Tony Scott rolls the dice

Recently I caught a mid-week screening of director Tony Scott's (not to be confused with New York Times co-chief movie critic Tony "A.O." Scott) latest ode to Avid-powered excess, Domino, as it played to a surprisingly populated Thursday night show just over the bridge in Georgetown. The negative critical consensus about the picture (Metacritic currently lists it at a 36 – lower than this summer’s craptastic Fantastic Four) is accurate to some extent, and yet not entirely complete. Clearly, it’s a pummeling, amoral barrage on the viewer’s senses —more punishment than entertainment—and yet it seems to me that there’s also something deeply revealing about the film’s unrepentently violent, hyperstylized aesthetic. It may not be a good movie by any definition of the word, but it’s undoubtedly one worth discussing.

The first thing that struck was that, like Scott’s previous foray into spastic digitally edited incoherence, Man on Fire, Domino is a sign of how sophisticated modern film viewers have become. This is a $65 million venture from an industry not known for taking risks, and yet a little more than a decade ago it would have caused nothing but confusion and disgruntled railings from the masses. With its editing infiltrated by paranoid kineticism and its camera work juggling a half dozen film stocks, lighting schemes and color palettes in every scene, it’s either a stylist’s nightmare or wet dream—either way, it never would have made it out of a film school editing bay until just a few years ago. Yet audiences seem to accept Scott’s nuttiness; what used to be hedonistic excess is now expected.

Largely, of course, this is due to the prevalence of music videos and commercials, which are increasingly edited to the beat of butterfly wings. On a wider social level, films like Domino reflect the increasingly twitchy pace of modern life, where it’s common to sit in front of multiple monitors while checking several email accounts, handling a phone and a blackberry and reading information from multiple browsers and RSS feeds. Our once boulder-sized attention spans may have been hammered down to a pile of pebbles, but each of those pebbles—however small—can concentrate on something different.

Scott seems to realize this, and indeed, he seems to want to test it. How much can a mainstream audience handle? What will it take to get their knickers in a bunch—or rather, their eyes and brains twittering too fast (cause who wears knickers anymore? And if you do, please don't tell me you call them "knickers."). And in every frame, he seems to want to prod the limits of accessibility, daring his audience to accept whatever outrageousness he’s put before them.

This goes not just for the editing and camera work, but for the content as well. The whole film seems like the fever ramblings of caffiene-riddled, blood-and-guts-obsessed coke addict; in addition to being nearly incomprehensibly edited, it is thoroughly amoral, playing only to the most vile, base, violent pleasures. Scott is challenging his audience to be offended, to be confused, to be unable or unwilling to deal with his onscreen temper tantrum and his self-obsessed bloodlust. But the fact that the film was made and released with a significant budget and star suggests that the boundaries it pushes are rather minimal. Hollywood marketing master don't allow their studios to drop that sort of cash on films that audiences can't handle.

But Scott goes for the jugular (almost literally) anyway. How else to explain a scene in which one of the protagonists cuts another character's arm off in what’s supposed to be played as a case of goofy, missed-communication hijinks? That sort of sickening violence is what passes for humor in this film. Every character is a narcissistic asshole, most with sadistic tendencies. The only difference between the good folks and the bad is that the good ones recognize their vileness for what it is—but they still don’t feel any shame. Scott, ever the egoist, fills his movies with people like himself.

The film ends in typical Scott fashion with a Mexican standoff and a storm of gunfire. For Scott, who has used this ending now at least three times, the only catharsis comes with mass, senseless slaughter. For good or for ill, it seems that mainstream American filmgoers may be surprisingly willing to agree.

A hulking gorilla of a movie

Kudos to Universal Pictures for showing the teensiest bit of courage in allowing Peter Jackson to release King Kong at a full 3 hours. Admittedly, giving a wide berth to the man behind the massively successful Lord of the Rings series is something of a no-brainer, but Hollywood studios, ever concerned with commercial appeal and quick hit profits, are often hesitant to allow artistic freedom that might cost them a short-run buck, as this decision most certainly will.

The NYTimes article linked to above is filled with the typical superfluous, glowing praise from Universal suits ("I've never come close to seeing an artist working at this level."), but it still gives me great pleasure to see that a filmmaker as talented and dedicated as Peter Jackson is being given the freedom to make the movies that he wants with full monetary support and creative freedom from a major studio.

Between Kong, Chronicles and the new Harry Potter (which, having already recieved a PG-13 rating and glowing remarks from Chud, looks to be another big step up for the series), this Christmas season looks to be the a fantasy film fan's, well, film fantasy.

Clueless Clooney

Human Events called George Clooney's recent directorial effort, Good Night, and Good Luck, a "clueless movie," and while I certainly liked it better than everyone's favorite Coulter-publishing conservative weekly, I may have found the reason for what they saw. Filming Steven Gaghan's political thriller, Syriana, Clooney went all Christopher Nolan on us :

His chair was kicked backwards and his head smashed on the ground, damaging his spine. The injuries left him in such intense pain that he entertained suicidal thoughts and continues to suffer short-term memory loss.

What movie does this remind me of? Demented? Mentos? Mothballs? What's this post about again?

More like...

A better headline would have been "Global plan to protect aggrieved victim status of sore losers.”

Socialism's rise?

Yglesias with a thoroughly depressing thought:

Be that as it may, this is why the era of big government being over is over. It would be a serious mistake to confuse Bush's brand of big conservatism with liberalism, or with any kind of real concession to liberalism, but it suggests that the underlying political dynamics have shifted a great deal. If you did have a progressive president, there's no longer a particularly large amount of popular resistance to expanding the activist state. Even most Republicans don't especially care about small government.

John Derbyshire said something similar this week:

All the windsocks are now pointing in the direction of more socialism. As the population ages, Americans will want more leisure, drugs, health care, nursing homes, security. As the Jihadist threat continues to metastasize (from the MidEast to Indonesia, Thailand, Africa, the Caucasus, Europe), we shall want the state to have more police powers, more scrutiny of us and our lives. The trend of the last 40 years away from the old Anglo-Saxon rights and liberties -- private property rights (google "tobacco settlement," "Kelo," etc.), freedom of speech, contract and assembly ("speech codes," anti-discrimination laws, etc.), limited government (is Washington DC shrinking? looking poorer and shabbier? not that I've noticed) -- will accelerate. And everybody will be fine with all this, because that's what everybody wants, except for a few freakish intellectuals like ourselves.

As Derbyshire notes, outside of the politically aware elite, there’s very little support for limiting state power. And why should there be? It’s not as if the problems of a massive government are blindingly obvious to the vast majority of Americans. Sure, high taxes are annoying, and that’s why Bush’s cuts have been so successful, but outside of large business interests and intellectuals, how many people are really going to spend the time necessary to conclude that government services, entitlements and the socialist agenda are bad? A kind, helpful government that works to better its citizens certainly sounds like a good idea at first – who doesn’t want the government to help people? – and few have any incentive to move beyond their initial impression that government services aid those in need.

The socialist agenda is based on an awkward (but ingenius) blend of selfishness and misplaced altruistic sentiment. The masses love it because they can claim to support the public good while supporting policies that allow them to mooch off the state. The elites, on the opposite end of the financial spectrum, get to promote public welfare and put up a selfless front without having to sacrifice their own cushy lifestyles.

The challenge for small government conservatives is to combat these notions not just with intellectual ferocity in the usual outlets (that’s being done daily), but with populist messaging that promotes the easy to grasp ideas on the surface of small-government ideals: lower taxes, unrestricted speech, personal freedom, big government as villain. The left’s biggest success has been in co-opting culture, and subsequently, their ideas of guaranteed equality and corporate villainy have permeated the skin of mass entertainment to the point that they’re accepted without thought even by Americans who consider themselves conservative. The fiscal, libertarian right has had lots of success in the intellectual sphere, but less so with mass culture.

What I’m really saying, I think, is that we need more movies like Serenity.

White on North Country

This is why I read Armond White. Despite being a certifiable loon, he's also willing to walk directly into the firing line and unapologetically call out propoganda when he sees it. From his review of North Country:

"Inspired" by a true story, Theron and director Niki Caro don't have to follow rules of truth, fairness or art; they simply push post-feminist self-righteousness with crude storytelling techniques that only a fool would find persuasive.

I told you it was a never ending discussion

Tarantino vs. Ridley Scott over at Yglesias. He asks:

Questions about who's more overrated than whom are hard to answer because it's hard to know how highly-rated someone is. Ross and I agree that Ridley Scott is a better director than Quentin Tarantino, but Ross seems to think Tarantino is more highly rated than Scott, whereas I have the reverse impression.

Here's the difference I see:

Ridley Scott has a settled respect - almost a mini-legend - that's been attached to him. It's old gaurd prestige that comes with an admittance that his current work may not be up to snuff (though I'd argue that Black Hawk Down and Gladiator were both very good, though not great, films), but that no matter what, his place as an Important Director is cemented.

Tarantino, despite having been on the scene for more than a decade, is still an unknown quanitity. Yes, he'll certainly be in the canon of directors people talk about decades from now, but we're not really sure what's going to stick. Will it be his ability to pull nuance from crime genre thugs? Will it be his total obsession with pulp allusions? Will it be his razor sharp pop cult dialog - or maybe just a dissapation of talent as his work becomes less significant over the years.

Scott's legend, prestige and position are settled: unless he releases some utterly unexpected masterpiece (not likely, if KOH is an indication), we know approximately how history will treat him.

Tarantino is still developing, and it's going to take another decade and a few more films before his position - legend, dissapointment, or otherwise - really settles in the public mind.

Film, faith and profits

The front page of today’s Washington Post has an article that uses the new Left Behind film, which will be distributed exclusively through churches, as a jumping off point for exploring the growing consumer culture associated with megachurches. Like the New York Times Magazine article on megachurches earlier this year, it is another big media attempt to cautiously penetrate the strange, suspicious world of red state evangelicals on behalf of the coastal elite - and subsequently paint them as either prudish nuts of scheming profiteers. The Post would’ve been only marginally more blatant if it had titled the article “Just Look at Those Kooky Christians!”

Little to my surprise, the article, while staying within the technical bounds of journalistic objectivity, once again portrays Christians as some sort of eccentric, separatist cult group. A typical quote from a pastor:

"We want to show Hollywood that there are enough people in the churches to support good, wholesome entertainment without all the blood and guts and sex and vile language.”

As usual, Christian leaders come off as out of touch, prudish clowns who rail against that dutiful minder of community standards, Hollywood. The stereotype has unfortunate roots in truth (more on that in a few paragraphs), but it is far from monolithic, as this project, The Faith and Film Critics Circle, shows.

And if they're not old-fashioned and priggish, they’re cynical manipulators aiming to make big bucks off of suburban, middle class church attendees. The middle portion of the article wanders off topic into a discussion of how films are being used to sell, sell, sell—here you expect to see a subhead like “Hucksterism Hits the Heartland.” This, of course, is perfect fodder for left leaning outlets like The Post, as they get to toss jabs not just at wacky, stupid Jesus lovers, but at wacky, stupid Jesus lovers who make profits! Why not just add “And also, abortion is really awesome, you war-loving pigs” at the end and hit all the lefty rallying points?

Sadly, the article sheds some unfortunate light on the prevailing attitude of cultural and intellectual disengagement that is so prevalent in many churches. Along with the previous quote about blood, guts and sex, there are some depressing bits about how so-called Christian filmmakers feel about the industry.

"I tell everyone, the most important 10 minutes of this movie is not on film. It's when the pastor gets up afterwards and shares the gospel with the people who are there and invites them to make a decision for Christ," said Peter Lalonde, an evangelical Christian whose own conversion occurred 22 years ago after seeing a Billy Graham film, "The Prodigal."

. . . "When 'The Passion' came out, there was this great hope that Hollywood had discovered Christianity," he said. "But it hasn't happened. They are selling Hollywood films to the Christian marketplace, not making genuinely Christian films in Hollywood."

. . . "My conclusion is that, if we're going to have a viable system for the distribution of evangelical Christian movies, we have to build it ourselves."

This is the depressing reality of what passes for Christian filmmaking. As Lalonde admits, his films don’t actually matter: like so much of what’s referred to as Christian art and culture, art for art’s sake has been banished from Christian life, having been entirely co-opted as an evangelizing tool.

This is an extreme example of what has now been thoroughly covered in the Pinter and politics discussions (also here and here and here), where art is rejected not on any grounds of its worth as art, but because of its social, political or moral standing (or worse, the standings of the artist). Christians are perhaps the worst at this, for many refuse to even look at what a film is saying about its subject before rejecting it outright for raunchy content. With so many Christians, it often doesn’t matter what a film says about violence, much less how well it says it, if the violence is objectionable. The Passion, of course, is the exception to this rule.

Another problem with limiting art to a proselytizing role is that it forgets that Christians needs to have something to do after getting saved. If all art is geared towards bringing people into the fold, it leaves little culture to appreciate afterwards. Well, unless you’re really into Stryper.

UPDATE: McSweeney's is like a crystal ball for the internet, except it's not glass or round and doesn't tell the future.

Wallace and Gromit: So much more than clay

Accustomed as we are to the slick, ultra detailed worlds afforded by computer generated animation in everything from the Shrek films to the recent Star Wars prequels, the idea of a movie hand molded entirely from clay seems suspiciously old fashioned. But scene after scene, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were Rabbit, the newest film from British clay wizards Aardman, proves that millions of dollars worth of technological flash are no match for clever storytelling and lovingly crafted characters. Part horror homage, part absurdist comedy and all giddy fun, The Curse of the Were Rabbit is a loving tribute to the virtues of devotion and creativity.

Armies of CGI tech heads may be at work this very moment attempting to code new ways to generate ever more realistic facial pores and frazzled hair, but few will create anything as endearing as the title characters directors Nick Park and Steve Box have molded out of simple lumps of clay. Wallace, a bald, scraggle-toothed English inventor, runs a pest-control service with the help of his loyal dog Gromit who, in classic comedic style, is constantly saving his master from his own hapless errors. The gag is an old one, but Park and Box play it with astounding wit and ingenuity.

Like the best Pixar films, Wallace & Gromit is bursting with invention. From the elaborate, Rube Goldberg style devices that shuttle the heroes through their outrageously complicated daily routines to the rooftop garden overgrown with giant vegetables, the movie is a mad scientist’s laboratory of delightful, imaginative marvels. That each was painstakingly pieced together out of clay only makes it more miraculous.

The film’s lumpy, earth-toned, clay world makes a perfect venue for its dry, off-kilter humor. Cleverly masked adult innuendos (“Kiss my artichoke”) sit comfortably beside gags that use rabbit suction machines (don’t ask) and elaborate bits of visual humor. It’s distinctly British, with drab one liners and surrealist imagery that recall both Monty Python and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

As the title suggests, the film is structured in the mold of classic horror, with a vicious monster wreaking havoc on a small, English village. Vicious, though, is a relative term, for the movie is imbued with a surpassing gentle spirit; in this case, the “monster” is an enormous fuzzy bunny whose presence threatens the town’s giant vegetable competition. Wallace and Gromit, as the town’s pest control service, are called in by the regal Lady Tottington to rid the village of the vegetable ravaging menace, but snooty, conniving aristocrat Victor Quartermaine has other ideas.

Park and Box have dotted their film with sly nods to horror and adventure greats. From Jurassic Park to Jaws and King Kong, the movie is clearly aware of its predecessors, and in many ways it bests much of the exploitative drivel that slithers out from under Halloween floorboards each year substituting gross outs for entertainment. With nary a scene that wouldn’t be appropriate for a kindergartener, Wallace & Gromit hits all the horror movie highlights: the raving priest who warns his fellow villagers after an initial encounter, the slow reveal of the beast, the climactic standoff with a mob of angry townspeople. Mixing satire with reverence, it gently prods its origins while playing strictly by genre rules.

As with all good genre storytelling, the film comes alive because of its characters. Despite being constructed of little more than hunks of Play-Doh, each of the players has a firmly established personality. Wallace is a reserved, slightly naïve Brit who gets nervous in the presence of the flighty Lady Tottington, while Quartermaine is a preening sleazeball with an Elvis-like pompadour and a brutish, gator-toothed mutt every bit as nasty as Gromit is nice. They may be simple clay figures, but they’re all deeply real, emanating life from within their putty cores.

Most endearing is pet pooch Gromit, an unwaveringly loyal dog that, even without a mouth, is one of the most expressive animals ever brought to the screen. With a simple lift of his eyes or furrowing of his brow, his expressive range topples that of many human actors, revealing the sort of genuine devotion and kindness rarely seen on the big screen. Man’s best friend doesn’t even begin to explain it.

Gromit’s relationship to Wallace is one of pure servitude, and yet he neither complains nor falters. Whether Wallace is making breakfast or catching vegetable eating pests, Gromit is there to silently pick up the inevitable mess left in his wake. Without moralizing or speechifying (a somewhat difficult task given that he lacks a mouth), Gromit is a perfect picture of humility.

Eschewing the staid pop-culture references and raunchy bodily function jokes that enamor so much family fare, Wallace & Gromit instead opts to be smart and sweet-natured. With so much kid-friendly entertainment based around bratty, hyperactive pseudo-adolescents, it’s refreshing to see a film that manages to be funny but not piercing, all while praising loyalty and humility in the character of a lovable pooch. Good dog, indeed.

Not the Luc Besson movie

Poor Joan of Arc. I actually kind of like Duets, but Pitchfork drops a timeless smackdown on the rickety old clump of indie rock sideshow freaks:

Yup, another record by perennial Chicago snob-rock pissing alley Tim Kinsella(s) and his rotating cast of enablers. It's Presents Guitar Duets, in which 10 once/current Joan of Arc members draw names out of a trucker hat to noodle us some, hey, guitar duets. The project would seem stinky-ripe for a haha 'fork-tongued concept review -- quick, get me the top 10 PFM crits ever to give it to Kinsella with a sandpaper Durex-- but seriously, why do we hate this guy again? More to the point: Why does anyone even care?

Read the whole thing.

Witty wonder

Apparently, Aaron Sorkin talks just like one of the interminably clever characters that populate his shows, or at least that's the impression I get from this:

When ABC insisted on using a laugh track to punctuate his short-lived ABC comedy "Sports Night," the writer-producer told the New Yorker that the experience made him feel "like I've put on an Armani tuxedo, tied my tie, snapped on my cuff links, and the last thing I do before I leave the house is spray Cheez Whiz all over myself."

If only all crackheads could write (or say!) lines with this much zip.

Doomed

Looks like Doom is awesome. That was sarcasm.

The Me-ometer goes wild: Elizabethtown at Relevant

There are things in this world that I really appreciate: nerdy, intricate science fiction novels; obscure and slightly obnoxious indie rock bands; really, really big speakers; quirky, heartfelt movies about young people trying to find direction; Central Kentucky.

While Cameron Crowe, director of such feel-good classics as Say Anything and Jerry Maguire, has yet to film an ode to massive speakers or cyberpunk novels (probably for the best, in the long run), he’s recently made a go at the last two with the Orlando Bloom/Kirsten Dunst festival of romantic naiveté, Elizabethtown. Relevant has my review, which discusses the winding ups and downs of his latest film.

Another entry on the Me-ometer

The Washington Times excerpts my Spectator piece on Serenity today. Somehow I ended up sandwiched between movie critic legend Stanley Kauffmann and National Review bigwig Ramesh Ponnuru, which is the writerly equivalent of a college theater major starring alongside Meryl Streep and Al Pacino. Not that I'm complaining.

Style a while

It takes gumption and panache to drop your nut graf in the second sentence of your article without sounding dry or clunky, but everyone’s favorite DVD critic, Chris Orr - structurally one of the tightest writers in film commentary today - pulls it off in his latest Home Movies column at TNR:

Has a historical epic ever told us less about the milieu in which it is set, and more about that in which it was produced, than Kingdom of Heaven? An exuberant war movie that is also a laughably ahistorical anti-war polemic, the film is an exceptional example of what happens when Hollywood's commercial and political imperatives crash headlong into one another.

Pen15

Harry Knowles, reviewing the film adaptation of first-person shooter PC game Doom, has this great line (buried, as usual within about 5000 words of unreadable shit):

Later – when [The Rock] actually gains access to [the BFG], it is the most amazingly hilariously awesome case of a gun boner that I’ve ever seen.

Knowles is one of the most sophomoric, blithering jabberjaws on the internet - and that's saying something - but when it comes to lovably brutish movies like Doom, he gets geek glee like few others.

Kill Quentin

Greetings to those arriving from Look Closer; be sure to check out my recent post on The Washington Post's recent article about so-called Christian filmmaking.

_____________________

Ross has picked up the Tarantino thread over at The American Scene, and not surprisingly, he's not too kind to Tarantino's most recent film. But as with his response to A History of Violence, I think he's being dismissive of the movie precisely because of the thing that makes it interesting – its ability to simultaneously work spectacularly within genre trappings and elevate those trappings beyond their typically shallow usage, reminding us why those tropes work so well to begin with.

Here’s what the article he links to in the comments section says about Kill Bill:

“Because of the violence which is presented without any apparent moral comment, because of the adolescent embarrassment about adult sexuality in his films, Tarantino—who was born in 1962 and is thus of the first generation of directors to have been raised on cable television and video recordings, with their promise of endless repetition—has become, in the minds of many, the poster boy for a generation of Americans—mostly male—whose moral response to violence has been alarmingly dulled by too much popular entertainment.”

The argument, essentially, is that Tarantino is a skillful technician of grisly mayhem, but little beyond that. Yet all of his films take the artifice of genre – noirish crime stories, kung fu films, gangster movies and comic books – and then dazzle us not only with their masterful evocations of their pulp roots, but with their ability to use those roots to examine distinctly human insecurities.

Kill Bill is the slickest film he’s made, and the one most nestled in genre artifice, but, when taken as a whole (he wrote it and shot it with the intention of it being seen in one piece; it’s unfair to judge the first without the second), it’s a quite stunning portrayal of the a woman coming to grips with a life full of difficult choices who hopes to redeem herself through her daughter. And thus we get nearly miraculous scenes like the hotel room where the Bride is attacked by a rival female assassin just as she finds out she’s pregnant: it’s an ingenious way to use genre to heighten and highlight the emotional impact of coming to understand that you’re about to bring new life into the world. We get the cunning, wickedly intelligent Bill delicately cutting meats and vegetables to make a sandwich for his young daughter – a clever way to transpose the killer’s skill with a blade into something sweet and elegant that muddles the line between ruthless killer and doting father. These are people: superheroes too, perhaps, but genuine, feeling people.

And then, of course, there’s Tarantino’s completely thrilling treatment of violence. Some call it amoral or nihilistic, and I won’t argue that point either way, but it is most certainly two things – technically brilliant filmmaking that, on the most surface level, is utterly exhilarating stuff from a master stylist who takes lowbrow comic book hijinks to spectacular new heights. But more than that, it’s an eloquent reversal of so much heavy handed moralism that comes with many violent message films. In Kill Bill especially, Tarantino reminds us that violence can be striking not just for its brutality, but for its sheer, visual beauty.

Morally, I may object to this (I find all real life violence repugnant, even when I think it's necessary), but I find Tarantino’s presentation so flawless that I cannot reject it either (the Pinter discussions are relevant here).

As for Ridley Scott, that's another discussion entirely.

Teachout on Pinter

Terry Teachout, a critic wotj whom I have only recently (and sadly, not well enough) become acquainted, has written an excellent defense of Pinter’s Nobel. A Corner reader has added a useful sidenote to the debate, which suggests that the left, far from being bastions of artistic evenhandedness, are just as willing to shun art for political reasons as the right. But as Teachout makes so eloquently clear, good art is good art, and whether it or its author advocates a particularly disagreeable political position is relevant to discussion (discussion which I have been known, from time to time, to engage in myself), but it is no way to judge the artistic merits of a work. Too many political wonks have been raised parsing newspapers for bias and skimming op-eds for distortion. In that world, good writing is often determined by the positions one advocates more than the flair with which one does so. But one does not have to accept the values of either a piece of art or its artist in order to appreciate the craft with which it was made. Terry Teachout understands this, and that is just one reason why he is a fantastic critic.

Good Night, And Good Luck at AFF Brainwash

Say, did you know that I like movies? And politics? And that sometimes, when the (Hollywood) stars align, I actually even write about them? Well, shock and surprise, I've done it again, this time with an article on George Clooney's newest political docudrama, Good Night, and Good Luck, a retelling of the mid century Ed Murrow/Joseph McCarthy broadcasts which I call "a solidly entertaining, technically excellent take on politics and journalism that is Clooney's most stringent plea yet for intellectual respectability."

AFF Brainwash has the piece: "Good Night, and Good Luck: A Serious Plea for Serious Journalism."

The Facebook is All Over This

The New York Times, always with the stories that matter. Today's issue features a write up on, of all things, beer pong. The story is mostly just late-to-the-(beer pong)party-and-clueless rote designed to explain newfangled kids and their ccrrrraaaaazzzzzy drinking rituals to the Times' increasingly geriatric readership ("Remember when beer used to come cans with pull tabs, hon? Fetch me my cain - I'm gonna do a lap around the manor."), but it does include this bit of sublime stupidity:

Students say they enjoy the games because they are a fun way to compete, socialize and drink, and often the only consequence of playing is a hangover. But alcohol prevention experts say the games do sometimes lead to alcohol poisoning and drunken-driving crashes and may increase the chance of a woman being sexually assaulted.

Yes, and the same could be said about football games, frat parties, Hooters and, come to think of it, any sort of social drinking. Quick! To the moralist's cave! There's fun to be stamped out!

But it gets better:

Thomas J. Johnson, a psychologist at Indiana State University, has published seven articles on student alcohol use in peer-reviewed journals since 1998 and has studied thousands of students who play drinking games. He found that 44 percent of men who played said that they did so to sexually manipulate other players.

So wait - you're telling me that 20 year olds drink in order to hook up with girls? Like - and have sex with them? Really? I thought this whole bar scene thing was just a way to escape the drudgery of the office and silence those pesky voices that are always telling you to hold up a diamond store. Maybe that's just me then.

Taking Away the Teenager's Credit Card

It can't be said enough:

Conservatives have tolerated a lot from this White House — not least the sort of spending we normally associate with Saudi royal concubines at the mall.

... and Jonah Goldberg, with typical wit, says it again.

No Regrets

NYT spills the story on Miller:

Asked what she regretted about The Times's handling of the matter, Jill Abramson, a managing editor, said: "The entire thing."

Art Police

Matt Yglesias on judging art by the politics of the artist:

Surely there's nothing more annoying on this earth than complaining about the politics views of prize-winning artists. If you have some critique of Harold Pinter's plays to offer, then by all means offer it. If you think Pablo Neruda is a bad poet, then make your case. But if you think Neruda shouldn't win prizes for his poetry because he was a Communist, then you've sunk into a real cesspool of philistinism. Shakespeare was a monarchist -- get him out of the schools! That's just dumb.

Not much to add here except that, no matter his political stances (which were indeed asinine), Pinter's plays are often brilliant, and they paved the way for writers as brilliant and diverse as Aaron Sorkin, The Coen Brothers and David Mamet.

This is, however, different from judging a piece of art by its political poisitions. There's enough to say about that issue for an essay (which I hope to write someday), but the short of it is that it is important for pundits to remember that good art can be made in service of rather moronic political claptrap, and that, vice-versa, good politics in no way gaurantees good art.

Soundtrack Bodes Poorly for Narnia Film

The Winter film season this year is finally catching up with the success of the Lord of the Rings films, and studios are doling out big-budget fantasy epics like peppermints from a Christmas float. The biggest, most anticipated films – LOTR director Peter Jackson’s King Kong, the new Harry Potter and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – are all mammoth budget tales of the fantastic based on beloved properties.

The one that’s causing the most stir recently is Wardrobe, the first entry in a planned seven film adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ Christian fantasy allegory Narnia series. There is, of course, the usual furor over the film’s religious symbolism, with the company sticking to a deliberately squirmy line that goes something like, “Those that see religious overtures in the original novels will still see them in the film, but the film is in no way deliberately promoting any religious ideas.” In the next two months, there will undoubtedly be enough ink spilled on this aspect of the film to fill Gulf of Mexico, and every third writer will make clever with The Passion of Harry Potter references (I know I plan to). What I’m interested in is whether or not the film will be any good, whatever the symbolism (or lack thereof).

Initial signs were tentatively positive, starting with the fact that Lewis’ estate was actually willing to release the rights to the property at all. Lewis’ designated rights holders have been notoriously picky about who they let touch any and all ancillary rights to their most precious property, so the fact that Phillip Anschutz’s Walden Media was able to convince them of their commitment to quality says something. The first trailer looked promising, if a bit lacking in a truly original production design (pretty much a make or break factor in these sprawling fantasy epics). And ubergeek Harry Knowles who, despite being unable to write in anything that resembles a coherent fashion, knows his genre films as well or better than any film nut alive, gave a ten minute preview a rave review.

But there are also disturbing signs. Millionaire publisher and theater mogul Phillip Anschutz’s last film was the putrid Around the World in 80 Days, and his company, Walden, hired director Andrew Adamson to helm the project. Adamson’s only directorial credits are the mildly clever but thoroughly uninspiring Shrek films. Not only are the hyperactive, pop-reference-heavy Shrek films the antithesis of what Narnia needs to be, they were entirely CGI, meaning that Adamson has no experience working with actors. Wardrobe, which is brimming over with inexperienced child actors, hardly seems an easy task even for those with a propensity for directing performances.

But the most worrying sign of all came today, in a New York Times article describing (what else?) the difficulties marketing a film to a Christian audience without alienating secular viewers. The worries arrive, though, not because of some conflict in the religious aspects, but because of the choice of music on the soundtrack:

Mitchell Leib, president of music for Disney's Buena Vista film unit, said he still expected to assemble and release a secular soundtrack before the film's Dec. 9 opening. But he cited production snags. He said he was still awaiting a recording by the rock band Evanescence that is intended as the film's closing song.

Putting Evanescence, a terminally cheesy, psuedo-goth, wannabe Christian bar rock band, in a Narnia film is exactly the sort of numbskulled, pop-cult alluding piffle I’d expect from a director like Adamson. The last time Evanescence was featured heavily in a film was in the execrable Daredevil, which was awful on too many levels to even discuss. The Narnia series, like Lord of the Rings, demands a certain level of timelessness and respect. This is along of the lines of setting a film like Gladiator to music by Blink 182 or Britney Spears; it's wholly innapropriate for the tone. C.S. Lewis is certainly rolling in his grave, but it should be fans who complain the loudest: we're the ones who have to see the movie.

Films That Matter (Do They?)

In college, one of the most influential classes I took was on the relationship between politics, culture and film in the 1970s. We watched 2 movies a week, read a book full of Rolling Stone essays and talked out of our asses for hours on end, trying to figure out if culture shaped film or reflected it. There is, of course, no good answer to this question, but like all good film discussions, it’s complex enough that the discussion is one that’s almost always worth having.

Today, the New York Times carries that topic forward, albeit in a small, current eventsy sort of way (as one might expect), with this article, The Problem With Films That Try to Think. The piece argues that Hollywood is currently inundated with socially conscious “idea movies,” but that few, if any, of them actually carry much intellectual heft. Author Caryn James says:

Because these movies are Hollywood products, though, they need to navigate between inoffensively pleasing a mainstream audience and actually saying something. What results is a genre of timid films with portentous-sounding themes, works that offer prepackaged schoolroom lessons or canned debates. Hollywood may be drawn to Big Ideas, but it is always more comfortable with sound-bite-size thoughts.

This is partially correct, but it also forgets some important aspects of dramatic construction that require filmmakers to boil down their ideas into easily digestable chunks. It’s certainly true that many movies passing for socially conscious filmmaking are simple-minded polemics, unable to muster more than some, relatively well written, impassioned speeches in defense of their cause. Some of these, like The Constant Gardener, are well made, despite their simple minded outlook on policy. Others, like Lord of War, are just feebly made films, and their simpleton approach to issues only exaggerates their foulness.

But James, in a rush to make the oh-so-original claim that most of Hollywood is really kind of stupid, forgets that the nature of drama is to strip issues down to two opposing sides, then use inflated rhetoric to deliver the essence of each position with as much passion as an author, director or actor can muster. Screenwriting gurus and narrative structure theorists are always beating the drum of conflict – one book has called it "negotiation" – saying that any given scene should be about two sides, each of which wants something seemingly at odds with what the other wants, going back and forth until the issue at hand is either resolved or it’s made clear that it won’t be resolved (in which case a suggestion should be planted on how one of the characters might attempt to resolve it in the future). The tension created by opposing forces – physical, mental, whatever – is what drives the narrative and what keeps the viewer or reader locked in.

Thus, by its very nature, good screenwriting will take a complex issue and pack it into two easily discernable sides. And because screenwriting favors compression, events and positions become compacted into increasingly smaller, tighter chunks. Sure, we could have films that tackle more abstract ideas, but the general public has a rough time with Soderbergh, much less genuinely obtuse works like those of Beckett and Artaud. The Theatre of Cruelty wouldn't just harm it's audience, it'd starve the producers as well - they'd barely sell any tickets.

Politicians and political journalists are increasingly discovering that dramatic compression and artfully articulated rhetoric makes for high interest in real life political drama as well, which is why so many issues get reduced to easy, partisan talking points, and why the issues with the clearest divisions often play the best. Republicans are against abortion. Democrats are for it. Republicans are for tax cuts. Democrats aren’t. Republicans are against gay marriage. Democrats support it. All of these statements grossly oversimplify the issues at hand. In Hollywood, however, that’s not just the formula, it’s the ideal.

Tarantino Watch: Matt Yglesias brings up another timeless film discussion (at least for the last decade, and likely for the next one too), getting into the ring with those who dismiss Tarantino, saying that one good film (Reservoir Dogs) doesn't make him great. Yglesias is right to decry this notion, for in several decades, we will indeed look back and appreciate anyone capable of producing one or more great films* - whether some of a director's output missed the mark or not won't be an issue. But I can't abide by his criticism of Jackie Brown. Reservoir Dogs remains Tarantino's best film, but Brown, though a bit long, is his most mature and his most human. Plus, it's got Sam Jackson with a fu manchu, and that's worth the price of a ticket any day.

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*By my count, Tarantino has made four.

Two Times the Serenity

Sci-fi geeks and cantankerous individualists everywhere are hailing Joss Whedon's newest film, Serenity, as a strangely perfect melding of space opera and libertarian sentiment. As one of those oddball few that exists suspended in the Venn diagram where those two identifiers meet, I had to join the chorus and salute Whedon's film for its praise of small-government. So head on over to The American Spectator and read why I think that spaceships and small government mix like Captain Kirk and Romulan ale. And if you still haven't checked out my first article on the film, Relevant has it here.

Bork calls Bush to reject Miers

This is really getting bizarre, isn't it? Bork, the defeated conserative Supreme Court nominee, is asking Bush to withdraw his nomination:

Appearing on MSNBC's "The Situation With Tucker Carlson," Bork complained that Miers "has no experience with constitutional law whatever" and called her selection "kind of a slap in the face to the conservatives who've been building up a conservative legal movement for the last 20 years."

Bork, whose own nomination to the high court was defeated in the Senate in 1987 because of his conservative views, added that only White House loyalists are sticking with Miers. "Everybody else I've talked to ranges between disapproval and outrage," he said.

"Well," responded Carlson, "I hope those voicing disapproval and outrage carry the day. I agree with you completely."

Drawing Tenuous Lines

The New York Times has an interesting story on Senator Brownback’s reaction to the Miers nomination – a strong reticence at best, a threat not to vote to confirm at worst. Brownback, the Times says, is “considered a leading conservative voice” and is principally concerned with Miers’ refusal to openly stand against abortion and other issues of concern to social conservatives. The Times says:

While other Republican senators have emerged from their meetings with Ms. Miers offering more effusive praise of her than before, Senator Brownback said his view was unchanged. He complained that he was left trying "to gather little pieces of shreds of evidence" about her views not only on abortion but on other matters of importance to social conservatives, including gay marriage and the role of religion in public life.

What’s useful about this story is that it exposes the frailty of the evangelicals versus intellectuals frame that’s been put forth on the conservative reaction to her nomination by several publications. While James Dobson and Martin Olavsky may favor Miers for her evangelical background, she is by no means a shoe-in for social conservatives.

Nor is Brownback attacking her on grounds that could be called elitist. While some have suggested that resistance to her nomination is largely a result of snooty, pointy-head Ivy League types, Brownback’s criticisms show that conservatives of all stripes are joining the fracas.

While Miers’ worth as a candidate is still an open question (with the burden entirely on the White House to prove her value), the fact is that the lines drawn by the MSM in the conservative fray aren’t as easy as any of them would like.

In Her Shrews

Salon, looking fresh with a redesign, boasts this acidic lede from film critic Stephanie Zacharek:

"In Her Shoes," based on the bestselling novel by Jennifer Weiner, is shamelessly positioned as a girl's-night-out movie: You don't need a brain to enjoy it -- a vagina is good enough.

The magazine has been on a downturn for several years now, especially in regards to its arts and culture output, but Zacharek remains one of the best critics in the business - a singular, thoughtful voice that stands out from most of the dreck that currently passes for criticism.

"A sorry retreat into smallness"

Krauthammer earns the second half of his name and delivers a wallop to Ms. Miers.

What Elitism?

Goldberg and company have already responded to the charge of elitism fairly strongly over at the Corner (and, I’m sure, elsewhere), but I felt this passage in Noam Schieber’s TNR piece suggesting East Coast conservatives are distrustful of Miers out of elitism was too ludicrous to ignore.

Conservatives who populate National Review's blog retreated from the credentialist critique of Miers once the angry e-mails began pouring in. They emphasized instead that Miers lacked a coherent conservative legal philosophy--that she'd "never written seriously on constitutional issues," as National Review's Jonah Goldberg wrote. But this is really just a politically correct form of the same argument. Pretty much the only places where students are encouraged to develop a coherent "legal philosophy" are the top 20 law schools. These philosophies then get refined in the kind of academic or professional writing that only a tiny fraction of lawyers ever do.

Schieber is absolutely right in saying that only a “tiny fraction” of lawyers ever get to develop a formal, public argument for a specific judicial philosophy. What he misses is that it’s entirely reasonable for conservatives to expect a Republican president to choose only from that select few. What Schieber is implicitly calling for with this statement is an egalitarian, representative court marked by handy tokenism. But this is the Supreme Court, and if a Democrat were in the White House, he’d be suggesting no such thing.

Earlier in the piece, Schieber tries to equate what he calls elitism with credentialism – the idea that conservatives simply want a list of uppity resume items that justify a nominee’s worth. But it’s not the absence of credentials that’s worrying about Miers, it’s the absence of publicly articulated opinion. There’s a massive difference between the two, but Schieber won’t recognize it.

Instead, he’s launching a lazy attack on conservatives who want to see Supreme Court nominees picked by demonstrated merit. If that’s elitism, then count me as an elitist.

Whedonite Sounds More Like a Weird Mineral...

Relevant has posted my review of Serenity, a movie which every fan of clever, unpretentious science fiction should see. For the longest time, I didn't understand the appeal of Joss Whedon. Buffy always seemed too kitschy for my taste, and his script for Alien: Resurrection might have been interesting had it not been totally wrong for the franchise in nearly every way. But once I discovered Firefly, I finally got it. The unblinking dismall of genre fallback devices combined with the utter devotion to B-movie pleasures - it's no wonder he ghostwrote for Pixar, another brand known for its willingness to both treasure and deconstruct low brow genre, reimagining it in a form that celebrates and satirizes the original. Anyway, go see the movie. It's giddy sci-fi fun of the first order.

The Earth Rumbles

Mt. Miers has officially exploded. Chalk up another disaster on the Republican charts.

The problem with Bush’s nomination isn’t just that it’s an uninspired blunder of a pick. The problem is that it’s an uninspired blunder of a pick at a time when the right can’t handle another fissure in the cracking party unity.

Tom Delay has been indicted (twice!) – probably unfairly – but it’s a major blow to the party regardless of its validity.

Hurricane Katrina gave the PC left an unending supply of new ammo with which to flail their arms and stupidly charge Bush of racism, callousness and class discrimination.

Karl Rove and others involved in Plamegate are still held in high suspicion by many.

The war in Iraq has grown into a minor fiasco to be slogged through, and much of the public is disgruntled with its handling.

The dual impacts of Katrina and Rita were used to portray the Bush administration and the Republican Party led federal government as a massive operational, logistical failure, with the head of FEMA revealed as an uninspired crony of little ability.

And now, large segments of the right, after initially dipping their feet into the waters of stern Bush bashing over the administration’s willingness to spend massive amounts on Katrina clean up, are vehemently speaking out against a major Presidential initiative.

All this to say that things do not bode well for the immediate future of the Republican party. It’s a testament to the disunity and small-mindedness of the Democrats that the country hasn’t been whole heartedly flipped by now. Like the disorganized, anti-everything rally held at the Capitol recently, the party is awash in fiery outrage, but can’t seem to direct it into a focused, consistent, palatable message for long enough to launch a significant attack.

Now, with the right cracking, that may change.

Robinson takes offense

Eugene Robinson has, to no one's surprise, a rather annoying take on the Bennet abortion comment:

I know what a real racist is like, and Bennett certainly doesn't fit the description. But that's what's so troubling about his race-specific "thought experiment" -- that such a smart, well-meaning opinion maker would so casually say something that translates, to African American ears, as "blacks are criminals."

Essentially, he's suggesting that it doesn't matter what Bennet said, it only matters what people (and while he specifically refers to African Americans, it could really encompass any minority or interest group) choose to hear. Thus Bennet, and - one assumes - any other political commentator, ought to avoid saying what they mean not because it's wrong, but because some subset of the population might choose to interpret it as offensive.

This is the sort of anti-free speech garbage that the left has been preaching for decades now, and it's just as awful as ever. Bennet's comment, by Robinson's own admission, wasn't racist, but Robinson doesn't care because of the perception by some that it might have been motivated by racist sentiment. In the age of South Park and The Aristocrats, one would've thought we were beyond this culture of entitled offense, but the PC movement, albeit in stunted form, lives on.

UPDATE: Over at Tech Central Station, Robert McHenry traces the culture of victimhood back to (where else) schoolyard bullies.

File under: Duh

Today’s NYT has a story about the evolution of life prison sentences which, while remaining under the technical banner of objective journalism, is a typically whining progressive plea for a sentence of life in prison to mean something less than a life of confinement. The end product of this, they claim, is that more inmates than ever have no way out of prison except death. Here’s the gist:

Just a few decades ago, a life sentence was often a misnomer, a way to suggest harsh punishment but deliver only 10 to 20 years.

But now, driven by tougher laws and political pressure on governors and parole boards, thousands of lifers are going into prisons each year, and in many states only a few are ever coming out, even in cases where judges and prosecutors did not intend to put them away forever.

This seems more like a case of “let’s fill some Saturday inches” than anything resembling real journalism. The story, ostensibly, is that states are actually sticking to their word on prison terms. And yet it’s all related in a tone of Deep, Moral, Concern. So let’s get this straight: The Times is worried because a bunch of convicted criminals – many bloodthirsty criminals – are dying in prison, but how many stories do we see bemoaning the million plus babies killed in abortions each year? Could their priorities be any more backwards?

Being in the business of love is also known as prostitution

Judd Apatow, the producer of Anchorman and cowriter of The 40 Year Old Virgin, kept a diary/blog over at Slate this week, and on his last entry, he ended up writing this insipid little pile of word dung that exemplifies everything that's wrong with Hollywood liberals:

This current administration is the wet dream of American corporations because Bush and company believe that business is the answer to all problems, not love. Have you ever heard anyone from this administration talk about how the citizens of this world need to join together and remember that we need each other? They laugh at that kind of talk. But putting the hammer down does not work in all situations, and all we have done is show the world that we can be defeated. And that leads to more countries thinking they can have nuclear weapons because we are not the almighty USA anymore; we are the guys who can't even control Iraq.

Love, not business, eh? Previously in the post, Apatow wrote about how people would much rather watch celebrity gossip than talk about issues like terrorism, because if we focused on what city might blow up next we'd all be too afraid to leave our homes and nothing would ever get done – more problematically, though, he’s buying into that idea as a good (or at least better) solution to world problems. Essentially, Apatow's moronic solution is to ignore any real problems in favor of vacuous soap opera.

It’s an appeal to ignorance, and one that’s typical of the Hollywood community. While Apatow may have some genuine frustration about the state of world affairs at the root of his outburst, much of this sort of talk comes as a result of the fact that Hollywood, as the chief peddler of vapid distraction, serves to make a truckload of money. Maybe Apatow needs to find a new line of work that matches more closely with his values; Hollywood, it seems, isn’t about love, but business.