Moore nonsense

[Michael] Moore described good movies as a bridge across the political divide for people "tired of the hate, tired of the yelling, tired of ... the screamfests, the talk radio."

So people tired of yelling, hate and talk-radio style partisan hystrionics turn to Moore - the left's most renowned hyperventilator? That's utterly farcical - as wild and hypocritical an accusation as if Jerry Springer claimed people turn to daytime talk shows to avoid the peurile, circus-freak antics of daily newspapers. Keep on bloviating, Moore.

Commander Mom

Geena Davis is going to play at being President. She’ll get to suit up in fancy, high-powered duds and stomp the (recreated sets of) the White House, delivering pithy responses to all those pesky men who get their Depends in a bunch over the thought of our nation being led by a woman. Through it all, she’ll have to deal with the pressures of Capitol Hill and school age kids, epitomizing the struggle of free-world leading moms everywhere. Or whatever. And for some reason, ABC thinks this will make great television. They’re calling the show Commander in Chief.

Now, far be it for me to suggest that it won’t be a ratings cow. Screenwriter and NRO Corner contributor Warren Bell said ABC President Steve McPherson picked up the show almost immedietly after seeing the pilot – and unheard of step that he first took after seeing last year’s Desperate Housewives. There is a strong likelihood that the television-viewing masses that can’t get enough slick-soap cattiness from Teri Hatcher and her crew will devour another serving of pandering girl power.

The show is already drawing criticism for both its presumed anti-conservative stance and its regressive attitude towards women. NRO is rightfully wary of its almost-certainly liberal politics, which, despite the fact that Davis plays an Independent who gains her seat after her Republican President dies, will almost certainly blossom into third way centrist-progressive speechifying.

Over at The New Republic, Michelle Cottle waxes eloquent on a subject only briefly tackled at NRO – the show’s focus on gender. Cottle takes the show to task for being unable to accept the idea that a female President would be able to be just a President. Instead, they’re going to present her as a White House soccer mom. Here’s what Cottle says:

The cutesy, family focus of the show should set her teeth to grinding. As "Commander-in-Chief"'s creator, Rod Lurie, explained to critics this week, rather than fixate on the "arcane" political issues tackled by NBC's "West Wing," his show will address more "East Wing" issues involving the president's family life. Examples cited by The Washington Post include "how to get the First Kids to school, how to take the First Kids trick-or-treating, how state dinners are run from A to Z." Because "if history has taught us anything," Lurie reminded the critics, it's that, regardless of women's professional gains in recent decades, it's still almost always Mommy rather than Daddy who assumes the role of primary caregiver.

Gag. What a grotesque exercise in gender clichés. As president of his TV universe, Martin Sheen's Josiah Bartlett gets to strut around dealing with terrorism, bureaucratic infighting, and budget battles. President Geena, by contrast, will apparently show us how hard it is to keep your man from feeling threatened by your hot, young Secret Service contingent, not to mention deal with the nerve-jangling diplomatic implications of serving raspberry sorbet versus pumpkin flan to the King of Jordan. If we're really lucky, during sweeps week maybe Martha Stewart will pop by to orchestrate a quickie makeover of the Lincoln Bedroom.

Cottle’s comments are dead on target, a firm reminder that television, despite its newfound complexity, isn’t all that far from the days of separate beds and housewives vacuuming in dresses and pearls.

On a less political level, I can’t see how a show like this will have any impact in the wake of The West Wing. Even in its reduced state, the show is still a dramatic wonder, an exciting, funny, human and surprisingly complex look at the machinations of political power. While I rarely agree with the show’s politics, it never makes any attempt to hide its leftward leanings, unlike CIC, which is cynically hiding under the guise of portraying an independent. Not only is the Independent tag a cheap political façade, it’s also fairly inept as a dramatic device: it pretends you can make a show about the Presidency that doesn’t address partisan politics. I’m sure the show’s creators think it’s a way to be above the fray; more likely, it’s just a way to pretend the fray doesn’t exist.

With series creator and master-clever-maestro Aaron Sorkin rumored to return to The West Wing for its final episodes, Commander in Chief will almost certainly be left in TWW's Brechtian, Epic Theatre dust on both a creative and dramatic level. And while the political controversies rage, there will almost certainly be one thing everyone can agree on: no matter how dimwitted it is, the show won't be as bad as Cutthroat Island.

Armond White's continuing mission to seek out new forms of hyperbole, to boldly go where no critic has gone before...

UN Spacy has some choice words for the fiery critic's 2004 year in review list, and has dedicated himself to dissecting every review the man publishes. If outrage is what White wants, he's getting it in spades.

Looks like we'll be getting 'Bad Boys III' any time now...

Michael Bay has his first box office flop, with The Island, which cost $122 million to produce but only took in $12 million in its opening weekend. I liked the film (my review will be up at Relevant tomorrow), even if it was just more of the same badass, macho theatrics and epic destruction. But hey, badass paramilitary dudes and exploding vehicles are not something I usually complain about. If explosions are an art form, then Michael Bay is the foremost practitioner. He's an auter of bombast and mayhem, and I'm an unabashed fan of his movies.

Box Office Mojo tries to explain the film's failure by its lacklustre advertising, which gave away key plot points and sold the action over the characters. The spoiler trailers are unforgivable, but they're, unfortunately, an expected part of most big budget films these days (War of the Worlds being a notable exception). And while I hate the trend, it's understandable. People are stupid, and if a studio spends $100 million plus on a film, there's a pretty strong incentive not to sell it with advertising that could be mistaken as confusing.

My feeling is that the film was sold as just another generic action film, and it didn't include one of the things that makes Bay's previous work so popular - his rowdy, outrageous sense of humor. The Bad Boys movies and The Rock didn't just work because of the bullets and fireballs - all three were relatively quick-witted in a bawdy, crotch-scratching, locker room sort of way. Armegeddon misfired as an action film, but the buddy comedy coming from its large, mostly excellent* cast was top notch. Audiences can get high-velocity destruction any week of the summer, but Bay's humor, crude as it may be, greases the rails rather effectively for his mayhem. The Island had a few moments, but played it mostly straight, and that may have been what turned people away.

Still, his next film is virtually gauranteed to be a hit, and I can't think of a shallow popcorn chewer that I'm looking forward to any more. I was born in 1981, and if you are also a child of the 80s, or even remember children from the 80s, you'll understand when I sign off with just four words: live action Transformers movie.

*Meaning, of course, everyone but Affleck and Tyler.

Reverse Shot hits its mark

One of the consumate Armond White haters over at Reverse Shot takes on the Village Voice this week, ladling on a 1000 calorie serving of snark:

I don't want to go on too much about Dennis Lim's panting over Gus Vant Sant's new floater Last Days or Michael Atkinson's overthinking of 9 Songs' lifeless provocation, other than to say that write-ups like this only facilitate the production of anemic, fatuously "difficult" arthouse fare and allow idea-barren twat directors to coast on moddish minimalism, confident that there will always be plenty of dithery, quasi-intellectual writers to fill in their blanks with genius. Sure, Van Sant's new movies "waft," but so do dog farts.

This week's real prize winner, however: In the time-honored tradition of scraping the bottom of the rolodex for 15th tier critics when it comes time to review less-than-prestigious horror titles, we get "Benjamin Strong" waxing retarded on Devil's Rejects. First sentence: "If in retrospect musician Rob Zombie's 2003 directorial debut, House of 1,000 Corpses , reads like a yee-hawing harbinger of last fall's red-state triumph, then its sequel, The Devil's Rejects , is the smug Republican victory lap." "If in retrospect"... But it doesn't. At all. Nice blind stab at "relevance" Ben; looking forward to hearing you place 'Dukes of Hazzard' in a "in the wake of 9/11" context. Jackass.

I've never been much for math, but...

The New York Times story today on the readiness of Iraqi units was, shall we say, true, but inaccurate. It is true that only 3 out of roughly 100 Iraqi units are at Level 1 of readiness, on the scale of 1 to 4, with 1 the highest. [emphasis added]

OK. Maybe I'm just snooty, arrogant and hypercritical. Wait, I'm definitely all three, but that's not important. But honestly - what kind of numbering system uses a 1 to 4 scale and makes 1 higher? Doesn't that just completely defeat common sense? Maybe this is from the same guy who keeps saying we have enough troops deployed. Sheesh!

Personal log: Thursday afternoon

I'm feeling kind of spaced out and aimless, like I've drifted into some weird tumultuous outworld... an extra-dimensional malaise. I want Earth to make contact with intelligent, friendly aliens. Because it will bring us together for a minute until we fight about it. And because it would be a really good news story to follow for at least a couple of years. I'd be sitting at home thinking, "What to do, what to do..." and then I'd remember. Aliens! Here! Check it out!

And by within a few months there'd be an alien reality show, even if we couldn't communicate with them. It would probably be on Bravo, and they'd have annoying commercials. They could have Queer Eye for the Alien, too. Do aliens have fashion? We always assume that they'll be like us, or similar anyway. You know, except maybe a diferent color and with slime or scales or some other unearthly acoutrement. Also, I wonder if they'd actually be green. That would be weird. To see green things come out of a spaceship on CNN. And then I'd eat more Goldfish and go back to reading about movies, which would have to rethink the whole alien invasion thing.

Coldplay sucks redux

And he even manages to work in a Dashboard Confessional diss...

Still, I think the lone commenter sums it up with utter precision, if somewhat crudely.

Coldplay fucking sucks. And so does Radiohead, you fucking sycophantic hippies.

Ah, the simplicity of the internet flame. It's kind of beautiful, really.

PS - What's really funny is that I haven't even heard X&Y.

Kevin Smith's take on 'The Passion'

I'd much rather have seen this movie:

He said he would have started with the crucifixion instead of leading up to it the whole movie... But as Jesus was on the cross, two ninjas would sweep in and kill all the centurians around and then one of them would have climbed up onto Jesus' cross with a hammer. While pulling out the nails Jesus would be saying, "But I'm supposed to die..." and the Ninja responds by throwing him over his shoulder and, descending the cross, would say "Not on my watch!"

The two ninjas would, of course, turn out to be Jay and Silent Bob.

Bush nominates a jock!

This just in: John Roberts is prepared for lots of blocking - he was CAPTAIN OF HIS HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL TEAM!

This way, when lawyers start throwing briefs at his head, he'll at least be able to catch them.

Judicial drinking

Tonight's cable news network drinking game is based on the words "Gang of 14" and "abortion." I thought about picking "judge," but I'd like to live through it. Bottoms up!

Armond White gives us a mid year reckoning

The film critic world’s favorite grousing, curmudgeonly academic, Armond White, recently posted his mid year roundup, titled with the appropriately aggressive moniker "Midyear Reckoning." White is a critic who always seems to have his hand on over his holster, itching for a showdown, and this is no exception. As usual, White’s taste is all over the spectrum, alternating between brilliant political readings of underappreciated films and cranky dismissals of anything he thinks reeks of hipster sass.

He starts by snidely dissing Brian Grazer’s pathetic, apoplectic response to Cinderella Man’s box-office failure, mocking Grazer for saying “I feel like crying” as his treacly weeper bombed amidst an onslaught of summer bombast. White, correctly, is incensed at Grazer’s idea that filmgoers are somehow responsible for the fact that movies now come in seasons. Just as we expect snow in winter and sun in summer, we concurrently expect self-serious epics and films imprinted stamped with a seal of Bold, Serious Import in the Christmas months and jubilant (and juvenile), silly explosion-fests when it’s hot. Grazer suggesting that these arbitrary seasons are the creation of anything other than Hollywood and its increasingly standardized release schedules, which ghettoize films into strict, seasonal genres, is absurd.

White then goes on to praise Kung-Fu Hustle and War of the Worlds, singling out War as especially essential.

“It’s an apocalyptic vision based in how we live today, amidst worldwide trauma, but every astonishing sequence demonstrates the hard psychic work of civilized man forced to rehumanize himself. This challenge to good-time filmgoers' expectations is the latest example of the 70s modernist urge to revise genre in order to face life more knowledgably.”

While the critical consensus on this film was generally favorable, White is one of the few to understand its emotional significance as well as its importance to the sci-fi genre. War of the Worlds is, of course, a smarter retelling of the standard invasion story, but it’s also much more. It’s an important step towards serious, thoughtful science fiction filmmaking that allows for exhilarating action (and truly, it’s some of Spielberg’s best) that’s not confined to the goofy, serio-comic ride atmosphere of movies like Independence Day. Even further, Spielberg invests the film with an unflinching emotional core, avoiding his tendency for gushingly sentimental paternalism until the film’s final frames. It’s not just smart science fiction, it’s deeply human and politically thoughtful too, stamped with the approval of one of Hollywood’s most respected directors – a real step up for a B-movie genre typically content with shallow stories and cheap thrills.

But then White pulls his usual shtick and stands up for a totally worthless film – in this case, the dog Sahara. I’ve already written about that incoherent mess of a film, but White’s insistence that it brings “consciousness to modern African politics” and that it “entertains historical and political issues” is laughable. Just because the film’s stock villain is a badly designed, over-simplified caricature of a nasty African dictator doesn’t give the film any more political relevance than a P. Diddy Vote-Or-Die commercial. Or, for that matter, a bag of rocks labeled "rocks for Kerry."

Mentioning politics doesn’t equate with substantively addressing them, nor does it make up for the film’s lazy, arbitrary narrative and poorly staged action sequences. I think White is just using it as an excuse to justify an undue appreciation for the film's unrelenting parade of beefcake - after all, Mathew McConaughey's bronzed, hairy chest is quite the attraction to some.

At the beginning of the article, Brian Grazer is quoted as saying that U.S. audiences’ failure to attend Cinderella Man is “biorhythmic.” That’s certainly not the case, and as Armond White consistently proves, head-scratchingly inconsistent taste can rear its head in any weather.

'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' Review at Relevant

For those poor, misguided souls who keep up with such things, my latest review, which tackles Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, is up at Relevant. I've been fairly vocal about my (lack of) feelings towards Tim Burton's latest neo-expressionist clunker, but read the whole thing to see why I said this:

Despite its gloriously realized, meticulously detailed world, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is marked by thin characters, stolid pacing and trite sentimentality. It’s all flashy color and puffed-up fluff, a cinematic cotton candy lacking in any real substance.

Flame not so on

Box Office Mojo is reporting, as I predicted, a massive 59.5% dropoff in ticket sales for the second weekend of Shamtastic Four. A note to Avi Arad: you can buy an opening weekend, but even by whoring out your beloved products to every diarrhea-inducing second rate burger joint that ponies up the cash won’t keep you keep the green flowing for much longer than a weekend. Like any playground bully – and you are nothing if not a marketing bully – you’ll have your day in the sun, but when everyone else is out being successful, you’ll be long since spent. Let’s put this short-lived turkey of a film out of its misery and get it over with.

As for the success of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a film which I disliked, at least there’s some understandable appeal. Burton’s production designs are minor miracles unbound by such niceties as plot and character. Burton, back in his late 80s heyday, even admits as such, saying he wanted to subvert “the Spielberg story structure.” With Charlie, he hasn’t subverted it so much as done away with it entirely, and then slapped on a treacly little resolution about family and togetherness that’s so saccharine it might almost be a parody of Spielbergian resolution except for its simpleton delivery. Here’s to Burton, the new master of macabre naiveté.

UPDATE: It looks like the real winner this weekend isn't even a movie yet (give it a couple of years). Accused young adult occult training manual Harry Potter sells 250,000 books an hour.

Because in 10 years, "Rovian" will be as common a word as "metrosexual"

We all know Karl Rove is a genius, possibly even an evil genius, depending on whether you hail from a bruise or blood colored state, but even secure in this knowledge, he never fails to surprise. Amidst a national scandal over undercover CIA operatives that's sadly unrelated to the events of Mission: Impossible but does include a cool-sounding spy thing called a N.O.C. list, Rove, the man who's taking the brunt of the media drubbing, switches gears entirely. He wants to talk about healthcare! From a recent White House pool report:

At one point, Reuters reporter Adam Entous felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Rove, who handed him a small bottle of Tylenol PM pills. "You look like you could use this," Entous said Rove told him.

Ten bucks* to the first one who spots a Daily Kos poster suggesting that Rove is implictly sponsoring Tylenol, and this is just another example of his insidious backdoor linkings to that evil of capitalist evils, Big Business.

________________
*A figurative ten dollars, because I am poor. And if I wasn't, do you think I'm going to give you ten dollars?

Charlie and the Tim Burton Factory

If you’re a 16 year old megaplex usher, be prepared for some cleanup.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is high-gloss production design porn. Every single production designer, set builder and amateur theater stage decorator in America is going to have two hours of drool to mop up after they see this.

Too bad the movie is mostly a snore, a forgettable take on a story that had so much more energy in the Gene Wilder version. Outside of a few moments of visual wit and some cleverly bizarre one-liners from Depp, it’s a gloriously designed but ultimately empty facade of a movie.

If you're a Burton maniac and have to see everything he puts his hands on, then you might be content enough with the visuals, but between the languid, overly expository pacing, the episodic structure and the trite, sentimental moralism, there's enough to dislike in this movie that flashy sets probably won't be enough.

My full review will be up at RELEVANT early next week.

Cooter crows

According to IMDB News, the original Cooter from the TV version of Dukes of Hazard is incensed with all the crass goings on in the upcoming remake. Kids these days!

"Sure it bothers me that they wanted nothing to do with the cast of our show, but what bothers me much more is the profanity laced script with blatant sexual situations that mocks the good clean family values of our series. Now, anybody who knows me knows that I'm not a prude. But this kind of toilet humor has no place in Hazzard County."

A message we should all consider more thoroughly

Those who cruelly exploit the labor and ingenuity of sartorially savvy child-freaks from outer space will come to regret it when their big fashion show devolves into violent, flatulent chaos.

So says The Onion A.V. Club of The Garbage Pail Kids Movie.

Hollywood's recipe for success: put a "2" at the end

Alternate title suggestions:
I Still, Still Know What You Did Last Summer
Hollower Man
Roadkill

Reuters reports:

"Hollow Man 2," "Road House 2 -- Last Call" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer 3" are in various stages of development at the studio. It has not been determined whether the projects will be released theatrically or become direct-to-DVD releases.

"Hollow Man 2" revolves around a Seattle detective and a biologist who are on the run from a dangerous invisible assassin gone rogue as well as the government forces that created him. A mid-August start date is scheduled, with Swiss director Claudio Feah at the helm. The 2000 original starred Kevin Bacon who turns invisible and goes mad.

"I Know What You Did Last Summer 3" focuses on new characters who didn't appear in the first two movies, which came out in 1997 and 1998. It revolves around four teens in a Colorado town who are menaced by an assailant a year after a Fourth of July prank turns deadly. A director is expected to be announced shortly, and a late-summer shoot in Utah is planned.

"Road House 2" centers on a graduate student who must run his uncle's bar and fight to maintain control as a local crime boss tries to take it over. Johnathon Schaech has an offer to star, and Scott Ziehl ("Cruel Intentions 3") is in negotiations to direct. An August shoot is being eyed.

Stupid duper

Despite the critical onslaught, Fantastic Four has turned up the heat at the box office. Whatever. Word of mouth will kill this film by week two; look for a 55-60% dropoff as this not so super flame dissapates.

A conspiracy nut makes a 9/11 movie

Oliver Stone has announced plans to make a 9/11 film starring Nicholas Cage. Now, ordinarily, I’m a defender of Stone. One of the country’s most potent political filmmakers, he brings a piercing, fiercely independent view to any subject he tackles. Even when his films are bad (U-Turn, Any Given Sunday), they’re almost always interesting. True, I joined the chorus in knocking his overblown epic-wannabe Alexander, and I think Natural Born Killers is one of the basest, most demoralizing films of all time, but as a general rule, you can put me in the Stone-supporter category.

Now, however, he wants to make a movie about 9/11, and I just can’t see what purpose this film will serve. Here are the possibilities, as far as I can tell:

1. A conspiracy film that, in JFK-like fashion, takes on the myriad conspiracy theories that say that the White House is behind the attacks and that what crashed into the Pentagon was actually either a missile or a U.S. military fighter plane. While Stone seems likely to be interested by these ideas, I don’t think any major Hollywood studio is going to bankroll a film that 9/11 was a government-sponsored event – the popular backlash and uproar would be to the controversies surrounding The Passion and Fahrenheit 9/11 as War and Peace is to an classified ad. Even a rogue like Stone couldn't get away with this sort of liberal hubris.
2. A film that explores and elucidates on the run-up to the attack from the perspective of terrorists and U.S. anti-terrorism forces. Here, you’d probably get either some sort of moral balancing act that takes excruciating pains to show plenty of respect to Islam while decrying the bombers as the few bad apples, or a wishy-washy psychological account of how the terrorists were people too, driven to extremism by circumstances. Again, the likelihood that anything other than full-on demonization of the terrorists (as they deserve) would pass muster with the public or the skittish studio suits is low.
3. A jingoistic, pro-America, “remember-the-heroes” film that ignores the terrorists and the conspiracy and focuses on the thing we all agree on: the momentous heroism displayed by the rescue crews that day. This seems to be the direction the Stone is going, with Cage playing a fireman who manages to rescue some of the few survivors of the crash. But do we really need this sort of unconsidered John Wayne WWII flick gung-ho patriotism at the box office - aren't there enough SUVs driving around with These Colors Don't Run bumper stickers to keep us going for a while? Love for country is great, but a weepy ode to American bravery isn't exactly going to make a compelling movie. And don't think for a moment that this is some sort of Hollywood love song to America; this is about profit, pure and simple Hollywood raking in the bucks like this is just a high-gloss version of the guys who made a mint selling flags on September 12 ^th – profiting off of our tears and national devotion.
   

Four years may seem like a long time, but our nation is still very much reeling from the shock of that day. As a result, Stone, limited by his financiers to “good taste,” won’t have much freedom to make a film that says anything other than, “wow, those guys are heroes.” It’s a nice sentiment, sure, but it’s awfully simplistic, and it’s a cynical way to profit off the attacks. Stone’s never been much for subtlety, and this sounds like a recipe for his biggest mistake yet.

Fantastic Bore

Fantastic Four sucks, or so says every critic in America. Not that I predicted this or anything.

All the critics were rushing to get their reviews out first so they could use the Not So Fantastic line and not have to expend effort on this flaming turd to think of anything more clever.

UPDATE: Slate's David Edelstein succombs to a predictable headline (Fantastic Four Ain't So Fantastic), but has some choice words for Marvel's craptastic new release:

Archvillain mogul Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon) introduces Jessica Alba as "my director of genetic research." It's not that Alba looks like a junior-college sorority girl, it's that she looks like the stupidest junior-college sorority girl. Why couldn't they have cast someone more plausible, like Hilary Duff? Then again, Alba is the perfect mascot for this convictionless clunkfest.

Terrorize THIS.

I could launch into some tirade about how today's attacks justify some contested conservative idea, or talk about the weird press coverage that's skittered around actually calling the bombings terrorism, but I don't want to join the fracas in this except to say two things.

Unprovoked, mass attacks on civilians are the most vile, despicable, barbaric acts of which I'm aware. Damn those terrorists to hell. I have no sympathy for them.

(And this is where my punditry comes out a bit) I truly hope that Britain does not react as Spain did. Backing down is never the right course when faced with violent sociopaths. When one side is willing to resort to this sort of barbaric violence, there's no room for appeasement.

Plot summary for 'Dark Water'

Creepy shit happens, accompanied by intendedly creepy music, often including loud string jolts and something surprising appearing on screen. At first Jennifer Connelly ignores it, but as creepy shit becomes more explicit and bizarre, she becomes increasingly terrified. Creepy shit finally reveals itself (likely as both creepy and as shit), but Jennifer Connelly is saved at the last moment. The end.

Not Compelling

I don't care whose side you're on, this is bullshit.

Fat Harry on Fantastic Four

In a recent Wired article on the marketing bludgeon that is Fantastic Four, Avi Arad assured the writer that "even fat Harry's on board." Fat Harry, as all good geeks know, is the proprietor of Austin, TX based Ain't It Cool News, a one stop geek-n-fanboy gossip palace on the internet. Harry is one of those enyclopedic film geeks who, like Tarantino and his ilk, seem to have seen every movie once, ever genre move three times and, from the great to the horrible, love it all. The man wrote raves of both Matrix Revolutions and the Emerich/Devlin Godzilla fercrissakes.

And he's not too kind to Fantastic Four. He starts his review by calling the movie "mediocre, badly designed, lit - and in some cases - acted."

Care to revise your statement, Avi?

Jonathon Chiatt’s New Idea: “New Ideas Don’t Matter.”

One of the bigwigs over at The New Republic has a new essay up arguing against the power of new ideas in driving the political forces. And yes, I know this is ostensibly supposed to be a blog about movies, but you forget three important factors. The first being those two little words “and culture” that I cleverly appended to the title as something of a loophole/catchall for whatever the hell else I feel like talking about. The second is that this is my blog, dammit, mine, mine, mine, (mine!) and I will use it for anything and everything that I please, letting it follow my interests like a confused little puppy in a blizzard. If my interests suddenly shift to expensive wine or Turkish Salami (if there even is such a thing), then so be it – though the most likely alternate topic would be Goldfish Crackers, since I am completely and irrationally obsessed with them and their 150 calorie/50 piece servings. The third thing, I forgot, and at this point it’s easier to keep typing rather than go back and fix it. I say “Pish!” to this whole non-linear editing business and type valiantly forth.

But I was saying something. The new TNR essay about the Future of Liberalism (TM).

Chiatt’s article is one of those grumpy little liberal cynic pieces that you want to like at first, but then find out that, like most things grumpy, cynical, liberal – and yes, little – it’s not really something that holds up. Chiatt’s best points come from the middle portions, which don’t just say that new ideas don’t matter, but ideas, period, don’t matter, as voters are morons and just pick the suave looking guy who looks like the Hollywood version of a good guy legislator anyway.

Polls consistently show that large swaths of the voting public know very little about the positions taken by candidates. In 2000, the National Annenberg Election Survey found that just 57 percent of voters knew Al Gore was more liberal than Bush, 51 percent knew he was more supportive of gun control, and a mere 46 percent understood that he was more supportive of abortion rights. "The voting behavior literature, which is massive, shows that people are not particularly idea-driven," explains Berkeley political scientist Nelson Polsby. "They don't know what the fashions are, with respect to what ideas go with other ideas."

Political scientists have shown how factors like economic performance and the rally-around-the-flag effect can exert enormous influence over voting behavior. A recent study in Science magazine was even more disturbing to those who believe in the power of ideas. Scientists showed the subjects pairs of photographs, which turned out to be matched candidates in Senate and House races. The subjects had to judge within one second which candidate looked more competent, on the basis of appearance alone. Their choice matched the candidate who won an astounding 71.6 percent of the time in Senate races. If you consider that a decent share of Senate races pit unknown, underfunded challengers against popular incumbents in highly partisan states, that is a remarkably high percentage. Faith in the discernment of the public is not based on proof, it's premised on, well, faith.

So, people don’t vote based on policy, because they don’t care or know. People watch bad television and show up at the polls drunk, vote on the one issue they heard something about from an equally drunk buddy after work one day and afterwards go back to their bad television and cans Busch Light. And they say liberals don’t know how to communicate with rural voters.

Look, I’m as inclined as anyone to be a cultural elitist, but despite the research, this sort of thinking is defeatist and self-fulfilling. Giving up on ideas because people aren’t listening to them allows the complacency of the masses to kill the power of a good idea. The research shows that people don’t know tort reform from campaign finance reform – but that’s not a reason to discount the necessity and power of ideas; it’s a reason to work that much harder at spreading the message.

Just as bad, it doesn't give the voter any responsibility for becoming informed. Chiatt turns this into evidence by relying on the idea (which doesn't matter anyway, right?) that if the voters don't know policy, it's someone else's fault. Don't voters bare a large part of the responsibility for becoming informed about candidates and their platforms? This sort of soft parenting approach to the masses is equivalent to a parent deciding that, "Well, he's never going to learn to dress himself. Look at how little he's done for the last three years." Mom and Dad need to keep working - maybe even work harder - but it's not reason to throw in the towel (or perpetually layout the clothes).

Chiatt’s liberal pessimism appeals to my inner elitist, the part of me that listens to NPR, wants a Volvo and just had 10 lbs of organic coffee shipped to his home, but allowing that sort of statistics-based negativity to rule results in a politics of elite paternalism, where the few at the top baby the masses through life, never expecting them to take responsibility for understanding their world.

'Fantastic' Reversal

Alright, fine. I admit it: The Fantastic Four has a possibility of opening reasonably well this weekend. Avi Arad and company have apparently succeeded, at least somewhat, in mollifying the intensely negative coverage the film has received on the internet, as well as the initially laughable trailers, simply by marketing the living shit out of this film.

But I still think it’s going to disappoint those hoping for a Thing style super smash. Despite having founded the Marvel comics empire, The Four have never been a truly top shelf title, always devoting more time to nerdy science fiction arcs and soap opera like family drama to appease the comic fan core who wanted muscular men and women in tights and little else. While the movie will surely tone down the sci-fi and play up the Jessica-Alba-is-hot, it’s also a sure to be cheesy summer throwaway – at best. Even if it does reasonably well opening weekend, it’s going to crash and burn in the long run. As Daredevil proved, the Marvel logo in front of the first reel is anything but a guarantee of success.

In other Marvel film news, CHUD’s got interesting names attached to two Marvel projects. Rumors are that Bruce Willis will star as superspy Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., and that David O. Russel, director of I Heart Huckabees and Three Kings, is going to take on The Silver Surfer. While I’m only vaguely familiar with those characters, I think they’re both bold choices. Willis’ squinty-eyed cigar chomping antics sound just about right for the gruff, aging action hero Fury, and Russel’s existential dramedy just might work with the Silver Surfer’s pangs of conscience over being dubbed a God who fell to Earth.

Everyone's a Critic and Most People are DJs

Launched a new project on consumer reviews today: Everyone’s a Critic and Most People are DJs, or for those inclined to abbreviations - EACAMPADJ

Hollywood Monster says, "Meeee! Tasty!"

I don't even know what to make of this bit from the New York Times' article on the burgeoning Chinese film industry:

Walt Disney Pictures may even spend part of its legacy, with a plan for what some people involved say is a live-action martial-arts remake of "Snow White" that would be shot in China and replace the dwarves with Shaolin monks. The director is expected to be Yuen Woo-Ping, the Chinese director and choreographer who arranged the fight scenes for Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" series, as well as "Kung Fu Hustle" and the "Matrix" movies.

On one hand, Woo-Ping finally getting to direct an American film is great. Every sequence he's put his hands on in recent years has been action gold; he's undoubtedly the best thing to happen to action filmmaking in years.

But this also sounds like it has the potential to wade into some hideously dorky territory, with comic relief monks engaging in kung-fuized circus clown antics. One of the best qualities of Woo-Ping's recent American work is that it takes itself seriously while retaining a sense of playfulness. And with this being his U.S. directorial debut, he'll be at the mercy of the studio overloads, who, as we know, have shown no mercy towards up and coming directors in the past.

And really - does this need the cushion of being a remake to get funding? It seems like, more than ever, it's impossible to get financing for a film that isn't an adaptation, sequel or remake. Of the "event" films this summer, only Mr. and Mrs. Smith and The Island didn't fit those categories, and they were both sold on the virtues of the big names attached - Pitt and Jolie to Smith and Michael Bay to The Island. Hollywood has long been cannibalizing itself, but at this stage, it seems as if it's lost any additional source of nourishment it had outside its own past.

"The fireworks keep them distracted...."

Today we celebrate the birth of our nation* with a country-wide orgy of beachgoing, flame grilled meat and cold beer, which hopefully will not be from a can. Unpatriotic as this may sound, I, as a movie lover, am not interested in all that sand, salt water and sun, despite living just 10 minutes from Florida’s golden beaches.

No, I want to hide from the glare-producing death rays of summer's peak and take advantage of the time off from my day job to indulge in those patriotic pleasures that can only be delivered on celluloid. While the alcohol, of course, is still mandatory, I think there are more entertaining ways to fry my brains than the scorching rays of our home star – and at least two of them come from Roland Emerich and Dean Devlin.

The directing/producing duo’s films The Patriot and Independence Day are both slick, goopy, sentimentally jingoistic entertainments of the first order – bad movies for sure – but not entirely terrible ways to zap some gray matter on midsummer free day. If only they'd combined the two and had Mel Gibson fighting aliens during the American Revolution, we'd have the ultimate July 4th classic.

Of course, there’s always Bravo’s seemingly neverending marathon of The West Wing, which delivers the democratic (as well as the Democratic) process in short, punchy sound bites that are so sharp they almost get me to believe that the whole political process really Means Something. Hurrah for America (except those bad old Republicans)!

*Not The Birth of a Nation.

No smarmy comments needed

Quote from today's NYT article on the booming budget DVD business:

The very term "budget DVD" makes Mike Omansky bristle. "It brings up the image of schlock, which our product is not," said Mr. Omansky, the chief executive of Digiview Productions, a New Jersey company that supplies Wal-Mart with classics like "Bucket of Blood" and "The Beast of Yucca Flats." "McDonald's puts out a high-quality, low-priced hamburger. Our burgers are high quality, too, without the frills."

Hitchcock's 'Vertigo': a journey into fear, terror and 5 decades of thrillers

My cinematic knowledge, for all practical purposes, starts with 2001: A Space Odyssey. I’ve seen a representative number of important and interesting releases from all the post 1960s decades, but when it comes to earlier films, even the “standards” that everyone is supposed to have seen, my viewing is virtually nil.

May the gods of classic cinema have mercy on my poorly educated soul.

The point is, I’m trying to remedy this, and as much as I might wish for it, there’s no Matrix-like* way to inject 50 years of film history into my brain. As I did several years ago when I decided I wanted to learn more about 70s film (a decade which I’m still learning), I’ve got to actually plop down and watch “old” movies from beginning to end.

This, as you might imagine, is not exactly torture, but it does require some effort.

All this to say - I finally got around to seeing Vertigo, and it’s everything I always wanted from classic thriller. Hitchcock’s compositions bare a studied, formal excellence; even on first viewing, every move seems painstakingly refined. The production design, with its lush reds and greens, turns San Francisco into an immaculate dreamworld, equal parts mystery, terror and seductive fantasyland.

Best of all is Bernard Hermann’s score, which glides over and through the images like a thick, magical fog. Hitchcock’s work is top notch, but it’s Hermann’s bold, enveloping score that makes the film – it’s as entrancing as Kim Novak’s eyes.

Novak, for her part, plays the part of ingénue with supreme grace. Her role as Mystery Woman is necessarily left somewhat blank, but she fills in enough of the gaps that it ceases to be an issue. Much better is Barbara Bel Geddes as the charming, smart, perky Midge, though she drops out of the film without much closure.

Jimmy Stewart is, as even someone as unfamiliar as I with the period knows, a superb leading man. His acting skills are adequate, but even more, he’s got that ineffable combination of manly certainty, good looks and sympathetic eyes that mark him as the perfect cipher through which to tell a visual story.

Vertigo is put together in such an unerring, careful fashion that its threads of desperation and obsession make perfect sense – they are, it certainly seems, what Hitchcock and company relied on to create it.
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*See? All my references are from the modern canon. I'm a spoiled middle-American pop culture lover with no real claim to being a cineaste. You might as well quit reading now and hit up Filmbrain; you don't want to deal with my cinematically vacuous ass.

CNN calls Bobby Brown's new show "most disgusting ever"

"Being Bobby Brown," the reality show spotlighting the R&B singer whose rap sheet might be longer than his catalog, is undoubtedly the most disgusting and execrable series ever to ooze its way onto television. And when you consider the competition from the celebrity reality genre alone, that's says something.

-- CNN

The Corner's John Podhoretz gets cranky with Spielberg

The New York Times has an article today on the next Steven Spielberg project, his long rumored take on the assassinations that followed the 1972 Munich Olympic hostage situation. The Times describes the story like this:

The film, which is being written by the playwright Tony Kushner - it is his first feature screenplay - begins with the killing of 11 Israeli athletes in Munich. But it focuses on the Israeli retaliation: the assassinations, ordered by Prime Minister Golda Meir, of Palestinians identified by Israeli intelligence as terrorists, including some who were not directly implicated in the Olympic massacre.

Coming directly after War of the Worlds, which is dominated by post 9/11 fears of terrorism and catastrophe, this is another bold move for Spielberg as he ventures more heavily into the current political climate. Kushner, a gay Jew with an eye for Brechtian moral dilemma, is a smart choice to give the assassinations an emotional and moral underpinning as the Israelli hit squad comes to terms with their assignment.

The Corner’s John Podhoretz, however, doesn’t think so.

Needless to say, the movie won't be a celebration of Israel's determination to hunt down the monsters who killed 11 kids solely for the crime of being Jewish and Israelis, but will rather be about how the assassins suffered and felt remorse and don't know if they did the right thing blah blah blah. Why tell this story now?

Podhoretz, a normally quick-witted man of intellectual precision, doesn’t seem to think it’s valid to make a movie that examines the moral uneasiness of even the most righteous violence. He wants a vengeful shoot-‘em-up in which killing the bad guys is an easy decision carried out with assurance and moral authority. In a word (or two), he wants Die Hard.

Now, with all due respect to John McTernan’s gleeful, exuberant action fest, that’s a cheap, insulting choice to make. Why would anyone want to “celebrate” Israel’s decision to carry out a series of murders? Even if we think they were necessary (I suspect they were), there’s no need to attach that sort of chest-puffing bravado to the act of murder.

The best stories are the ones that understand that even the right decision are fraught with moral potholes and ambiguities. Podhoretz, for some unknown reason, wants Spielberg and Kushner to ignore those uncertainties and paint a picture of good old fashioned unquestioning heroes who kill without remorse, utterly certain of their moral superiority. State sanctioned murder may be a political necessity, but it’s not one we should celebrate. Recognizing the need for violence is a difficult thing to do; what Spielberg wants to do is even more difficult – recognize its cost.