Musical forks

More on the music front, seeing as it’s the end of the year and Best Of 2005 lists will need to be compiled before too long. At this point, I don’t believe there are any other major releases left for the year, or if there are, the promos are already out, meaning mildly connected record nerds have probably heard what they’re going to hear from the zero five crop.

Because all things indie revolve around Chicago’s best-known elitist webzine, I’ll start with their recent review of the Death From Above 1979 remix album Romance Bloody Romance. Writer Nick Sylvester, once nominated for an Andrew Sullivan Posuer Alert (spelled that way cause Sullivan isn’t just a semi-conservative homosexual beltway blogger-pundit-former New Republic editor, but a British semi-conservative homosexual beltway blogger-pundit-former New Republic editor, and those Brits like the extra letters), makes his feelings rather plain from the start, calling it the “worst release of 2005,” which is pretty dumbfounding considering it’s actually one of the year’s better albums. Who knew?

Maybe I just don’t have the dance beat knack, but every track on that album kills, and whether I would want to shake my ass to it Ken Mehlman-style isn’t even a factor. The whole thing is a groove bludgeon, the sort of spasm-inducing aural energy bar that will transmogrify a boring night of dancing and drugs into a sweaty-chested celebration of hedonism. That, by the way, is a good thing. All those hardcore kids sporting bushy growths and clever piercings need some sexed-up rock blasts, and for the segment that thinks The Locust is good date music, The Faint just doesn’t cut it. Romance Bloody Romance is a fucking great disk, and Nick’s just mad cause his parents stuck him with the name of a cartoon kitty cat dunce, always on the losing end of the battle and without even gaining a bit of audience sympathy. Looks like he lived up to it well.

On the other hand, the Fork gave appropriately high marks to the Test Icicles disk, another spazzy hardcore gem who sound a lot like The Blood Brothers but a little more spastic. Plus they have a genital pun for a name, so you should probably own this CD just so other hardcore heads will get a chuckle when browsing through your CD rack.

And if you occasionally dabble in wussdom, the new Cardigans record is pretty sweet too – a little bit precious, a little bit too cute, but nicely sad and with just-specific-enough lyrics about mopey shit that your urge for vaguely embarrassing innocence and melancholy ought to be satiated till the next Postal Service LP.

Well. That's settled then.

Just in case you were concerned, there will be absolutely no hip-hop montages in the upcoming Aronofsky episodes of Lost:

Q: I wanted to ask you once last question – when you’re doing Lost, do they let you say, ‘Jack is my favorite character, so I want to do a Jack episode’?
Aronofsky: My thing on it is that I just love the show. I’m not going to be Darren Aronofksy when I make Lost, I’m just going to be a fan. I feel bad because everyone might want some crazy shots or stuff, but I think they do that show really well and it’s shot really well, so I want to be a gun for hire for them. ... It’s doing what they do best and just helping them do that for a while and having fun with the actors and stuff. It’s not about putting my fingerprint on it, it’s more about having a good time. ... I figured two weeks in Hawaii, actors I like, a great show… it’s their baby, I really respect that. I’m not going to change it, I’m not interested in converting it into a monster.
Q: So no hip-hop montages.
Aronofsky: No hip-hop montages.

It's good to get these urgent, pressing matters settled. Now on to the next matter -- will there be a Clint Mansell score, an appearance by Ellen Burstyn, and injection close-ups?

Wizardy builds character

Thomas Hibbs writing on why Harry Potter is great character education:

It is true that as practice in many schools character education is no more than a fad, deployed as a quick fix for rising violence, promiscuity, drug use, and incivility that afflict our youth. [...] Much that passes for character education never transcends "simplistic slogans." Schools promote virtues the way Baskin-Robbins sells its flavor of the week, with posters of nice kids being nice to other nice kids. This is the sort of insubstantial rot through which young people see very quickly; it is, I would contend, one of the motives for rebellion among perceptive, slightly disaffected kids who yearn for something more than the latest superficial pitch from adults.

No kidding. And yet so few administrators, teachers and others in charge of rearing our nation's children realize that their hokey sloganeering is woefully ineffective in reaching today's ultra-scrutinizing, media-savvy youngsters. Hollywood will spend $40 or $50 million marketing a single 2 hour movie to the nation's children (and even then many films fail) -- does anyone really think a couple of laughable, archaically designed posters and videos will have a chance? There's much more to be said about the failure of educational systems to use media effectively, but it's the Monday after Thanksgiving; there's work to be done.

"An Analog Armageddon?" at AFF Brainwash

Most people that know me are fairly clear on the fact that I like movies; only slightly less well-known is my affinity for gadgets (judging, at least, by the regularity of conversations that begin with “Peter, I’m thinking about buying a computer…,” versus “Peter, I’m going to see a movie this weekend…”). Consequently, when the two fields intersect, I go at it like Steven Spielberg and megabudget schmaltz. So it’s no surprise that Congressional rumblings seeking to give the FCC power to institute broadcast flag regulations raised my interest – and my ire. AFF Brainwash has my article, “An Analog Armageddon?” which explains why recent broadcast flag proposals could ban an entire class of professional and consumer gadgets.

Top 5 Reasons You're a Total Record Geek

Musical classification nerds rejoice, for Pitchfork proves (again) that it can play the absurdly obscure categorization game with the best of 'em, describing the latest from Adult. as a transition "from cyborg post-punk to cheerleader pogo goth." You know you've been reading (and probably writing) snobby rock crit for far too long when you see phrases like that and nod, like, "yeah, totally." Gimme trouble -- and a post-rock cellphone-ditty twee punk comp -- indeed.

P.S. -- The Fork gave the record an 8.0, which fits the site's now classic pattern of giving high marks to vaguely freaky, experimental and totally unlistenable albums for being audaciously different, if not especially good. Protest about rewarding originality all you want, but in ten years not even the band members are going to be listening to this dumbass march-to-my-Atari hipster bullshit (and this is coming from someone who really likes every single Joan of Arc release).

Can you spot the differences between these two pictures?

Note the similarities between Manohla and David's reviews of Harry Potter. Manohla calls Brendan Gleeson "a man of garrulus temperament and removable parts," while David says he's an "amusing glowerer," but structurally, their text is suspiciously parallel. Would it be too much to suggest some sort of Oliver Stone-esque conspiracy? Probably, but one wonders, nonetheless.

Manohla writes:

If the lead attraction remains somewhat unsteady on his feet, one of the constant pleasures of the films, and one of the benefits of the big Hollywood money behind them, has been their pedigreed talent. Among the British sirs, dames and quality hams returning to the series are Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman, Robbie Coltrane, Maggie Smith, Timothy Spall and Gary Oldman, whose brief appearance is sadly little more than a tease. New to the scene are Miranda Richardson as Rita Skeeter, a snoopy journalist who is mainly on hand to remind us that Harry is no longer a child, and Brendan Gleeson as the latest addition to the Hogwarts staff, Mad-Eye Moody. A man of garrulous temperament and removable parts, including a googly eye that he wears like a pirate's patch, Mad-Eye is a pip.

Meanwhile, David pens:

Speaking of casting, it's always a treat to see what big-studio-franchise cash can produce in the way of top-flight British (and Irish) actors. The islands have been swept for great thespians; this movie must have closed the theaters for months. Along with the peerlessly bitchy Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Robbie Coltrane (smitten with a visiting giantess who looks like an elongated Judith Miller—only nicer), and Michael Gambon (who has found his Dumbledore, injecting a dose of irony into his lines), we get more Gary Oldman (albeit only as a smoke-and-ash face in a fireplace), more Timothy Spall (vermin with a pedigree), and, best of all, more of the delicious Shirley Henderson as Moaning Myrtle (now sneaking peeks at Harry's privates). There are three additions: Miranda Richardson—regrettably one-note—as a journalist who has made up her mind about Harry well in advance of their interview (i.e., the normal-sized Judith Miller); the amusing glowerer Brendan Gleeson as the latest Defense Against the Dark Arts professor; and Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort.

Let's put Judy Miller on the case, and in a few years, we won't know what happened, but there will be a lot of fuss and scandal.

After all that eating, think about noseless film characters

Ms. Dargis is most certainly correct when she says about Ralph Fiennes expert turn as the malevolent He Who Shall Not Be Named that:

His Voldemort may be the greatest screen performance ever delivered without the benefit of a nose; certainly it's a performance of sublime villainy.

And later she even drops a Butoh reference, definitely apt in this case. Whatever complaints one may have about the New York Times' co-chief film critic, Manohla clearly knows how to light up a weird-art geek's pleasure centers with her words (though, since she doesn't publish her picture, it cannot be determined with what else she might or might not appeal to said centers).

Still, it got me thinking, besides Vincent D'Onofrio's completely wacked performance (though one could make an argument that those words describe all his roles) as a psychotic noseless druglord, a character type we clearly need more of, in The Salton Sea, how many other noseless characters are there in the film world? And let's leave out characters whose whole face has been disfigured, as they're more accurately described as "the dude with the fucked up face." No, I'm asking only for characters who could concisely be referred to as "noseless" without cheating by forgetting to mention that, oh, they were headless or faceless as well. And before someone gets smart alecky, no, apparitions and such don't count either. Anyone?

There's a Thanksgiving Day bleg for you to ponder.

Howdy thar, Pilgrim

My reccomendations: watch a movie and stuff yourself silly.

Portents of doom

This weekend looks to be a botch already: Bravo isn't fulfilling their normal holiday role as purveyor of just-smart-enough-to-not-make-you-feel-guilty middlebrow TV by running a West Wing marathon! I might have to resort to something drastic like, er... buying the the DVD sets.

Foreign policy: Are we in or are we out?

Lawrence Kaplan has an excellent essay on the polarized ideas informing the liberal reaction to the war in Iraq, and he crystalizes the difficulty they've had in dealing with U.S. foreign policy in recent years like so:

Every time America goes to war, it unearths a contradiction at the heart of American liberalism. The contradiction pits the liberal ideal that discourages impinging on the autonomy of others against the liberal ideal that no people ought to be governed without their consent--and that liberals ought therefore to support the democratic aspirations of foreign peoples. The tension between the two manifests itself in every war, with liberals who heeded Hans Morgenthau's admonition to mind our own business arguing that we have no right to violate the sovereignty of a Yugoslavia or an Iraq, while the descendants of Woodrow Wilson argue that to do otherwise would amount to a betrayal of liberalism.

What's just as interesting is that conservatives and libertarians have a similar split, between the non-interventionist isolationism profferred by libertarian diehards and the aggressive, democracy-spreading bent of pro-war neocons. It is this debate -- on both sides of the aisle -- that will inform the future of American policy, with Iraq as the test case. How it will play out will largely depend on whether or not Iraq is seen as a failure (looking more possible every day), and if so, if it's a failure that can be modified into a success or a failure that can be best learned from by avoiding it in the future.

Assorted movie bits

Proceed with chest-beating and 6.1 jungle roar: Peter Jackson shed 70 pounds while making King Kong, and though he didn't manage to produce anything resembling a trim film, the marketing department has produced some lightweight TV spots for this oversized gorilla of a movie. At least it will be better than Congo.

Who is number 1?: In the words of High Fidelity's Jack Black: "McGoohan! McGoohan!"

Harry Potter and the (magical) dumptrucks full of cash: Thank goodness the whole Christians versus Harry Potter thing has died down, though it seems to have been replaced by Christians versus everyone who doesn't care if Aslan is God or whatever because it's just a movie, dammit. I still haven't seen this movie. Shush.

Shamalamadingdong: So we're all aware of M. Night's favorite board game, and, understandably, some are rather annoyed by his insistence on narrative sleight-of-hand, but despite some blunders, I still think the man deserves real credit for being one of the few filmmakers to take magical realism seriously. He posits worlds in which the fantastic can and does exist -- but right along side the very mundanities that we all take for granted. His new trailer is appropriately mysterious, and Apple has it here.

The endless stupidity of the MPAA: This will certainly help Bram Cohen, but I don't see it doing much to stop piracy, as anyone who has ever used (or even read about) BitTorrent clients knows that it's not exactly difficult to use, let's say... Google, among other search sites, to find trackers.

You break it, you buy it

Over at Wired there's a story about a fairly stupid anti-consumerism project, Buy Nothing Day. Now I'm as sensitive to the consequences (as well as the benefits) of our ultra commercial consumer culture as just about anyone, but this is just dumb:

The day after Thanksgiving, the busiest shopping day of the year, is fast becoming known as a day of protest. A growing subculture of activists now proclaims the date Buy Nothing Day, and its members challenge themselves and others not to consume on consumerism's busiest day.

So one day of not purchasing is going to do what? Those participating will, at best, just do their shopping before or afterwards. They'll get groceries and gas and whatever else the day before, and they'll buy Christmas presents afterwards. If anything, it means more support for the retail world: the day after Thanksgiving is often marked by the biggest sales of the year, many of which are driven by massive loss-leaders. A smart shopper can often make their way out of a store having paid less for their items than the store did. Of course, Buy From Absurdly Low Sales Only Day just doesn't have that same ring...

Rent, John Woo and tensionless dancing

I’m not at all interested in seeing Rent, and, if it means committing a mild heresy, I’m generally uninterested in film musicals of any stripe. The blasé critical reaction to the film and the presence of master of mediocrity Chris Columbus aren’t exactly an incentive to spend my hard(ish)-earned ten bucks on a ticket, but more to the point, I find filmed musicals to be, at best, an awkward medium that tries to repackage the spectacle of live performance into 35mm frames. It rarely works.

Hong Kong film buffs and Western junkies have long heard how the best filmed action scenes, especially gunfights, work along the same general principles as great musical sequences. They are exuberant displays of the physical form in motion, the body not just as artist but instrument and art as well. It’s become basic film critic lingo to label high-octane dual-pistol gunfights with a John Woo quip and the word “balletic,” but to do so is to rob action scenes of an integral ingredient: conflict.

When Chow Yun-Fat busts out the pistols in the tea-house and slides down the banisters, icon-style, he’s not just engaging in an impressive bit of physical business: He’s saving his life. That tension derived from the inherent conflict of a gun or sword battle is entirely missing from the fussy, choreographed unreality of most musical numbers. Sure, they look great and they pull of some impressive moves, but there’s nothing at stake. The characters are going to continue to burst into weird song and dance numbers and they're not going to make mistakes. Pardon me while I thumb through my email.

In a live-performance setting, however, musicals don’t need to create tension in the plot; the spectacle of the choreography, and indeed, the tension created by the uncertainty about whether or not they’ll pull it off, is what keeps us interested. Live theater always has the capacity for error, and the feats it manages are incredibly impressive for the third row. On film, though, that excitement is entirely dissipated as there’s just no question about whether the performers will pull off the next move or not. Hell, half the time it’s a stunt-dancer. That’s not excitement; it’s sissified Oscar-bait.

Mindbending or whatever

Filmbrain has a worthwhile write-up of the allegedly genre redefining anime film Mind Games, and while the net's master of Asian cinema doesn't care for it all that much, I'm sold. Possibly this is because in 1981, while he was enjoying repeat viewings of Heavy Metal, I was still working on, you know, being born. Subsequently, my taste for immaturity is probably still a little stronger than that wise old film sage. Although when you talk about ancient movie blogging legends, there's only one, and the world is a sadder place without him.

Despite the time of year, this post will be about squids and whales, not turkeys

I still haven’t seen Harry Potter, or Capote or Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang. I still haven’t seen Paradise Now or most of the other wonderful obscurities showing at the E-Street. I saw The Squid and the Whale, which is sort of Wes Anderson meets Martin Scorsese and Steven Soderberg, and I loved everything about it except that Anna Paquin seemed to be playing the exact same part she played in 25^th Hour, which, by the way, is a thoroughly overlooked masterpiece that deserved every bit of the ecstatic praise lavished upon it by former Salon critic Charles Taylor in his sputtering, heartfelt 3600 word review. It’s Spike Lee’s only genuinely worthwhile film in the last decade – others have been interesting, but not good – and it’s the only film to address September 11^th’s incomprehensible, unspeakable horror with any sort of depth. It deserves to be held up as a classic. Anyway.

The Squid and the Whale, I think, like 25^th Hour, is also a film about New York, though less about New York as a place than New York as a culture – specifically the upper middle class intellectual set of the 80s. Raised in the small town South (albeit by Yankees), it’s not a culture I’m intimately familiar, yet it feels despairingly accurate. Director Noah Baumbach doesn’t have to explain the intricate roles played by literature and parking and tennis; he simply assumes their importance and lets the audience come to understand it as the film goes on.

It’s also one of the few films that capturees that unnervingly difficult family dynamic created by not just difficult parents, but brilliant, compelling, difficult parents. Most films about family dysfunction like to simplify problems, but Squid shows two very flawed – yet arguably decent – parents whose mistakes aren’t made solely in spite of their brilliance and talent, but often because of it. Their nuerosis and their stubbornness are inseperable from their intellectual strength.

Both Daniels and Linney are just devastating as proud, intelligent, accomplished adults who somehow or another still manage to wreck their lives and their family. The film is a sad reminder of the way intelligence can get the better of its owner, and the unfortunate way even the strongest and most able individuals can, through stubbornness and intellectual pride, shatter their own lives and the lives of those they love.

On web sites for people with Internet addiction

We are entertaining ourselves into inanition.

A must-read socio-political commentary from George Will, who argues that the solopsism of the iPod and cell phones, the welfare state, bad grammar and spoiled children of entitled parents are all signals of incivility's reign. I am in total agreement, despite my participation (I'll be replacing my iPod headphones later today -- my last set got dipped in coffee), and would also reccomend Patricia Dalton's column, "What's Wrong With This Outfit, Mom?", as a corollary. While I'm somewhat less convinced in regards to Dalton's concerns about clothing, her points in regards to child-rearing and the flat-out stupid idea that it should be friendly and conflict-free are spot on.

Bartlett would watch this

Over at Ain't It Cool, Herc gives the rundown on whiz kid screenwriter Aaron Sorkin's new series, Studio 7, which concerns the real-life insanity of a Saturday Night Live-like sketch comedy show. It doesn't come out till Fall 06, but I'm totally foaming already. Which is, you know... good. The real question now is: what role will Joshua Malina, who's appeared in every single Sorkin project, get cast to play? Cause I'm laying down the law right now: No Josh, no watch.

Bill Buckley, Conservatism and Reality

And now for a bit of K-Street pointy head navel-gazing in honor of Bill Buckley’s 80^th birthday (which is actually the 24^th, it seems, but the gracious and wonderful folks at NRO are celebrating it today, and so will I).

In a recent Wall Street Journal profile, Bill Buckley made an interesting statement.

“Conservatism, except when it is expressed as pure idealism, takes into account reality.”

This idea of conservatism as a bastion of realistic thinking is, as a Texan friend of mine would say, something of a sticky-wicket, for in that simple statement, Buckley has conjured up one of the foremost challenges in current conservative thinking – whether, in embracing thinking that is “realistic,” to position conservatism as an institution of political pragmatism, with all the PR flattery and political dealmaking that implies, or as one of intellectual, moral and economic truth – public opinion be damned. There are realities inherent in both, and yet often these realities conflict with each other. This juxtaposition seems to be in constant play amongst the leaders of the right, whether in the constant verbal maneuvering of Congressmen or the ferocious, unbending certainty of think tanks and lobbyists.

On one hand, there are political realities. It is inarguable that a great many intellectually sound policy options are simply not available because the public will not accept them for whatever reason. Economic conservatives and libertarians might love to do away with anything resembling a progressive tax; social conservatives would race to ban most forms of abortion at the federal level. Political realities, and the realities of public opinion (and, probably, public ignorance), mean these aren’t actually feasible policies no matter how well they might work on paper.

A more obscure example, but one close to my heart, is the issue of Digital TV converter box subsidies. Congress is smartly moving to mandate the conversion of all broadcast TV signals to digital, provoking much talk about how much better digital signal is and how wonderful movies and sports will become when it’s all 1080i and 5.1 surround. This is, of course, rubbish. Congress is mandating the transition to open up hundreds of billions of dollars in spectrum that will finally be available to provide genuinely useful services rather than support the decaying broadcast TV industry which now serves only about 10-15% of the population, depending on whose estimates you look at.

The problem with all this is that the transition mandate will turn lots of old analog TVs into junk, and many are clamoring for Congress to subsidize digital television converter boxes at the cost of about $3 billion. Yes, that’s $3 billion to make sure that your TV doesn’t stop working; that’s not exactly limited government at its best. Julian Sanchez has already exposed the stupidity of this expenditure, but his essay misses the political reality, which is that Congress will never vote to mandate the DTV transition if the broadcast industry can point to even one single grandma who relies on television for blah, blah, blah and just look at the mean old government who is taking it away. Call it granny-TV pork; in order to open up hundreds of billions in spectrum, the government is going to have to shell out $3 billion to keep crappy TV sets alive. That’s the political reality.

On the other hand, we have intellectual, economic, and moral realities. The economic reality is that high tax rates and regulation on businesses burden industry, and thus the economy, creating fewer jobs for everyone which means greater poverty all around. The moral reality is that abortion is tragic and harms many more women that NARAL would ever admit. The obvious policy position is for the government NOT to spend billions of making sure TVs still work. By the logic – indeed the reality – of conservative intellectual thought, all of these are the correct positions to advocate. This, also, is a way in which conservatives could “take into account reality.”

The problem lies in the fact that much of the public does not take reality into account, and therefore, the reality of their will doesn’t match up to the reality of sound policy, but is a force to reckon with all the same. So to which reality does Bill Buckley suggest conservatives adhere? I’m not sure there’s a good, simple answer to that, and I’m mildly abashed to admit that I don’t know Buckley’s writings nearly well enough to propose an idea on what he might say. I think, though, that it’s that ongoing tension between the reality of public opinion and the reality of intellectually correct thinking that keeps conservatism lively, and it’s outlets like National Review (and many others) through which those who attempt to “stand athwart history” can keep the resulting questions wonderfully, sometimes brilliantly, alive.

Sweethearts, not bleeding hearts

I don't know whether this is clever or awful, though I lean towards the latter. If it were a Black People Love Us style joke, I'd definitely laugh, but it's as serious as an Armond White review. AFF recently hosted a mixed party dating roundtable, and I've been told by authoritative sources that it was "silly" (which, Julian, was not intended as derogatory). I'm suspicious of cross-party dating, however, mainly because of how it turned out for Donna and her incident with the guy and the boxes at Farragut Grille. In the end, everything in D.C. goes back to The West Wing.

Fercryinoutloud!

The film version of hip 80's musical Rent is apparently being released with a PG-13 rating, despite a smattering of four letter words, sexual themes and drug use. Chud uses the opportunity to praise the MPAA for a rare smart ratings decision, but even the article's description of how it recieved the rating shows just how patently absurd the whole ratings process is:

The film originally got an R rating, and Chris Columbus claims that Sony assured him that they didn’t want him to cut anything to get a PG-13. “The MPAA gave me a list of things to cut,” he said at a press conference Saturday. “They gave me five to seven language issues, and they gave me a list of 30 picture edits they wanted me to change.”

In the end Columbus made the language changes and cut 5 frames of a needle going into an arm – “We did lose a third of a second. It was the difference between the needle going into the arm and the needle going into the arm. A second is 24 frames and we cut 5.” – but otherwise he left the picture edits alone. When he resubmitted the film he got the PG-13.

So the difference between an R and a PG-13 is literally 5 frames of film? Could the assignment of a rating, which often makes a pivotal difference in the film's marketing and box-office, be any more arbitrary? Ratings and content regulation, even supposedly "self-imposed" (really just code for the-government-will-if-we-won't) are a bad enough idea even if carried out in a sane, organized fashion; but this is the MPAA, and sanity is the least of their objectives.

Skewl Dayz

One might've thought Slate's decision to hold "College Week" more reasonable around Labor Day, or even at the end of May, when collegial activities are beginning or ending, though I suppose right before Thanksgiving is as good a time as any, as many college students are wishing they could forget about classes and simply begin the holidays now. Either way, the toast of internet webzines' piece on the favorite college books of a variety of influential minds is both wonderful and depressing. Wonderful, because it is almost always amusing to see the world's public ponderers turn inward and literary, and depressing because it reconfirms how despairingly poor of letters I am. Combine this with over-mentioned-on-this-site blogger Ross's recent list of books he hasn't read, and the overall effect is that of being shown a golden boulder and told you can have it -- provided you can carry it home.

The competition for the best entry award is easy, with Bill Simmons's post on Raymond Carver:

During the summer after my freshman year in college, I bought a collection of Raymond Carver's short stories—Where I'm Calling From—that ended up impacting me more than anything I ever read. At that point in my life, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to attend law school or become a writer, and that book literally made the decision for me. I can't even tell you how many times I read it—in fact, I have the exact same copy from college, only it looks like somebody pounded it with a bloody baseball bat or something. I don't know what's holding it together. Aside from the obvious classics ("Cathedral," "A Small Good Thing"), my favorite Carver story was "The Calm"—structurally perfect, layers to everything, quirky as hell—which had one of those classic Carver endings that made you just shake your head and think, "I will never be as good of a writer as that guy." Not only did he inspire the hell out of me in college, he completely discouraged me in every way. Now that is an influential book.

To be a young creative type with impossible aspirations is to continually live those final sentences; the best writers or filmmakers aren't just great -- they're impossibly great. They tell stories you never could've dreamed up and do it with far more dazzle and integrity. Reading these books and watching these movies opens up an entire new world of what is possible, and yet similarly reminds us of how much further we have to go ourselves.

An honorable mention goes to College Humor editor Ricky Van Veen's entry, which pretty much captures the flavor (minus a thick marbling of profanity, of course) of every conversation I have ever had with my college roommate:

High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Culture of Excess by Charles Fleming. This glimpse into the ridiculous world of Hollywood pushed me in the "entertainment-career-after-college" direction more than any guidance counselor or computerized survey ever could. I'd find myself stopping every few pages and reading passages aloud to my roommate. "Wait, he paid a hooker just to watch TV with him?" "Yeah, dude."

The Comedy of Offense

Sam Anderson's recent Slate piece on Sarah Silverman contains perhaps the most precise, concise definition of the comedy of offense that has risen to notoriety with shows like South Park and The Family Guy.

Through her stand-up, however, Silverman has become an important member of a guerrilla vanguard in the culture wars that we might call the "meta-bigots"—other members include the South Park kids, Sacha Baron Cohen's "Ali G", and the now-AWOL Dave Chappelle. The meta-bigots work at social problems indirectly; instead of discussing race, rape, abortion, incest, or mass starvation, they parody our discussions of them. They manipulate stereotypes about stereotypes.

Unlike Matthew Yglesias, I can't say I'm particularly excited about Silverman's new movie, Jesus is Magic. I too have seen the trailers running at E-Street, but I remain skeptical. Anderson's article correctly points out Silverman's shaky track record in films like School of Rock, and the trailer I saw seemed to miss the part "meta-bigot" comedy where the ultimate end was, well, comedy. Silverman's approach to stand-up seems pretty much to be to find the most offensive thing possible, and then... well, that's it. It doesn't go any further than that.

And, partly due to the nature of stand-up, it seems like that's the formula for every joke. Find a cultural taboo and expose it in whatever way is most likely to offend, daring people to be shocked, and then leave it hanging out in the public square for all to gawk at. It's not so much humor as it is confrontation; it's not a bad thing--but it's not always all that funny.

South Park and its ilk, while not always on the money, are more than a repackaged collection of awkward offenses, and they're willing to move outside the bounds of obscenity and taboo in order to make their jokes. They use clever dialog, brilliantly constructed characters and narrative structure tp bring some actual wit to the proceedings. The songs in South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, for example, aren't just funny because of their outrageous lyrics, they're funny because they're perfect parodies of formulaic musical tunes. Team America didn't just parody the indeterminate racial issues in the war on terrorism (or global Islamist extremism, or whatever WH speechwriting is calling it these days), it also included a lot of very amusing self-referential jabs at the absurdity of the puppet medium itself.

Sure, the most memorable gags were about sex and vomit, but they weren't the only gags. Silverman, on the other hand, seems to screen out most everything but un-P.C. skewering, and the result is far more monotonous than her fellows in form.

If Darren Aronofsky ran a 50's diner it would be called

... The Fountain. And this is what it would look like.

Ms. Run-Amuck becomes Ms. Pink Slip

Judy Miller's personal website has her resume, which is probably going to come in handy now that she's been fired. Yeah, the Times says they "reached an agreement," but that's pretty obviously the polite way to say they threw her ass out, just like MoDo's opening line in her Miller column, "I like Judy Miller very much," really translates to "bite me, whore." At the Times, every day is opposite day.

For an amusing take on NYT's inability to get comment from the departing (shitcanned!) Miller, check out the AmSpec Blog.

The Jack Bauer Power Hour and Torture

There's quite a fuss about the McCain torture bill going round the web right now, with hawks like Andrew Sullivan and Ramesh Ponnuru arguing for its passage and National Review arguing against it. The problem is that, like most potent legislative dilemmas, it's not just a matter of policy, but of politics.

National Review's case is, intellectually, I think, the right one. There's no reason to tack on additional regulation banning torture. It's already illegal, and codifiying more laws and restrictions on prisoner treatment can only serve to make information gathering more lugubrious and muddle the boundaries further. Legislative directives, as much as they might be pored over by a raft of law-degree holding D.C.ers, are rarely the pictures of clarity, and there's an intrinsic cost in time and delineation whenever you add more law to the books. We're swimming in laws in this country as it is; we need fewer regulations, not more.

Further, there's what I'll call the "24 Exception," in which an agent must extract time-sensitive information pertaining to an imminent attack. Audiences increasingly love Jack Bauer for his hardcore excursions into torture, but we're a little more squeamish about its real-life counterpart. But I think you'll find few who will argue that there aren't exceptions (or hypothetically could be) in which any and all measures should taken to produce information from a detainee. When lives are on the line, we want a man who's willing to electrocute his girlfriend's estranged husband for information (hey--they're separated).

But as Ross and Ramesh point out, there's also a strong need for good PR, and the way to approach this bill is not to think of it so much as a ball and chain for our field agents and instead consider it symbolic public statement of our beliefs about prisoner treatment. As a general rule, the U.S. ought to be the world leader in detainee treatment, and our legislation ought to remind a somewhat understandably riled world that this is the case. These rules, like any rules, can be bent or broken when the need is there, but that's not the public face we want to put on. Let President Palmer do the talking; Jack Bauer can do the dirty work, and if he fails, we can always send him on the lam for season 5.

Shades of super-cinema

Further proof that superhero films have settled into a comfortable Hollywood niche, we're entering the the era of superhero deconstruction--or at least silly parody. Just as the 1980s ushered in revisionist comic lore with gritty graphic novels like The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen, the second half of this decade will undoubtedly take the prior half's newfound obsession with super cinema and attempt to put a new spin on it. This has arguably already begun (and probably should have ended) with The Incredibles, but since Hollywood has never been known for moderation, get ready to gear up for third generation derivatives like Super Ex-Girlfriend. Yeah, clever title, really.

Fuel for the geek engines over at Ain't It Cool with what appears to be a Spider-Man 3 still of Thomas Hayden Church as Sandman.

Chud reports development of a Hellboy cartoon, which almost seems like a good idea until you realize how much of Big Red's charm comes from his grouchy, occassionally offensive demeanor--a tough element to maintain for the kiddie set. The article says the series is being developed for Cartoon Network, which means it may end up running in their less restrictive Adult Swim block, but from the looks of the animation in the still they provide, I'd guess its being set to appear alongside the network's other superhero cartoons, all of which are spastic, cheaply-drawn kiddie fare.

Reihan and Ross...

... offer a comprehensive plan to fix everything. Smart kids, them, even if they do reccomend wage subsidies.

Sand and Soldiers: Jarhead Review at NRO

This weekend, director Sam Mendes released his third film, Jarhead, based on the cynical Gulf War memoir of the same name. Since then, quite a few people have asked what I thought of the film, and the answer is … uhm. Er. Yeah, let’s see here. Gimme a second. The answer is … is … about 1000 words long, and is currently posted at National Review Online. So soldier on over and check out my take on this existential tale of desert dissatisfaction:

-- http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/suderman200511080825.asp

Faith, film and profits: part II

The New York Times’ Sharon Waxman today has her take on the Christian film phenomenon that’s currently sparking discussion with the release of the newest Left Behind film. And once again, it reveals the unfortunate truth about so much Christian filmmaking—these films aren’t actually about film. As usual, Christians have no idea how to approach art, and in fact seem to shy away from it (when not condemning it outright) in favor of pseudo-art whose dual purpose is proselytizing and profiting. Clearly, I support both of these as worthwhile goals (my cred as both a Christian and a free-marketer is pretty well established), but devoid of artistic integrity they’re a prime setting for pretty cruddy art.

Probably the most prominent omission from the article is any talk of the movie’s quality. The focus is entirely on evangelizing and making money.

Mr. Feingold said Sony had plans to make two more Christian movies next year, and intended to make more "Left Behind" films. "We think it will be a nice franchise for Sony," he said. "Modestly budgeted, the 'Left Behind' books are a nice business."

Many of last month's church screenings were followed by an altar call for born-again conversions and fund-raising. Mr. Lalonde said proudly that at a screening for about 900 people at a Costa Mesa, Calif., church on Friday night, "11 people became Christians after the film."

This isn’t filmmaking; it’s advertising. It’s a new way to sell faith—and to do it at the expense of any pretense of artistic quality. The issue I have with this isn’t so much that the films are explicitly pro-Christian, it’s that they’re only that. They’re two hour commercials for accepting Jesus under threat of Revelation, and the result is that, while they may achieve some limited good, they ultimately succeed primarily in furthering the association between Christianity and bad art, as well as propagating the notion that religion is just fire insurance.

Just as bad is the absolute focus on profitability. Yes, the world of film is one that is massively concerned with money—who’s got it, who’s making it, and how everyone can get a piece. But this single-minded focus on profit is just another sign of how these filmmakers are utterly unconcerned with artistic integrity, as well as an easy way for the secular world to paint Christian filmmaking as trashy and exploitative. The sad thing is, when it comes to movies like this, they’re right.

This post is concerned with Star Wars on a very plain level

I almost don’t know how to react to Aidan Wasley’s Slate essay on how that Star Wars series is really just a two decade experiment in postmodern art. It is, without overstatement, jaw-droppingly fantastic. Clever, insightful and shamelessly academic, it’s lofty without being pretentious. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it in a publication as mainstream as Slate. He even drops a John Ashberry reference.

Wasley’s essay claims that the entire Star Wars series—even the much maligned prequel trilogy—is a visual and narrative representation of the artifice of drama. One particularly salient point he makes suggests that The Force is a literal device for the narrative control:

But Lucas takes this self-consciousness about narrative artifice a step further: He makes explicit his theoretical interest in the mechanics of plot. As viewers, we take pleasure in the implausible events that must happen for the narrative contraption to snap shut in a satisfying way. But the characters come to understand that there is another agent, external to themselves, that is dictating the action. Within the films' fiction, that force is called … er, "the Force." It's the Force that makes Anakin win the pod race so that he can get off Tatooine and become a Jedi and set all the other events in all of the other films in motion. We learn that Anakin's birth, fall, redemption, and death are required to "bring balance to the Force" and, not coincidentally, to give the story its dramatic shape. The Force is, in other words, a metaphor for, or figuration of, the demands of narrative. The Force is the power of plot.

Later, he points out Lucas’ use of a technique that’s quickly becoming popular in the production of gritty, serious science fiction—the use of rough, handheld camera movements in CGI:

Likewise, in Clones there's a fascinating instance of cinematic self-consciousness that speaks to Lucas' awareness of the imaginative costs of all-digital filmmaking. Amid a riotous and panoramic battle-scene on a desert planet, the film frame suddenly starts to shudder as it zooms in on a close-up of a clone-filled combat vehicle. As viewers, we recognize the jerky camera movement as that of a hand-held camera, familiar to us from news footage and war movies, and the shot gives a kinetic, you-are-there edge to the chaotic scene. Until, that is, we realize that the entire scene exists only in a computer hard-drive, that there is no hand-held camera, and that Lucas is using a computer program to mimic the authentic touch of the unsteady human hand. It's a startling moment, where the film calls our attention to its own technological artifice.

I don’t have much to add to his excellent interpretation, except that it’s curious to see the way critical appreciation for the Star Wars series has evolved. As baby boomers and Gen Xers (a term which has, to my great relief, quickly fallen from our daily lexicon) for whom Star Wars was a—or perhaps the—pivotal film experience of their young lives take over the reigns of film commentary, we’re seeing an increasing level of tension over how these iconic movies ought to be treated. The impact of the original trilogy cannot be overstated: the series inspired a generation of geeks to love science fiction and changed the face of Hollywood like few other films by cementing the idea of the blockbuster in studio executive minds. Two generations of critics, from fanboys to the most influential dailies, grew up living and loving Star Wars, but now, especially with the percieved failure (at least by many) of the prequels, there are growing movements to either justify these films or to distance oneself from them.

Subsequently, we hear lots of talk about how flippant and juvenile they are. They’re movies for kids, is one argument, and probably well-made movies for kids; but that’s all. The Hero’s Journey business was just a ruse tacked on by Lucas after the fact because it helped sell the film as myth and made Georgie-boy feel better about having spent a decade on a goofy kid’s story. It’s the “I was young and stupid excuse,” perhaps tinged with some boyhood nostalgia.

On the other hand, we’re also seeing a critical reevaluation of the film from a postmodern, visualist’s rspective. Wesley’s essay is one example, but hypervisualist critics like Manola Dargis are offering new justifications for Lucas’ handiwork by transferring the power of the movies entirely to their images. And in one sense, this is a pretty convincing argument. Lucas has a magnificent eye, mixing modernism and art deco into a gleaming, science fiction wonderland. These critics tend to reference Lucas’ comment about how he believes that the images should tell the story without the dialogue as well as Ron Howard’s reminiscence that, as a young man, Lucas encouraged him to check out USC’s animation department because it freed the director from dealing with actors. Images, not people, dominate this line of thinking.

I’m not inclined to settle my own opinions of the films yet, suffice to say that I’ll always love the original trilogy—even Jedi—and that I think that those three films succeeded on narrative terms while the prequels did not.

On a somewhat related note, I’ll also recommend this review of the Sith DVD at Ain’t It Cool. Alexandra DuPont, the wittiest, most graceful writer ever to opine for that repository of unrequited geek glee, returns from retirement to offer a highly amusing, smart take on the final Star Wars film that may be the closest thing we have to a definitive fanboy (fangirl, I suppose) reaction.

Diverging on diversity

In today’s Washington Post, Ruth Marcus adds to the already overflowing sewage tank of PC gobbledygook with a strained cry over the lack of "diversity" in Bush’s nomination of Samual Alito to the Supreme Court. But like most of the drivel spewed out from the PC left, it’s an incomprehensible mix of vague, trite pronouncements and self-contradiction.

Marcus starts by agreeing with nearly everyone that the Miers pick was a mistake.

The Miers pick represented the elevation of gender over quality; instead of adding to the sense that it is normal and appropriate to have women on the high court, the choice made it look as if presidents have to make sacrifices to scrounge up female nominees.

But she immediately follows that statement with this nonsensical conclusion:

I also find it disturbing that the drive for diversity has been so quickly, so blithely abandoned.

So wait—let me get this straight: Miers was bad because she “elevated gender over quality.” In other words, using her gender as a qualification made her a bad selection. Logically, it would seem to follow that gender—male or female—shouldn’t be a factor in selecting judges. Implicit in Marcus’ statement is that quality, not gender, is what matters in a judicial nominee.

So how then to explain that in the very next paragraph she pines for a pick that seeks to mollify proponents of “diversity?” Diversity for its own sake, which we are to assume in this case translates to picking a woman, is what Marcus says made the Miers nomination so troubling. If quality, not gender, is the true delineator, then why does she continue to make irrational, contradictory statements like this:

Just imagine an all-male, all-white Supreme Court. No president looking at a high court vacancy would consider that acceptable in this day and age, nor should he -- or she. A court with a lone female justice -- or, for that matter, a lone African American justice, or no Hispanic justice at all -- isn't all that much better.

Marcus wants to have it both ways by opposing the Miers nomination for its shameless play to diversity, but also complaining about Alito’s nomination for its lack of that same nonsense qualification. One imagines that if Bush had nominated a white, Catholic male who was also an extreme liberal, her complaints would’ve been somewhat muted.

Zorro: All flash, no slash

Movie star glamour, elegant costumes, massive sets, a period setting and a swashbuckling story full of swordplay and all manner of daring-do—what’s not to like? In the latest Zorro film, the answer, unfortunately, is quite bit. Read why I don’t think The Legend of Zorro is all that legendary at National Review Online.