A Gilded Planet

On Monday, I stood in the rain on the steps of the state capitol in Sacramento with thousands of students and workers to protest further deep cuts to California’s beleaguered public infrastructure. Last Saturday, over 85,000 people marched in Madison, Wisconsin in support of the basic rights of workers to collectively bargain. What these actions have in common, aside from being largely ignored by corporate media outlets, is a renewed commitment to resisting the relentless assault on the American middle class exemplified by Governor Scott Walker’s phantom anti-worker agenda in Wisconsin and the persistent lack of democracy in California. In last fall’s elections, Scott Walker did not campaign on stripping the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively. Yet that has become the non-negotiable central goal of his brief tenure in office. Similarly, the progressives who swept every statewide office in California while continuing to hold commanding majorities in both chambers ...

Recently, Michael Moore made a speech to protestors in Wisconsin which was published as an editorial in the Huffington Post under the title "America is Not Broke." The idea that America is not, in fact, broke has come as a surprise to many. Don't we have a giant federal budget deficit? Aren't state governments (including our own here in California) scrambling to deal with massive shortfalls? What about high unemployment? And on and on. The geniuses at Reason.tv recently decided to tap into such misunderstandings in order to make the following highly misleading video: The breathtakingly ugly dude in this video either has no understanding of how finance works, or he is being deliberately obtuse in order to keep his viewers from understanding the financial condition of the U.S. The most obvious way to look at whether the US government is broke is to look at interest rates on federal government bonds. This is the same as looking at how much the government has to pay t...

After a self-imposed exile from political writing , as well as an accompanying partial news blackout, my growing addiction to movies metastisized to a nearly unfathomable degree. While I will continue to chronicle this addiction regularly, the recent events in my home state of Wisconsin have made it untenable for me to continue avoiding comment on politics, economics and the like. On these subjects, I plan to begin writing about how the radical right wing of this country has been using government to further enrich the rich while screwing the rest of us along with some discussion of how ordinary people can fight back.

Howl 2010. 84 minutes. USA. Directed by Rob Epstein and Friedman Watchdate: 10/9/2010 A terrible disappointment. I haven't seen many movies that squander so much potential in every possible way. Apart from excellent performances by James Franco, David Straithern and Jeff Daniels among others, and the poem itself which is as brilliant is ever, almost nothing worked about this movie. And there were so many good ideas that were so poorly executed! Combining animation with documentary and live action dramatization? Right on, I'm with you. But don't get cheap, generic animation. Don't drop using the documentary footage inserts halfway through the movie. Don't shoot dramatizations devoid of all drama. What a waste of time, especially considering what could have been. Throne of Blood  1957. 109 minutes. Japan. Directed by Akira Kurosawa. Watchdate: 10/9/2010 Having designed lights for a stage production of Macbeth, I have seen the play and its component scenes dozens of t...

Map of the Human Heart  1993. 109 minutes. Directed by Vincent Ward. Watchdate: October 18, 2010. Map of the Human Heart was thoroughly mediocre. A handful of cool moments, but otherwise a lot blandness and more than a few clichés. Also, Jason Scott Lee was really bad. The beginning was not bad. It seemed like a very different, interesting movie. But as soon as the children grow up, and Jason Scott Lee enters the picture, everything goes to shit, or at best boring mediocrity. The script has some interesting ideas but never really develops them, and while it avoids the worst cliches, it still never hits on anything as compelling as the first twenty minutes. But Jason Scott Lee easily takes the title of the worst part of the movie, singlehandedly draining much of my enjoyment. I hope to never see his face, or his unbelievably limited range again. You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger  2010. UK. Directed by Woody Allen. Watchdate: October 14, 2010. The new Woody Allen comedy is ...

Heavenly Creatures  1994. 109 minutes. New Zealand. Directed by Peter Jackson. I loved nearly every minute of this movie. Kate Winslet is always very good, but in her feature film debut she is beyond efflorescent. Peter Jackson constructed a movie as manic and mad as its subject matter. The movie is based on the true story of two young girls who one day decided to kill. The many scenes of the two girls playing outside are frightening for being simultaneously familiar and completely foreign. I was impressed the scenes where their rich fantasy world came to life because they could have screwed up so easily there. But instead it works seamlessly and ably predicts Jackson's later facility with the fantasy worlds of Middle Earth. Movies about madness tend to work best when they glide between unsettling and hilarious without missing a beat, and this movie does that better than nearly any other of its type. The unstinting look at forbidden sexuality and how it affects consciousness more b...

Institute Benjamenta  or This Dream One Calls Human Life 1995. 104 minutes. UK. Directed by Stephen and Timothy Quay. Watchdate: 10/20/2010. Institute Benjamenta is an exquisitely surreal diversion that reminded me a lot of Guy Maddin's Careful in a very good way. They both have lots of great imagery and are about men training to become servants who get involved in odd, Freudian love triangles.  In Benjamenta , I was especially struck by the bizarre choreography of all the men training to become servants. They move with an eery synchronization, and hit each other with dusty towels and things. I was also surprised and delighted to realize that Herr Benjamenta was played by none other than Gottfried John, who I haven't seen in anything other than the James Bond movie of the same year. In Goldeneye , G-John takes a completely one-dimensional villain character (he's the underwritten part of a nefarious trio that includes Famke Janssen and Sean Bean) and actually made it a bi...