazing ear for the stuff, their lyrics are a blast, and they're so oozing with effortless glam-cool it's irresistible. But the extra mile is more than covered, and I for one can't wait to see what happens when this band starts making some more albums.

Hell; this song below even starts to sound like Toto around 1:30.

Electric Feel - MGMT

My Apology to Kanye West (and my two readers)

2008-12-29T22:54:00.003-05:00

Hi Kanye --

It's OK that I call you by your first name, right? Awesome. Look, I'm really sorry about the bad review a few weeks ago. I was in a crappy mood and I put the album on from your Myspace page and I admit I didn't even give it 100% of my attention before I wrote about it. I hate to have to admit these things to you so directly, but I hate the fact that I wrote them even more. I pride myself completely on being as disinterested and thought-out in my writing as possible, and in the case of 808s & Heartbreak, I let one slip. Sorry sorry sorry sorry...

In truth, you've made more than a decent album. It's a unique and pleasurable and daring album, and I salute you for it. True, it's not rap. And I like your rap better; 808s & Heartbreak won't change my mind on that. But I see what you're getting at here. I see the straightforward title, I see your need to express what's going on inside you in a different way, and I see the experimentation wrapped up in every bit of sound. I like it lots.

I also think more than half of the album is downright catchy. I'm surprised I didn't catch this on my first listen. I'm an especially big fan of Paranoid and RoboCop for this. But the one that's been stuck in my head up to writing this post, and the one that I respect the most right now, is Welcome to Heartbreak. I was so wrong in my last post about the songs' lack of character and your bringing to 808s the things that make you special, Kanye, that I want to burn my hand every time I listen to this track. It's honest and painful and tuneful, and it completely wraps my shame into a melancholy nugget of sound every time it plays. Which is growing more often.

I hope you can forgive me. Unfortunately, I won't be able to retract the previous post. It's not mine any more, and I think it'll serve to remind me of this little lesson every time I feel daring enough to review an album after one "listen" (or to review an album at all).

Your friend,
Doug

The Hamburger at Veselka

2008-12-10T21:56:00.004-05:00

Hell yes. Hell yes in the highest degree. I've recently become a follower of the New York section of A Hamburger Today. You can imagine the silent and semi-worshipful admiration my affinity for foodie websites has engendered among female coworkers. No matter, though; for this passion, it's worth the hit. And some deliciously griddled/grilled/broiled/etc. steer is just as good for the ego as their quote-unquote support, anyway. Especially when it comes from Veselka.

This burger is pretty near flawless in every single aspect. Take the bread. I've had a great many conversations recently about how bun choice affects the burger outcome, and I don't think I've ever had a better bun than this one. Soft and coated top and bottom with sesame seeds, but with the slightest touch of flakiness. Unique and wholly deserving of emulation, everywhere (just last week I went to Burger Joint and was subsequently disappointed to the point of spinal chills by what I'll swear were buns from Sunbeam).

It comes with fries (tried one; superb), home fries (not even a glimpse), and potato salad. I ordered the last, and by the time I got around to trying it (after snarfing 70% of the burger in what must have been 14 seconds) it came as no surprise to me that this, also, was the product of a deeper love. I thought I'd found the best boiled potatoes with artery-clogging creamy sludge at the Butcher Block in Queens, but the first real competitor in over a year has up-and-stepped forward. The product is a tidal wave of creamy dill with just the right textural mix of vegetables to suit the taters. The portion is shaped like the molding of a perfect ice cream scooper. Imagine my joy.

Did I [need to] mention the Pilsner Urquell was like $6 for 20 oz.???

Food porn and a link #1:

Food porn and a link#2:

Dog Day Afternoon

2008-12-09T23:15:00.004-05:00

***

A long time coming, my seeing this one. Dog Day Afternoon is a work of unqualified brilliance, so bafflingly well-made it makes me want to curl up into fetal position and shiver for a while. It all starts with a time-honored premise (and is based on a true story): men hold up a bank in a poorly planned attempt to get a bunch of badly needed money for God-knows-what. From there, irresistibly drawn characters take over, coloring in delicious shades of why around the reasons for this robbery. The psychological investigation of each character is tremendous; no single stone is left unturned, and the end result is satisfying like Christmas ham (see if you can tell what form the holiday spirit takes for this guy).

One robber is on a hair trigger, and seems willing to go to all degrees of violence to see the plan through, even if the whole effort is obviously doomed to fail. The FBI cop is disturbingly placid, and has one of the most affecting ambiances of assured mastermind I can remember encountering in film. The city cop flails around wildly, vainly attempting to manage a public ravenous for information, a horde of undercoordinated officers, and a perpetual imbalance of expectations from all parties. Given the demands on him, his track record in meeting them, and his folksy delivery, it becomes impossible to know what to believe from this guy. And the other robber is just your average main character in a 1975 movie looking for emergency cash to use in a sex change operation for his estranged homosexual lover.

All the right ingredients, then.

The acting is exhilarating, unpredictable, and thought-provoking--a masterful execution at the hands of Pacino, Cazale, et al. And Sidney Lumet is confident enough to lavish his camera on his cast, giving them plenty of time to work the lines to maximum effect.

I heartily recommend Dog Day Afternoon. A few days after having seen it, the thing that really sticks out to me is the ending, and the dramatic shift in tone that occurs in the last few minutes of film. For the entire movie up to that point, Sonny (Pacino) is a rock star, a demagogue; a somebody in the heart of his 15 minutes of fame and using every one of them to the fullest. With all the suddenness film direction can muster, this changes, and the cruel world moves right along, leaving him empty, devastated, and most of all, alone. To me, it's the most affecting scene of the movie, and it provides an overriding counterpoint to everything else up to that point. The fact that it's placed at exactly the end of the movie only exaggerates the analogy between Sonny's feelings and my own at that very moment: "more please."

Julian Koster: The Singing Saw at Christmastime

2008-12-09T23:09:00.002-05:00

Christmas music played on a saw. You heard me. It's diminutive and ironic in some of the best ways. But no good to fill a room (with the possible exception of O' Holy Night).

See for yourself:

Jingle Bells - Julian Koster

Sukiyaki Western Django

2008-12-07T22:58:00.002-05:00

* * *

I always have a hard time when I catch a glimpse of Actor Quentin Tarantino. I have issues enough with Director Quentin Tarantino. I'm usually able to forgive Producer or Recommender Quentin Tarantino. But there's absolutely no excuse, ever, to let this guy stand in front of the camera and say or do anything.

Sukiyaki Western Django opens with a whole sceneful of cameo Actor Quentin Tarantino.

Here's the thing about Tarantino's latest work, since about Grindhouse (but evident also, to some extent, in Kill Bill). I'm actually watching Under Siege as I type this entry. Under Siege is an bad movie fan's awesomely bad movie; maybe it's even Top 5 in the "genre." Without having any command at all of the circumstances that led to Tommy Lee Jones starring opposite Steven Seagal and Gary Busey in any movie whatsoever, I offer unmitigated praise to this lucky confluence of events for its having given us a completely earnest, hilarious, and fun movie that is both without so much as a trace of self-awareness and completely unmakeable in 2008. Contrast this with movies like Snakes on a Plane and Death Proof, which, to varying degrees of effectiveness, are entirely self-conscious and contrived attempts at recreating movies like Under Siege.

This is why later Director Tarantino work gives me fits, and why I'm susceptible to immediate hostility for movies by Producer or Recommender Tarantino. It seems that he's grown to value giddy and mindless nostalgia for the old, bad stuff he sometimes catches on television (or in those old grindhouse cinemas I've heard so much about), and has done so entirely at the expense of using his considerable talents to push his art in new directions. And he's only the vanguard of a new and wide movement, to which he has provided no small deal of legitimacy. For this reason, when I see his name nowadays, I blanch just a little, wondering whether I'll get another taste of the best parts of his work circa Kill Bill and earlier, or the rash of dreck he's foisted on the market since then, from his own lenses and from those of his cohorts in Asia.

So, putting aside the fact that Tarantino appears on camera, I also have to deal with his recommendation of Django. Which is immediately unfair to the movie, as it is the work of a separate and honest artist who's trying to forge his own way.

Django takes place in a mythical-to-the-Japanese neverland called "Nevada," which is concocted here to offer the typical spaghetti western setting of a small village in the middle of nowhere. In this village rages an everlasting war between rival gangs clad in red and white. They use both guns and samurai swords--the simplest way to describe Django as being another entry in the East-meets-West genre of action movies. Instead of having the actors speak in Japanese, however, they speak in non-native and very broken English. This adds a touch of surrealism to the work, as if it solely belongs to neither culture--an effect which is duplicated by the fabrication of a nonexistent place called "Nevada."

Against this background, a lone gunfighter walks into town and offers to fight for whichever side pays him in more favorable terms. During the negotiating process, he learns of the dark story surrounding the town's one young woman (who happens to be ridiculously gorgeous), and ends up fighting only for her honor, wherever it may lead him. There's wild mayhem and blood-frenzied violence, like you'd expect from something with the Tarantino imprimatur these days. There are some truly pretty shots, and some well-made action with admirable direction.

All in all, though, I don't know that I'll remember much from this one a few months down the line. On the one hand, it's innocuous and isn't worthy of shouldering any of the negative load of the Tarantino recommendation. It isn't a completely self-aware ripoff of someone's recycled garbage; instead, it's a legitimate attempt to fuse the western and the samurai movie, and it works well enough. But on the other, it's neither awesomely bad nor especially good. None of the characters resonate on any level beyond causing an occasional smile, and it's not entirely clear at all times why they're doing the things they are.

I can't wholeheartedly recommend Sukiyaki Western Django, because it's not a movie I'll judge as having either "liked" or "disliked." It was OK, and nothing else. I suppose I felt it important to write about this one in order to mark an exception to the Tarantino stain I've noticed of late. I'm happy to see a movie he recommends that I don't find boring or worse, and I'm refreshed in outlook, able now to think that his helping bring movies to America is actually a blessing. It keeps new material moving along, and allows a director with obvious respect for his art to gain an audience in the U.S.

Now if only I could take back the four hours I spent in a theater watching Grindhouse...

Synecdoche, New York

2008-11-23T22:19:00.006-05:00

* * *

I saw this movie a few hours back now in what was maybe the most surreal movie-going experience of my entire life. Synecdoche is a huge, sprawling movie. I'm still not sure how I felt about it and don't know when or whether I'll be able to make up my mind.

The people with me didn't like it, and were able to say so right off the bat. It wasn't fun to watch, it was depressing, it was morbid, it was plodding, it wasn't paced well, it was too long (123 minutes that felt like maybe twice that), and more. And I wasn't even with a crowd that's bothered by scatology in art. Yep, you heard me. You can actually expect to consider finer points like that after seeing this movie. Which is surprising in that it's not the work of Trey and Matt or of the Farrellys, but rather the directorial debut of one Charlie Kaufman, who might be the Greatest Living American [screenwriter]. This guy has squeezed some thought-provoking cups of juice, and his past work is beautiful stuff, worth seeing over and over again. So I've been anticipating Synecdoche for a while now.

Despite the flaws listed above, though, there's a lot of great stuff in this Opus-with-a-capital-O. Foremost: Philip Seymour Hoffman, as you would expect, is Philip Seymour Hoffman. It's impossible to say too much about his talent and versatility, and I won't try here. And the screenplay is every bit as Kaufmanesque as you'd expect, starting with the typical leading creative male character, who is cursed with unfruitful relationships with women and presented with mindbending problems that show flippant disregard for the standard precepts of space, time, and logic. Beyond that, there are layers of story-within-story (not to mention setting-within-setting), doppelgangers, deus ex machina's (don't know how to pluralize the Ancient Roman; sorry), and The One That Got Away. These are all well and dandy.

What makes the film particularly difficult is the combination of its seeming lack of discipline and failure to focus on a satisfying narrative with the breadth and depth of themes it attempts to tackle. To describe the overall effort as "ambitious" would be a drastic understatement. It's almost like Kaufman wants to kill every baby he's ever had all at once. Maybe getting this one out of his system will make for more streamlined and immediately likable directorial work going forward. Or maybe he just goes back to writing.

In the meantime, Synecdoche's a thinker, and it's not an entirely comforting one. It's a movie obsessed with decay and death, and every bit as unobsessed and dismissive of concrete notions of time, and of reality in general. There are some deeply surreal streaks running through this movie, and at some point you realize that the only trustworthy thing is death, itself. Which is exactly what's on the main character's mind at all times, and probably how he feels about life, anyway. Kaufman's ability to put us inside this head is one of the movie's biggest successes. His directorial style, though not completely refined and a little inconsistent in its repeated switching of gears, at least maintains this constant very effectively.

What made the movie even more surreal for me is incidental and should have no greater than a 50% chance of affecting your Synecdoche experience. But it's put me in a funky mood for the evening, so here goes. I saw this movie in a theater I hadn't previously visited, and was running a little late for the show. The streets I walked while hurrying to get there had buildings that felt like something out of a time warp from the 1950s. Then, when I arrived in the auditorium, it was a small and densely packed affair, in which everybody save for my friends was over the age of 60. And they were coughers and wheezers and plastic wrapper fidgeters. And they were reading the infrequent signs and subtitles out loud, the way some people do it in a slow monotone instead of keeping the whole gruesome ordeal inside their own heads. There was a lot of talking, questioning the plot points of previous scenes. Basically, everybody seemed a little inept, and not entirely the crowd for whom Synecdoche was meant. While watching a movie obsessed with the slow arrival of the end of human life and painstakingly documenting the points along the way, the coincidence represented by this set of environs was just a bit bizarre for my otherwise spicy-food tastes.

It's not easy to write much more about this movie at the moment. I saw it too recently, and it was massive massive massive, like a cloned woolly mammoth. What I will do, however, is point you in the direction of the helpful things I've read:

http://seul-le-cinema.blogspot.com/2008/11/1116-synecdoche-new-york.html

http://www.filmbrain.com/filmbrain/2008/11/the-life-of-the.html

http://www.thehousenextdooronline.com/2008/11/understanding-screenwriting-10.html

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2008/11/03/081103crci_cinema_lane

Kanye's new album

2008-11-22T14:16:00.004-05:00

* * *

It's called 808s & Heartbreak. And it's not very good.

It's worth mentioning before getting too far that two years passed between albums the last time Kanye West released a full-length LP. This time, in the midst of a hectic touring schedule to boot, Kanye has come back to the market only 14 months after 2007's Graduation.

At long last, Kanye's dismissive references to and disgust with higher education seem to have run their course and evaporated from his work. Similarly admirable is his refusal to resurrect skits, last seen in the Late Registration days. When you first give this album a listen though, you'll notice a few other things missing, as well.

The first is rap, itself. On 808s & Heartbreak, Kanye has pushed into an area of experimentalism (for him) that obviously had its starting point in Graduation, and has decided to record Auto-Tuned and thinly lyricized dance music. There are a few guest spots where a fresh voice peeks its way in and, now and then, offers a snippet of hip hop verse (or at least something faster than ten words per minute), but Kanye for the most part abstains from this type of delivery.

The less immediately conspicuous but infinitely more egregious absences are all of the charisma and storytelling technique Kanye has shown in his previous work. This, and not the change in format, is why 808s and Heartbreak is a failure. After all, it's possible that the album's tracking measures up as something avant garde in the instrumental electronica field. I'm not an expert in this type of music, and I wouldn't be surprised if this is a consistent argument that shows up in some of the forthcoming reviews. If so, I frankly don't see it; nothing here sounds sonically adventurous, or even interesting. Even if it did, however, Kanye doesn't meet the requisites for an artist to indulge a format change like this: maintain your core strengths and what keeps you recognizable as an artist, while simultaneously challenging listeners to follow you into places where you can surprise them with your comfort level and prowess. See Radiohead's Kid A, or Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska.

For Kanye, those core strengths are an immediate personal likability despite (and partly because of) his comically monstrous arrogance, talent in storytelling and relating honest past experiences from his own true slice of American life, and a clever use of soul, dance, and other infrequently-plumbed areas of source material in his tracking. Absolutely none of these things show up on 808s & Heartbreak. There are no stories in his words, and no charisma in his delivery. It would be difficult to find these in any album sung entirely through Auto-Tune machinery; combine this with the fact that Kanye isn't rapping and wants to sing precious few words at a glacial pace, and these become unreachable ideals. Likewise, there aren't any hints of exploration into multiple musical genres; only wholesale conversion to a particularly bland dance format with no room left for anything else. To top it off, the whole effort sounds worse than merely tired or plodding. It listens like something from a funeral in space--cold, inhuman, and slowly rhythmic, but with no sense of development or personality.

I wouldn't recommend against listening, if only because 808s & Heartbreak is a major release from a considerable talent. I wouldn't advise you to expect much, however. Find out here.

JCVD

2008-11-16T11:41:00.008-05:00

* * *

This one's been on my radar ever since first reading about it during the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. Ever since The Office, I've been interested in the mockumentary format. Borat blurred the line in the genre a bit, showing some scenes that were entirely scripted and some that were filmed live without preparation by all of the people on screen. JCVD, while not strictly a mockumentary, has one lengthy monologue that breaks the fourth wall (like a candid), and has similarities with the ambiguous mishmash of scripted drama and reality seen in Borat. Jean Claude Van-Damme is playing himself, to the extent that his character's name is Jean Claude Van-Damme, and that his back story up to the film's beginning is at least plausible for real-life Van-Damme: international stardom, a history of living comfortably (even if it's never entirely clear that that's still the case today), trouble making deep and lasting personal relationships, and lots of personal uncertainty as to whether his life's work is valuable. Further, Van Damme is on the losing side of a custody battle and is having a hard time finding work that meets standards of selectivity he may have allowed to increase recently. About the only thing going for him is that people in his Belgian hometown recognize and love him--at least to the extent that they always want to get a picture, autograph, or karate demonstration with him.

One day, an impeccably-dressed Van Damme shows up at a Belgian bank to make a money transfer to his legal team in Los Angeles. What follows is that he ends up on the inside during a robbery and hostage situation. Having seen Van Damme in one of the bank's windows barking orders after a gunshot rings out, the police have nothing to go by other than the assumption that he's actually robbing a bank out of desperation for cash to get custody of his child. As the authorities, the news media, and the public piece together the information they have and try to determine exactly what's going on inside that bank, the movie unfolds with a lacerating series of broadsides directed at news and celebrity cultures, and at the public machines of mass adulation and mob mentality that feed them both. It's sharp stuff, well-considered and extremely funny. And against this background, Van Damme's internal struggles play out as he comes to terms with the possibility that this may be his last day on Earth and tries to consider what's left for him going forward from the age of 47.

The real surprise of this movie, as you've probably read elsewhere, is how good Van Damme is in a serious dramatic role. This isn't a documentary and it isn't a series of interviews; it's real acting and it's a completely scripted film. Sure, it has the plausibility of having its main character based almost entirely in reality, and one of the most resonant scenes is a lengthy monologue in which Van Damme may just be addressing the public as himself, mostly outside of the context of the film. But the completely fabricated plot demands much more of Van Damme than just playing himself in an interview, and he more than delivers at every opportunity. I won't say he's Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood, but he's deeply affecting and sorrowful, and if what he really wants is to take on some meatier roles, he's well more than proved himself ready in this turn.

This one's definitely worth a look. It's a very intelligent movie and it satisfies on both comedic and dramatic levels. It also touches on a large number of themes, related to both the movie/celebrity/news businesses and those great life questions in all of us, and will leave you plenty of intellectual fodder. Besides, this is the guy who faced down Raul Julia as M. Bison in hand-to-hand combat.

Rambo: First Blood Part 2

2008-11-16T10:37:00.005-05:00

* * *

Hot damn is this some camp. Rambo 2, how art thou difficult to watch? Let me count the ways:

Faux-cathartic revisionist strategy for the Vietnam war
Stone-faced lack of even the slightest granule of irony/self-awareness for your entire duration
Racially questionable implications throughout, especially for all story points and themes related to Co Bao
Utter lack of even a single character who has more than one dimension and motive
Failure of characters to learn anything
Failure to make plausibility for the audience learn anything
Failure of filmmakers to show a willingness to learn anything
Oh yeah--and the oddly pornographic obsession with Stallone's body

And yet, this is an important film, necessary for a thinking American to assimilate to about the same degree as Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. and Oliver Stone's early films. Made in 1985, it takes a longing look back at the Vietnam war, plucking its titular veteran from the societal ostracism imposed for his actions in the first film, and planting him once again in combat--the only life he really knows or is cut out for. That ostracism? A prison quarry, where he's chipping rocks all day in the hot hot sun and complete silence, save for the barking commands of his supervising officers.

I could be wrong, but were there any American correctional facilities in 1985 where this was happening?

Obviously John Rambo's home country doesn't want him. Fortuitous, then, that his commanding officer, Col. Trautman, shows up on the other side of the barbed-wire fence one day to tell Rambo his services are needed again in Vietnam. "Why now?" asks Rambo. A great question, really, and thus begins the surreal and fantastical streak that is this entire movie. Trautman proceeds to rip off the justification and probably half the explanatory dialogue for sending Commander Shears back into the jungle in The Bridge on the River Kwai, and Rambo takes it in like mother's milk. Of course he would.

When he arrives in southeast Asia, it turns out the following things are lining up to betray this Everyman Vietnam vet:

Bureaucratic civilian military commanders
Today's generation of soldiers
Vietnamese who at first appear trustworthy (unless they're pretty girls who don't use articles in their speech)
The Legislative Branch of the government
Any combat equipment outside of guns, knives, and arrows
Computers

But Rambo doesn't know this at the time. He only has his gut, and he elects to trust nobody outside of Trautman. And they send him into 'Nam again, this time to investigate a P.O.W. camp and determine whether there are American soldiers there. But he's not allowed to shoot anything, and he's not allowed to retrieve any P.O.W.'s--this is a picture-taking mission! In one of my now-favorite montages of all time, Rambo gears up with his ferocious hunting knife (the kind you kill velociraptors with), explosive-tipped arrows and bow, guns guns and guns, and his S.L.R. film camera! I could be wrong, but I even think the sound effects of Rambo inserting rounds into a clip were the same for his loading film into the camera. Somehow I don't see him mastering the arts of focus and composition.

Tell me this isn't a recipe for some broken orders.

And it unfolds predictably. Rambo proceeds to go it his own way after each of the successive betrayals listed above takes place, and comfortably overcomes each of the resultant challenges using a few key pieces of equipment. One, his bigger and better weapons. Rambo is never outgunned, and when it seems like he might be, he usually ends up getting the other weapon for his own use within a few minutes, anyway. Two, his superior guerrilla tactics. Never mind that this is his adversary's homeland; Rambo is a killing machine and dispatches opponents at about the same ratio as a bug zapper handles flies. Three, his bulging brain. When Rambo can't just bulldoze the whole place with guns, knives, or fists, he has to spend about thirty seconds planning ahead and always comes up with the trump card idea that gives him an edge. Usually, it's just playing possum while something explosive is pointed at him, but it seems to be enough to top the worthy intellects of his adversaries. And four, his hottie Vietnamese escort. At first glance, she doesn't look cut out for the exigencies of jungle combat, but boy does she prove us wrong. And she can cover some terrain, too; she's always there at the right moment with a machine gun to bail Rambo out when there's just a notch too much trouble for Our Hero to handle. It makes perfect sense, though; all the pretty Vietnamese girl really wants is to escape the hell that is her homeland and get a lift to the good ol' U.S. of A.

This movie's not going to leave a good taste in your mouth. I promise. It's a corrupted, insular, and offensive look at a particular political situation from a very limited point of view. Like it or not, though, that political situation represented a real problem in 1985. And in the aftermath of the Barack Obama election, with the real possibility that a large number of combat-hardened U.S. troops will return to an America not wholly prepared to re-assimilate them, it's important to understand some of the feelings in this country shared by and regarding vets after the Vietnam War. After all, most people thought we just plain couldn't make the mistake of repeating the war, itself. Not to oversimplify and compare that one to Iraq today on a 1-for-1 basis, but there are parallels. Who's to say we we've learned and aren't prone to repeating the post-Vietnam mistakes to some extent, as well?

A Big Recommendation: Fareed Zakaria's GPS on CNN

2008-11-02T14:01:00.002-05:00

For all those of you out there hungering for a sharp, insightful discussion of policy, trends in news, economics, and general current affairs, this is the show. Best I've seen yet, anyway. I just finished watching Reagan's former chief of staff, Ken Duberstein, recommend voting for Obama in this election. Particularly memorable for me was the brief discussion as to whether it was appropriate for an American president to negotiate with states like Iran and North Korea without first setting preconditions that must be met. Duberstein said Reagan was willing to do this because he was a man who believed in the strength of ideas, and that America really was the shining city on a hill. I'll paraphrase the rest of his comments: because of this appeal, a willingness to listen to all states and cooperate with them in order to smooth out the patches in the international regime would not be indicative of any weakness in America, but just one of the appropriate means by which it goes about its noble business.

This is the smartest talking heads show I've seen yet. Check it out here if you're interested.

My Slice of the David Lean Retrospective, Part Two: The Bridge on the River Kwai

2008-10-26T21:15:00.006-04:00

So here I am, and it's been just shy of a month since my writeup on Lawrence of Arabia. In that time, I've been horribly inconsistent with this blog, and for very little justifiable reason. I have a world of things to say about The Bridge on the River Kwai (as well as the handful of other movies I've seen in the last month), and maybe this is part of the reason I've been so, err, shy: dread about managing reader expectations and the perceived burden of living up to what I'd consider an acceptable standard when writing about this caliber of movie.

Anyway. It's October 26th. The election for the 44th President of the United States is just about (more or less) over. I want to write a few words about a great, massive, epic, awe-inspiring movie that shows immovable objects meeting unstoppable forces meeting other things of similar fortitude. One of my very, very favorite movies, with some scenes that just leave me speechless (see Colonel Nicholson leaving Saito's cabin for the "oven"--specifically the audience noises and the long, slow, dreadful take showing where he's headed) and with some of the best-written characters I can think of, ever. I'm generally a sucker for any character played by Alec Guinness, besides.

In Kwai, Colonel Nicholson (played by Guinness) remains the archetypical stiff-upper-lip Brit, never losing composure and staying duty-bound to the men under his command at all times. His motive is among the clearest in cinematic history, partly by virtue of Guinness's performance, but also because of the continual clash between it and the motives of the Japanese captors' commanding officer, Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa). Nicholson followed a British order to surrender and demands his men be treated as honorable soldiers, as codified by the Geneva Conventions. As such, they will remain under the command of their own officers, who as captives will have instructions given to them by the Japanese. Saito, coming from a different school of thought, regards the British surrendering army as being comprised of dogs whose officers have proven themselves unfit to lead. As such, all of the men and officers alike will be worked to death for the Japanese war effort.

If ever there was a story of the triumph of the spirit, this is it, and then some. Nicholson has a lot to overcome, but maintains his ground in the most stringent adversity. The real muddle, however, shows up later, when the fruit of his army's labor (the titular bridge) becomes a target of the Allied war strategy. Once Nicholson has accomplished whatever he has vis-a-vis his men and the Japanese captors within the confines of the prison camp, new moral variables are thrown into the equation when the things Nicholson was implicitly fighting for before his capture and the man he has become since are brought into direct conflict.

As with Lawrence, Kwai holds a surprising amount of humor for me. The most prolific source is the British special forces, an institution run by upper class boys with heavy duty toys. To these guys, everything about the war is a game, as witnessed by their rubber knife skirmishes, guffaws of "jolly good show," and the exhortation to "get some boot in there!" during combat practice wrestling. I also can't help but reflect again on the scene I mentioned above, in which Nicholson first emerges from Saito's cabin en route to the oven. Here, the British troops go wild with noise while he's held captive inside. Then, on a dime when he emerges, there is silent reverence as they regard what is happening to their commanding officer. That scenario with that timing reminds me of some of the best physical jokes on The Simpsons (see Episode #2F17, in which Rainier Wolfcastle letting go of the truck with an x-ray machine doesn't result in it falling on Milhouse, who's lying underneath. Yes, I went there).

I mentioned the presidential election a few paragraphs back. The Bridge on the River Kwai chronicles a fundamentally good man driven to mad obsession by his willingness to subordinate concern for the greater good to something that seems more immediately important but proves to be a dangerous distraction. In the end, the short-term worldview Nicholson espouses is laid bare for its insularity, counterproductivity, and blitheness to the realities of the big picture. The whole while, Nicholson remains an empathetic and competent man; a man of good moral fiber who is never without the ability to exert a will of some consequence for the many. The film and Nicholson's decisive actions move forward methodically, rhythmically; the outcomes come closer, palpably inevitable. The profound tragedy (especially when watching a second or third time) is that this incorruptible and undeterrable man's pathological pursuits serve not to build anything he can see, but only to destroy what he has lost sight of: the very world he once committed his life to defend.

Thoughts on the Second Presidential Debate

2008-10-07T23:07:00.003-04:00

1. This was the first Presidential debate I'd watched. I also saw the VP debate last week. If you could somehow undo all of the cynical aspects of the campaign the Republicans have run thus far and view only tonight's debate, I would be in about the same position I was when the general election (so to speak, anyway, given the extended Democratic primary) actually started: weighing two superb candidates, each capable of inspiring pride in country and faith in its leadership, either of whom better than most of the other candidates offered up for this office in the last three decades, in order to make a difficult choice resulting in a President neither of whose election I would find disappointing. However, flash forward to October 7th and here we are. Lots of courting of the anti-intellectual elements of the conservative base, as well as that little thing called Barracuda.

Shame, really. Both candidates came across well this evening, and there were a handful of off-the-cuff moments (e.g., Brokaw's yes-or-no prompt as to whether or not Putin's Russia presented a new Evil Empire) to show that, despite the pigeonholes into which both candidates have by now been placed, these two men are both capable of analytical thought and lively, witty conversation. That may not be one of the go-to qualities a voter looks for in a President, but it helps more than might be obvious. It's also evidence of a healthy and inquisitive mind.

The substantive nature of this debate and the competitive format, as well as the caliber of discussion, did a great job reminding me anyway that this is still a McCain-Obama election, and not a Palin-Obama one. After seeing this, I almost find myself rationalizing that, were McCain to win and be able to serve his entire term(s), things might actually not be so apocalyptic.

Besides, maybe he fires her after three months. Oops.

2. Meaty debate with lots of wonkish policy discussion, especially compared to the VP sweepstakes last Thursday. Where that one came across as separate and simultaneous primetime addresses by two candidates, delivered largely without regard to the other candidate's presence, this was a much more gritty and competitive affair. Even the arrangement: a pit, surrounded by amphitheater seating, with blinking lights of different colors all around the circumference and fire engine red carpeting. Two men pacing around, each prowling as the other answered questions, forced smiles showing through clenched teeth all the while. Almost like a 21st-century gladiator's rink, in a way. And there was plenty of testiness to go around between these two candidates. Again, not having seen the first debate, I can't offer too much comparison, but one of the complaints I'd heard was that Obama didn't go far enough to attack McCain and came across as passive. What I saw tonight was two candidates trying to mix it up with each other throughout the duration.

3. Question of the night as far as stimulating what seemed to be the most spontaneous and genuine answer/debate session: the one in which both candidates were asked how they would prioritize (from 1 through 3) entitlement, health, and energy reforms. This seems like the type of prompt that a traditional candidate's exhaustive debate preparation might not have covered, and the initial answers and discussions seemed to reflect this. McCain had the last word, and he used it wisely, getting my nod for seeming "victorious"* on this question by hyper-praising the American people's ability to undertake all three reforms at once. This stood in direct contrast to Obama's more admittedly rationalist answer, which demanded sacrifice and patience on behalf of the American people, in that they would have to defer his lower priority reforms in order to see the higher priority ones accomplished effectively. Better always to wait until explicitly prompted before asking this sort of thing of the voters, however.

Also -- Obama did mention "education reform" instead of entitlement. And he glazed over the points without what seemed like a full and careful analysis, preferring instead to use his time to retaliate against an earlier attack on his tax policy.

4. Good moderating. Brokaw joked with the candidates and came across amiably, even asking one of the candidates to step out of his view of the teleprompter as he wrapped the broadcast. And his followup questions were incisive and enjoyable. But why did he have to announce that the last question was the last question? Couldn't the format have included a couple of minutes at the end for each candidate to deliver a closing statement? I complain about this because the last question was taken only as a prompt to segue into a closing statement, and it was probably the best pure question of the evening: What don't you know, and how will you learn it?

Shame we didn't get to hear actual discussion of that one.

5. I think I caught a handshake snub by McCain of Obama at the end, deflecting his offer instead to Cynthia before turning away and wandering off.

***

*I quote the word because I don't see either candidate as having won this debate, and don't think this particular format is conducive to win/loss analysis. Besides, the subject matter and manner of discussion on display tonight was too great to boil down so simplistically. I prefer to honor these two men at this point.

Biden v. Palin on SNL

2008-10-05T15:19:00.001-04:00

Brilliant stuff:

Religulous

2008-10-05T13:19:00.002-04:00

***

Religulous is Bill Maher's earnest attempt to sound the alarm bell for all of the people he considers intellectual--i.e., people without religious beliefs--to rise up and end worldwide organized religion forever. The alternative, he prophesies, is death for all, courtesy of some horrible fire or nuclear holocaust that will inevitably transpire because the levers of global power have been bafflingly commandeered by parties acting in the interest of their own gods' perceived whims. And, most of the time, those interests are malevolent toward all people worldwide besides those on whom the god in question first bestowed his scripture and creed.

Whew. Tough pill to swallow, and the euphemism should be apparent when I say this film could be considered controversial. Certainly it's not for the weak of heart. I caught it in a packed auditorium on opening wide distro weekend in New York. That's 512 nationwide screens as of October 3rd; certainly not Dark Knight numbers. The audience seemed to be receptive to the goods Maher was hawking, which were something along the lines of "look at these idiotic farm animals and listen to the unintelligible noises they make!" There was much laughter and the occasional singular outburst of applause, and the end credits were accompanied by an entire auditorium clapping for a good ten seconds. A lighthearted, jocular experience was had by all in attendance.

Safe to say there are other auditoriums across the U.S. in which the circumstances might have been quite different after a showing of this film. In any given theater, viewers with even a shred of religiosity might have felt more slighted by this movie than any other. After all, Religulous is a genuine documentary, sharing kinship with the output of Michael Moore. It's not Borat and it's not The Passion of the Christ. Not Borat because it's not partially scripted and hashed out by professional actors; not Passion because it's not a semi-fictional drama. Instead, it starts out with a question: "What is the place of organized religion in today's world, and why do otherwise rational individuals subscribe so readily to a worldview this inexplicable and therefore irrational; a worldview that, at its best, is a waste of time, and might be far worse?" It then promises to answer that question, and makes every attempt to expose the Maher and his viewer to as broad a sample as possible. Maher visits a significant chunk of the United States and interviews believers of varying literalist and orthodox tendencies from a large number of religions and geographic locations. Somebody has researched these people exhaustively, and should be commended.

Unfortunately, the depth of that research is inversely proportional to the extent that Maher truly probes his subject matter and interviewees, and he falls disappointingly short in advancing his argument by the end of the pic. This will be the greatest source of any open-minded viewer's offense, religious or otherwise: that Maher spends the entire length of the film ridiculing interesting and different people from whom a real understanding of what makes a religious person so might be gleaned. Maher is an atheist, but the worst possible ambassador for the worldview in the largest possible way, betraying absolutely zero respect for others' rights to religious belief in a film of nationwide release. From the start of almost every interview, Maher assumes he knows more than does his subject about the particular religious beliefs in question, and resorts to Sean Hannity-style interruptions and bullying to bring his subject to silence or self-parody. During the limited number of times in which his subjects are allowed to speak for a few moments, the editing becomes suspiciously jumpy, with rapid cuts and piecemeal assemblages of clips each containing a few words at a time. As these instances tend to be the ones with either the most shocking interviewee revelations or the most futile attempts at counterargument versus Maher, it becomes impossible to take any of the encounters seriously after only a short time.

The film sputters along in this manner until about the last three minutes. Then, Maher finally decides to advance his conclusion and reason for making the film (see first paragraph), which together run something like the Daisy ad from the LBJ campaign of '64. Really, though, this is just the nail in the coffin for an intelligent and religiously skeptical person watching Religulous. As a movie made for precisely that audience, it neglects to realize that its viewers will be people who require facts, analysis, and learning whenever outlandish viewpoints are proposed. Unfortunately, the only learning possible from this movie is the degree to which Maher is in love with his own voice and condescension; the only final analysis in its overall failure to take the intellects of intellectual people seriously. Instead of sounding an alarm bell, Maher comes across a childish huckster blowing on a party whistle. Everybody go on in and get a laugh.

My Slice of the David Lean Retrospective, Part One: Lawrence of Arabia

2008-09-28T16:26:00.007-04:00

***

For a couple of weeks ending Sept. 25th, the Film Forum in New York was running a retrospective on director David Lean. Admittedly, I haven't seen a large number of his movies, but two of my favorite films of all time are the ones I have seen -- Lawrence of Arabia and The Bridge on the River Kwai. Once I found out they'd be playing in a theater, it became essential to see both while I had the chance. After all, I'd repeatedly seen Lawrence, in particular, described with such flattering language as a "one-movie argument for the importance of big screen viewings," and knew Kwai to be a movie of similarly epic proportions. Surely, if there are any number of movies that in and of themselves typify everything that makes seeing movies in public auditoriums necessary, these two belong high on the list.

Let's start with Lawrence of Arabia, which the Forum showed before Kwai. The reasons supporting seeing it in a theater include its being shot in a large film format, 70mm, which can be thought of as equivalent to seeing the 1960s version of an Imax show. Also, the production specifics of the movie almost ensure that nothing like it will ever again be made. First of all, it was filmed almost entirely on location, mostly in vast desert expanses. Costly, to say the least. Second, Lean had enormous creative control over his shots, and was able to luxuriate in drawn-out panoramic shots of desert and little else. A specific example of this is one iconic shot known as the "mirage shot," in which Omar Sharif's Sherif Ali first appears a distant, nearly-invisible shot on the horizon and takes several minutes of screen time to arrive at the point where Peter O'Toole's T.E. Lawrence is standing, during which Lean intercuts images of Lawrence and another character's face registering the approaching camel rider.

This was the first time I'd seen Lawrence since late 2005, which itself was the first time I'd ever seen the movie and came at a time before I would have been able to appreciate how great the film was. On this second viewing, Lawrence opened itself to me considerably, and I was startled at how thoughtful and effective the dialogue of this nearly four-hour film was, especially considering the time lavished on voiceless shots of environments. In the characters' words are gallons of wry wit (see especially Alec Guiness's Prince Feisal), but there is also an extreme sense of gravitas. For me, the only character for whom every single word does not seem spoken after only the completest consideration is Arthur Kennedy's Jackson Bentley, and that's exactly the point for this fast-talking American purveyor of journalistic schlock. His manner of discourse is a noticeable contrast to that of the other characters in a movie where spoken, cultural, behavioral, and visual contrasts combine to form a lot of what makes this a great piece of art.

Those visual contrasts were one of the two main highlights of the theatrical experience for me. After all, one can pick up the character- and dialogue-driven nuance irrespective of where he sees the film. But the visual element became clear to me after the conquest of Aqaba, after which, for the first time in a considerable length of film, the viewer sees buildings and blue water instead of more desert and more nomadic constructs, and the soundtrack turns to a cascading celebration of the relief experienced by Lawrence at both these things and his victory in battle. As the film drives its way through the desert scenes, alternately turturous and beautiful, the battle scenes, and the city scenes in which Lawrence deals with various governments, the color palate and set designs change by turns subtly and suddenly. Sitting in that dark auditorium with the large projection in front of you presents the daring and grandiosity of this movie in a way that just won't translate to your home system.

You also won't have the audience.

It's no poignant observation that the audience in attendance at your viewing of a movie acts as a lens through which your entire experience is passed. I, for example, am looking forward to attending the upcoming Lebowski Fest New York in November, at which I'll see one of my all-time favorites while in the warm embrace of an actual cult, dressed up in various characters' attire and quoting the entire movie back to the screen in a state of White-Russian-induced drunkenness. Similarly, I caught about forty minutes of 300 while channel surfing recently, and was surprised at how good I didn't remember the movie being. This was because I saw it opening weekend at a theater on 34th Street, where it seemed the entire Ages 16-18 Male From New Jersey contingent had decided to congregate. The threat level of potential Spartan-inspired violence in the theater that night was palpable from about ten minutes into the picture until exiting the cinema a few hours and floors of building later. I kid you not--on the way out, there was an actual escalator fight between two viewers.

I caught Lawrence of Arabia with a similar-minded crowd of respectful film lovers who'd been eagerly awaiting this opportunity for years and were consciously trying to savor it as much as possible. There was complete silence and awe, and walking around at the intermission and after the show, I heard plenty of cerebral and polite discussion of the film. In such a crowd of focused cinephiles, every audience nuance can be interpreted and analyzed as part of the movie. Where does everyone go for a big breath of fresh air? Where do they rustle in their seats? Where do they laugh, and to what degree? (They laugh a lot, by the way. Again: plenty of wit in this movie.)

Given that the screen on which the Film Forum showed Lawrence is humble by New York cinema standards, this whole audience bit for me took primacy over the actual film artifice in the argument for the movie being enhanced by seeing it in a theater. A larger screen may have changed that, but my opinion is that any opportunity whatsoever to see Lawrence of Arabia in a theater at this point must be seized. It really is one of the all-time greats, and the awe you'll get from the combined large presentation and audience won't fail to add up to one of your most memorable moviegoing experiences.

I'll let you know some of what I thought about my second viewing of The Bridge on the River Kwai shortly.

Appaloosa

2008-09-21T12:41:00.003-04:00

Ed Harris directs and the only interesting performance is Viggo's. In a complete coincidence, Viggo's character has a solid ten lines of dialogue throughout the script and his mystery is actually rewarded at some point in the script.

It's the only such trinket you'll find.

The whole film is tired, pushing to get across the finish line without having quite made up its mind whether to take itself granite-faced-seriously or whether to have a completely ironic worldview and let the actors ham up the script with sly glances and grinning delivery. I read A.O. Scott's review and enjoyed the review for what it was, well-written and attempting to find the silver lining while also pointing out the movie's flaws. But where Scott decides the movie is just fine (and nothing more) alternating between comic self-awareness and thick attempts at gravitas, I feel shortchanged and disappointed. I don't see the connect; the film doesn't convincingly show that its characters (with the exception of Viggo) are able to pull both of these things off, and I find myself believing only the heavy-handed dialogue.

A description of the story might lend the movie some credibility, but for the fact that is has about seven hundred too many major plot points. Some of them are clever (I agree with Scott's opinion on a major gunfight scene), but others aren't paid enough attention and let the characters undergo multiple transformations on a whim, whether through change in manner of dress, motivation, or career pursuit. Very little feels organic or sufficiently developed.

Particularly hasty is everything about women in the screenplay. Surely the writers (Robert Knott and Ed Harris) have a thing or two to learn; none of Renee Zellweger's actions feels justified unless one takes her as a creature of nothing more than whimsy. If that, though, the significance of Ed Harris's actions and the empathy of his character are brought into question. He hasn't shown enough of a masochistic streak for his love to be believable, and the possibility of his being a helpless cuckold is glanced over, as if you'll forget and just enjoy the surface-level happenings for what they are. Unfortunately, as a cuckold, he becomes a naif and a sap, and everything else he says or does falls apart.

Besides. She's still a little funny-looking for my tastes. And enough of that Renee-Zellweger-Smile. It's not acting.

The only other gal in the pic is an all-knowing woman who might or might not be a prostitute and who, it turns out suddenly, might or might not have been in a relationship with Viggo since shortly after he arrived in town. How clever of the filmmakers to turn the prostitute cliche on its head. And to leave us in complete wonderment as to the reasons behind the two characters' spending time together? Marvel!

The whole thing is just inconsistent and frustrating. It's been demoralizing to write this, actually. If you must see it, please wait until you find a nice bootlegger on the subway.

Pineapple Express

2008-09-07T12:43:00.002-04:00

One word, two syllables: original Huey Lewis soundtrack composition.

Really. Do I need to write anything further about this movie to entice you to see it?

OK -- it's the same writing duo that gave us Superbad. It's a blend of genres all boiled together in a modern "pot movie." It'll remind you of Cheech and Chong movies and The Big Lebowski. It refuses to take itself seriously, and turns a few character assumptions right on their heads (see payphone conversation between the characters played by Seth Rogen and Amber Heard, and also the is-this-even-real-anymore climax). Even seeing it in a nearly empty theater (seriously, there were like eight people), it provided almost continuous laughter for the audience. Not a common thing; laughter is inertial in comedies, and an audience that small removes this sustaining effect from a theater. Which means you should be convinced the movie's pretty damn funny.

The whole experience is a chill buddy-and-laugh fest, complete with relaxed reggae soundtrack and a long-awaited cinematic reuniting of part of the cast of Freaks and Geeks. The plot is lighthearted and the characters are silly, but the movie (a) takes your intellect (not to mention pop-culture awareness) seriously, and (b) stays fun throughout. It'll keep you satisfied, amused, and not too belabored with pesky depth of theme. See it in a theater while you still can.

otnemeM

2008-09-07T12:10:00.005-04:00

***SPOILER ALERT***

I'm not a shill for the eight-year-old ad campaign. I just think the backwards title looks cool, is all.

Saw this movie for the first time and noticed close ethical similarities with Groundhog Day. In that film, Bill Murray's character has some amount of omniscience vis-a-vis the rest of the world, and exploits its inhabitants, who are hapless in the face of his knowledge of the future, for his own benefit. In Memento, the rest of the world has a very similar omniscience vis-a-vis Guy Pearce's character, and its various, cynical inhabitants exploit his physical abilities and reduced intellectual capacity for their own ends.

The films share an inverted thematic siblingdom in this aspect, but are otherwise very different viewing experiences. Groundhog Day is a comedy touched with romantic aspects. Memento is a thriller touched with detective/noir aspects. However, both of them presume essentially the worst in man, given a situation providing the ability to exploit another person with guaranteed success and without fear of recourse. In Groundhog Day, the story has an arc that deals directly with this theme. The main character comes to realize how hard he's been on everyone else only because he's trapped in a situation where he has an infinite ability to exploit people but no ability to lead a meaningful life with any real connection to people until he's learned to suppress his exploitative and ill-tempered nature.

In Memento, however, the story arc itself is slowly drawn out to be largely inconclusive with respect to this theme, and the film's inner cynicism is made more extreme and complete with the revelation that the afflicted character is doomed to being permanently exploited by just about any acquaintance he meets who has the will to do so. His senses of prioritization and elapsed time in his life are non-existent, and he is unable to learn or accomplish anything. He is unable to feel any lasting emotion for anything that transpires in his life; consequently, he is incapable of having memories of "success" or "failure," and his life trajectory has no forward. His is truly a hopeless case.

At the end of Memento, I found myself harboring a greater sense of pessimism toward the film's world than I had after watching almost any other movie I can think of. And this was a good movie, a very good movie. Highly stylized, character- and plot-consistent, with balanced and artfully used elements of suspense, noir, and psychological examination, Memento makes for an experience that is both cerebral and enjoyable. But an upper this is not. And it should get you thinking: really, what does any of us know?

A.I. Artificial Intelligence

2008-09-01T18:53:00.005-04:00

contains SPOILERS. you've been warned.

***

After compulsively searching IMDB for a while to find out exactly what ever happened to that kid, I'm ready to generously offer my well-formulated comments on yet another film. Blam.

Comment #1: why does a movie have a periphery character offer up the central theme of the piece in a tidy bit of dialogue during the scene that serves as a prologue to the entire movie's action? Something like, "wouldn't humans after creating a machine that can love then have the obligation to return that love? It's a moral question, really. Tee hee." Then shocked and profound gazes all around the room. I can't decide whether the "tee hee" was really the character herself, or the filmmaker(s) feeling they pulled a fast one on an unsuspecting audience. This little gemstone reeks of deus ex machina, and set in approximately the first three minutes of film, it certainly put the borderline-and-lower aspects of the film at a disadvantage in passing my stringent judgment criteria.

Comment #2: I read somewhere that the film was a good example of a director doing honor to the legacy of Stanley Kubrick while still making a deeply personal film. And I couldn't agree more. Unfortunately, I don't think of this as a positive in the case of A.I. To me, the movie started to feel very "Spielberg" and very "Hollywood" after a certain point, and caused me to descend from boredom to fidgeting to eye-rolling and head-shaking. Two things: (1) after David fully realizes where he's from and then attempts suicide, where exactly does his mental capacity snap, such that he then goes back to seeking the love of his "mommy" by pursuing the Blue Fairy and a fruitless transformation into a "real boy?" And (2): 2,000 years passed in this movie between two consecutive scenes.

Think about that. Have you ever seen a movie that maintains story integrity with 2,000 years passing between consecutive scenes? The only example I can come up with is 2001: A Space Odyssey, and that's a different animal; more of a thesis than a strict story-arc narrative film. Plus, the entire bit in that movie with the apes might well be considered a prologue to the rest of the film, much in the way that the classroom lecture served this film. After the lecture scene in A.I., a significant amount of time passes to give the viewer the feeling of distance. But 2,000 years?

I don't like to deal in absolutes. I'm sure it's possible for an interval like this to pass and the story to remain perfectly intact within the medium of film. By no means will I argue that I've seen enough films to conclude it hasn't been done. In fact, I welcome your contradictions. But it's sort of like the two villains problem that superhero movies experience. It makes things much messier and much more difficult, no matter the caliber of craftsman behind the ship's helm. And here, the craftsman is prone to overly tidy, heart-shaped endings. In a dastardly trick, this 2,000-year jump serves as a transparent writer's device, deployed only to provide the technologies and narrative omniscience needed to integrate an implausible ending that provides a minimally thoughtful bowtie and a warm, fuzzy glow.

When the camera was pulling back after the undersea remnants of Coney Island had fallen apart, I thought that was a nice place to end the movie. The entire story was told and all of the themes were addressed fully, despite the deep, deep sorrow I felt for David. But anything more would have been insulting. And then it turns out David lives forever, and the future aliens/mechas come to rescue him. Using their omnipotence, they then grant him an interview with the Blue Fairy and a day with "mommy." The use of a plant, by the way, in having "mommy's" hair come back and be useful in providing a DNA sample for cloning raised my eyebrow a bit. Didn't feel consistent with the ethic of the movie to revisit the hair-cutting scene and slap a positive spin on it, and it brought the integrity of the scene as it existed, in the first place, into doubt.

So I found the whole post-2,000-years sequence to be tacked-on and meant only to provide moral uplift after the story was complete. And that annoys me, because it's expensive and difficult to get movies made, and economy is a virtue of this art. Just like the ten minutes of uninterrupted, meaningless dialogue in the diner scene in Death Proof were inexcusable for me. In the latter case, this was enough to ruin the entire (relatively short) film for me, forcing me to view the rest of it only in light of this wastefulness and extravagance. In A.I., it was just the icing on a cake baked twenty minutes too long, providing the convincing argument against this unfolding grotesquery: a director who is not named Kubrick taking dull, rusty blades to the Kubrick style. This two-hour-plus "what if?" of a tease broke at least one movie lover's heart for a little while. And the very final line of A.I. only force-fed me a little more of the repugnant, saccharine "goodness."

I'm getting me some Strangelove soon enough. I strongly recommend you follow suit.

Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs

2008-09-01T00:48:00.004-04:00

I'll come right out and say it: even as a huge fan of the show's original run, I'm disappointed thus far with the two direct-to-DVD releases of Futurama feature-lengths, and even more so with this second one than I was with the first. Where Bender's Big Score provided the refreshment of seeing the cast back in action and mostly refrained from riffing on the show's previous comedic success, The Beast with a Billion Backs fails to live up to that standard and worries me as a longtime fan.

Futurama was on television for four seasons, and to me, those episodes were every bit as good as anything that was on The Simpsons at the time (1999-2003, meaning Simpsons seasons 10-14). I'd even say that some of the best episodes belong right up there with the all-time greats from The Simpsons (see Jurassic Bark for example). But these new DVD's, in effect making eight episodes thus far and half of the "new season" of output the creators arranged with Comedy Central, feel tired and uninspired. The show's been there, done that, and in a cleverer way. And it's better than this. I know the first four seasons didn't dry this writing staff up. Right?

I loved this show so much during its original run and on DVD since, and have spent many a precious word boosting it to friends, family, and the occasional funny-looking person on the street. I admire inexpressibly the fact that there's an empathetic character out there whose virtues are being evil, drinking, and stealing. I marvel at the layers of hyper-intelligent jokes going over my head, some of which are from the obscure-to-me corners of the sci-fi universe, and others from the noodles of mathematicians on the writing staff. But I'm still sitting here waiting for the that's what I'm talkin' about! moment to hit me, now that the show's back for a potentially indefinite run. I'll chalk these first two 90-minute discs up to rustiness out of the gate.

But God save this show if they ever end up with something like one of those atrocious main-character-fights-a-giant-chicken scenes...

Spanish Food at Red Hook

2008-08-31T23:57:00.004-04:00

Today, the 31st of August and the day before the end of the summer, was the day I finally first indulged my longtime craving to journey to Red Hook, Brooklyn and experience the various and sundry delights of the Red Hook Vendors. I'm reduced to using words like "finally" and "first" because Red Hook, though within New York City limits and part of the same mass transportation infrastructure I use daily, lies approximately as far from my apartment as the length of the entire Oregon Trail, and takes about as much time to traverse. Seriously--you'll need to saddle up a covered wagon and get provisions. This makes very little sense to me, as I only live 8.5 miles by road (by no means a straight-line distance) from the point at which I considered myself "in Red Hook" earlier today, and Google Maps indicates I could have made it there in 15 minutes by car, had I tried.

Today, the trip took me over two hours. A few subway transfers, a walk in lower Manhattan to Pier 11 for the free Ikea NY Water Taxi Ferry, and the ferry ride itself, which actually was a beautiful ride and almost made forget the arduousness of the trek up to that point. But not quite.

I digress, though. And before we go further, a bit of characterization for all of you readers: the Omnivorous Mediaphile is not an Omnivorous Dairyphile.
Yogurt: yes.
Cream in coffee: necessary.
Ice cream: hell yes.
Lactose, itself: no problem, even in enzymatic powdery crystalline form.

But cheese? An emphatic NO DICE.

So you can imagine the extent of my handicap at a place with exclusively Spanish (and Latin American) foods served from trucks and cooked at least in part before arrival at the venue of sale. Heroically (as I am wont to be), I soldiered on nonetheless. My gustatory inventory for the day began with an unfairly good pair of pupusas from a Salvadorean vendor. Most of his pupusa selections included cheese, but thankfully, he also made pork-only ones. (I had plenty of time to make sure while waiting in about thirty minutes of human line.) The pupusas were served with a cabbage side dish, as well as optional jalapeno peppers. I also ordered a champagne cola drink. Delicious stuff, really. The pupusas, for a fried corn tortilla dish, were made with enough heft so as not to be too hard/crunchy and not too soft/floppy. Perfect texture, and the meat inside is the kind of stuff you'd trudge through a patch of angrily-defended beehives to get. But this time for more than the normal reason of "because it's meat and you're hungry."

After the pupusas, I waited on another line (this one significantly shorter, but please be aware regardless that a chunk of your time visiting the Red Hook Vendors will be spent waiting on lines). This one ended at the juice man known for his "magical mix," something about "how does he do it?" Earlier in the day, I'd had high expectations for the food and middling expectations for the drinks. I'd heard of fruit juices, etc., but figured honestly, how good can these be? I was sure they'd be refreshing, thirst-quenching, blah blah blah.

Nearest I can tell, I woke up about an hour after I got the drink, my pupils wide enough to fit a number one pencil and my mouth pressed sideways against the asphalt, muttering something about "more please more please more please sippy sippy." I'm not a religious man, and I've only thought I'd seen the Lord on a very small number of occasions. But in this tamarind-and-lime concoction, my brothers and sisters, something Higher was calling my name directly (and It was throwing in a heavy bit of diabetes-inducing sweetness in the shouting). Bottom line (and my friends have taken to calling me a "bottom line" sort of guy recently) is that I paid $3 for this thing. I've paid more than twice that before for other drinks that I'd gladly trek out in ugly weather to have a second time. This kind of thing is a different animal entirely; something almost farcical under the weight of its own delirious goodness. All I can really say is "me likey" and hope you get the wax-sealed and monogrammed envelope.

Another interesting "bottom line" fact -- I think I spent $12 on my entire day of travels, food, and drink. Cough.

And that's about it. You need to try this food and juice.

I Heart Huckabees

2008-08-29T14:46:00.002-04:00

I think this was my third viewing, but who the hell remembers any more when it's one of those DVD's you own and throw on every once in a while, and it's been around for a few years?

I don't have much new to say about the movie that anybody hasn't read, but did want to highlight how continually impressed I find myself with Mark Wahlberg's performances, whether supporting or lead. He steals every one of his scenes in this movie, and did the same thing in The Departed. Underrated actor. Also, in I Heart Huckabees, he plays a variation on the obliviously belligerent goofball type best-embodied in John Goodman's Walter Sobchak of The Big Lebowski. Those looking for a little more time with Walter might do well to give I Heart Huckabees a watch.

If you haven't seen it yet, it's a fun movie with an interesting take on the process of removing oneself from depression. Odd sentence, I suppose. Anyway, there's a bit of Wes Anderson style (and some might say preciousness) reflected in it, but David O. Russell is a more-than-competent writer/director with his own style, and most of the parallels are forgivable and forgettable. Aside from Jude Law's forced American accent, which sounds terrible and unpracticed, you'll find nothing overtly offensive.

Rocky Balboa

2008-08-24T13:07:00.002-04:00

I seem to remember hearing positive things about this one. Talk about unjustified; this movie feels more like some old dude going through the motions than anything I've seen in a long time. The whole thing is filmed in a farcical halcyon light and tone that, despite aiming as very hard as it can for the opposite, should remind you: "hey, the last three or four of these weren't that good, anyway."

The younger (read: under 30) characters in this movie are written wrong, wrong, wrong, from their motives to their dialogue. Likewise, Stallone seems to have imposed a rule that only allows him to draw on the existing Rocky universe to dredge up new storylines for this last effort. See the should-be-love interest for an example. If I wanted recycling with feeling, I'd be better off consulting my neighborhood homeless man. And half the movie is occupied with old footage from the previous films, tossed with a dash of new cutting or a sprinkle of fancy black-and-white effect. The most disappointing part, though, is the fact that the dual archetypical elements of a Rocky flick--the inspirational training montage and the full-fifteen-rounds fight at the end--were completely slapped-on, betraying all the admirable craft that lies in a patch job on country blacktop, and imparting about the same emotional resonance.

I was rooting for the reigning champ during the last fight. Luckily, I saw this thing for free. Otherwise I might be angry.

Hard Eight

2008-08-23T09:24:00.002-04:00

Check this one out of you get a chance. The 1996 film is the first feature effort from filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson, and the hallmark brilliance of his future movies is not at all left wanting here. Pic stars Philip Baker Hall and John C. Reilly from a time before he was Will Ferrell's sidekick, along with Gwyneth Paltrow. Like most of Anderson's movies, it invests heavily in father/son relationship themes. What makes this movie particularly interesting is the slow unveiling of Hall's character, Sydney, who appears from nowhere as a seemingly self-effacing sage to down-and-out John (Reilly), leaving us continually wondering the reason. The movie maintains this audience curiosity, and ratchets up the level of tension throughout, as Sydney's motives and background become clearer.

I've always enjoyed movies that employ this sort of technique--one character seems strong and in control throughout the pic, almost acting as a mentor, while another is slowly learning his way around that mentor character, also using what he's been taught to experience his world in new ways. The Matrix is an easy example of this, with Neo and the audience learning the philosophy and structure of the world all at the same time (though not entirely from a single character). Likewise Boogie Nights, Anderson's second movie.

Bobby Jean

2008-08-21T23:10:00.005-04:00

I think it's consensus that this is a song written by Springsteen about Steve Van Zandt (a.k.a. Little Steven, a.k.a. this guy) leaving the E Street band to pursue his own career. Released on the album Born in the U.S.A., it's an elegy for a friendship put on hold while one of the two travels away and around the world. Bruce is stunned, not having been able to see his friend one last time to say good bye, and now he's got a void where that friendship once was.

It's always been just about the saddest song in the world for me. No joke; puts a lump in my throat every time I hear it. I saw it live recently, and the result was barely any different. The lyrics are heart-wrenching, the character is convincing (Springsteen is quite good at this, using a lot of vernacular in his lyrics), and the story shouldn't be far from home for too many listeners. But there are a lot of songs out there that have these traits. Why is this one different for me?

Some people rag on the Boss for not having a sense of irony; for having very straightforward lyrics and being a little cheesy sometimes in his delivery. And, admitting I'm a born-and-bred New Jerseyan (despite my disownership of the state in more recent years), maybe you'll have to take everything I say with a kernel of suspicion. In any case: I myself have occasionally been one of his detractors for precisely those reasons. I can't think of many things more cloying than the lead-in story he does to "The River" on the three-disc live 1975-1985 set right over here. But one of the things I've come to learn over the years is that sharp commentary and wit in music are sometimes shown in places other than the lyrics. Bruce's words are smart, but on a lot of his work circa Born in the U.S.A., the higher intelligence is in the tunes, themselves.

The title track of that album, for instance, was disorienting enough to this effect that it passed muster with an entire army of political brains for use by Ronald Reagan's campaign, despite the fact that an even remotely thoughtful listener would have no trouble grasping the bitterness and disillusionment in the song.* Why? Because it sounds like a rocker and has a simple "E-I-E-I-O" chorus a child could learn to sing. This is a major component of Bruce's genius during that era. This is his irony: write stories about desperate characters who don't necessarily have solutions to their formidable problems, and smooth it over with upbeat rock-and-roll music.

"Bobby Jean" similarly tells a dark tale, this one being about a lonely friend who misses his bud and doesn't have any way of saying so. And, given its subject matter, the music could have sounded like "Atlantic City" or "The River." Instead, given only a casual listen, it sounds almost perversely upbeat. A thumping wall of sound, complete with glockenspiel and a saxophone solo from the Big Man. But beyond the irony, I still get sadness, and more of it than would have been the case given a more downbeat melody. For me, this upbeat music provides three emotions that would otherwise be difficult to capture in one shot--marvel, inevitability, and resignation.

Marvel at the awesome scope and size of it all. His friend is just gone, and there was no goodbye. The very full texture of the music, as well as the attention-grabbing extras (like the glockenspiel) convey this, almost turning the character's acknowledgment of the feeling into a perverse fascination. The inevitability is in the tempo. It has a convincing, onward-marching beat that doesn't slow down or vaguely let up, as if to say "that time is over and now you've got to keep going." And resignation to precisely this fact, embodied by the "oh well, life goes on" sax solo after the last words are spoken.

For me, this song is one of the more powerful and irresistible ones I know, despite its sadness. Have a look-see:

***

*Or maybe I'm wrong and they all felt they could get away with it because nobody would know better. But how cynical would you have to be to think that?

A Quick Aside for Baaaaaaaaaaaa

2008-08-20T22:39:00.003-04:00

(that would be the noise of My Favorite Farm Animal)

So I just got back from a food cart up on 53rd St., near the corner of 6th Ave. Specifically, it's the one on the southeast corner, a bit down 53rd from the intersection. You won't miss it, because neither did the twenty-five people who got there before you and are now waiting for their $4, $5, or $6 meals.

OK, so this isn't exactly a mediaphile's entry, unless you count eats as a medium for something. Maybe wonderment, soul-finding, and even that comatose kind of thing that happens to a person's eyes in the presence of greatness. But I'ma put the "Omnivorous" back in my title here and tell you a fairy tale about a land far away; a land covered in equal parts rice and lamb (or, as I prefer, "the sweet meat of the baby sheep"), a bit of iceberg lettuce, and generous helpii of yogurt white sauce and nuclear-hot hot sauce. It's a land without orcs or goblins; only princesses and archery. And the happiest ending of all. Go on and get you some:

Character Arc Observations from a Second Viewing of The Dark Knight (with extra juicy SPOILERS)

2008-08-18T22:29:00.041-04:00

Second warning: SPOILERS ABOUND!

***

First off: is it worth the second viewing? When the screen happens to look about four stories tall and the whole thing (including most of the panoramic birds-eye shots) is covered in sweet, sweet mayhem for a significant duration of the movie, the answer is a resounding "damn yes." But for those of you who either saw it in Imax the first time around or have no such access, is the second viewing warranted by the film's content alone?

My biggest gripe about The Dark Knight after the first viewing was what I perceived as lack of sufficient character development in Harvey Dent, the film's "main character" (a label the initial critical buzz would have us believe). For a man of such fierce convictions, his complete moral breakdown appeared a bit hasty. After going to the lengths he did in the first half of the movie to scourge crime and extol justice, what made this guy abduct a police commissioner's family and hold a pistol to a young boy's head with intent to kill, and why did it feel so untrue?

The death of Rachel certainly dealt a blow to Dent's world, but was the loss of this relationship really enough to make the guy go that far from everything he believed in? In my first viewing, I didn't buy the chemistry. I'd read somewhere that Maggie G. did the "classy" thing by maintaining the contours of Katie Holmes's character interpretation, as opposed to taking the character in an entirely new direction. And that may be classy. But for me, the effect is a less-hot version of the same Katie Holmes role, and like most of you out there, I wasn't convinced by Rachel in the first film, either. For Bruce Wayne, at least the girl-next-door angle had been in place for his whole life. For Harvey Dent, there were no such backstory favors to this relationship's believability. And unless you believe all those burns are sufficient to change Dent, this lost love is the only real cause of his character transformation.

So, in my second viewing, I gave Rachel every chance in the world. I noticed every fond smile, every eye gesture, every touch. I paid extra attention to the bits about whether Rachel would always be waiting for Batman, the note she delivered to Alfred, and the conviction of hers and Harvey's feelings for one another; i.e., to what extent each represented the other's "everything." After all, Harvey would have to lose something pretty significant to go to quite those extents, yes?

And while I have greater appreciation for her character after this viewing, I still don't see the scales as equal. Rachel's death does not equal the fall of Harvey into Two-Face.

Feeling unsatisfied with the climax, I turned to Dent's character setup, particularly related to the traits I had issues with. There was always the possibility that I'd misjudged the guy. Maybe he wasn't as solidly grounded of a character as I'd thought, and maybe an event with only moderate gravity would have pushed an already-teetering worldview over the edge. First things first, though--I didn't and still don't see any problems with Harvey's incorruptibility and pursuit of justice. In fact, these traits' acting as constants in his life sufficiently explain for me the conviction with which he pursues most of his actions, both before and after the transformation.

Before the climax, however, the things from which Harvey is incorruptible and his means of obtaining that justice are considerably different. Up to the transformation, he has an eye for good. He has sound judgment and knows that Gordon is a good man, that Batman is a good man. He's willing to trust and cooperate with these good men, even showing a nuanced understanding of their shortcomings. He also doesn't seem like a violent man. And, perhaps foremost for me, he has to this point spent his whole life putting his lot in with the public system of justice, working to make it as strong as possible and most likely regarding as anathema those who would impose their own narrow justice on the world.

Simply put: he plays according to a set of rules.

For me, his abandonment of the public justice system, changed verdict on the natures of Gordon and Batman, embrace of violence as a problem solver, utter dedication to the coin toss as arbiter of every outcome, and disavowal of any nuance in judging good and evil (even to the point of viewing himself as incidental to and unaccountable for the coin's verdicts) all come about quite suddenly.

After my first viewing, these things bothered me. Deeply. I really had a blast watching The Dark Knight, and not only because of the Joker. It had big-time ambition and was close to hitting a home run. It came as near as any superhero movie I've seen to pulling off the (impossible) two-villain game. Any movie that causes the kind of public discourse we've seen before and after its release, to say nothing of that kind of feeling in the theater, is a rare experience. If you haven't seen it, (a) shame on you for reading this far, and (b) bigger shame on you for being deaf to the cultural tides.

My confession before going further is thus: I want to rest on a flawless verdict (from a craftsmanship standpoint) for this movie in the end. I want the characters to feel perfectly balanced, the drama to feel symmetrical, and the whole world contained in the story to feel complete. I'm only writing this as another attempt at that exactly. And surely this is a bias; I'll make no bones about it. But try as I might through repeated viewings, blog posts, readings, and discussions to make these things happen, I have this nagging hunch that I'm never again going to experience the film the same way as the I did the first time, and that all successive impressions will be tempered by the knowledge that my initial judgment of the film's emotional resonance should probably be regarded as the most reliable.

So, overruling the possibility that I'd misjudged Rachel's significance to Harvey during my second viewing, I began to build the case against my first regarding Dent's worldview as unshakable. To this end, one scene stood in increased relief the second time: Dent's abduction in a police van of the Joker's henchman immediately following the funeral shootings. Seeing "Rachel Dawes" on the henchman's nametag sends Dent into overdrive, and his actions in the abandoned building show a man dangerously straddling a particularly steep line between professional and personal in his pursuit of what he believes to be an absolute good. The cause and extent of his temporary snap lend legitimacy to his vengeful feelings after Rachel's death, and thus a little much-needed gravitas to the climax. But the most relevant effect of the scene is to start laying the groundwork for Dent's feelings about chance by introducing the coin as arbiter of life and death.

For in this first encounter with Dent's blind rage, we see a character wholly different than he had been before the funeral shootings a few minutes prior. Instead of taking the guy into custody and accepting the transparency of the public justice system, Dent tries to find the Joker's whereabouts well outside the rules and accepts the possibility of taking a life. Instead of taking the time to carefully judge the situation, Dent almost kills a mental patient for not cooperating with his private interrogation. Instead of putting his trust in good men and building credit with those that have put their faith in him, Dent plays it "close to the chest" and excludes Gordon and Batman. Most poignant, though, is the revelation that a man so committed to culpability and justice would be able to put these convictions aside for a philosophical time-out, during which he flips a coin to determine life or death and legitimately believes that, although the murder weapon will have his fingerprints if fired, responsibility will belong to the Universe.

A lot of the movie's psychobabble passed me by the first time I saw it. The Joker's monologue during the climactic confrontation between he and Dent in Gotham General seemed quirky and well-acted, but by virtue of being the scene in which Dent appears to be changed permanently, it remained wanting for me, for reasons described already. The development of Harvey's philosophy toward chance is interesting though, because something I hadn't connected until after the second viewing was the correlation between this belief system of Dent's and Joker's feelings about chaos, especially as these two worldviews come to a head in the hospital scene. After all of the most horrific events possible have befallen Dent, he comes face to face with the man most sane humans would think unquestionably responsible for his newfound living hell. But a funny thing happens--given a loaded gun and more than a moment with no witnesses, Dent doesn't kill the Joker.

As we first see these tense moments, we have yet to witness Dent committing a murder, so his sparing the maniac may seem vaguely plausible. But weighed against his wanton disregard for life a short time later in the film, it's clear that either (a) the Joker is infinitely more charming a fellow than you and I give him credit for, (b) there are two major character changes in Dent--one before the loaded gun presses against the Joker's head and one immediately after, or (c) something's fishy in the writing. I say two major character changes because we know that both the early Dent and the Two-Face Dent would determine responsible parties and seek justice at all costs. We also know from Two-Face Dent's actions that his grasp of that responsibility becomes a bit unstable and biased towards violence at some point in the film. How else to explain his pursuit of Commissioner Gordon and Batman? And surely a man willing to kill these people would at least find a bullet to spare for the Joker's head...

Right?

Somehow (and this is one of Ledger's handful of uniquely masterful scenes, reminding me of Brando during the watching) the Joker convinces him that the men responsible are the ones he has trusted all along, simply by dint of their trying to bend such an unwieldy world to their own well-intentioned will. Convinces him that Joker's not responsible because he can't be responsible--just look at him! After all, he's just a madman. He's out there, inevitably, and he was only unleashed because of the changes in the world caused by these men's plans. He doesn't pursue the chaos; he is the chaos. So Dent puts some of the responsibility in his lap and gives him a coin flip.* But just one, and that's it. Afterward, the Joker walks free. In a dress, no less.

At various other points in the film, Dent indulges as many attempts as are necessary to overrule chance's merciful coin landings. When he abducts the insane henchman, he grants a second toss (and presumably would have kept going, if not for Batman's intervention). In the car with a mob boss, he gives the driver a flip after the boss is let off. With Commissioner Gordon's family, he appears poised to take someone's life in the family, no matter what the coin shows. And therein lies the source of my chagrin: with this kind of determination to discharge whatever his interpretation of justice is, why would Dent let the Joker, of all people, go free?

At best, Dent's decision (for it is just that--a decision) shows an inconsistency in his philosophy on chance, resulting from an underdeveloped character trait. The worst person gets one chance to die; everybody else gets several. At worst (and I was closer to this area after only the first viewing, before I'd put together the significance of the chance philosophy in my mind) it undermines the film's "main character" completely, depriving the entire story arc of legitimacy.

That said, with my bias admitted and hopefully adjusted for during this writing, I feel this movie has a strong story arc, well-developed and interesting themes, and is close to a flawless piece of craft. I'm not saying it's tied for "best movie ever made" by virtue of being perfect. I mean that, on a content (not style) level it's close to having no character deficiencies, story holes, or improperly neglected themes. A movie needs much more than flawlessness of craft to be a "great movie," but failing to come close fairly precludes a movie from real memorability, except as a piece of shock or something awesomely bad.

So after my first viewing, I was in too much of a daze from the pace, from the overwhelming quality of everything J-O-K-E-R, and from having just taken in this massive plot for the first time. All I could get was that the loss of Rachel and Dent's actions didn't add up, having presupposed his unshakability. After the second viewing, my verdict is that the loss of Rachel doesn't have to be enough, because Dent was always treading a fine ethical line. But I'm still unsatisfied (though less so), because I think his use of the coin is inconsistent, and that further development of his chance philosophy was necessary. Either (a) he kills the Joker, or (b) he gives everyone else the same equal opportunity he afforded the Joker. Hell; given what the Joker did, I'd even let it slide if he treated that guy a good deal worse than everybody else.

My prescription? Two movies. In The Dark Knight, Dent stays the "main character," only the movie ends with a man set up to be truly incorruptible being morally done in by the Joker and coming to terms with murder by killing that antagonist. In the end, he'd have been convinced by the Joker or some combination of events/characters that there were others responsible, and as the only man who would pursue justice for what he'd lost (of course, this might require strengthening the Rachel romance, as well), Dent himself would have to hunt them down and make them pay. All would receive the exact treatment the Joker did, in accordance with Dent's laws of chance, interpreted in the sternest manner. The unfolding of this pursuit would be the third movie, and it would present a world of thematic possibilities as to how Batman fits the Gotham City picture at the end of the trilogy.

Let me know how you feel. Is Dent's transformation believable? Any reasons in addition to the ones I've outlined above? I'd also encourage you to take a look at my Google Reader shared page; I know it might take some backscrolling, but I found a whole munitions den of quality criticism regarding this movie out there in the Internets between mid July and early August, and it's only helped me appreciate the film more. Please feel free to refer any that I may have missed this way.

In closing, I want to convey my amazement at how financially successful and intellectually stimulative this movie has been in its one month of life. At the risk of sounding too gushy, it's been a privilege to experience this phenomenon, and the whole essence of the thing has been palpable for me both times I've entered the theater to see the movie. Despite my problems above, after two viewings I think there's a whole lot to this movie beyond the Joker, and a whole lot to Harvey Dent's character. And even though the Nolan brothers curiously didn't ask me for input during the creation of their baby, I'm still big enough to say "I Believe in Harvey Dent."

***

*Bonus points to the all involved with the Joker character for one of the best-written and best-delivered lines in the last few years, "now you're talking," through which Joker's insane sadism and glee at the world's deepest depravity is made real with truly impressive economy. This is a terrifyingly beautiful moment in the film: the hard clash of two villainous worldviews, one of which represents brutally exacting justice and the other of which represents anarchic disregard for all of the things that make us human, tempered from a murderous flare-up only by mutual and all-surrendering deference to the respective philosophies of chance and chaos. Great, great scene.

Tropic Thunder

2008-08-17T02:00:00.002-04:00

Got back a little while ago from this one, and it feels like the kind of movie that warrants a few viewings before making a full impression. I limited my readings before seeing the picture to only a few, and I was aware of a few of the cameos beyond the topliners' names. I'd recommend against even doing that much yourself; these cameos are surprising and very enjoyable, and I noticed the delight on some of the other audience members' faces when they finally realized who they were watching in this movie full of cleverly-disguised Hollywood faces.

I'm not going to be writing in the same format as below very often because (1) it doesn't feel like the direction I want to take this blog, (2) this blog is barely a blog at all, given my reliability in writing it, and (3) something has to change in order to make this work. So, please forgive the somewhat stream-of-conscience first paragraph. They might all be more or less the same from here on out. Plus: look at the time.

Anyway this is a movie I'd recommend. It's a thinker of a movie; an actor's movie about actors and what he loves about his job. I suspect there's plenty to gain from repeated viewings, and I also suspect the screenplay is a bit cleverer than the film itself. But I don't want to give the impression you won't be laughing yourself stupid at least a few times in this one. Well worth the two hours of summer escapism.

Watch particularly for Les Grossman.

The Promotion

2008-06-21T17:18:00.005-04:00

I know it's been a horrendously long time, and for all you 0.7 loyal readers out there, an apology is in order. However, there is business to tend to, and that is a quick recommendation of "The Promotion," playing right now at the Angelika Film Center in New York and perhaps a few other locations around the country. It's a quirky little indie comedy that premiered at the South By Southwest Film Festival earlier this year and has been in theaters since early June.

The film stars Seann William Scott (yep, that's right) and John C. Reilly working together as assistant-manager-level supermarket lifers competing for a big promotion to full manager dangled by the imminent opening of a new store a few neighborhoods away. Both of these guys need this promotion. Doug Stauber (Scott) is married to sweet, beautiful Jen (Jenna Fischer), a woman for whom a lifetime commitment to a grocery manager might cause viewer skepticism. A nurse working in downtown Chicago under a young doctor transparently conniving to woo her and disgrace her husband at every chance, she probably had a selection of men from which to choose. All the more imperative, then, that Stauber advance quickly in his career and whisk her out of the somewhat depraved apartment complex in which they live and into a spacious new house.

Richard Welhner (Reilly) has his own plans, though. The film makes clear through measured character development that he's coming from an insecure background and fights an intense, daily struggle to retain the love and presence of his wife, Laurie (Lili Taylor), and his young daughter. Another assistant manager who arrives from the supermarket chain's Canadian sister company to share responsibilities with Stauber, there's something both a little off and a lot disarming about him from the very beginning.

Disarming, that is, only to us. To Stauber, the ease with which Welhner at first appears to interact with others and his seemingly instant likability raise every alarm bell possible. Suddenly, Stauber's "shoo-in" candidacy for the new location's managerial position, as well as his preemptively placed deposit on the aforementioned new house, are in very real jeopardy. And all the while, Jen's been led to believe her Doug already has the job.

This is where the film really takes off. Both of these guys are sympathetic, good people, and you're not supposed to be "rooting" against either of them. However, good people in desperate situations will do heinous things, and this movie explores the depths to which they'll sink in pursuit of something so completely necessary for both of them. Written and directed by Steve Conrad, screenwriter of "The Pursuit of Happyness" and "The Weather Man," this film traffics in extreme subtlety of gesture and language, letting verbal euphemism and the considerable talents of both Reilly and Stifler--err, Scott--accomplish what heavy-handed comedy directing never does. In this, the emotional stake and comedic charm compare for me with some of the best moments of Wes Anderson movies, and are completely without that director's critically panned touches of precious quirkiness. And, in all seriousness, Seann William Scott has made a believer of me, between his efforts in "The Promotion" and in last year's "Southland Tales," a movie I genuinely deplored, save a few acting performances.

Anyway, go watch this one. It'll never be a big name movie, but in quality it ranks up there with the last few years' output by Judd Apatow in terms of honesty, enjoyability, and laugh value.

John Adams

2008-03-22T14:46:00.000-04:00

The HBO miniseries, not the book. I know that the blog title might lead to this kind of confusion in some instances. Note below I've mostly limited myself to discussing movies. I'll feel free to occasionally dip into other media, and especially regard television as a separate form of delivering the medium of "movies"--film--but as a habit I don't read books quickly or frequently enough to merit so much of their review here. I'm also insecure in my ability to do justice to music reviews; I just knows what I likes. So, yes, mostly movies and TV.

Anyway I took some umbrage with a New York Times review of HBO's intensely advertised "John Adams" miniseries, starring Paul Giamatti in the title role and Laura Linney as his wife, Abigail:

New York Times "John Adams Review"

I consider myself no expert on our second President and his life. I'm a several-years owner of the McCullough biography, but due to my slow reading pace and recent yearlong completion of Ron Chernow's splendid "Alexander Hamilton," which should explain any enthusiasm for U.S. Revolutionary history that crops up in this article, I've yet to burrow into the Adams book.

That Hamilton book and this new miniseries are lending me some determination to pick up the McCullough book. One sticking point in biographies, however, is the development in writers of near-familial attachment to their subjects (probably necessary to spend so much time inside someone else's head), which sometimes translates into favoritism vis-a-vis the forces or characters acting against those subjects. Hamilton was a monumental figure--one responsible for much of the financial and balance-of-power systems undergirding our current American arrangement, and who arguably served in a co-presidency during the unfathomably critical first eight years of our Constitutional government. Consider him deserving of that favoritism. I don't mean to suggest Chernow falls prey to this trap; I consider his book to be one of the best biographies I've ever read. However, I will note that my viewpoint after only this one reading may be pro-Hamilton at the expense of his contemporaries. Why, though, favor one and not the others?

Fortunately for all of us, the Founding Fathers were a brilliant generation of political thinkers and Revolutionary leaders who all have legitimate claims to our lasting admiration. But they had a hard time stomaching one another. While today's leaders are busy throwing accusations of racism and sexism and campaigning to be seen most like Average Joe, the likes of Jefferson, Adams, Madison, and Hamilton fended off long-winded treatises from one another's personal pens that lobbed charges of scheming to sell the entire country to Britain or France, crippling and sometimes fatal character assassinations that aren't possible today, and the ever-present possibility of dueling by pistol.

So then, my knowledge of Adams is tinged with pro-Hamilton bias. And Hamilton and Adams didn't have the most cordial relations; during Adams's presidency, it is debatable whether Hamilton challenged the Chief Executive to a duel. What is not debatable is his publication of a lengthy pamphlet denouncing Adams's character and perceived lack of leadership in the runup to the 1800 election, which Republican Thomas Jefferson carried and which would provide Adams ample fuel for his burning resentment of Hamilton.

Perhaps some of Hamilton's claims were right. Adams was the last truly effective Federalist politician, overlapping the period during which the party's influence peaked under Washington and Hamilton and declined in the very beginning of the nineteenth century. Behind-the-scenes Federalist Party leadership (Hamilton at its head) was unable to parlay the gains made during the first administration into lasting control of the Executive Branch. Adams's bunker mentality and willingness to abandon Philadelphia for long-lasting retreats whenever he felt ambushed from all sides must have driven his party insane with anger. A Nixonian figure, indeed.

From what I understand of Adams, Paul Giamatti's performance in the first two episodes of this miniseries makes perfect sense and does nothing to detract from its overall quality. I won't even go so far as to vindicate this Times writer by saying Linney or anybody else is better here.

Neither, however, will I fall prey to needless exultation of this miniseries. I think it's too often that "event" pieces, whether in the cinema or on television, are hyped to the point that their participants become the putative recipients of the next season's major awards. And chances are that someone involved in "John Adams" will end up with something shiny. What is important here is that I am a person who is intellectually engaged, right now, in U.S. Revolutionary history. I enjoy its cast of characters and I'm anxious to see how the John Adams story plays out as depicted by HBO. Perhaps you're not like me; perhaps you'd find this subject matter boring. I'd encourage you to watch it, anyway, for an understanding of the time and place from which our country and political culture derive. But not because of stunning overall craft. My angle is that this is a well-made and very respectable production. It shouldn't disappoint if you're even remotely interested.

But we certainly shouldn't have people fingering Giamatti for an artistic impotence that simply does not exist.

Paranoid Park

2008-03-17T22:53:00.000-04:00

"Paranoid Park" does not play very conventionally. For starters, it's only 85 minutes long, which may lead some to question the fairness of charging movie theater prices for its admission (questions which deserve only the heartiest eyeroll). It also moves in a snakelike chronology, doubling back on itself to paint little splashes of light, one at a time, on events both critical and minor in the story. In addition, "Paranoid Park" might well be placed outside of the three-act structure class of movies that includes the vast majority of those made today.

"Paranoid Park" is about real teenagers and the awkwardness of growing up. Admittedly not so unique at first blush. One of its immediate charms, though, lies in its casting with genuine teenagers and not actors and actresses in their twenties pretending to be teens. This novel idea provides the advantage of showing babyfat-faced and convincingly uncomfortable actors who remain believable in their roles for the entire film. More specifically, these teens are skater kids in the Pacific Northwest. They're not trusted by adults, they're isolated from the other kids at school, and they probably haven't found the healthiest outlets for the anxiety they're experiencing at the transition to adulthood.

The film's main character, Alex, is an earnest but somewhat poker-faced little guy going through the standard milestones in the most puzzling time in his life thus far -- first sexual experiences, trying to make sense of a failed marriage in the home, pressure to prove oneself to peers not necessarily in the "right crowd," and the like. As we look back on moments like these in our lives through young Alex's eyes, it's all too easy to feel shifty sitting in the dark theater, remembering ill-advised words similar to Alex's coming out of our own mouths and wishing we could get back even one of those moments with the knowledge we had today.

The difference is that Alex may, in fact, be a monster. And unfortunately it's nearly impossible to even discuss the nature of what that entails without ruining this dialogue- and plot-minimalist little movie. But this self-imposed constraint is what propels "Paranoid Park" into the upper atmosphere: to be toyed with by Van Sant's careful use of shadow, camera movement (check out the frustrating-but-superb classroom interview scene between the detective and all of the school's skater kids), image composition, and soundtrack is to be marveled to an almost Hitchcockian effect. And none of this is to take away from the movie's plot or character; both are well more than merely serviceable, and both remain clouded to Van Sant's desired effect until his chosen moment. Narratively, this short piece flows almost like a poem composed of both short stanzas, containing dialogue and story movement, and choruses, which here provide interludes comprised of stirring images and soundtrack sequences.

As the true character and motives of Alex are revealed during "Paranoid Park," Van Sant makes many interesting points on growing up and feeling one's way in an overwhelming world where most other people don't appreciate just how intense a young person's journey can be. It also deals with being part of a misunderstood subculture on which a large amount of pressure to conform is placed. The film has its share of memorable small moments, including some well-advised editing decisions that lend a bit of relief to some of the more intense growing-up moments you'd expect to come across. Note in particular the cut right after an intimate scene involving Alex and his girlfriend, which provides absurd reflection on just how serious and yet disjointed this young man's life has become.

All in all, "Paranoid Park" is a well-made sensory reflection on youth and an enlightening way to exchange 85 minutes for some interesting food for thought.

28 Days Later

2008-03-09T16:42:00.000-04:00

Sometime last Spring, I went into a theater to see Danny Boyle's "Sunshine" not having heard much about it, other than a few vague recommendations from the bits and pieces of coverage I'd happened across (I try to deprive myself of reviews before seeing movies). On the way out of the theater, I felt exhilarated and excited for more movies in the near future; a feeling I generally only have after a select few movies, and which led me to recommend "Sunshine" to a great many people. Sure, the movie had its flaws. I strongly disagreed with the direction the movie took after its crew encountered a disabled spaceship, and would have preferred an internal solution to the story's problems that would have continued along the thread of exploring the conflicting psychologies of this deep-space crew and the constraints placed on them by a suicidal mission. However, there were also some great and overriding positives I took from "Sunshine," and it was at that point that I decided to see all of Danny Boyle's other movies.

Know then, that despite the stature of "28 Days Later" and other Boyle works, I came into this movie without background, knowing only that it involved some sort of zombie plot and took place 28 Days after an event involving those zombies. I'd also never seen "Trainspotting"; this was my first experience with the earliest-made Boyle movie I'd yet seen.

It's tough for me to write about this movie because I have always had a difficult time connecting to the zombie genre. After "Sunshine," I expected more of the gorgeous attention to color and almost sterile cinematography that I'd experienced in that movie. Perhaps this was a foolish assumption, given the contrasting settings and also the amount of time in Boyle's life that had transpired between making the two films. I did pick up on some inklings that this visual style was to come, such as the contrast between Cillian Murphy's patient gown and the surrounding world after his initial awakening. Also, I noticed some of the same unconventional soundtrack devices I remembered from "Sunshine." When Murphy is fending off a few baddies in pouring rain near a military checkpoint, his Rambo-esque guerrilla fighting style is accompanied by a few well-placed chimes that accent the fear of an invisible enemy he inspires in his foes.

Unfortunately, I didn't take much away from "28 Days Later" beyond these glimmers of style. The movie doesn't do anything wrong. It's a perfectly reasonable and well-made horror/action flick, with an ensemble cast anchored by Cillian Murphy's coma patient who awakens to a dead world and including a revolving door of teammates, none of whom seems to present either an absolute positive or negative in the manner that the Infected (zombies) do. The gang seeks elusive survival in a world of death and gloom, over which the inevitability of failure hangs at all times. Survival for what purpose and at what cost are themes that emerge consistently, and the movie does an admirable job of approaching these issues without preaching or becoming heavy-handed. But for this guy, the zombies' fast-forward running, their blood-red eyes, and the predominantly heavy metal soundtrack are just a little too jarring and distracting. I might be getting too old for this type of movie, no matter how much I respect its creative team and irrespective of my anticipation before seeing it.

I still fully intend to see the other Boyle movies, but my expectations have been tempered a bit by this one.

Be Kind Rewind

2008-03-03T21:39:00.000-05:00

I don't imagine I'd be the only person to confess I had been looking forward to Be Kind Rewind since I first heard about it sometime in Fall of 2007. The main draws for me were the apparently Kaufman-esque story and writer/director Michael Gondry. I also expected a neat package of inside jokes for film snobs; almost a guilt-free spoof pic. Maybe "Date Movie" for those with an IQ over 40. I found Gondry excellent as co-writer/director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and still in right respectable form (even if it wasn't my absolute favorite form) for The Science of Sleep. Furthermore, I liked the combination of the antic and anal-retentive Jack Black (about whom I can say nothing bad, strike Nacho Libre from the record) and emerging straight man Mos Def. From all of this, I expected a lighthearted and funny pic with a mellow buddy vibe, delivering ample reward for the minimal intellectual and emotional commitment I anticipated it would seek.

On my way into the movie over delicious hot ramen noodles on a frigid and precipitating night, I amped up a little bit of hype in my friends, who had decided not to read much about the movie on their way in, preferring instead to be surprised. Of course, I didn't tell them the plot, but told them I expected something sweet and funny; a nice, relaxing movie experience that I was greatly looking forward to. I received some head shakes for using the word "sweet" in that context, and also more head shakes for being me--I'm known for getting a little carried away into hyperbole when I'm trying to justify my tastes. I did, too.

Definitely get some ramen when you have a chance, though.

Anyway, the movie takes place in a beautiful setting in just about the last place one might expect to find it: Passaic, NJ (my profoooouuuuund apologies to those who call it home). Set in a very post-industrial area of a state with some real post-industrial decay, the Passaic, NJ of my upbringing (in another area of northern NJ, but close enough that I knew the area and had some exposure to it through my father's work) was a place that didn't seem likely to offer much in the way of charm or hospitality. And perhaps I'm wrong; I did have a pretty insulated youth. In any case, Gondry's film has squeezed a vibrant community atmosphere out of Passaic, filming entirely on a single block teeming with polite citizens of all stripes, and showcasing his setting in almost exclusively bright, blue-sky daytime. The old folks have an appreciation for and connection with the history and culture of their town. The young are enjoying their lives without harming anybody else. Everybody is prepared to engage a community that's something greater than just the sum total of its component groups.

On this block in a dilapidated corner building sits a small, decades-old, exclusively-VHS video store called Be Kind Rewind Video. In the wake of some collaboration by town revitalization personnel and a residential condominium developer, the building has been marked for demolition. To make matters worse, the competition is directly across the street, in the form of a West Coast Video offering popular DVD's and an impressive projection preview screen--admittedly the wave of the future, but perhaps of a future without a soul. Nonetheless, without exactly thriving, Be Kind Rewind has thus far managed to stay open and cater to a sampling of the townsfolk not at all confined to any particular demographic.

One day, storeowner Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover) informs his second-in-command Mike (Mos Def), with whom he shares an ambiguous father-son relationship, that he's leaving town for a brief vacation. In reality, he'll be hanging around the area using the time to research West Coast Video and plan to defeat his building's demolition the only way he sees possible--disconnect with his history, switch to DVD, and make he money he needs to save his store. Just before leaving, he apprises Mike of the single rule that will constrain his temporary stewardship of Be Kind Rewind Video: Keep Jerry Out.

Jerry, played by Jack Black, is an everyday occupant of the store and best friend to Mike. He's the kind of guy who would fit right into previous Jack Black roles such as in High Fidelity, and whose presence probably isn't the best sort of marketing gimmick for a relationship-based small business like Be Kind Rewind. Mr. Fletcher's wariness is proven prescient when Jerry decides his power bills are too expensive and proceeds to sabotage the power station next to the trailer he calls home, setting in motion an electrical accident which leaves him magnetized for a few days. If only Mike had managed to keep him out, Jerry's presence alone while following one of the store's customers around, providing running criticism on her choices and opinions, wouldn't have accounted for the erasure of the store's entire stock of videocassettes.

Fortunately, once this mess transpires, Mike and Jerry have some time to plan their way out, as the only customer they have to service in the immediate aftermath of the catastrophe is an older woman not well-versed in her particular selection: Ghostbusters. When she asks for the video, Mike and Jerry coyly inform her that it will be ready at the end of the day. The second she leaves, they frantically set about producing their own version of the classic comedy, believing her lack of intimacy with its subject matter will grant them enough creative license to get away with their mismanagement of the store. Chasing librarians and housecats using raygun beam-shaped streamers of Christmas garland suspended from long fishing rods, Mike and Jerry film their exploits at the public library over the course of the afternoon and manage to deliver a piping-hot final product to their customer in the nick of time. The relief of the film's completion is short-lived, however, and other customers invariably begin to arrive looking for different movies.

The game lasts until Mike and Jerry can no longer rely on the vanilla tastes of a less-informed customer base. Eventually, people with prior exposure to the films they're supposed to be renting catch onto what's been happening. Jerry and Mike try to explain their product away as having been imported from Sweden. However, when it turns out their twenty-minute spoof films are actually being enjoyed, the fledgling filmmakers embrace the chance to make a movie for every one of their empty videocassette boxes and bring unparalleled success to Be Kind Rewind Video. The lame original excuse that these mysteriously short and unfamiliar films were imported from Sweden gives way to the more intentional categorization of Jerry and Mike's process of"Swedeing" classic films. When Mr. Fletcher returns and explains his financial and building problem to Mike and Jerry, they focus their efforts on raising enough money to save the videostore. With their films getting progressively better, word of mouth begins to spread, and soon enough, the Sweded movies develop a reputation even outside of Passaic, NJ.

And so, what begins as a desperate attempt to keep the video store afloat while churning out product sufficient to meet demand transforms into an cleverly-filmed exploration of creativity's way of taking root in the mind and transforming the individual into artist, and the community into both participant in and consumer of that art. In every successive endeavor, Mike and Jerry become cleverer with their filming techniques, invent more story of their own, include more fellow townsfolk in their casts and production crews, and make a more rewarding piece of art. Eventually, they are faced with the daunting task of creating their own movie from scratch instead of spoofing another title, but by that point, both we as audience and they as creators are hard-pressed to tell the difference, and are prepared to make this final jump.

I was pleased by Be Kind Rewind to roughly the same extent that I had been by the recent great Judd Apatow comedies, Knocked Up and Superbad. All of these movies have interesting plot concepts and present characters with whom spending two hours is like time with old friends, but they also have a deep emotional core and touch on some worthwhile and thought-provoking themes. Here, aside from ideas about the nature of creation and art, the film explores the meanings of shared culture and community, the value of preserving history, and, of course, the buddy relationship, itself. All the while, the movie kept me laughing and had some especially deep nods to film snobbery and Hobbesian philosophy, among others I probably missed.

I won't go out on a limb and say this is a must-see while it's in a theater, especially while No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood are still out there, but I will say that Be Kind Rewind is made in bright, beautiful color that will immerse you happily in its jovial vibes for its entire one hundred minute duration, should you decide to see it there. As I expected, for what it asks, this movie pays back truckloads of heart and comedy. Keep a special eye out for the upside-down mountain literacy teachings and the dazzling tracking shot showing Mike and Jerry's first selection of films to Swede.

The Iron Giant

2008-02-26T22:31:00.001-05:00

Couch-ridden with a cold/flu situation for a day and getting re-acquainted with my on-demand cable package (available courtesy of a roommate with a penchant for vast channel selection), I settled on HBO and began the process of selection. Series first: was there anything I hadn't seen yet? I was done with the Sopranos and Extras, didn't want to start anything new (and there wasn't a single Episode One available--an egregious offense), and I'd seen all of the available selection of Curb. With the series option tapped, I eyed the menu for movies, but thought I'd better hold off on those for later. Surely there'd be a quicker diversion in the section for specials: sports shows, documentaries, fights, softcore porn...

...And Bob Saget doing an hour of shock-and-awe standup comedy pretty much encapsulated in his one mid-act line to an older gentleman sitting dead center in the audience: "This guy just can't help but think, 'What in the hell's happened to Danny Tanner?'"

See if you can guess which diversion I decided to indulge first. Anyway, when I was done and still had part of the day to fritter away, I wanted something meatier and had come across praising references to Brad Bird's "The Iron Giant" a fair number of times in the past few weeks. It's a classically animated (read: not 3D-computerized) movie of one and a half hours, made in 1999. Fortunately, it was in my selection of on-demand movies yesterday afternoon.

For a movie made in 1999, or even within the past twenty years, it feels more like one from either 1960 or 2045; I can't decide. It's not your quintessential children's film, which one might expect from this director and in this medium. Sure, it's got a wide-eyed kid's point of view on the world, and the world is, for the most part, the small domain between a house in the country, a great big forest somewhere out in the back (which encompasses a glowing blue power station of some sort), and the small town of Rockwell, Maine on the rocky coastline. But some of those intangible kid-movie guarantees also lie just out of reach in this world. Nonetheless, the main boy, Hogarth Hughes, leads a pretty humdrum life looking for pets that he hopes will assuage his curiosity and loneliness (also onset by the unaddressed lack of a father), but that mostly just end up annoying his mother and destroying her place of business, a local diner.

It's 1957, at the height of Cold War hysteria, and one night a tentacled satellite probe ends up crashing into the ocean near Rockwell, giving rise to the film's title character. He's got to be a hundred feet tall and he appears to be harmless, but he's uncontrollable, seemingly indestructible, makes a ton of noise when he moves, and eats metal that he tends to find by biting cars in half lengthwise while their owners aren't looking. All the reason necessary for the paranoia that sets in among the townsfolk about their mysterious and unseen guest, and for the career-advancing instincts aroused in a government agent entrusted with safeguarding America's weapons supremacy who thrusts himself more than dutifully onto the giant's trail.

Through a pure act of open-mindedness and magnanimity, Hogarth finds himself the Giant's lone human connection on Earth. The two then begin a relationship with only the most infantile of communications possible between them at first, but with a lot of childlike acceptance and the sustaining metal and shelter (not to mention convenient father figure material for Hogarth) provided by a local scrapyard owner-cum-artist, their connection evolves throughout the course of the movie into a deep, meaningful friendship.

Given the size of this Giant and his awesome potential for inadvertently causing damage, the film touches on death, killing, the difference between them, and what it means to be a causal factor in either. It also spends ample time, by way of the staggering contrast between its characters, on the very meaning of humanity. It's been called heavy-handed by some, and I can see that when compared to all movies, but cast in its role as an animated family film, I find it fascinating, conversationally stimulating, and even subtle in its affecting certain other contexts.

Which is where the "not your quintessential children's film" part of my review comes into play. The Iron Giant isn't a movie of 1999. By working so well to convey Cold War paranoia and a state machine that will stop at nothing to maintain a status quo favoring its own survival, the movie actually ends up pretty well capturing our post-9/11 fear of the unknown. For this Giant, we must admit, is in all likelihood a massive and efficient killing machine, loaded with the most terrifying weapons of mass destruction imaginable. Its existence as a friendly sentient being becomes the curiosity of the film. Perhaps it's caused by a small but well-placed bump on the head? Maybe the weapons activation was only put on hold for a time by whomever/whatever sent the machine to Earth? In any case, I walked away from this movie feeling that the Giant's reason for being, deep down, was to cause damage, but that something the film leaves undefined had sufficiently obscured this sinister purpose to the point of rendering the machine benevolent and even human.

The jaw-dropping destructive power of this machine and the fear it incites, as well as the hopelessness of the film's citizens in dealing with the weapons brought on both by the Giant and other forces in the film, anticipate non-animated and very adult filmmaking in our own decade. The greater curiosity in The Iron Giant for me lies in its ending (spoiler alerts!). It is not among our strongest virtues as Americans to recognize and come to terms with power greater than our own living among us. Yet the frailty of life and the seemingly instant capacity of the world and its people to end that life are never convincingly placed at safe distance from the characters in this movie. Likewise, the single most destructive, most unpredictable, and least understood force in the movie--the Giant--is something whose true nature, debatable at best, is never really altered (in a story arc sense) by the good, small-town Americans around him. The fact that he remains out there, somewhere, and the prospect that some of the more disturbing sequences of the film might very well be repeated sometime in the future, make for an unusually dark family movie, one which I suspect will yield very different emotions for children and for adults. For despite the characters' lack of accents, the film feels less morally concrete and American than it does vaguely existential and from another land.

I was extremely impressed by this movie. Anything this succinct and resonant, so simple and eloquent and yet so mature, always draws my greatest admiration. I've had a soft spot for this type of art since my first encounter with "Animal Farm." To ice this cake, the movie is aesthetically murky and satisfying, fitting its mood and recalling the best of classical animation ever offered by Disney (though this one's from Warners). For an engaging look at a darker side of the world from the mind behind Ratatouille and The Incredibles, go get yourself a copy.

The Lives of Others

2008-02-18T23:09:00.001-05:00

As you can see:
1) I have little discipline with this blog, and
2) I evince little regard for the release dates of the media about which I write.

The Lives of Others is a stunning movie in so many ways, and I feel utterly incapable of doing it justice in my writing. For starters, I know nothing about any of its stars or the creative team behind it. It's a German film and it's possible that my untrained eye is missing a German Johnny Depp and Nicole Kidman in its midst (and all of the implications that such star power would provide a movie). Also, I'm entirely removed from the movie's sociopolitical context and wish I'd come at it having had more exposure to the pertinent history and culture.

As with most movies I enjoy lately, I find myself praising the aesthetics before I can dig deeper and articulate the other bits I like. The Lives of Others has a sweeping, emotional score, and is given cinematography in a worn-in, comforting manner befitting the hardwood floors, old buildings, and antique machinery on which it so often lingers. Just the way the score and imagery in the very final frame of the movie converge might itself be worth a separate post.

However, it is of course the story and characters here (and in every movie) that set the film apart from others. In the East Germany of the Cold War ("German Democratic Republic," or "GDR"), there is a rigid state security apparatus (the "Stasi") that oppresses and, according to star Ulrich Muhe, takes the "dignity" of its citizens so as to ensure order and its own survival. The lengths to which the Stasi will go to accomplish this vary depending on the nature of the threat. Given that this film concerns itself with published dissident writers in underground intellectual East Berlin, one might approach it expecting the most pronounced of Orwellian tactics.

And one wouldn't be disappointed. The prime concern here is Georg Dreyman, a reliable writer from the Communist Party's point of view, who at the start of the film makes moving work and will not rock the political boat, despite the crumbling personal lives and careers of his close friends who dare thwart the State. At some point, his threshold for bearing the consequent pain of his loved ones is surpassed, and he begins to collaborate with the dissident movement.

Fortuitously for his Stasi "bodyguard" (a term the writers use in faux-affection to describe their state security tails), regime suspicion of Dreyman first warrants a sophisticated eavesdropping operation only just before his decision. Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler, or "HGV" (Muhe) plays the stone-faced soldier, capable of the coldest analysis in rooting out and convicting those who would betray his motherland. And until he begins to personally enter the beautiful mind and life of Dreyman, he remains largely an unempathetic fixture on the screen, refusing to flinch at even the State's harshest measures of imposing its will on its people. His saving grace at this point, and the part of his character which lends believability to his particularly broad arc, is his complete dedication to the purity of his responsibility and his infallible integrity.

The lives of others determine the actions of these characters and set their stories in motion, as they always do to all people. Here, the outcome feels inevitable, given the seemingly insurmountable State, which is a truly frightening and heartless force in this movie, and which is peopled by some inarguably evil men. However, the greater good at stake for these characters becomes overwhelming even in the face of some terrifying fates, and we are rewarded for the triumph of some type of nobility and dignity at the end of the day.

This movie presents an exhilarating study in character transformation and a penetrating investigation of one of the twentieth century's many egregious wrongs. Go rent it.

There Will Be Blood

2008-01-13T22:05:00.000-05:00

"There Will Be Blood" starts with a screeching crash of strings set against a dry, massive, foreboding landscape of red dust and rounded mountains. There's tumbleweed, acrid heat, ominous isolation, and a man swinging a pickaxe by himself at the bottom of a wooden ladder in a silver mine. From there, this flawless movie comfortably and lingeringly winds its way around the dark corridors of a genuinely bad human soul and the torment it both receives from and returns to an utterly caustic world.

In empathetically committing to film a character of such dubious moral compass as Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson has accomplished something truly special. Plainview is an oil man, as he makes abundantly clear to different sets of unwitting townsfolk on several occasions. Having cut his teeth on the land working in holes, chipping away at stone for sustenance (and surviving a few injuries handed to him by a particularly resistant Nature), he begins to understand the value of oil and manages to scrabble together the capital to install himself atop his very own company and master the art of pumping the stuff from the earth. He gets big, but big is never big enough when there's a Standard out there, and the movie begins to make clear to us just how important it is for his business to continually grow.

In doing so, the movie effectively draws us into the psychosis that sets in for Plainview: there simply is no room in his life for anything other than the ruthless competition he feels necessitated by his work. Through careful, virtuoso directorship and riding a delicious performance from Day-Lewis (things that have become routine in the work of both of these men), Anderson manages to focus our attention on the most frightening aspects of business, on mastery of one's craft, on coldly managing a sinister machine with very human parts, and on the hard reality that without growth, there is only death. This all despite the human suffering that envelops Plainview's life--a human suffering to which we are surely privy and sympathetic, but which nonetheless fails to distract us. This, I suspect, is truly allowing us to see this world through its main character's eyes.

I mean neither to pardon the misanthropy on continual display in this film, nor to deny the gravely disturbing nature of spending over two and a half hours in Plainview's head. After all, Plainview lays catastrophic waste to human beings and their communities all in the name of his bottom line, even when he obviously has more than enough for anything he could believably want. His austere lifestyle and total lack of family and friends for which he must provide only draw this contrast between his means to ends and his needs into starker relief.

This film presents a world of resources--both human and mineral--made for the pilfering by any spirits entrepreneurial and clever enough to have their way in it. It is a world without trust and without compassion, and it is a harsh place that seems to burn those few gifted (but necessarily wayward) spirits like acid from cradle to grave. There are two types of people in this world--the users and the used. Flowing from the original realization that growth is necessary to survival, Plainview becomes an expansion-obsessed user. Everything that would deny or inhibit that expansion becomes nothing more than an obstacle. Two people representing the closest thing to family he will ever attain simply outlive their emotional and material usefulness to him and are dealt with in a manner which might be expected toward the harshest of betrayers. Women are non-existent; perhaps his lessons and means of overcoming have taken place before the film's first frame. The truly big Standard Oil businessmen with which Plainview cannot compete represent the one thing that he cannot control and dominate, and the rage it fuels in him is primal and terrifying.

The church (which takes on a whole life of its own in this movie, providing a theme based on the spiritual and capitalist duality of the American economy and its history) becomes to Plainview a vehicle of the mollification of the masses. No scruple is too sacrosanct to be placed at its feet in the name of buying off some material exploitation right. Plainview's relationship with a similarly exploitative church becomes a nice, little box, in which he stores his little hatreds, piece by piece and day by day. The brow-raising ending of the movie is only proportional in Plainview's mind to the contents of this box.

In every single case, the camera spends just the right amount of time on the faces it should. Witness the exchange between Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) and a man who may be his brother, both in perfect profile lit only by campfire, in a situation where neither Plainview nor the audience is really certain of what's going on, but which feels suspicious enough that hamhanded cuts would do great injustice to the character development at hand. I especially enjoyed the camera direction of the first true oil boom, a critical scene in the film in which two major plot points occur simultaneously and the camera manages to remain focused on both, never allowing the foreboding nature of the Large, Impersonal, and Inevitable to vacate the same realm as the Small, Heartrending, and Urgent--one of many accurate and astonishing glimpses into the soul of Plainview.

The score, provided by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, is sensational beyond description. It recalls the great scores of classic Hitchcock movies and should be directly compared with the score in the Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men, a film with which this has been released almost simultaneously and with which it is competing in the most prestigious of the 2008 Academy Awards. In both movies, the atmospherics of the worlds created by these writer-directors are conveyed unforgettably and with stunning technical savvy. A note to the ADD generation regarding the meaningless, disparate soundtracks that provide token emotional resonance and nauseating, pluripotent reverse cymbal effects to their media -- less can be more. Pay attention and don't let this art form die.

One final thing. When a piece of art strives to be this ambitious and even comes close to succeeding, it must be rewarded. It is too easy in the American Cinema, given budgetary constraints and production needs, to lowball the production scope of a movie during its creation, especially for a director that can be viewed as an art-house crossover. On another wavelength, given the material studios are willing to make and audiences are willing to confront, it is also more commonplace to develop grandiose themes in small and personal gestures. "There Will Be Blood" wastes no time with these concerns. It wants to have the cake and eat it too, directly confronting the very nature of what makes America America, and beckoning us to spend time deep on the inside of a callous monster who personifies perhaps our greatest sociopolitical shortcomings as a nation. The world, itself, is awesome, immense, and inhuman. We should be repulsed by this movie in every way, but its virtuoso craftsmanship proves impossibly magnetic. In everything it attempts, this film hits a grand slam.

And as for that title? Future tense, reader. Future tense.

15 Step

2008-01-07T00:52:00.001-05:00

The first song on Radiohead's "In Rainbows," in listeners' hands now for about two months, is so jittery and motion-forcing that, even at the risk of sounding dated, I couldn't resist making it the subject of my first post. I've compulsively been listening to it all this past weekend on my train trips out of the city and back. It's the closest thing to Kano's "Grab-and-Shake" move from old school Mortal Kombat that exists in the rock and roll world. Go ahead and listen; I defy you to sit still.