A Gilded Planet

Ghost Pepper Zombie Crackheads

2012-02-10T12:44:00.000-08:00

as if another glass
for this extremophile.

We praise Prince for
his pansexuality and
the queeny fixins
thereof. I gave him
a violet for violence

in the gun can held
in each hand of KUKA
industrial robot arm
that I first saw deep
in the televisual hub

there appeared a
pitched bullet of
Ghost Pepper Zombie
Crackheads. This
raised the sonic

interest rate which
left Prince maqued
with danderous
slavey footprints.
This pure play of virtuoso

gave glam to Our.
And we dod praise
Our. Such CEOs
earned a celebrity
premium that Our
may have approved.

We found out that he was an
A-List Loon of the kind

The Art of the Pregnant Pause

2012-02-09T11:54:00.000-08:00

Drive
2011. 100 minutes. USA. Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Watchdate: 9/19/2011

Drive is a contemplative action noir with an 80s European aesthetic and a 70s American attitude (or perhaps sensibility might be the better word). It strikes an unusual balance between the visceral and the detached. The cast is pretty good: Albert Brooks is particularly inspired in this joint. It's one of the better 2011 movies that I've seen.

The Future of "Public" Higher Education

2012-02-08T13:00:00.000-08:00

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No One Can Be Happy But Me

2012-02-07T15:00:00.000-08:00

To speak coherently is human
to talk nonsense divine
or should you say divoon
Let's write a speech about captivity
in the backseat of a peach sedan
the address will say
‘No one can be happy but me’
but with certain exemptions and earmarks
such as a
dirty nickel plated excursion towards
aimsol
Ah yes aimsol that cloud of lost souls
where is discovered (question mark)
overfabricated words & found languages
aimsol aimsol aimsol ah ah ah
She monstratiated supraneously inberscene
the pudgelled cublic, the ondis martenotes
Fitz boocomon plup aimsol
Givvord umbrel zune fortuna
Cree griega aimsol zune canonical
'Now where is that speech, then,' asked he of the loud sweater,
dragging John Vivien Nancarrow after him by his coattails,
and jabbering the entire time. "Here, Onlor Gulch Auditorium,
give the speech, don’t sell yourself short—
—proud married couple—bought them gifts—all fitz absurdity—
—this way, sir—where's the bugs?—all in jest, I know—forget it—
—war is war—bitter better bug powder—you know my name—
—better odds tomorrow—monstratiate this under the hill—but the umbrel—
—dear rascals."

the outsider walked slowly before arriving at the threshold. There he stood, regarding her

February Resolutions

2012-02-06T19:17:00.000-08:00

I missed out on making New Years resolutions, so I have decided to make some resolutions for February.

I will post here every day.
~~I will read a poem every day.~~ (I have already failed this resolution.)
I will read Heart of Darkness. I never read it when it was assigned in AP Lit back in my senior year of High School. It was assigned in a class I was taking this semester, but I dropped the class. But I'm still going to read it, by reading 2-5 pages every day until I finish. It's short so I think this is my most manageable resolution.

I'll check back in March to see how well I'm doing. How your face did grow, we'll never know...

Seeing "The Body Electric - A Scientific Fiction..."

2012-02-05T16:42:00.000-08:00

Last Friday, I went to Oakland Art Murmur and saw a terrific exhibit at Johansson Projects that matches up perfectly with the technomystification I am encountering in my research on time in Victorian Britain.

The exhibit was multimedia and included text, imagery and video. Some of the components were styled as old-timey advertisements (or perhaps disclaimers would be the better word) while others were paintings, prints or comic strips. The exhibit's theme explored an imagined historical fear of electricity transforming and bedeviling the human body and spirit.

These poorly captured screenshots of the free program that I picked up at the gallery do not begin to do the exhibit justice. It's difficult to describe the curious excitement I felt in viewing the gleeful antiquarian anachronism of the work. I highly recommend checking out Follies of the Digital Arcade.

PS - Here's some better images I grabbed from their website:

The Elemental Creep

2012-02-04T16:54:00.000-08:00

Lolita

1962. 152 minutes. USA. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Watchdate: 2/24/2011

By channeling the elemental creep, Peters Sellers causes convulsive combustion deep in my guts, cries of uncontrollable laughter seared permanently deep in the bastion of my physical memory. An engineer like Kubrick builds soulful demons and then forces them into covalent orbits. The reactions are priceless. My inner optimist shrieks with horror when contemplating his work, but he probes our darkest impulses with unflinching humanity.

Power Relations

2012-02-03T16:16:00.000-08:00

A billy club
got jabbed in
my belly. (I mean
to say: I wasn’t
following orders.)

For crowds that link arms,
police gangs use arms.

And was the ground we stood
ground of the public or private?

Who made the ground
(our belly) that way?
Ask the one percent.

“Move! Move! Move!
"There is no one percent!"

A Dozen Snazzy Dresses and a Car

2012-02-02T16:05:00.000-08:00

I Am Cuba

1964. 140 minutes. Cuba. Directed by Mikhail Kalatozov. Watchdate: 12/29/2011

Holy God! Sweet Jumping Christmas! Perhaps it's my unfortunate ignorance of early Soviet filmmaking and my total lack of knowledge of Eisenstein and that school, but this movie moves in a way like nothing I've ever seen before. Purely based on its dynamism I wish to fill it with stars! The difference between photography and motion pictures is the motion. Though that seems self-evident, it takes a movie like this to really make the implications of that clear. Why does no one seem to use a camera like this anymore? I don't mean copying this style, but the mobility of the camera is just on another level here and I'm wondering why so few movies of recent times (at least that I've seen) ever achieve that kind of mobility and dynamism - or anything close to it… it's just in a different league. Even when the camera is still, the placement is so brilliant you'd never expect it and yet it gives such interesting views on the subjects. If this is cinematography, I wonder what all those other movies I've been watching have their DPs doing.

Lying About Occupy Oakland

2012-02-01T10:21:00.000-08:00

I haven't written much about the Occupy movement both because I'm lazy and because I haven't thought of anything original to say about it. I have taken a baton to the stomach, I have participated in actions that have stopped (at least for now) further fee increases that would make the UC system even less affordable, and just a couple of weeks ago I took part in a largely unreported occupation that restored funding to the Anthropology Library (we had to do the same thing over two years ago before Occupy Wall Street was a national catchphrase). But so far, I haven't been able to articulate anything that anyone else hasn't already written better than I could. That still remains the case, but I think that writing about how CNN and the New York Times failed utterly and deceived their readers in "reporting" on Occupy Oakland this weekend is worthwhile even though someone else has already described what they did. Because the message must get out there: believe almost nothing that you read in CNN and the New York Times. They lie, they plagiarize and they have no credibility left.

Last weekend, shit went down in Oakland. I wasn't there, but the mainstream reportage I've seen only confirms the increasingly hollow and pointless role the press plays in helping anyone understand the events of the world. The problem is not that press coverage of what happened is biased. Press coverage will always be biased. There is no escaping it. Initially, press coverage of Occupy Wall Street and the movement that coalesced around its message all around the world suffered from a novelty bias. Now that the novelty bias has worn off, reporters have fallen back on the most pernicious bias of all: the laziness bias. It's what Aaron Bady calls stenography journalism.

I'm about to do what they have just done. I'm going to be lazy and outsource the work of explaining this to someone else. But the difference between me doing that and them doing that is that it's their job to actually cover the damn story and not simply rewrite the Oakland Police Department's press releases. Remember what a job is? It's that thing that the Occupy movement is pissed that there is not enough of for everyone. Working reporters should be happy they still have jobs in the face of a massive recession and the rapid decline of their industry. They should not, under any circumstances, do this:

[W]hile I had an obstructed view of those events – and I know what I did and didn’t see – it’s very easy for you, when you read a news article like CNN’s, to not see the most important clause in the article, the last one, “city and officials said.” This indicates for you (or should) that CNN is essentially doing to OPD’s press release the same thing that desperate college students sometimes do with wikipedia articles: copy and paste, and then change just enough words so that it isn’t plagiarism. CNN was not there yesterday, so they only saw what the Oakland Police Department told them to see...They turned “12 pm” into “around noon” and they copied down OPD’s crowd estimates exactly (ABC7 guessed 2,000; I would have guessed about a thousand), and slightly altered the wording to cover their trail. After that, to their credit, they found the time to copy and paste text from the Occupy Oakland twitter feed and web site. And then they called it a day and went home, apparently; while real journalists were still being arrested while doing their jobs, the good people at CNN were finished putting the imprimateur of “objective” journalism on OPD’s press release, and laughed all the way to the bank.

As Bady points out, CNN is not alone in failing all over the place on this story. The Oakland Tribune did essentially same thing, and our country's "newspaper of record," The New York Times, turned in the very same brand of lazy reporting (ever since the NYT helped the Bush Administration lie us into the Iraq War, they have continued to fail their readers on a regular basis and few people are willing to call them out on it).

It's time for everyone to start labeling this sort of journalism for what it really is: plagiarism, which is a form of lying. CNN, the Oakland Tribune and the New York Times released reports on Occupy Oakland with the implicit understanding that they sent reporters to investigate what happened and then tell us about their findings. But they clearly didn't do that. They took the work of others and rewrote it and while they gave some attribution, that doesn't get them off the hook for plagiarism because all they did was rewrite the reports of others. They added no work of their own. Yet they still added their byline to it as if they had really done original reporting. This is plagiarism; this is deception; this is lying.

I do not claim to be a reporter. I was not in Oakland this weekend. But based on the available evidence, neither was CNN or the New York Times or (absurdly) the Oakland Tribune. Many are worried about the "death of journalism." If this is what passes for journalism in our time, I say let it die.

PS - To articulate what I think of flag burning and the other sensational parts of the Occupy Oakland story this weekend that I haven't mentioned, I will once again defer to Aaron Bady who seems to get it about right:

I’m not going to defend things like burning of flags or vandalizing city hall; I wouldn’t have done it, I wish they hadn’t done it, and I think it was stupid to do it. I don’t think it accomplishes anything, and it feeds into the story that people like Reid and De La Fuente want to tell about Occupy Oakland, making it seem like Occupy are the violent ones...That said, the “assault on City Hall” was virtually the last thing that happened on Saturday. It wasn’t the cause of the police reaction, as the National Lawyer’s Guild noted: it was a response to the actions taken by OPD and the city of Oakland. You can still think whatever you want about it; you can be appalled at the protesters who did it, if you like. But it wasn’t the cause of the days events; it was the coda to the night’s events, if that.

Great Expectations

2012-01-31T10:28:00.000-08:00

Melancholia

2011. 136 minutes. Denmark. Directed by Lars von Trier. Watchdate: 1/10/2012

This is the finest cinematic demonstration of expectations creating reality that I have seen. For that alone I will extoll its virtues beyond (perhaps) what is fair. But there was something deeply disturbing but also exciting about that idea of expectations. It's like the dark edge of Charles Dickens updated for our time, but it's also sort of the anti-Secret (fuck Rhonda Byrne).

Justine (Kirsten Dunst) is told not to make a scene before she actually makes a scene, Justine is told she is a workaholic before she actually does anything to indicate she's a workaholic, Justine is told she is not happy enough before she really does much of anything to justify that sort of expectation. Similarly, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is told to avoid going online to research her fears before we ever actually see her doing so and John (Kiefer Sutherland) - well in John's case he is such a swirling vortex of expectations and contradictions that it is hard to separate out a single moment that exemplifies his paradoxically simultaneous fulfillment and disappointment of expectations.

I must also commend the movie for its incredible refreshing (if also excruciating) sense of humor. I haven't laughed this hard in horror in a movie theater since probably…Errol Morris' Tabloid? I don't know but it really made me love the movie aside from all its other intriguing qualities. While Antichrist is more viscerally disturbing, this movie is far more psychologically and emotionally disturbing…especially because it insinuates darkness into your bloodstream without your normal defenses being activated. Of course, this might be because it's a white folks problem movie and I am a white folk. That I love it this much says a lot about my own identity probably. Best of the year? Well it depends on how you define year of course...

Will Alexander Visits the Archive to Study Biology

2012-01-29T14:21:00.000-08:00

in this text I've seen
through Eros and abstraction

Let's write a speech about
creativity in the back seat of
a peach sedan: it reads as if
each of the frames is
contaminated with unknown

pleasures' gaze. I read not as a
Anatolian Outlaw not as a
Japanese Diva or as
a brief afterimage tearing
under the skin but Our eyes

in talking pictures enzymes
capable of any viral trans
fusing cells of rupture by
which Our polymerase
replicates the data of books

written in search of mystery
on a page as time's shadow
given over to the grin, smile,
smirk to the perpetual swoon
of a kinetic antichrist and

secrets behind the door about
the mechanical age restored
by the fragility of life
with an authoré, her names:
Denis, Costa, Ellison

I am Our audience who
Okazaki has forgotten

Happy Birthday, José Martí!

2012-01-28T15:15:00.000-08:00

Today is the 159th Birthday of Cuban revolutionary hero and political theorist José Martí. As well as being equally contemptuous of both Spanish and U.S. imperialism, Martí possessed a badass moustache:

Even Frank Zappa can't compete with that 'stache.

I will be keeping him and his facial hair in my thoughts all day.

The Top Ten Funniest Wikipedia Articles of All Time

2012-01-25T21:41:00.000-08:00

Ariel Gardner asked me to contribute a top ten list to his top ten list blog. Go check it out, I promise you won't be disappointed. I compiled a list of the funniest Wikipedia articles that I have encountered. Number 4 on my list is Liver-Eating Johnson:

...[o]ne tale ascribed to Johnson^[1]^[2] (while other sources ascribe it to Boone Helm^[3]) was of being ambushed by a group of Blackfoot warriors in the dead of winter on a foray to visit his Flathead kin, a trip that would have been over five hundred miles (>800 Kilometers). The Blackfoot planned to sell him to the Crow, his mortal enemies, for a handsome price.^[vague] He was stripped to the waist, tied with leather thongs and put in a teepee with an inexperienced guard outside. Johnson managed to chew through the straps, then knocked out his young guard with a punch to the face, took his knife and scalped him, then quickly cut off one of his legs.^{[dubious – discuss]} He made his escape into the woods, surviving by eating the Blackfoot's leg, until he reached the cabin of Del Que, his trapping partner, a journey of about two hundred miles...

I swear the Liver-Eating Johnson entry used to be even funnier and weirder but has been sanitized by the editors slavish devotion to objectivity. I can't find the earlier version that I read in the page history but if anyone finds a better version than the current one please drop me a line in comments.

Somebody is Waiting in the Hallway

2012-01-18T10:03:00.000-08:00

Stop Making Sense

1984. 88 minutes. USA. Directed by Jonathan Demme. Watchdate: 1/26/2011

This is a movie about a giant suit that makes everyone happy and terrified. It's a giant suit that magnifies what is perhaps the craziest sense of rhythm in the Western World (whatever "the Western World" means nowadays). This movie is about sweat and white light and running and everything else people did in the 80s like wearing giant suits to make themselves seem bigger and more important than they actually were. It's great, it should be required viewing.

PS - David Byrne looks startlingly like Cillian Murphy in this movie.

Dearest Watson

2012-01-15T11:59:00.000-08:00

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

2011. 129 minutes. USA/UK. Directed by Guy Ritchie. Watchdate: 12/26/2011.

Disclaimer: The best part about this movie is how gay it is. Usually you don't get a forbidden gay romance like this in a big Hollywood action blockbuster, and if you do it's usually about submerged homoeroticism rather than fine screwball gay romance complete with cross dressing and jealously of hetero relations which this movie has beyond its capacity to hold. I will say that on its behalf.

Robert Downey Jr. had a one-two punch a few years ago with two clever, fun blockbusters that made use of his considerable charisma in just the right way. Now comes time for their disappointing sequels. Just as with Iron Man 2, the second Sherlock Holmes outing has occasional moments or sequences that recapture or even flirt with exceeding the pleasures of the original. But for the most part, it just feels like a waste. The action scene innovations of the first movie that focused on Holmes' intellectualization of fighting and stuff like that show up again but not only have they lost their novelty, they aren't even as well thought out this time. Also, Sherlock Holmes for some reason uses a vast number of disguises that strain at producing mirth but succeed easily at producing incredulity. The costume bits felt like they'd be more at home in Austin Powers or god forbid - Scooby Doo. Except for one scene at the beginning, Moriarity is largely wasted. It's a terrible shame to because there was a clever idea behind all of this that upped the stakes and did everything that a sequel is supposed to do. The idea of it being this precursor to world wars I was down with and there was a whole George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara vibe that I could have gone with fully had the execution been better. But the gay romance part of it worked very well.

Will I Remember To Tell You I Told You...

2012-01-13T00:58:00.000-08:00

Amarcord

1973. 123 minutes. Italy. Directed by Federico Fellini. Watchdate: 10/5/2011.

I commence with the consideration of an effect. Of the myriad impressions of which the heart or the intellect or even the soul is susceptible, I feel confident in choosing Amarcord for its vivid effect in these matters. Can Amarcord best be praised for incident or tone – whether its ordinary incidents and peculiar tone, or the converse, or by peculiarity both of incident and tone? Looking about me (or rather within) for such combinations of event, or tone, all aid me in seeing Amarcord as a brilliant string of precious stones.

PS - This movie contains the ORIGINAL masturbation contest! Eat your heart out, Seinfeld!

The Fabricationist Manifesto

2012-01-09T22:53:00.000-08:00

Art is anything you do with your hands. For example, as a species, we have built so many dams that 50% of all river flow on Earth is regulated by human whims. We have transformed the planet. This is the most grandiose artistic project that has come to fruition in human history. If sculpture is an art, than sculpting the land is an art. If writing is an art, than rewriting the genetic code of the plant kingdom is an art. If painting is an art, than painting the view of our planet from space with a Great Wall is an art.

Art is anything you do with your hands. If fixing a motorcycle or performing heart surgery is not artistic, but fixing the narrative structure of a novel-in-progress or performing an avant-garde dance piece is artistic, we do not wish to have anything to do with that idea of art. If fixing a motorcycle or performing heart surgery cannot be artistic, but well-designed representations of such actions can be artistic, there is a serious imbalance of priorities that fetishizes the superstructure at the expense of the base.

An art is anything you do with your hands. An art is not capitalized. It is not elevated to an echelon of superiority. An art fails. An art fail. [tearfully] An art fall. [regaining composure] An art is a work. An art is work. An art work. An art works. A work is an art. A work is art. A work arts. A work's art. Work is art. Art is work. Art works. Work arts. Working is art. Arting is work. Hard working means hard art. Hard arting means hard work. Working is an art you do with your hands. A work is an art you do with your hands. An art is any work you do with your hands.

An art isn't just anything you do with your hands. Douglas Adams gets very worried about the idea of art. He thinks the idea of art kills creativity. Of course, he was a comedy writer so no one took him seriously. Which is how he liked it. And obviously, comedy is not an art. Who would think making people laugh is something artistic? An art is also anything you do with your voice.

The age of contradiction has not lost its luster. We are all disposable heroes of the same hypocrisy. The fabricationist project impels us to simultaneously channel both our most individualist and our most communitarian impulses into a new dialectic. That dialectic unites heretofore artificially separated crafts and disciplines. Previously, we organized society like a book, with all the soothingly ordered hierarchy that implies. Now, in order to survive, we must reorganize society to be like the internet, with all of the terrifying chaos that comes with such a disordered horizontalism. The age of contradiction has not lost its luster. To be converse, this conversation is not all bluster.

On Being Right

2012-01-06T22:31:00.000-08:00

"I am increasingly convinced that the need to be right has nothing whatsoever to do with the love of truth, but to face the implications of this means accepting a painful inner emptiness; I am not now what I sense somehow I am meant to be. I do not know what I feel from the bottom of my heart, I need to know. The beginning of wisdom is not to flee from this condition or distract yourself from it. It is essential not to fill it up with answers that have not been earned. It is important to learn how to wait with that emptiness. It is the desire to fill up that emptiness which leads to political or religious fanaticism."

That's John Garvey, via Charlie Kaufman speaking at BAFTA.

The Wild Street Kids of Telegraph Ave

2012-01-05T01:31:00.000-08:00

We, in Berkeley, are fortunate to have Telegraph Avenue which bustles daily with culture and commerce. Telegraph's vibrancy is a tribute to our community and to our faith in Berkeley's spirit. Today we are concerned with vagrancy amongst the young and able-bodied on Telegraph Avenue along with its causes and its effects. This article will only scratch the surface of the concern. However, we believe that public awareness is a first step toward a remedy for any problem. It is in this spirit and with this faith that THE WILD STREET KIDS OF TELEGRAPH AVE was composed.

You’ve seen them on the street corner, you’ve passed them on the sidewalk, you’ve heard them ask for change. They disdain tests and grades and resumes, they care not for extracurriculars and externships and Panhellenic exchanges. They do not live by the daily shower or the hourly wage. They go their own way, and they seem somewhat proud of it.

But who are they? Who are these ageless children, these eternal youths dressed in the most fashionable of rags who strum guitars and hang out in doorways? What compelled them toward their alternative path? What do they want and who do they want it from? To find out your faithful reporter went out into the field to live for just a short while as they do – to learn their stories – to gain their insights.

“Do you like dogs?” she asked moments after her dog jumped on me and licked my face.

“I could take them or leave them,” I replied, and then realizing how bloodless and remote that made me sound, I quickly added, “I used to have a cocker spaniel.” I still have a cocker spaniel, it’s just that I abandoned him to a parent when I moved to Berkeley to acquire a college degree.

“He usually isn’t so friendly with strangers, he really likes you! My name’s Moon by the way.”

“I once a met a street kid in Portland who had a cocker spaniel. I didn’t spend enough time around him to know what to think of them.” As Moon’s friend said this – I later learned his name is Teddy – I realized that the questions I want to ask them were just a bunch of aggressive posturing. I could have just as easily told them repeatedly that I thought I was better then them.

To one side of me were a couple of veterans conducting business in hushed voices, to the other side were some kids who like to draw and play with dogs. What was I really doing here? Documenting the ways in which I think I’m superior to these people would not make me an investigative reporter or anthropologist; it would make me an asshole.

As pure as I wanted to believe my intentions were, I had really chosen to pick on these people because it bothers me that many of them beg for money on the street. Why does this bother me? Because their youth, their attitude and yes, their whiteness seemed to suggest that they had chosen poverty. And I would respect their asceticism if they did not suck around the collective asshole of capitalism hoping to collect its waste.

You can’t reject the establishment and act entitled to its scraps.

Or at least that’s what I thought. When a middle-aged couple gave Teddy a slice of pizza without being asked, or when a man asked to photograph Teddy as he drew a picture in his sketchbook, or when a UC Berkeley student propositioned Teddy for a drug that is known to be less harmful than the drug sold legally across the street at Raleigh’s, I started to see that Teddy didn’t feel entitled to much of anything. I wanted to expose the truth about Wild Street Kids, but the truth is they are already fully exposed.

Up the way a bit, outside Rasputin, a jug band outfit playing a folky bluegrass variant on the sort of gypsy punk made popular by Gogol Bordello drew the attention of many of the street kids around the block including Moon and another girl I met named Snowflake. As I watched them dance to the music and cheer on the nameless ragtag band that was apparently visiting Berkeley from up the coast, I knew I was letting my subject off the hook. Thankfully off the hook is where my subject belongs.

The Decline and Fall of a Decorated Veteran of Christmas Past

2011-12-31T21:35:00.000-08:00

The Fabrication of a Word

2011-12-12T02:36:00.000-08:00

s n u u s p e a r o
su ne ous pra
nesu pra ous
prasu neou s

suous nepra
The little man comes along into this mess
The little man who studies Brazil
not Brazilian himself

su ousne pra
He says to himself
sune praous
Says he to himself:

"Where do all these pieces go?"
su ous pra ne –
"Supreousne!"
The little man wearing mirror spectacles…

...thought it not quite right yet
supreousne supreousne supeousrne
He dipped his quill
supreciously

Dipped his quill did he
in a gleaming ink pot
soon he wrote
"supraneously"

supraneous
adjective
: characterized by the vertiginous replication of mutated iterations of a particular aesthetic form
First known use: 2011

Giggle Christ

2011-11-07T17:04:00.001-08:00

Christian stoners united
around
a polymorphic Book of Hours
Sick cattle in Devonshire
Rainstorm on the outskirts of Bangkok
War in Equinoctial Kesh
These Christian stoners
will go just about anywhere
carrying Bibles
and bags of Cheetos
Hernia Outbreak in Tripplehorn County?
you best believe
Christian stoners got there already
playing their lutes
laughing in tongues
Spreading the good word
about the nature of that universe there

"Who are they?"
ask the newsmen
"Are they in cahoots with cartels?”
question the cops
"Why don't they go back where they came from"
bark the troglodytes
A fad that will pass
or a scene that lasts
Christian stoners will
carry the day
A joint for your troubles
A crucifix bong
for the suffering
the unlimited suffering
of strips of tortured flesh
thick sluggish blood
pain that grows greater
with each choice
so take another rip
and
munch
His
body

The Basement Arcadist

2011-11-03T19:12:00.000-07:00

A version of this article I wrote 9 months ago was originally published in the zine Connect the Dots. The online supplement to Connect the Dots can be found here.

We know of a remote arcade in Berkeley. Every Friday night, games are played there. Down an unlit street in the southern reaches of town, one may find an unmarked blue door with an ornate knocker at its center. When the intrepid soul enters for the first time, bathed in the ethereal glow emanating from dozens of seemingly ancient pinball machines, one is likely to be struck with an astonishing sense of rapture. Just like falling down the rabbit hole, stepping into this enigmatic House of Games almost seems like entering another world filled with curious amusements – Egghead, Trade Winds, Magic City, Cover Girl, Gottlieb’s Two-Player Surfside, Gottlieb’s Four-Player Masquerade, Rotospin and dozens more, glittering with midcentury light, ringing and echoing caustically about every win and loss, haunted by fun until they are finally shut down and darkened for another working week of dormancy.

But the efflorescent wonder that abounds in this place derives not just from the startling locale or the antiquated games – even the surrounding superstructure has dreams to suggest. The acid-gutted pinball wizard, weary from a marathon in Magic City, may rest in the loud wilderness of political and pop cultural mythography that adorns the building’s walls. Nixon plays a leading role in the image stream of the arcade’s outer consciousness, but he is happily joined by the Three Stooges, Santa Claus, Running Wolf, “Elephants and Asses,” and copious beer advertisements, as well as his fellow demons: Reagan, Oliver North, Barbara and the two George Bushes. Alas, even the fiercest wizard may strain his eyes trying to take it all in, for it is a nearly infinite pastiche of bedazzling Americana.

What is this uncommon place that does not show up on any Google map, that goes unlisted in every phonebook still extant in our digitized age? To find out, your humble reporter spoke to the man behind the machines – Berkeley’s own maestro of underground pinball – Mack the basement arcadist. “In 1986, I was in Omaha, Nebraska and I found this warehouse that had around 1200 machines,” he explained as he passed me a joint, all within moments of having met me. “So I shipped some of them back here. I can’t believe they let me get away with doing this!”

I understood Mack’s legendary status after running into an old teacher of mine a few months ago. Bob Ernst had done experimental theater with Whoopi Goldberg, among many others, with a Berkeley group called the Blake Street Hawkeyes back in the ‘70s. When I mentioned Mack and the arcade, Bob quickly realized whom I was talking about. Apparently they were old buddies. Next time I returned to Mack’s arcade, he had forgotten me as one of the dozens of friendly strangers that passed through his labyrinth of pleasant diversions. But when I mentioned that Bob Ernst said hello, he lit up. “Any friend of Bobby’s is a friend of mine!”

He proceeded to tell me about how he had encountered Bob and the Blake Street Hawkeyes: “I got so tired of big industry so I went to work in the skylight factory – we had been making nuclear submarines, so I went from that to making skylights. And it was just so much easier on my head. A lot harder on my bank account but you know what? You spend the money for shrinks and drugs! So I got accidently collided with the Hawkeyes, but I already had some run-ins there through the dance world even though my studios were in the city.” I have to admit, I didn’t follow all of this but I had to know about why Richard Nixon’s face featured so prominently in his arcade. Mack obliged, discussing his eternal disgust with Nixon and then adding casually, “And I play with this band, The Funky Nixons–” I had seen “Funky Nixons” posters among the paraphernalia on the walls – “We’re actually playing a gig in April at Ashkenaz, a benefit for the tree people. You know they’re still up there in the trees? Around the Lost Coast.”

I began to realize why Mack had agreed to let me write this article only under the condition that I keep the exact location and hours of operation of his arcade a secret. This antiquarian pinballer has built a beautiful little world that can shimmer and twitch beneath the visible surface of a town that for all its vaunted tolerance, still maintains a darkly uneasy relationship with free thinking outsiders.

A Thief Sleeps on the Couch Downstairs

2011-10-31T14:07:00.000-07:00

This fear seems awful silly now,
this acid belly flood
when Dan the piano man says how
he found your money blood

We talked and talked like fans of Bird
so many weeks ago
of antics Dan had played absurd
it was not just a show

Some creeps on this side of the night
are not so very bad
but when he followed her with fright
they knew they had been had

Eager Visions

2011-10-26T11:07:00.000-07:00

“In the land of Janaki, there exists a tall cylindrical edifice covered in alabaster that serves as both a tomb and a monastery for fertile academic minds. First built in the decades following the ill-fated Keshite invasion, it did not become a tomb until centuries later. The insectivorious King Grimmage III committed his life to quiet study in the building and when he died he left strict instructions to be buried in the structure that was from that day forth to be known as Grimmage Tower.

“Grimmage Tower developed a reputation as the most prestigious refuge for those citizens of Janaki blessed with enormous gifts of scientific, analytic, artistic or literary character. To be invited to Grimmage Tower is a great honor, and many of Janaki’s brightest lights spend years working in its catacomb cells before eventually being buried in its mausoleum. The admission of an individual working in a field heretofore unrepresented inside Grimmage signals a new respectability for that endeavor, as was the case when Prasad Venedin entered for his pioneering work in information analytics.

“Prasad usually had a drink at Alexandrine’s after work, but after receiving word of his invitation he decided to head home immediately to dress up for a night out in celebration. He wore a caerulean cape hand dyed with smashed bodies of a type of beetle found only in the rain forests of the tropical region of Janaki. While wearing the cape prior to this day had made Prasad feel insecure about ostentatiously displaying aspirations of fully joining the intelligentsia, he now felt that he truly earned its lush appearance.”

Carly Bryann Young took her hands off the keyboard and leaned back in her chair. Her mind had been focusing on three things: the text she had written, what she planned to say next, and an idea of how her as yet non-existent readership would interpret each sentence she had composed. But now as she paused from these cognitively intense tasks, anxiety washed over her. She felt nervous about borrowing the name Janaki for the imagined country that was the setting for this story. She first heard the word in a song and liked how it sounded, but she knew little about the Indian subcontinent and therefore could not determine what connotations it might carry for those that did.

She also worried about dealing with ethnicity. Yet it was an exciting worry. She had completed a 500 page hard fantasy trilogy when she was ten years old that after a generous referral from author Leonard Colbeck was reviewed by an editor at Crooked Timber Books. At fourteen, her glo-fi play almost won a national playwriting competition in New York City. Almost. She had learned to loathe the word. She had been told that in this industry (she always used the term ‘industry’) that one can die of encouragement, and she felt that was true. She didn’t need any more pats on the head. She was nineteen and way beyond that. She felt ready for the next step.

For some reason she felt that next step was to attempt to invent a new genre. She wanted to combine the otherworldly color of the work she had come to love as a kid with more realistic politics, ethnicity, and social criticism all written in a tense, journalistic prose style more often found in nonfiction. Time will tell if she succeeds.

Invective Incitement

2011-10-19T18:11:00.000-07:00

Robots and Monsters huddle around
the embers of our campfire
fiends gnashing their teeth
in your unimagined paradise
with the Red Army here and the Blue Army there
a tremendous wiggle loosed on the lot

Guillermo Credenza
that most magical bishop
yields before the developing
world of business disasters
wishing most earnestly to be described
as ursine

How to react to these foreseen
machinations? drink my laughs
you old plate of soup
before we prepare for murders
Monsters must burn
Robots must burst

When Credenza sings
"The Maltese Jew"
at Christmastime
Sweet Jumpin' Christmas Time!
Oh how we feel ready
to carry out his dark designs

The Great Rock Hunt Tour Adventure

2011-10-12T15:13:00.000-07:00

An abridged version of this article I wrote just short of a year ago was originally published in the zine Connect the Dots. The online supplement to Connect the Dots can be found here.

When my editor called with an assignment about a rumor she had heard in Solano about some Ohlone shaman who had apparently carved mystical Kuksu inscriptions on five great rocks in the hundreds of years prior to white settlement in what is now North Berkeley, I was intrigued. Knowing the Ohlone – famous for their giant shell mounds as well as their skill at dancing on the rim of the world – I was certain I had a killer story on my hands. So certain that I briefly considered hiring a semiotician to assist me in decrypting the strange Ohlone symbols before abandoning the idea because I did not want to go overbudget on my very first assignment for the publication.

My editor directed me towards the Friends of Five Creeks, who have uncovered some of the history of Berkeley’s major rock parks as part their conservationist efforts. While these mysterious geophile Friends did not respond to requests for an interview, I gleaned some useful background from their website. Berkeley boasts five splendorous rock parks made of lavas from the last few million years: Great Stone Face, Indian, Mortar, Grotto and Cragmont. I resolved to uncover the hidden secrets of each in turn.

In a past life, I had already encountered Indian Rock and its intoxicating views but the others were unknown to me up until this point. So I would need a map if my rock hunt tour adventure were to succeed. Scorning my usual method of printing a map off a website called “The Google Maps,” I drew my own plot with all of the important roads and landmarks set out in pencilstroke. I planned to set off in a Northwesterly direction from Shattuck and Hearst and return to civilization via Euclid Avenue. On a chilly November day, I snaked past Safeway and over a large tunnel to arrive at The Circle, a magical font of suburban spirit waters and also the source of ALL ROADS in Berkeley. Choosing among dozens of drives, alleys and avenues, I followed Arlington Aven. This took me to my first destination.

The Great Stone Face, contrary to its name, appeared less imposing then my memory of Indian Rock. However, when I tried to climb it, I came to understand its magnitude. As I squeezed its side desperately, my breath becoming short, a woman named Julia appeared and asked me if I smoked cigarettes. Julia told me she had spent the previous summer in a hospital where she met Biggie Smalls and Method Man among other notables. This half crazed rambler subsequently distracted me from my mission by offering me avocado crackers and a pint of beer while she went to find a knife that she said she needed to make guacamole.

I sat on the park’s lone bench debating whether I could afford to tax my serotonin levels so soon after last weekend by eating the mushrooms I had hidden from myself in my jacket pocket. It may be the only way for me to operate on the same manic wavelength that Julia inhabits while allowing me a chance at the holy moment I knew I would need to make my article great. But before my professional side could offer a riposte I was interrupted by two traveling magazine sales-ladies that Julia had made vague reference to in our earlier conversation. They had come to meet Julia and drink her beer and I did not stand in their way. While they explained how houses of the Berkeley Hills were some of the nicest they had ever seen in their extensive exploits across America, I noticed the sunlight dwindling and remembered the other four rocks I was meant to investigate. The day was growing ancient and I had not found a single hallowed mark yet. With that, I took leave of Great Stone Face but not before Julia returned and insisted I take some photos of the three of them in an absurd one-handed pose that eludes further elaboration.

Sailing back to The Circle with all deliberate speed, I walked up another spoke on its wheel of routes: Indian Rock Avenue. As the sun dropped rapidly towards the horizon, a grand vision appeared before me of a spiritual watchguide of half-Ohlone, half-Friends-of-Five-Creeks-cultist descent. The luminous Archana Ram told me to skip Indian Rock as I approached it, as I already knew it well enough from earlier romantic rendezvous and anyway it was currently occupied by a gruesome nest of jackasses I would not care to encounter. She led me onto Mortar Rock where she explained that the Ohlone once used thick pestles to grind acorns into flour on this rock eventually forming hollows in the outcrops. Hence the name Mortar, I surmised, but as I did she disappeared into the thick brambles and trees surrounding the boulder. Sensing the swift encroach of forboding darkness, I climbed up the many necks of an enormous tree-like serpent, an arboreal hydra that intersected with the crest of Mortar. I surveyed the holey rock, looking for shamanistic carvings but finding only grinding indentations. When I peered into a shimmering pool in one of these hollows, Archana’s face appeared and then emerged into the temporal world to send me sliding back down the smooth nape of a thick tree arm.

I hurried down the street at her exhortations commanding me to get to Grotto Rock before sunset finally expired. I was glad I did because it’s a truly magnificent geological sight to behold. It’s much larger than any of the other rocks, and a web of enticing crevices and caves complicates its broad face. After I scaled it using the helpful stone stairs cut by one parks service or another, I looked out at the gorgeous one hundred eighty degree view of the San Francisco Bay and its surrounding environs. Disillusionment clouded the resplendent colors of the setting sun as once again I found no Ohlone glyphs anywhere on Grotto. I had a smoke and suddenly noticed some markings in blue, white and black. Excited at first, I quickly realized they had been drawn with spray paint. Perhaps these were the only purposeful symbols I would find: those of the wild-eyed contemporary Berkeley ruffian. But that’s not so bad, I thought as I noted the groups of worshippers who shared Grotto with me that evening to commemorate the daily passing of Ra.

When nightfall had taken hold and the others had left, I began to spelunk in the grandest crevasse that Grotto Rock had to offer. Shimmying and sliding with zeal, I heard the distant sound of a gruff voice intoning, “You’re making me mad, I’m tryin’ to be here with my friends!” Now will I in the chink see the phantoms of the crevasses here in this ghostly grotto? But no, as I tumbled out of the cavern and onto Santa Barbara Road, I realized it was just the voice of just such a ruffian as I mentioned earlier. Onward.

I made my way due east. It was quite dark when I reached Euclid Avenue, off of which Cragmont Rock was supposed to lie. I scrambled around in the gloom looking for the final stone park to complete my journey, but every shadow started to look like a rock. I was deceived by large bush here, a sloping driveway there. When I finally stumbled upon the park that contained Cragmont, I was greeted by a sign that read, “Barbecue Safely…Please Make Sure Your Coals Are Out !” And so it was that I discovered the holy rites of Berkeley’s great rock parks. Shaman had left no secret messages. Instead, what was once a place for Ohlone women to grind seeds and berries had become a place for the modern American rituals of barbecue, graffiti and sunset watching with friends. Archana Ram tried to tell me, but I didn’t listen. Now I know, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Dripping Noise (From Your Damn Mouth)

2011-10-10T09:38:00.000-07:00

The sounds you create anywhere are
repeated every minute of every day &
if I can hear the hands of the clock then
I will ignore those sounds you pro-duce at
dawn and dusk because too much else is
gaining and losing my attention thus
I have none left for you except
a thank you a God Bless You but
he say you didn't believe in
those old tales only the new stories that
you tell Strings lonely with doubt out
of the past crying dangerously for
more of those hit pops off
the record left to you by
that wicked corpse you call a
father.

GUEST POST: A Mostly Speculative and Acerbic Look at the Fall 2011 Pilot Season

2011-09-21T17:24:00.000-07:00

by Ben BenAry

I do not have cable, though I am a fan of television. My favorite current shows are Louie, Breaking Bad, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Parks and Recreation, and Mad Men. Though I have not seen, nor plan on seeing most of these new shows, I feel compelled to predict their potential as hits. Only time will tell how accurate I can be without having to subject myself to this dreck.

NBC:

Playboy Club - I'm anticipating strong initial ratings because of the lure of the Playboy brand, which will dissipate at the same rapid rate as viewers' hopes of seeing some nips. Also there's only so much room for Mad Men imitations, and that spot belongs to Pan Am.
Cancelled after one season.

Prime Suspect - Will Maria Bello's indie film street cred translate to TV star power? Maybe, but with police procedurals already accounting for half of all scripted television, this one about a lady detective in New York City isn't likely to stand out. She doesn't even talk to ghosts.
Cancelled after one season.

Grimm - Grimm is a modern retelling of Grimm's fairy tales. I think. I'm not going to do further research on this. I will not watch this show. If people didn't flock to see a Matt Damon/Heath Ledger retelling of these stories, why should this be any different?
Cancelled after half a season.

Up All Night - Raising Hope got a second season for some reason, and this "unfit parents raise a baby" comedy is more agreeable tonally. I like the actors. It's produced by Lorne Michaels. I'll probably never watch it, because my standards are just one notch higher.
Modest hit by TV standards, enough for NBC though. Two seasons until the Arnett curse runs Wilde.

Free Agents - An apt title considering what the career status of the actors on this show will be in about a month. Zing!
Cancelled like right now.

Whitney -

This is a picture of Whitney Cummings who got her very own sitcom on NBC.

2011 will be remembered as the year of Whitney Cummings. For some reason this poor man's Sarah Silverman got her own sitcom vehicle and another show she's producing. I predict that this one will be cancelled for being done in an outdated format while also starring Cummings who is neither funny nor likable.
Cancelled after one season, a full season because Cummings is apparently the most powerful woman in television.

ABC:

Pan Am - I don't know anything about this show other than what I've seen on a few promos. It looks like Catch Me If You Can. I'm on board.
Hit! 5 seasons.

Charlie's Angels -

Ben prefers Barrymore.

What did people like about the first movie? Bill Murray, and probably one of the three girls, depending on your type. I'm partial to Barrymore myself. This version has none of that. The time tested formula of hot girls kicking ass is wearing a bit thin, though this may get a second season just because Disney owns the property and why not?
Cancelled after two seasons.

CBS:

Person of Interest -

Jim Caviezel solves crime while nailed to crucifix.

As I understand it, this is some kind of high tech spy thingy. Starring Jim Caviezel (Jesus) and Michael Emerson (the best actor on Lost) and on the network that can't make an unpopular crime show. I think this is going to be a full-fledged hit, if not necessarily with anyone you know personally.
Hit! 8 Seasons, 1 spinoff.

2 Broke Girls - I actually watched the pilot. It's not my thing, but it might appeal to fans of The Big Bang Theory, which I also find unwatchable. I remembered one joke, told by the sage, white haired black man/one liner delivery machine who performs some unspecified job at the diner. "You're just like the night maid at the Schwarzenegger house: screwed." Studio audience ate that shit up.
Hit! 6 Seasons (they can't stay broke forever) plus TBS syndication.

How to be a Gentleman -

Gentlemen don't eat burgers.

I have only seen the poster for this show. It stars Kevin Dillon (Johnny Drama) as the guy who doesn't know how to be a gentleman, and a bland guy who plays the guy who does know how to be a gentleman.
Cancelled after half a season. Can't win 'em all CBS.

FOX:

The New Girl -

Dooey Zeschanel is so adorkable it'll make you vomit.

I watched the pilot with my dad. Neither of us laughed. I think he smiled twice. I like Zooey Deschanel as much as the next red blooded American white guy, but never before has a project banked solely on her likability (or adorkability as FOX's marketing suggests). She plays this girl who breaks up with her stupid boyfriend and then moves in with three stupid guys for some reason. One of the guys is also getting out of a relationship, and is not merely a caricature, so he'll be dating Deschanel's character after about 6-8 episodes of "will they? won't they?" story lines. The other white guy is the douche bag, which is reinforced by him doing douchey things like taking off his shirt in mixed company, and everyone close to him constantly telling him he is a douche bag. The black guy yells a lot, and is played by a Wayans son, ushering in a new era of Wayanses.
This show made me legitimately sad, because it will be a hit. It is also considered quite good, with the critical consensus being that "The New Girl" is the most promising comedy of the season. But it is not good. The situations are contrived, the relationships phony, the characters cardboard demographic representations. Toward the end of the episode, Zooey's three new roommates find out that her rebound date has stood her up while they are about to get into the big party they've been waiting for all year. What do they do? They abandon their supposedly important plans in order to cheer up their new weird roommate for some reason. They arrive at the white tablecloth restaurant, serenade her (as you do), and all four are told to leave. Why do they care so much about her? She's adorkable.
Hit! 7 Seasons, until Zooey Deschanel loses her taste for money.

Fans Away the Native Fumes

2011-09-21T13:16:00.000-07:00

Happy onlor day! I just landed
I’ll be home by auntie’s hour
Was in the future,
now I have been both told and advised to
take it easy
I will kill you with my eyes
Interactive rudix studio murderer
It’s not on the open market yet
Lodge Embles put in a bid for almost
three billion dollars
for the unfinished prototype
Ha ha ha he go east
Ah aimsol ha ahash laps cha ha ha ha ha
The brain is a machine and people forget that

The Undulating Earth

2011-09-18T23:21:00.000-07:00

The two minute hate
the three hour fear
four instants of absolute nonsense
followed by...
an eternity of the itchiest frustration
an internal itch impossible to scratch
subsides and the three second orgasm comes next, in me, in me
fades away for there is
the lifelong nostalgia to worry about
only two shakes of lamb's tail before
"The Five Day Effective Efficiency Plan"
effuses
about "The Three Week Weight Loss Drug Bender"
Though neither can compare to
The Eight Moments He Felt Lonesome
Directed by Howard Hawks
or was it John Ford, I can't remember for more than
a few months at a time
The seven eon hoax
The nine century farce
The six millenia of abject terror
The one searing white hot ball of anger
praying for nuclear holocaust

The Diaries of Nicholson Cage

2011-09-13T11:00:00.000-07:00

Friday, September 24th –
Only thing worth mentioning: spent longer than needed chopping vegetables

Saturday, September 25th –
Spent a good portion of the day replacing light bulbs

Tuesday, September 28th –
Can’t stand that lady at the drug store. Why is that lady always in there? Also, not going to forget to do this, no matter what they say.

Thursday, September 30th –
When the light wouldn’t turn off after flicking the switch, became convinced that it was all a dream. But it wasn’t.

Monday, October 11th –
Spent the entire weekend trying to learn how to make Tofu taste good

Tuesday, October 12th –
Remembered uncle in Thailand is still in a coma. Sent him a postcard.

Thursday, October 14th –
I have decided to start using more pronouns. Clarity is important. And consistency.

Sunday, October 17th –
My landlord burst in today with some mishegas about the property rental people and how they needed keys to unlock the door for a showing or some damn thing and how he had to be at service. I helped him out by offering to do his own job for him, but since I had the keys to someone else’s apartment I stole some incidentals like a spatula, a tape measure and a deck of cards.

Wednesday, October 20th –
Ads on TV for helping African Orphans inspired me to start my own charity

Thursday, October 28th –
Charity thing taking up more time than expected. Can’t go to the farmer’s market this weekend like usual.

Tuesday, November 23rd
Keep forgetting about this old thing. Got to figure out whether to put ads on TV, which might be a dead technology, or on the internet. Don’t know much about AdWords.

Monday, November 29th
Met a woman over the weekend that may fall in love. Surprise: it wasn’t at a bar!

Sunday April 4th:
Found out that the IRS is investigating me for my charitable activities. Or investigating my charity, not sure what the difference is. Oh, and it’s Easter.

Sunday, May 22nd:
Uncle woke from his coma and is coming home to see me. On the phone, he said he dreamed about me when he was under.

Hooligan Circus Political Technique

2011-08-31T17:37:00.000-07:00

When Tommy Fitzgerald offered to buy me a drink for the 21st birthday I had several months ago, I did not know what to think. “Your 21st birthday should last all year, am I right?” he said with an enthusiasm bordering on spooky self-regard. Some friends had warned me that Tommy was a fat, two-faced liar. From what I had heard, he was a schemer of schemes and not to be trusted. But in my admittedly limited interactions with Tommy, I had found him fairly forthright and even amusing to be around. As he explained to me how to rent a car before turning 25, I thought I would let him buy me a drink after I finished my second beer of the evening. How often do you get to hang out in a cool Ethiopian restaurant-bar with a group of friends you see none too frequently?

Sipping my Whiskey Sour as the somewhat slapdash and informal program started, I thought to ask Tommy about whether he would be voting for Maggie in a couple of weeks as I planned to do. I actually can’t remember if I thought about this before the emcees brought up the Roy vs. Maggie race. I do remember thinking about how the closest behavior to the deceptive bastard I had been told existed that I had experienced firsthand came in the minutes after both Tommy and I had lost the elector election coming in seventh and eighth place out of a field of six. Tommy told me he would call me the next day to talk about how to get myself appointed to the elector position (don’t the losers always get appointed?). But he did not. Of course, now we were both appointed electors and as far as I know he could have very well been involved in making sure that happened.

When I finally leaned over to him to whisper incautiously my question about Maggie, he turned to me with that grin of his and snapped, “What’s my last name?” At first I thought he was teasing me and I responded louder than I should have: “Fitzgerald!” And then, after a pause, “Oh,” I thought and said at the same time. Roy Fitzgerald. Maggie Pierce versus Roy Fitzgerald. “I’m his son, Tommy Fitzgerald,” he explained to my imbalanced embarrassment. I started to apologize without saying sorry and he stopped me by saying, “I love Maggie, she’s great.” I had seen them hug jovially just moments earlier but I continued nonetheless and he stopped me again by laughing without seeming to smile. “Tommy Fitzgerald is Roy’s son but I’m not that Tommy Fitzgerald. We have the same name though, it’s pretty funny.”

I found out that Tommy’s father, Jim Fitzgerald, is the fire commissioner for the city. Apparently he was not Roy Fitzgerald and that same evening I found out I was not allowed to vote for Maggie and against Roy until I was “released” to do so. I stumbled outside in a muddled temper. In the orange and gloomy dusk I felt I could have signed my life away to the IRS or some other heartless agency, and I probably did. I needed to get my ID card back, as I had left it up one town to the north. Mostly, I experienced a matchless remorse for the modestly nightmarish scheming world I could never really understand. It had been too long since I arrived, and it was not nearly long enough until I will depart.

Customer Review: HP7-P2

2011-08-24T23:25:00.000-07:00

I watched HP7-P2 a couple months ago and can't begin to tell you all how pleased I was with this wonderful product. It really does live up to its billing. And everything it does is so intuitive. The evil wizard Voldemort is a joy to watch and all of the product's many special effects function flawlessly. Helen Bonham Carter is fabulous and it never gets jammed or feeds more than one piece of paper at a time. I had occasion to give Hermione a real "trial by fire." The unit does not come with a manual explaining who all the characters are and what they are doing (that sucks). But it's on the provided CD. I like a paper copy of an operating manual so I printed out all 212 pages Hermioned in "Horcrux" quality. I was expecting the print quality to be so-so at best for this setting but was amazed at how good it looked. And the Hermione worked flawlessly, printing out all 212 pages on 106 pages of paper.

Now for a couple of nitpick negatives. The movie product is not the quietest in operation so don't expect to be watching it at 2:00AM without waking the neighbors. Not at least unless you enjoy getting yelled at. And the narrative is a little buggy. We had to uninstall and reinstall it twice before it made any sense dramatically to people who haven't read the book. That's about all I can think of to criticize so far.

The movie product is very attractive and a lot shorter and less bloated than the Academy-Award winning LOTR-P3. And the illumination for the LCD panel is a very attractive pure white rather than that drab 'sort-of-green' that you sometimes see on LCD's.

Amazing, just amazing.

Anothering

2011-08-18T11:10:00.000-07:00

Father Malkin is neither Filipino nor a bay laurel,
but is actually the hated visitor to the local school.
When he comes around, all the teachers sit in their desks
and can only remember what they’re supposed to be doing.
Their leisure is eaten away without even a clear idea of what the time is.
That is disruptive.
" " is why the father is not the son.
" " is why the father connects with
the jewel and the spike.

The father always uses the tools at his disposal
He likes a bigger screen to keep all our seaweed
He likes two loves at once.
He likes the fun of contradiction.
He likes to make sure he’s alive.
He hates oxygen but loves air.
He jumps for joy whenever a snake bites the children.
But he always protects the boys down the street
from their parents’ unwilling unrewarding unaccepting
This is the true nature of protection.

When you can make choices that limit what others seek
to put forward as rules before you,
there is enough protection to go around for both the him and the her.
He doesn’t care whether she knows it’s protection.
She doesn’t know
"whether or not there are enough numbers in the day"
for it to be clear for tomorrow.
That is the problem that she has with the future.
But he doesn’t want to know about it.
He just wants to jump up and down while singing old pub tunes.
But he likes when he hears unusual noises.
And unusual noises come often when she makes no escape.

She repeats the same words over and over again
but Father Malkin can’t hear.
He’s outside of her and he can’t be there over and over again.
And outside of the him and the her and Father Malkin and children and boys is the police officer and the librarian.
The librarian beats the police officer in the head.
The librarian is at her dresser and she puts on new clothes
because there is political blood all over the old ones.
No one addresses the fact that the blood is too orange to be natural.
We only have pyramid schemes to blame.

(guitar chords, attempted distractions , and fondled flutes were all incorrect answers)

"Making Movie History"

2011-08-01T11:16:00.000-07:00

River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West by Rebecca Solnit
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Solnit is a remarkable prose stylist, and her examination of the brave new world of abstractions and representations born in California's violent industrializing Gilded Age past works marvelously. I will even defend her occasionally tendency to wind off into tangled thickets of near schizoid conspiracism about the connections between the various phenomena she investigates with the careful eye of a social historian. Sometimes wild theorizing about the bigger picture is exactly what the doctor ordered.

The Ghosts of Electricity

2011-06-28T07:26:00.000-07:00

don't open e-mail from me about "beach photos"- it's "phishing"
X
Inbox
X

	from	Barrie Thorne [email address redacted]

to		Mary Hatfield Henderson et al [email address redacted]
date		Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 6:58 PM
subject		don't open e-mail from me about "beach photos"- it's "phishing"
signed-by		gmail.com
		Important mainly because it was sent directly to you.

hide details 6:58 PM (20 hours ago)

Dear folks on my gmail "contacts"list,
Alas, I have somehow been hacked. If you get an email from me asking you
to see some photos from the beach, DELETE IT. If more mayhem occurs, I'll
take appropriate action.
My apologies,
Barrie

--
Barrie Thorne
Professor of Gender & Women's Studies and
Professor of Sociology
University of California, Berkeley

Selections from "Thai Travels" No. 4

2011-06-16T14:46:00.000-07:00

"...I experienced a series of highly visceral hallucinations. I felt as if I flew high above the jungle upside down. The trees, the banana palms, the noisy yet euphonic hum of insects, the replicative green - everywhere green - whirled around me with dizzying splendor...Jiminy Cricket served as our guide. He taught us the ways and protected us from the gravest dangers we may have encountered. Undoubtedly my view of the jungle has been permanently altered by meeting it under such tumultuous circumstances...

"I had already seen the muddy river below my dangling feet. But now we got deep in the muck. Our captain fancied that he was a Jack Sparrow, he heard voices, he talked to himself and he led us down the current feet first. I was prepared to dunk my head in the drink, I was ready to drown.

"The day had not yet ended and my venturesome delusions now took shape as avatars - tigers first, and then ultimately elephants. I feel no shame admitting that I am terrified of anyone who is capable of tearing my face off and eating my flesh like so much lettuce. The tiger, he is capable, but the tiger can be approached...

"The next morning, the visage of the elephant became my delusion's North Star. We were all entranced by their gentle comic majesty. Sympathy for these enormous beasts anguished me - normally my soul harbors few warm feelings for animals. I deal with them as a technocrat deals with reams of collected data. I analyze rather than pet...[The elephants] took us on slow, stuttering roller coaster ride through the jungle.

"My sister and I rode on a houda atop the elephant. Her name was Wan Pen and she was a hard working 31-year-old. She climbed like hell. She ate using her highly articulate trunk. My feet were on her back, occasionally I placed my foot behind her ear. The jungle around us made way for these hulking wanderers. Again the resounding buzz of insects surrounded us, but this time Wan Pen's ears flapped back and forth to ward them away...

"The long chain of visions that Chiang Mai induced in me ended while visiting a working silk factory. These little slugs - born to transform - provide, in their yearning to become another, a fine fiber that Thais (among many other peoples) weave into threads. We wear these threads for fashion and comfort. After examining the worms in their various stages of development as well as the fibers, the threads and the wooden machines that women work to weave the silk, I entered the adjacent retail shop that sells the finished goods. My dream ended with the stark juxtaposition of a hot silk factory and an air conditioned retail shop. Nearly every shop I have entered in my life has had a sweat shop behind its wares, but the connection had never been so clearly dramatized. I felt a vague sickness; a hangover of unearned luxury infested me like opportunistic mold."

Selections from "Thai Travels" No. 3

2011-06-12T10:29:00.000-07:00

All photo credit to my sister, Katherine Bruens:

hey, look, that's me with a tiger

Selections from "Thai Travels" No. 2

2011-06-07T19:55:00.000-07:00

"...the [Chao Phraya] river bisects the city and feeds the many canals that cut through neighborhoods like so many veins and arteries...after getting on a long tail boat...[w]e sped down the river taking in views of the city. It's a truly splendorous way to travel.

"Our first stop was Wat Arun. An ornate Buddhist temple stippled by statues of cows and Gods from the Hindu pantheon, Wat Arun dares one to tumble down its pyramidal step formations. Near the end of our explorations of the vertiginous structure, I glimpsed a Buddhist monk working as a clerk behind the counter of the Wat Arun gift shop. This image inhabited me with a bemused sense of sweaty irony. I find it fatuously unsettling how easily Buddhism has taken to the highly commercial culture of modernity.

"The long tail boat than took us into a labyrinthine latticework of canals innervating Thai neighborhoods that alternate seemingly at random between wooden shantytowns and opulent villas...we stopped at a large orchid farm populated by gorgeous airborne flowers. I looked up at the opal sky, overcome by delicate blossoms with the mouths of insects..."

Selections from "Thai Travels" No. 1

2011-06-02T20:40:00.001-07:00

"My uncle lives on the outskirts of Bangkok. I slept the hot, humid night away without a blanket. When I woke up, I went outside into the morning drizzle. While I observed the orchids, the drizzle turned into a downpour. I sat on the covered porch to watch the hard rain drench the tropical plants. A few peals of thunder anointed the day...

"A shirtless Thai man ran down the street in the rain. He got into a van and revved the engine for several minutes. The sound of gunshot echoed through the neighborhood. The van had backfired. Just then, the rain stopped, as suddenly as it started."

Masters of the Compendium

2011-05-28T20:41:00.000-07:00

On February 17, 1998, the acclaimed filmmaker Cesario Flores was asked by a critic to name his favorite movie. He answered by naming We Won’t Go Home Again, a book divided into a series of photo essays followed by some tense journalistic prose of obvious relation, which seemed to at first confound and then infuriate the critic. “Every movie I make is about a lesbian relationship between a young girl and a woman in late middle age,” Flores added as a somewhat generous explanation.

The critic, Christopher Dennett, responded by letting the interview devolve into an argument. Dennett had become known for championing a very controversial French zombie film. Seeing how he could profit by trading in provocation, he later wrote “A Review of a Film That Doesn’t Exist” which earned him at first a letter of rejection but later further notoriety. With that in mind, Dennett decided to needle Flores about his constant conflicts with producers over their requests that he stick to a script rather just going off and shooting footage of all the people he met on location.

Flores tried to explain by referring to a dream he had shortly after completing work on his first feature. In the dream, Flores had to convince the actor Gabriel Byrne to appear as William Shakespeare in a movie about going to Bermuda to research The Tempest. Believing that this was a sign that he had been infected by out of control cinephilia, Flores decided to completely shift his way of working. The argument instigated by Dennett because he felt Flores was deliberating obfuscating eventually bloomed into a sham rivalry that persisted between the director and critic for many years.

Flores and Dennett never realized the formative experience they nearly shared in common. When Flores was a boy, his great uncle died and left a minor and insignificant fortune to his family. They proceeded to fight viciously amongst themselves over the inheritance until they had consumed both themselves and the fortune. Flores avoided being swallowed whole by the conflagration but it left a distinct imprint on his consciousness.

In his own childhood, Dennett watched his parents conflict with increasing frequency over family finances as they found each other less attractive and lovable (and we will ask which direction the causality runs without ever receiving a satisfactory answer). The divorce battle that ensued, a mess of money and machismo, traumatized young Dennett. He had to live with his mother’s sister when it became increasingly violent. Later he would describe this experience infrequently to close friends when the mood struck him. One friend, the actor and director Danny DeVito, based the film The War of the Roses on what Christopher Dennett told him late at night in dimly lit bars.

But this story was not true, or at least it was exaggerated. The divorce was not as much about a financial conflict as it was about a deep disagreement about how to live in the world.

This article’s sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (July 2010)

The Mind of Alexandra Anixter

2011-05-14T16:12:00.000-07:00

“The ignorant man works for his own gain, the wise man acts prolifically for obvious reasons, and the wise woman behaves above all as a seer. She sees the ignorant man’s work for what it really means and the wise man’s actions for what they represent to the world. She has constant doubts, as do her sisters, but the doubts are merely a mad distraction implanted by the twisted arts of work and action. Knowledge from sight remains with the woman while man’s feeble attempts at escaping inner despair fall away with every iteration. ”

Alexandra Anixter wrote the above paragraph in the first edition of The Book of Life. The very same people who had once embraced her researches chose to ostracize, persecute, and attack her for what she had written in a radical departure from her previous work. She engaged in heated debates with academicians of every field of inquiry in lecture halls and labs; at conferences that went out over networks; on elevators; in coffeeshops; within the shadows cast by clock towers. The police arrested her for assaulting Dmitri Yersin (a bureaucrat of some repute), though she vigorously denied initiating the altercation despite the reports of a few excitable eyewitnesses.

Next she published The Book of Time, in which she claimed she could transmigrate human consciousness into objects both animate and inanimate. While this claim received the bulk of the attention still remaining due to her, much more importantly she proposed a theory of time’s relation to the real and the unreal. In discussing the theory with her, I found that Alexandra seemed increasingly aggravated by the clumsy semiosis of our language. I feared that she had begun to develop a messianic complex. Not the least of my worries: that she might actually be able to lead us to the Promised Land. I did not feel I was ready to go.

As she found herself ever more isolated and unable to hold down a job or publish further work except through publishers too sleazy for her to bear, self-medication started in earnest. It pained me to watch her body and mind decay by poison. Unfortunately, I had my own reputation to consider. I felt deeply unsettled by my own selfishness and yet I justified my cold-hearted actions as deference to my own family. I hope that her next form will forgive me.

Alexandra was not fully aware at the time that all of what has been described in the preceding paragraphs took place entirely within the confines of her own mind. Yet twelve thousand Malaysians bore witness to her paranormal adventure as part of their government’s experiment with telepathy. A distinguished program of the Wawasan 2020 campaign, these seemingly innumerable individuals watched these events in real time, and so only they could fully appreciate Alexandra’s theory of real time as she described it in her second informal book of total awareness.

: Power Police : Merry Musicians :

2011-05-10T12:39:00.000-07:00

The whole police department was up in arms when orchestra entered
They didn’t know which weapons were instruments
or which genders were ready to be blasted
So they lit themselves on fire.
But the building couldn’t burn.
It had been covered in plasticine material
/usually reserved for old-stile aeroplanes
that are protecting rational thinking stage actors from getting in
,too much trouble,
when they make mistakes in front of the conductor.

He screams and he screams and he doesn’t use words
because it would be confusing and pointless.
That is the nature of the police exercise.
They want to marry musicians
and be felt around the world
not those who share power among the best of us.
Power isn’t publicly traded.
/that is why the orchestra has a problem.

Each musician has an instrument that has a cat or a bird inside
But the birds are ostriches
/they are not the best of us.
But I most certainly am.
Don’t ever forget when you’re ready.
Don’t ever forget it.

Ritual and Retrogression

2011-04-29T09:56:00.000-07:00

Timothy Corbin had been diagnosed with von Donnersmack’s syndrome, a psychological condition that prevented him from continuously internalizing his own age. Named after Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Donnersmack, the 19th century German chemist who first theorized its existence after observing the behavior of a student, it had developed in Timothy only very recently. One day, Timothy would be able to study as he normally had in the past. But the next day he would apply for Social Security benefits, thinking he would qualify as a retiree. And the day after that he would be at a playground riding the Merry-go-round without the cares of maturation and adulthood entering his mind at all.

Timothy’s unpredictable behavior quickly became a concern to his friends and family. His roommate, Chad Schmidt, had first noticed when Timothy began to watch PBS Newshour and Nickelodeon alternately with alarming frequency. Chad and Timothy had always shared a certain imaginative curiosity, but Chad could tell that his roommate was acting erratically even by their standards. Chad spoke to Timothy’s parents and helped his old buddy seek out a psychiatrist of good reputation. Even as Timothy started to receive the medical attention he desperately needed, the perpetual forgetting of his own age saddened Chad. Chad felt he might lose a friend. In the meantime that friend interfered with Chad’s ambition of inventing a new musical instrument. They would not be roommates for much longer.

The first psychiatrist that Timothy saw, in spite of his skillful manner, could not grasp the condition that burdened his new patient. For this reason, the psychiatrist decided to refer Timothy to Dr. T.M. Jiuliang, a specialist in rare psychological phenomena. Reports of Dr. Jiuliang’s notoriously intrusive methods concerned Timothy’s parents at first. But after Dr. Jiuliang’s accurately diagnosed Timothy’s disorder as von Dommersmack’s syndrome and explained to them that there is no cure or even a proven treatment, they gained a certain reluctant confidence in the renowned doctor.

Within weeks, Dr. Jiuliang had determined that talk therapy, psychotropic medicines and a variety of other traditional treatments were largely ineffectual in helping Timothy to remember his own age for more than twenty-four hours. Fortunately, inspiration struck Dr. Jiuliang in a moment of scientific rapture. He realized that Timothy’s amnesiac wanderings could be relieved by a kind of perpetual birthday celebration. By lighting the number of candles that corresponded to Timothy’s actual age on a birthday cake every day for the rest of his life, the worst effects of von Donnersmack’s syndrome could be avoided. Dr. Jiuliang thought the solution’s cost effectiveness, when compared to price of “shrinks or drugs,” might be its most beautiful aspect. And he had long held a deep appreciation for the power of ritual in the daily lives of men and women. Though he believed he had gained this understanding from reading Freud and Durkheim, as well as through his own observations and experiences, the insight had first been planted in his mind in elementary school when a particularly brilliant teacher had bestowed lessons about the great scientists of the past on her most promising pupils. His awareness of Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Donnersmack’s extensive writings on the subject of ritual remained inured in his subconsciousness ever since that time.

When Chad Schmidt felt frustrated with his stuttering and noisy contraptions, he would add or remove candles from Timothy’s birthday cake. But Timothy did not mind because occasionally forgetting his true vintage gave him an intense angle on mortality, like being confined to a room while the years passed by outside in every direction.

You Don’t Need the Boss, the Boss Needs You

2011-03-18T19:55:00.000-07:00

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 of the legislature did not campaign on a platform of cutting further billions from California’s education and health care systems. But such cuts are the most conspicuous feature of Jerry Brown’s proposed budget.

Electoral democracy has effectively ceased to function across vast swaths of the federal, state and local governments of the United States of America. This did not happen by accident, but rather is part of a plan orchestrated and carried out by a relatively small group of wealthy plutocrats and radical right-wing ideologues with converging interests. They accept frequent assistance from heedlessly self-interested corporations particularly those in the financial industry along with various fundamentalist Christian organizations. All of this may sound like a conspiracy theory, but I would hardly call it that. Much of this plan has been carried out in the open and there is extensive literature documenting it all the way back to the late 1970s. A recent example of this documentation would be Jane Meyers’ extensive investigative report for the New Yorker on the hugely influential political activities of the Koch brothers, who are well known industrial billionaires that believe in radically remaking the U.S. to have an authoritarian government exclusively of the rich, by the rich and for the rich.

For these reasons, elections can no longer be the principal means that the American people use to express their political will because the results of elections have become increasingly detached from actual government policymaking. One can look at the unanticipated but vicious attacks on workers rights across the Midwest, or California’s non-democratic legislature, or the absurdly dysfunctional institution that is the United States Senate, to know with certainty that this assertion is true. Voting is still important and seems to occasionally yield results, but the machinery of governance has become too disconnected from the voting booth for it to be reliable as the primary democratic action. I am advocating that given the deteriorating position of the middle class and the perilous state of global climate systems, U.S. citizenship demands more from those who benefit from its rights and privileges.

But what else can we do? If the electoral process is too corrupt to be effective and a self-selected billionaire elite is systematically dismantling democratic self-government, it would seem that despair is our only option. Except to believe that would only be buying into the modern mythology about ultra wealthy people. We are meant to believe they are wealthy because they are brilliant, or talented, or because they add untold value to our economy, or even due to a preternatural luck that the rest of us cannot access. But in reality, they are only rich because of us. The Koch brothers are nothing more than a pair of clever thugs who have helped push the government to systematically redistribute the wealth of the nation upwards for the last thirty years, some of it into their own pockets. We make them wealthy and we can stop anytime we want.

When I was in Sacramento, there were huge numbers of students from community colleges and CSUs, but very few from the University of California. I think that is because UC students do not understand that we don’t need the boss. Rather, the boss needs us. Put simply: the University of California, the state of California, the United States of America and most especially the moneyed elites that have driven our country into a ditch, can only function if students keep going to school, workers keep going to work, and the police keep securing the institutions of public and private governance against the collective will of the governed. What would happen if we just stopped playing their game?

Crossposted at the Cal Dems Blog.

But Really, America is Not Broke

2011-03-16T19:28:00.000-07:00

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 to borrow money. If we were broke, this interest rate would be astronomical because people would risk lending to us only in exchange for very high returns. As it stands today, the interest rate on government bonds is at record lows. That means it's cheaper for the US government to borrow right now than at any time in recent history. Needless to say, this would not happen if the country was bankrupt unless markets are completely irrational. If Republicans think the U.S. is broke and can't afford to borrow any more money, then what logically follows is that they believe that markets are completely irrational.

Another way of looking at this question (Is America Broke?) is to look at our debt-to-GDP ratio. This ratio compares public debt to the total wealth of our economy, and its useful for making historical and international comparisons. Our debt-to-GDP ratio is currently high, but much much lower than it was right after World War II. Despite this much bigger public debt after World War II, there was a massive postwar economic boom. In other words, America was either broke during the postwar economic boom that created the modern American middle class or it's not broke right now. You pick.

Finally, this pitifully hideous dude from the video completely ignores Michael Moore's point in favor of making glib remarks about Charlie Sheen. Moore is not denying that federal, state and local governments face significant budget deficits, he is saying that the reason they face deficits is due to a series of government policies in recent decades that culminated in the Bush years. These policies were, in effect, massive wealth transfer policies that redistributed money and economic power from the middle class to the super rich. And while you can quibble about the nature of those policies, what there is no question about is the wealth of this nation. America is still the richest country in the world. We are not, by any means or honest measurement, broke.

Originally posted on March 10, 2011 at the Cal Democrats Blog.

Don't Worry About the Market

2011-03-16T11:19:00.000-07:00

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.

182 Movies, 285 Days

2011-03-08T16:26:00.000-08:00

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 times or more so I know it backwards and forwards. Of course, I didn't really remember how well I knew it until I watched Kurosawa's version on the big screen (Pacific Film Archive, of course). It's a fairly faithful adaptation but changes the setting to medieval Japan (it's Kurosawa, where else?). I wasn't crazy about how Lady Macbeth and Banquo were handled in this version, but Mifune was great as Macbeth and I absolutely loved the ghostly apparition that took the place of the witches. Also, Macbeth's death by ten thousand arrows is one of the coolest endings of any movie ever. So the movie had that going for it.

Crimes and Misdemeanors

1989. 104 minutes. USA. Directed by Woody Allen. Watchdate: 10/7/2010

This would be my third or fourth viewing of one of the best Woody Allen movies. My roommate put it on, and I didn't plan to watch the whole thing but I got sucked it once again. Alan Alda is beyond superb, delivering one of the best comedic performances ever. "If it BENDS, it's funny. If it BREAKS, it's not funny." Interestingly enough, perhaps the movie's greatest strength and greatest weakness are one and the same: an unashamed willingness to be completely explicit about its themes, aims and purpose.

Too Many Movies, Too Many Days

2011-03-06T23:56:00.000-08:00

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 as confident and funny as Vicky Cristina Barcelona from two years ago, if slightly less novel because it lacks the Spanish setting and any performances quite as electrifying as Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz. Still, I enjoyed it a lot with Anthony Hopkins and Naomi Watts really bringing their A game. Also, there's a marvelous scene where Antonio Banderas takes on the classic Woody persona. It's brilliant, especially if you're a big fan like I am. It was fortuitous that I watched Alice shortly before this, because they each offer slightly differing takes on the value of delusion and fantasy in a world that Allen views to be, as always, fairly bleak without some silliness and laughter.

Chimes at Midnight

1965. 115 minutes. Spain. Directed by Orson Welles. Watchdate: October 14, 2010.

PFA was doing a "Shakespeare on Screen" retrospective so I got to see this and Throne of Blood, but I missed Welles' Macbeth and some other interesting ones. This didn't hold my interest as raptly as the other two Welles movies I have seen, but it still works pretty well. I'm not that familiar with Shakespeare's histories, but the scene where Falstaff is "enlisting" soldiers from the hobbled locals is brilliant as was the ending which is just a really powerful comment on the nature of these sorts of high end friendships. The comically bloated (and heavily bearded) Welles is perfect as Falstaff, since Shakespeare seemed to have thought up enough fat jokes for the character to only work if played by a real meat show.

I Walked with a Zombie

1943. 69 minutes. USA. Directed by Jacques Tourneur. Watchdate: October 13, 2010.

I Walked With a Zombie was fairly good for a B picture. I sort of imagine a situation like out of Ed Wood where Tourneur says the name of the picture and the studio's all for it and then he turns in this sort of Caribbean visual discursion of Claude Lévi-Strauss with just a touch of Frantz Fanon. Studio must have been pissed! Delightful. Anyway, it doesn't hold a candle to Out of the Past, but I didn't really expect it to...Tourneur's got quite an eye, though. The line about death and decay early on reminded me of Orson Welles describing the sharks in The Lady from Shanghai. Perfectly foreboding. Some great music and photography and a tantalizingly treatment of some really interesting questions of anthropology and decolonization elevate what would otherwise be a forgettable but spooky movie. Tourneur's got talent, no doubt.

Five Graves to Cairo

1943. 96 minutes. USA. Directed by Billy Wilder. Watchdate: October 13, 2010.

Billy Wilder just makes consistently excellent movies, at least so far as I've seen. This isn't anything groundbreaking, but it's still damn good. It's similar to Casablanca in a lot of ways, but still manages to have its own unique character in no small part due to the brilliant Erich von Stroheim. Akim Tamiroff and Fortunio Bonanova are entertaining if a bit vapid. The best scenes evoke the same finely tuned World War II tension that would be borrowed for some of the most satisfying scenes of contemporary adventures like the Indiana Jones movies and Inglorious Basterds. Oh and the flashlight bit is brilliantly shot.

Alice

1990. 102 minutes. USA. Directed by Woody Allen. Watchdate: October 11, 2010.

This was among the dozen or so Woody Allen films I haven't yet seen, so I picked it up for a few bucks at a supermarket bargain bin. It took awhile to actually get around to it, but it's actually quite good. There are a handful of inspired scenes that keep the story moving engagingly along. Allen successfully dramatizes the benefits and costs of escapism and superstition. Joe Mantegna, William Hurt and Blythe Danner are all terrific, to say nothing of Mia Farrow or Alec Baldwin. Definitely middle-of-the-pack Woody Allen, but that's not nothing.

Movie Mania

2011-03-04T12:00:00.000-08:00

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 broadly elevated this from superbly entertaining to something more thoughtful. My one complaint is that the ending came off as sort of pat maybe because the rest of the movie has so many elegant twists and turns. The murder scene is still disturbing as hell, though, I definitely recoiled on reflex.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

1975. 133 minutes. USA. Directed by Milos Forman

Jack Nicholson is my favorite actor. Based on what I had heard, and having read the book, and all of that, I was expecting a lot from this. Probably too much. I think I have to have a new rule about Oscar winners: always lower expectations. Anyway, this was by no means bad. It's actually very good, even great. I love the sequence on the boat, the voting scene, the basketball bits -- all excellently done. The ending part where Nicholson chokes a bitch is astonishingly engaging. Even so, I can't help feeling some level of disappointment. As good as Nicholson is here, he has at least a half dozen better performances. In general, this movie was around or slightly above the level of The French Connection or The Deer Hunter among 1970s Best Picture winners, but I guess I was hoping for something that would approach the greatness of my favorite 70s movies and that just wasn't the case. It definitely made me think a lot about how my expectations affect my enjoyment of a movie.

PS - I mentioned movies about madness that glide between hilarious and unsettling and both of these movies do that to one extent or another, but others that fit into this subsubgenre include the quintessential example of American Psycho along with Perfume: The Story of a Murderer and A Scanner Darkly.

A Dream Upon Waking

2011-03-03T13:36:00.000-08:00

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 bit interesting to watch. As Herr Benjamenta, he actually pulls off creepy without being just creepy.

Institute Benjamenta also exemplifies a certain subgenre of movies that I quite enjoy. The subgenre generally features surreal elements and may deal with the concept of dreaming explicitly or implicitly. I don't have a name for it, but it's the type of movie that might be best enjoyed in a state halfway between being asleep and awake. The best examples I had before this were The Science of Sleep, Waking Life and Akira Kurosawa's Dreams. But Benjamenta fits nearly as well if not better. These sorts of movies should be experienced in a perpetual state of waking up when your mind is still relearning how to apprehend the world around you. If possible, your own dreams should subconsciously intermingle with the images and ideas of the movie. Often, one can remove the soundtrack altogether, or use an alternative one in order to focus on the images (obviously this is something to try after a first viewing). Anyway, I'm glad a friend recommended this movie because it led me to articulate my thoughts on this obscure subgenre that exists mainly in my own mind.

PS - Looks like I FELL BEHIND. But soon I will CATCH UP. Don't you worry, dear readers, if there are any of you still out there.

198 Movies, 310 Days

2011-02-17T13:36:00.000-08:00

High Fidelity

2000. 113 minutes. USA. Directed by Stephen Frears. Watchdate: 11/5/2010.

My umpteenth viewing of John Cusack's last great movie (hopefully not for all time). What can I say, it's a great date movie. Cusack is great, Jack Black and Todd Louiso are revelatory, Tim Robbins' hair is horrifying and hilarious. Great soundtrack, strong structure, enough said.

Becket

1964. 150 minutes. UK. Directed by Peter Glenville. Watchdate: 10/25/2010.

Nothing more or less than a splendid showcase of the talents of Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton. John Gielgud does great things with his small scene as well. This is definitely an actor's movie, although the occasionally gorgeous production design gets time to shine as well. The scene where Becket becomes chancellor, the scene at the peasant hovel, the scenes in Rome, the beach scene and Becket's death scene were all standouts.

Shaun of the Dead

2004. 100 minutes. UK. Directed by Edgar Wright. Watchdate: 10/21/2010.

I am a latecomer to the work of Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and their other collaborators. But I enjoyed this thoroughly. The first half is hilarious and phenomenally inspired. The conceit of people being so apathetic and yet somehow also so preoccupied that they don't realize for an extended period of time that the entire world is falling apart is so brilliant, partly because it seems obvious after it's presented and yet it's still original. Also because it allows for some great comedy bits. My favorite is probably Pegg walking into a convenience store, grabbing a soda can without noticing the refrigerator case is covered in bloody handprints and then slipping loudly on blood but still walking nonchalantly out of the store. The scene with the zombie little girl is also great, and I absolutely loved the bit where Pegg and Frost are arguing over which LPs to lob at an oncoming zombies. The second half of the movie isn't as funny, but it still works quite well. The ending isn't great, but such is often the case with movies like this.

Tom Noonan Spotlight

2011-02-15T16:07:00.000-08:00

Wolfen

1981. 115 minutes. USA. Directed by Michael Wadleigh. Watchdate: 11/7/2010.

Tom Noonan is my new favorite supporting player. After seeing his haunting guest turn as a soothsaying doctor on an episode of Louie and his performance as the looming, suicidal anti-ego of Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Synecdoche, New York, I encountered him as a lonerish animal expert in Wolfen. I will now proceed to start to compulsively watch everything he has been in. Probably. What an awesome guy. Other than Noonan, this movie was pretty uneven. Though it did include one of the more sublimely ridiculous things I've seen in a while: a scene where Edward James Olmos strips naked, runs around like a wolf on a beach at night and then screams "It's all in your mind"at a bewildered Albert Finney. Actually, the movie reminded me a lot of Caroll Ballard's 1983 adaptation of Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat. That's another wolf movie that I have mixed feelings about that features a patently ridiculous nude scene. Also, the guy who directed Woodstock also directed this? It's the only movie he has directed not related to Woodstock? What?

199 Movies, 315 Days

2011-02-13T15:47:00.000-08:00

I watched 232 movies in the 365 Days of 2010. Here's some more:

Me and You and Everyone We Know

2005. 91 minutes. USA. Directed by Miranda July. Watchdate: 11/11/2010

I had seen this several times, but some of my friends hadn't and it has been a couple years at least since I last viewed it. I noticed some rather obvious things in the movie that I hadn't before, which I think speaks to the fact that the movie throws a lot at you without you entirely realizing it. I'm also quite in love with this deathless line: "Email wouldn't even exist if it weren't for AIDS." John Hawkes is great and I also enjoy Hector Elias but Brandon Ratcliff still walks away with the movie in his back pocket. I hope Miranda July gets around to making another feature one of these days. Actually I'm looking at IMDB's page for the movie right now and on the Related News sidebar there's a headline that says she's bringing a new movie to Sundance this winter. So, good on that.

Waste Land

2010. 90 minutes. Directed by Walker. Watchdate: 11/10/2010

I saw an early screening of this movie with very little prior knowledge of what it was. On the poster, there is a critic's quote that reads "The Slumdog Millionaire of documentaries" and certainly it shares a measure of that movies crowd pleasing rags-to-riches poverty tourism Oprahesque touchy feely Vanilla bullshit latte populist appeal. But it's really far more complex than that and certainly a great deal more inventive and unique. There's really no proper prior motion picture analogue to a movie that explores the culture of Brazilian trash pickers (or recycled materials seekers) - both working and getting organized in the world's largest landfill, the Gramacho Jardim in Rio de Janeiro - through the eyes of Brazil's most renowned visual artist Vik Muniz who first came to America because a rich man shot him in the leg and yes this sentence is getting long but wait there's more - Muniz and these catadores, as they're known, build giant self-portraits out of the refuse they work in every day and then become famous in art galleries around the world for their efforts. I highly recommend it even though I don't precisely know how I really feel about it. Maybe I recommend it precisely because the movie let me work through my own thoughts and ambiguous emotional responses, instead of trying to force me to feel good like Americans should. Seriously, just go see it. I want to talk to someone else about it.

The Seventh Seal

1957. 96 minutes. Sweden. Directed by Ingmar Bergman. Watchdate: 11/10/2010

My first direct exposure to Bergman (must thank Woody for my healthy background of allusion and homage to the Great Swede), I was surprised at how straightforward and digestible the whole movie was. It's very well done and quite funny with a shockingly warm embrace of the importance of family. I particularly enjoyed the sequence in the Tavern and its aftermath. Nice to see Max Von Sydow so young and cool.

The Thin Blue Line

1988. 103 minutes. USA. Directed by Errol Morris. Watchdate: 11/9/2010

Fantastic from start to finish. Errol Morris is a goddamn genius. The crime reenactment scenes are masterful examples of a deft use of light and shadow. Crime reenactment scenes are like the elevator music of moving image thanks to Unsolved Mysteries but Morris basically invented them so it was cool to get what they were before they were hackneyed. It reminded me of when I started listening to Speaking in Tongues by Talking Heads because I realized what an excellent template all that terrible 80s music was trying to imitate. Of course, The Thin Blue Line is also a searing indictment of the justice system in addition to being master class documentary filmmaking. This is my third Morris doc after The Fog of War and Mr. Death and I will need to watch many more to satisfy my thirst.

PS - An ambiguity emerges in my counting method for this project. I counted Me and You and Everyone towards my total despite having seen it before. I believe earlier in the year I was not counting movies I had seen before towards my total. Ah, the vicissitudes of nerdom.

Comedy as Anarchy: Richard Lester's The Knack...

2011-02-12T11:38:00.000-08:00

The Knack...and How to Get It

1965. 85 minutes. UK. Directed by Richard Lester. Watchdate: 11/11/2010

It's not often that I've encountered a movie that combines visual and verbal panache so deftly and cohesively. This was Richard Lester's follow up to A Hard Day's Night, and the superb direction he exhibited there was merely a warm up for the tour de force work he delivers here. The Knack moves so quickly it's sometimes hard to keep up. It's almost painful. Yet I was almost constantly laughing or in awe of the incisive madness of this whirling contraption. It's one of the funniest movies I have ever seen.

All Eisenberg, All the Time

2011-02-09T21:32:00.000-08:00

The Social Network

2010. USA. Directed by David Fincher. Watchdate: 11/12/2011.

The Social Network was very entertaining with a few great moments. The script was terrific, and Fincher's direction was workmanlike if not nearly as inspired as in his early movies. I think he tried to replicate his awesome Fight Club soundtrack trick where he perfectly synced up "Where Is My Mind?" by the Pixies with Tyler Durden exploding the credit industry. But unfortunately, as appropriate as The Beatles' "Baby You're a Rich Man" was to use in this movie, syncing it up with Mark Zuckerberg refreshing his browser somehow didn't come off as quite as dramatically. I guess clicking the keyboard on laptop is never going to be quite as cool as fiery conflagerations. Nothing Fincher could have done about that. I also really enjoy Jesse Eisenberg as an actor. He's not flashy but he really pulls you into the internal conflicts of his characters. A lot has been said about the opening sequence and while I agree that it was very well done, I think my favorite may have been the scene where the Winklevoss twins go complain to Larry Summers. The guy who plays Summers was really excellent, did a great job with a small but significant part.

Adventureland

2009. 107 minutes. USA. Directed by Greg Mottola. Watchdate: 11/15/2011.

I saw this at exactly the right moment in my life. It's a very understated, earnest romance with an equal measure of dramatic and comedic elements - it's really nothing like how it was advertised which definitely threw me off at first. It's not quite a great movie, but it really clicked with me. Also, very good soundtrack dominated by Lou Reed/The Velvet Underground. And Eisenberg, again!

Something Something Days, Something Something Movies

2011-02-08T16:44:00.000-08:00

Run Lola Run

1998. 80 minutes. Germany. Directed by Tom Tykwer. Watchdate: 11/17/2010.

Tom Tykwer seems to be a real maestro at merging form and content. That is to say, he not only successfully matches the story he's telling with a perfect style of telling it but he actually does so in a way that it's hard to tell the difference between the two. I didn't like this quite as much as Perfume, but it was a lot of fun nonetheless - a great cinematic exercise. The bank robbery scene in particular was excellent - bank robberies have been dramatized so many times by now that it's rare to see one crafted in a new way, but he pulled it off with flair.

The Mirror

1975. 106 minutes. Russia. Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. Watchdate: 11/16/2010.

Like Stalker, Tarkovsky's The Mirror is somewhat mystifying. With an even more glacial pace, it explores childhood, love and divorce in extremely personal terms. It was difficult for me to watch for various reasons, and I know I'll have to come back to it someday to truly understand or appreciate it. If nothing else, this Russian knows how to photograph wind and fire.

Tapped

2009. USA. Directed by Stephanie Schoetig and Jason Lindsey. Watchdate: 11/16/2010.

A notch or two above the standard current issue based documentary, including Who Killed the Electric Car? which is by the same producers I believe. Nothing groundbreaking, but it's a worthwhile exploration of a really sleazy industry that doesn't seem to get the awful reputation it deserves. It basically shows how everything about bottled water is really stupid and many things about it are down right dangerous. Don't buy bottled water (except for really specific reasons like emergency preparedness). Tap water is in almost every case superior, even if you don't count it being like 10,000 times cheaper.

Double Sevens

2011-02-07T11:38:00.000-08:00

I watched 232 movies in the 365 Days of 2010. On November 18th I watched a classic Kurosawa movie and its American remake:

Seven Samurai

1954. 208 minutes. Japan. Directed by Akira Kurosawa. Watchdate: 11/18/2010

First of all, Toshirō Mifune is a true baller. It's hard to take your eyes off him in this movie, where he's funny, badass and profound occasionally all at the same time. The scene where he rings the bell, or the one where he explains why peasants connive -- pure brilliance. Second, Kurosawa knows how photograph rain like no else. I think that was my favorite thing in Rashomon, but in this one it's even better. Third - fuck it, the movie is nearly flawless. How can you wrap a sophisticated, solemn meditation on the nature of violence and social class into a rollicking action adventure story without missing a beat or bearing an ounce of pretension? I don't know, but the Emperor did it. Up until this point, I had been impressed with Kurosawa as a technician but uncertain if he was the artist that his reputation seemed to posit. I have now been relieved of that uncertainty. I am excited to watch many more in the coming months. But yeah, looks like I got another favorite here.

The Magnificent Seven

1960. 128 minutes. USA. Directed by John Sturges. Watchdate: 11/18/2010

This was playing as part of this Flashback Films Thursday deal they have over at the UA Theater, and when I saw it was coming up in the schedule I decided to finally get around to watching Seven Samurai. So last Thursday, I woke up and watched Seven Samurai and then that evening I went and saw The Magnificent Seven. I hadn't thought of how unfair doing such a thing would be to the latter movie. I remember thinking while I was watching Seven Samurai, how the hell are they going to import the themes about strict social class to the U.S. where we like to pretend class doesn't exist. Then I watched this one, and of course they changed it to race. So obvious, I can't believe I didn't think of it. Race is often the medium that Americans use to talk about class. It's pretty fun though, it reminded me of Avatar, having a bunch of WASPy he-man action heroes swoop in to save the simple primitive village people from the real exploiters. Anyway, Steve McQueen, Eli Wallach, James Coburn, Robert Vaughn are all top notch, Yul Brynner is Yul Brynner and Charles Bronson is Charles Bronson. The role of Chico, a composite of Mifune's role and the kid role of Katsushiro, is filled by an annoyance which is really a shame because with someone good it may have been the best role in the movie like in the original. Elmer Bernstein's score is classic, and one of the finest parts of the piece. The movie has been copied so often by subsequent action adventures that some of it feels shopworn even though it probably wasn't at the time, but here's another difference between it and the original: no matter how many times Kurosawa gets copied, he's almost never matched or exceeded so his work still feels so fresh. Another thing is that Sturges cut out more than an hour in the remaking, losing a whole lot of depth but not gaining much in terms of pacing - the final act still feels too long. So it was quite unfair for me to put these two so directly side by side, but it was a fun exercise and The Magnificent Seven was still very enjoyable. Some great gunfightin' scenes in here, most definitely.

Ranulf the Unready (or Eat, Pray, Sin)

2011-02-06T10:21:00.000-08:00

“I built the bloody church, I damn well better have a say in the advowson!” Lord Beauchamp bellows at the cowering messenger before him.
“Yes sir, it’s just that the bishop –“
“The bishop – !” Beauchamp thunders, before attempting to regain his composure to add quietly, “ – is not my concern. My concern is Ranulf. I want him out of my household. You can understand that, can’t you?”
The messenger, practically in a crouch before the large table that serves as a sort of desk for Lord Beauchamp, had been averting his eyes but now allows them to meet his master’s. “Most certainly, my lord. But the bishop insists that his office has the prerogative as the parish is in his jurisdiction and that to cede such a privilege without compensation would be irresponsible.”
“Aha! The truth outs, as it always does.” Beauchamp’s face brightens with malice as he wheels his large, barrel-chested frame around the table to loom over the messenger more directly. “Of course, coin might make the bishop more amenable to my suggestions? Wedmore has revenue just like any other parish, and the bishop wants a taste? I am reading you correctly, yes?”
As the fairly diminutive messenger fumbles for a reply and seemingly shrinks as his lord comes closer, Beauchamp digs into his cloak and produces a small woolen pouch that jangles with the King’s currency. “Here,” Beauchamp shoves the money at the messenger’s chest brusquely. The messenger’s hands come up to grasp the pouch. “And you can tell the bishop that my brother won’t need much of the revenue. He’s a simple man – as far as the bishop’s accounts are concerned, it will almost be as if he could keep the parish vacant indefinitely without anyone noticing. It’s a great deal for the both of us.” Beauchamp glowers at the messenger for a moment. “Now, off with you!”

Eggs, porridge, bread, mutton, plum marmalade – that’s French after a fashion. Our Norman heritage. Yes, I like plum marmalade. Oh, how did I get hungry again? I’ve just finished a plate.
Ranulf Beauchamp blinks and looks up and over at the others eating at the table. As stocky and rotund as his brother is tall and muscular, he pays no attention as his more handsome sibling rises and begins to tap loudly on an empty goblet.
Perhaps, a spot of ale would do me some good. I’ll enjoy that. Ranulf reaches out and grabs a cup of ale and holds it up to his mouth to drink.
After tapping at his goblet and clearing his throat loudly, the room quiets to hear Lord Beauchamp speak. “Guests, fellows, kinsmen near and distant, I bid you salutations with all the gladness my heart can offer for coming tonight to share in this feast of bounteous proportions.”
It’s warm but it tastes good. The cup drops away from Ranulf’s face for a moment before he lifts it again and returns it to his mouth.
“It gives me great pleasure to be able to announce here and now that my dearest brother, Ranulf Beauchamp, shall be ordained as the new priest of Wedmore parish!”
Ranulf sets the cup down as ale dribbles from his chin. Applause and glowing adulation meets his distant gaze. He looks around nervously, his face mottled like spoilt cream, his eyes watery and bemused. I wondered why my brother let me sit so close. What’s going on, then?
For the next few moments, Ranulf’s environs become a blur. His brother seems to say more words but he cannot make them out. Likewise, other people at the table cast encouraging breaths in his direction but they all come out dim and faint. Ranulf turns to his brother, feeling flummoxed and overwhelmed. “What is everyone on about? What have I done now?” He speaks quietly and his brother doesn’t seem to hear. Except he does and after a moment he addresses Ranulf with a fierce, steely glare.
“You’re to become a priest. Do you remember Wedmore? Where I built that chapel. You liked it enough, right? Tomorrow, you will visit your new home on your way to Glastonbury where you shall be given a crash course by the monks there on the subjects of Latin –“ Latin!? “– and theology.” Theology…

Ranulf was mumbling to himself and clutching the Summa Confessorum tightly under his arm when Brother Stephen entered the anteroom to lead the pastor-in-waiting into the offices of Brother Geoffrey.
“I hope you’re enjoying your stay in Glastonbury, sir.”
“Yes, wal, of course it’s a splendid – enjoying it and so on –“ Ranulf trails off, avoiding eye contact with Stephen at all costs. As they enter, Brother Geoffrey sets aside his work and looks up at Ranulf and Stephen.
“Thank you, Brother Stephen. That’ll be all for the evening, then.” Brother Stephen bows and exits quietly. Now all of Geoffrey’s attention is deployed singularly onto Ranulf. “So..how are we finding ourselves tonight?”
“We? Sir…”
Geoffrey sighs, “What is it that brings you here?”
“Ah, yes, well it’s this Sum-ah Confessorium you’ve got me studying.” Ranulf glances down at the item in question and then looks up at Geoffrey hopefully.
“Right, are you having some trouble with it? It’s meant to prepare you for taking confession from your parishioners.”
“Well, it just…sinnin’ and that,” Ranulf pauses as he tries to collect his jumbled thoughts. “Take Luxuria for one,” Ranulf opens the Confessorum and slides the text over towards Geoffrey, his finger indicating a specific passage. “What’s that mean?”
Brother Geoffrey scans the passage. “Well, sometimes if you keep your inquires general you can avoid inspiring further lust. Usually, you should not describe a sin that a parishioner has never heard of…” Geoffrey trails off as he sees Ranulf nodding.
“I get that bit. I meant the next – the extracting of the confession.” Ranulf taps his hand against his chair, his uneasiness bubbling to the surface.
“Well, Robert of Flamborough felt it inappropriate to include too many details of how he got confessions of masturbation. It’s unfortunate to some extent if you want to follow his example as best you can.”
“Painfully?”
“Painfully, yes, confessions can be a difficult business.”
“I mean, painful masturbation, that sounds like a fairly serious – I don’t know if that’s just for a priest to –“
Brother Geoffrey shakes his head. “Oh, no. No, I believe you’ve misread it. He didn’t mean masturbation that was painful, he meant that he extracted the confession painfully.” Brother Geoffrey frowns. Does Ranulf get it? “You see –“
“So the bloke had done normal masturbation, and Robert’s just getting him to confess about it.” Ranulf says this slowly with a number of pregnant pauses, almost stammering a bit. As if he was unfamiliar with some of the words he was using. Normal masturbation…is that a sin, then? I suppose it is. I suppose I knew that. Of course, I remember now.
Brother Geoffrey had been waiting because it seemed that Ranulf had more to say. But he did not say any more, instead he just sat there in a sustained silence. It seemed to Geoffrey as if he was working something out in that thick skull of his. “Yes, he’s just getting him to confess. You’ve got it, I think.” Did Ranulf hear him just now? His expression hadn’t changed. His brow remained furrowed. Just more sustained silence. “Will that be all, then?”
“It’s not a bad sin, is it?” Worry had worked its way through Ranulf’s face.
Geoffrey is taken aback. “Excuse me? I’m not exactly sure what you’re asking, but if you are still thinking about masturbation, yes it’s bad, because yes it’s a sin and sins are bad.” Geoffrey realizes he is shaking slightly, his breathing irregular, his mouth dry. He can’t believe this man is about to enter the priesthood. This is why reform is needed, he thinks. This is the true price of simony.

The rituals aren’t too difficult after awhile. With repetition, he can get a handle on most of it. Even though his Latin is still poor, he can get by with rote memorization. It’s not perfect, but he feels he has been able to keep up the appearance of a proper education. He has never seen Paris nor Bologna, but he can deliver a Pater Noster like no one’s business.
It’s the unplanned work that has shown itself to be problematic. He has to deal directly with parishioners on a daily basis. This is a problem. He never feels he has the right thing to say. He does not believe he possesses the ability to cure or care for souls. He cannot cure or care for his own soul, much less for the souls of an entire community like Wedmore. His heart is sickened by the deceptions he must promulgate constantly. His mind is stricken by internal accusations of hypocrisy and inadequacy. Can he go on like this? Won’t someone find out?
Does every pastor feel this way at first? No chance. I can’t imagine it. They might worry that they fail their flock, but I know I am doing so. It’s all trouble. I’m just not up to it. I don’t know why my brother thought I was. I don’t know why anyone thinks I am. It seems like a bad joke. A trick of some kind. Perhaps that’s it. Perhaps a demon is behind all of this. An evil demon, out to make of fool of me and the whole parish, maybe even the whole church. A demon laughing endlessly. Laughing in the face of God. I hate the demon with every inch of my being. I hate the devil.
I’ve got to concentrate. I can’t let my head wander. Right now, there’s a woman here who wants to confess. She needs to confess to me. She’s waiting for me to begin. How long have we been sitting here? How do I lose track of time? Did we already begin? What is she waiting for? Have I been staring at her face?
“Father…“ she says, shifting uncomfortably.
“Yes. Have you committed lechery?”
She sighs, “I don’t know. I’m scared.”
So am I. Ranulf takes a deep breath. “There remains coitus which is lechery in the strict sense of the word. Have you ever been polluted with lechery?”
“I’m not sure. I think so.” Tears well up in the woman’s eyes.
“Ever against nature?”
“I don’t know. Maybe…what is against nature?”
Ranulf grimaces. “Nevermind. Ever with another woman?”
“Oh, no!” she cries.
The woman is crying now, and it is making Ranulf emotional as well. He struggles to remain composed as he asks his next question. “With clerics or with laymen?”
She is crying. She is in pain. He wants to help her. “I’m sorry – only with laymen. Only laymen.”
He breathes heavily. “Married laymen or single?” This is wrong. I feel wrong. I do not want to think what I’m thinking or feel what I’m feeling. May the Lord save my soul.
“Bb-both!” She stutters, tears dripping down her face and onto her neck. She is hyperventilating. Is the priest wiping the tears away?
“With how many married people?” I cannot do this. I will not do this.
“Only one.” Is her breathing becoming shallower?
“How many times?” I have to take my hand off of her neck. I have wiped away the tears. That is all I can or will do.
“I - I don’t know,” she hiccups.
Don’t cry again. Do not shed a tear. “Let us find out what we can. How long were you with him?”
She begins to respond, but he cannot hear her. He watches her, but she is no longer confessing in his mind. And his hand has not left her person.
“Do you sin with clerics?”
“You have already asked me that.”
“Have I?”
“Yes…”

May the Lord save our souls. For I cannot care or cure. I am lecherous and wicked. I have strayed and led my flock with me. I know what I do is wrong, but I cannot stop. The demon got to me. I cannot resist the devil’s temptation. I wish I could go home. I bring sin to this place. Instead of curing this woman, I have only worsened her condition.
Is this really who I wanted to be? I don’t know. I don’t know how to escape it. I never thought I would end up this way. What have I become? Why am I so full of sin? This is why I cannot be the shepherd. How can I care for the souls of others when I cannot care for my own? I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I am doing. I don’t know how to escape it.
Did you ever introduce any innocent person to sin?
I admit to masturbation. I admit to fornication.
Did you come to your female cousin?
...I…I…
Did you come to a pregnant woman? Was she pregnant?
No, no, no! No, I won’t admit to that. This is all wrong.
Many tiny children are in this way debilitated, crippled and oppressed. In time of menstruation or recent childbirth are generated many lepers, epileptics and children disabled in other ways.
I don’t want to hurt anybody!
Were you ever "infamous" for fornication? Was it public knowledge?
I hope not. I hope to escape it all.
Did you go to prostitutes? You should be afraid that she might be your kin, or vowed to religion…
My brother! It’s him! You want him! He went to prostitutes and he brought me. He laughs in the face of God. I went to prostitutes, yes, but I did so without prior knowledge.
Have you fornicated in a holy place or on a holy day?
Yes! Yes! I am right now!
Where and how often, in what order, with what person and in what kind of fornication?
Stop it stop it stop it it’s not her fault, blame me, I should know better…
Have you looked with evil intent at many people, men and women, have you desired, solicited…kissed them?
Too much. Far too much. I can’t think, I can’t breathe.

“Are you all right?”
“What?”
“You’re crying.”
“Yes. I am full of sin and I have led you astray.”
“You made me feel better.”
“Yes. But that’s not my job. I should be caring for your soul, and not for your body…”
“I don’t want to think about that right now. Do you want to think about that right now?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Well, then. Let’s not.”
“But –“
“Can’t we just enjoy each other’s company a bit longer?”
“I would love to.”

Double Feature at the Stanford Theatre

2011-02-05T13:23:00.000-08:00

I watched 232 movies in the 365 Days of 2010. On November 19th I went to a double feature at the beautiful Stanford Theatre:

Mildred Pierce

1945. 111 minutes. USA. Directed by Michael Curtiz. Watchdate: 11/19/2010.

So I missed the Pick Up on South Street/Where the Sidewalk Ends double feature at the Stanford Theatre in October which was unfortunate but luckily I got to make up for it with another pairing of a movie I had heard was a must-watch with an Otto Preminger movie as the second feature. Mildred Pierce is definitely worth seeing, whether or not you're a big noir fan as I'm fast becoming, because it's a Great Big American Movie that's more fearless than Curtiz's earlier Casablanca if a bit less polished. The script is almost psychotically ambitious, and its plot holes seem like part of the madness rather than a real flaw. The movie moves really fast, with the dramatic beats dropping furiously in almost every scene. It's like you're watching entire lives unfold, and it actually sort of makes sense that it's getting remade as a miniseries by Todd Haynes since there's more than enough going on to fill a half dozen hours or more, even though the movie itself clocks in at under two. Anyway, it's really quite hypnotic to watch how they unpack the American Dream and it's underlying insecurities about money, class, family and love. The glittering Mildred signs are haunting in their frivolous yet unknowing pride. The scenes with the Monte Beragon character have an underlying menace that's unnerving even as they guide you towards solving the mystery. And dear lord they drank a lot of booze in this movie. All in all, quite the movie experience.

Angel Face

1952. 91 minutes. USA. Directed by Otto Preminger. Watchdate: 11/19/2010.

First of all, it's awesome to see "Howard Hughes Presents" before you watch a movie. This was a really cool choice (by David Packard, the owner/curator of the Stanford Theatre) to pair with Mildred Pierce, because it toyed with similar anxieties about money and class. The script was inferior, but Preminger's direction is riveting and astonishingly ahead of its time. Particularly how the he would pair music from one scene and action from another in the kind of montage that's common to see in a Scorsese or Coppola movie. Jean Simmons is also excellent in the lead role, and Robert Mitchum plays a drunker, more pedestrian version of his Out of the Past character. I don't want to give away too much, but Preminger also shoots a couple of scenes of destruction masterfully with a frenetic but perfectly controlled energy. I think this was probably a very good first exposure to him as a director, I'll need to watch more soon for certain.

332 Days, 213 Movies

2011-02-04T11:10:00.000-08:00

I watched 232 movies in the 365 Days of 2010. Here are more of them:

The Simpsons Movie

2007. 87 minutes. USA. Directed by David Silverman. Watchdate: 11/25/2010.

Given the legacy that this movie had to live up to, I was quite pleased with what was accomplished. There were actually many inspired moments, outnumbering my minor quibbles here and there by quite a few. A lot of the jokes were not only funny in that they elicited genuine laughter, but when you think back they were quite impressive in their craft. I was really happy with the story, which manages to incorporate all of Springfield as I would've hoped, while still keeping the focus squarely on the Simpson family. And it had the really top notch incisive/subversive satire one hopes to get from the show, but on a larger canvass allowing them to go after government, religion, big business, both sides of the environment issue, and movies themselves. I'd call it a really pleasant and occasionally rapturous viewing experience. I think it would've been a smart move to call it quits with the show (which has lagged in quality for years) back in 2006 right before the movie and then switched to doing a carefully constructed movie every few years with the all-star writing team that you can't hope to keep on the show indefinitely. But there would probably be less money in such an endeavor, so no dice.

Criminal

2004. 87 minutes. USA. Directed by Gregory Jacobs. Watchdate: 11/25/2011.

This was a really bad remake of Nine Queens (2000, dir. Bielinksy), which I remember being a pretty decent movie when I saw it about six years ago. The main problem with this movie was the script, which was really one of the worst. I could fairly call it a trainwreck of a screenplay. The dialogue was especially clumsy and atrocious. John C. Reilly, Diego Luna and Maggie G do their best with what they're given, but it's not enough by any measure. They should have just worked by an outline, I know Reilly in particular can improvise dialogue that's about a million times better than the words he was forced to use here. I can see why Steven Soderbergh's cowriting credit is a pseudonym. I guess he tried to help out but didn't have time to rewrite all the dialogue? The director is Soderbergh's AD, so I'm assuming he got to direct a movie for all his loyal service. But he blew his chance pretty majorly, I think, considering the talented leads he got to work with.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1

2010. Fucking Too Long. USA/UK. Directed by David Yates. Watchdate: 11/24/2010.

For my full review of Harry Potter and the Hundreds of Millions Riding on Continued Bland Professionalism, you can click here. It's currently the most popular article on this betamax by far. Based on my read of the stats, this appears to be the case largely because I had the foresight to include a cool picture of a monster truck in the post. Apparently, there are lots of mouth breathing mongoloids on the Internet googling for pictures of monster trucks.

Fitzcarraldo

1982. 157 minutes. Germany. Directed by Werner Herzog. Watchdate: 11/20/2010.

I had long planned to get going on Herzog as I thought Rescue Dawn was excellent but everyone says his earlier work is where it's at. I can now see why. While there are a handful of dynamite scenes in first 45 minutes or so (I'm thinking about Fitzy breaking down at the swanky party, or his interactions with the kids, or even the opening sequence), the movie doesn't really shift into high gear until they leave on the riverboat. And then once the natives team up with the remainders of Fitzy's crew to drag the boat over the mountain, the movie is nearly as good as any movie I've ever seen. The agony/ecstasy moment where Fitz starts jumping and dancing right before the bloody reveal is really quite powerful. And then how he shoots the steam power section is amazing. It makes sense that Herzog also makes documentaries since many parts of this movie are shot with the look and feel of a documentary. I also enjoyed when Fitz almost loses his mind trying to stop the boat from falling into the rapids, and the ending is really superb. It's like pure joy committed to celluloid.

PS - I'm thinking I should just make this betamax about monster trucks because that's what the people really want.

341 Days, 219 Movies

2011-02-03T16:16:00.000-08:00

I watched 232 movies in the 365 Days of 2010. Here are movies 219-215 that I watched:

The Party

1968. 99 minutes. USA. Directed by Blake Edwards. Watchdate: 12/7/2010.

Aside from a few opening scenes setting up the fairly simple fish-out-of-water premise, I am convinced that the movie was mostly unscripted and Blake Edwards just had a camera crew follow Peter Sellers around the titular party, throwing comic set pieces in Sellers' way as he thought of them. At least that's how I like to think of it. It's a simple but effective technique. My personal favorite sequence starts with Sellers finally finding a toilet after a long search and then proceeding to break, clog and flood the entire bathroom to such an extent that he is forced to escape through a window. What follows is the best fall in the history of slapstick comedy. The movie eventually devolves into pure nonsense, with a vandalized elephant and mysteriously metastasizing foam.

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

1974. 93 minutes. Germany. Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Watchdate: 12/1/2010.

I wanted to watch a Fassbinder movie but other than that I went into this without any advance knowledge and was pleasantly surprised to see a nuanced, realistic story of forbidden love for lack of a better term. Fassbinder carefully dissects the bizarre ritual of shunning in scenes like when the tearful Emmi and sullen Ali eat a restaurant while the entire wait staff stares at them menacingly. Ali is a great character to watch because he seems so simple yet becomes so complex as the movie unfolds, all without too many words (except of course the titular line). There's a great scene where a grocer welcomes Emmi back into his good graces that basically explains all you need to know about the economics of bigotry while also signifying how Emmi's friends and family will eventually accept her choice. I think my favorite bit was the brilliant juxtaposition of the warmth of acceptance with the chill of social exclusion in a scene where Emmi is finally allowed to eat lunch and gossip with her maid coworkers as she used to before she remarried. They accept Emmi as they exclude the new maid who happens to be a foreign immigrant. The scene reflects an earlier one when Emmi is cut out in the very same way for her unconventional relationship with Ali. Emmi seems painfully aware of the similarity, and yet does nothing about it.

Hidden Agenda

1990. 108 minutes. UK. Directed by Ken Loach. Watchdate: 11/29/2010.

If Ken Loach was attempting to remake Illustrious Corpses without all of the subtlety, the beauty, the tension, the artfulness, the ambiguity and the sense of real danger that the earlier movie contained, he succeeded unconditionally. Brian Cox and Frances McDormand are both great in this, and I love withering attacks on the Thatcherite political establishment of post-70s Britain as much as the next guy. But even for a fairly unapologetic leftist like me, this was a little too on the nose. I don't know, maybe Loach was trying to make something commercial by being obvious? There is one great scene in the movie, a shouting match featuring Brian Cox slowly beginning to lose confidence in his own sense of right and wrong. Cox is a marvelous shouter, he can shout with so different many emotional notes behind the blare of his voice. It must be because he's Scottish.

Aguirre, the Wrath of God

1972. 94 minutes. Germany. Directed by Werner Herzog. Watchdate: 11/28/2010.

My friend who works at the beautiful old movie palace where I saw Vertigo, Mildred Pierce and Angel Face had been imploring me to see Fitzcarraldo, his favorite movie. Within a week of me finally watching Fitzcarraldo (and loving it), he called me up to tell me the Red Vic (different theater that another friend of ours works at) was playing Aguirre, the Wrath of God. So of course we had to go. What can I say about this movie that whirls without moving, that castigates without judging, that keeps the women looking beautiful while the men seem to decay into the mud? While there were many good scenes, the one scene that seemed to tower above the rest was when Aguirre's crew finally decides to toss the horse overboard. That scene is so dynamic while much of the rest of the movie is so still. So many people are trying to do so many different things at the same time in such a small space. It's the kind of scene that reminds you of why you go to the movies. Truly wonderful and terrifying. The movie seems to have influenced a good number of the epics that have been released since, everything from Apocalypse Now to There Will Be Blood. And I use the word epic deliberately. Because it seemed to have a running time approaching Fitzcarraldo until I realized afterward that I had only been in the theater a little over 90 minutes. The ending in particular has a perpetual, never ending feeling. It's like watching paint dry, if watching paint dry was like watching men rot alive and then see their corpses swallowed up by the Gaian impulses of the Amazon jungle. One of the best movies I've seen about dangerously insane ambitions that have little to distinguish them from asylum derangements.

Ordet

1955. Denmark. Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer. Watchdate: 11/28/2010.

Unfortunately, I only caught one movie at the recent Dreyer retrospective at PFA. Fortunately it was a pretty damn good one. While it started slow, the middle section was brilliantly executed. I particularly enjoyed the petty, vague and yet intense conflict over who has chosen the right sect of Christianity. This was played out by Morten Borgen and the father of the daughter that Borgen's son Mikkel wants to marry. Having known an individual in my own life who went mad thinking he was Jesus, I found Johannes to be a fascinating character to watch. It was almost like getting to see an earlier, dramatic take on Peter O'Toole's role in The Ruling Class. Of course, that's from deep in my own cinematic biases as I absolutely love that performance. The final act left me questioning in the best way possible. After spending much of the story seeming to goof on, satirize or at the very least kid-on-the-square about Christianity and religious fanaticism, why did Munk and Dreyer end the narrative in the way that they did? Why make God seem to punish Anders' agnostic lack of piety by killing his pregnant wife but then at the point of total despair bring her back as if by a genuine miracle? Such unsubtle ambiguity will keep me thinking for a long time.

PS - If anyone has been consistently reading this, I missed several days of posting because I got my wisdom teeth taken out. More on that later.

Birthday Viewings

2011-02-03T03:46:00.000-08:00

I watched these movies on my 21st birthday.

Marwencol

2010. 83 minutes. USA. Directed by Jeff Malmberg. Watchdate: 12/9/2010

Happily, this was a exceedingly superb movie. I anticipate it will easily make my best of movies released in 2010 list, probably in the top 3. I suppose that it helps that I saw it at a matinee on my birthday, and drank bottles of my first legal beers as I watched. But anyway, obsessive world builders like the man in this movie always entrance me probably because I am something of one myself. But as compelling as the subject is, the Malmberg tells the story more cleverly than I would have imagined. He builds tension and unveils revelations in the same way that many great narrative directors do. A story about a man with brain damage from a bar fight learning how to live in the world by building his own world, the titular war torn Belgian town crafted out of wood and GI Joe and Barbie dolls world could make a great movie. That would have been enough. The man gaining recognition for the excellent photographs he takes of that world with complex consequences similar to the artist-catadores of Waste Land would have been more than enough. But this movie has even more beautiful facets than all of that - kicking addictions, transvestism, alter egos, the tricks that the mind play - what's the use just see it already. By the end it echoes Synecdoche, NY in a completely original and unique way. Truly excellent.

Birdman of Alcatraz

1962. 147 min. USA. Directed by John Frankenheimer. Watchdate: 12/9/2011.

I also saw this on my birthday, but it suffers rather than benefits because I watched it after happy hour but before I went out for proper drinks meaning I was already quite drunk but anticipating more fun after I got out of the movie. If you stagger into the theater late with the movie already in progress, barely perceive what's going on other than a series of giant faces on the screen, and then leave early because you're confused about where exactly you are and what exactly you are supposed to be doing...does it count as having seen the movie? I think not, but I did get some mangled thoughts about the totalizing effects of watching movies on the big screen out of it which were later augmented by watching Godard's "Meetin' WA" on Youtube. I'm quite distressed that this was my only exposure to PFA's Grin, Smile Smirk: The Films of Burt Lancaster. I'll have to watch it again, along with The Killers and Trapeze among many others some other time. Hopefully when I'm less drunk.

PS - Waste Land is another 2010 documentary that everyone should see. It will come up on this betamax very soon.

222 Movies, 346 Days

2011-01-25T16:51:00.000-08:00

I watched 232 movies in the 365 Days of 2010. Here is the 222nd movie I watched:

Black Swan

2010. USA. Directed by Darren Aronofsky. Watchdate: 12/14/2010

It's as least as good as everyone says. It gripped my attention completely for its entire running time, and didn't let go for quite awhile after the credits had rolled. Aronofsky's direction is way over the top, to the point where even his subtleties are over the top. But that's okay because it's about ballet. With a subject matter as dramatic and theatrical as that, it's almost an obligation to go over the top as the Archers might tell you (if you haven't seen The Red Shoes, that shit's on Netflix Instant so hop to it). Between this and Requiem for a Dream, Aronofsky could fairly be called an expert at visualizing how compulsions torment and distort the mind. Describing any of the scenes I liked would do them a disservice because out of context they would sound fairly idiotic. But I will single out Natalie Portman's tearing and scratching as particularly primal, disturbing and somehow eerily accurate. Portman in general did a crazy good job. Her voice sounded exactly like so many shy girls I have known and yet was absolutely native and specific to her character. Vincent Cassel gave the ambiguity of his role the depth it needed. I was also delighted at the unexpected appearance of Winona Ryder and Barbara Hershey, both hit it out of the park with suitably frightening ease. Unfortunately (but fortunately for the movie) Natalie Portman was so skinny that she wasn't very attractive in a number of scenes. Fortunately, Mila Kunis more than made up for any of the hotness lost.

223 Movies, 349 Days

2011-01-24T13:39:00.000-08:00

I watched 232 movies in the 365 Days of 2010. Here are the 223rd and 222nd movies I watched:

Waiting for Armageddon

2009. 74 min. USA. Directed by Kate Davis, David Heilbroner and Franco Sacchi. Watchdate: 12/15/2010.

My roommate put this on because he puts on random videos and movies off of Youtube and my Netflix account, and at first I thought he had put on some random proselytizing evangelist nonsense. So I started demanding he switch it off. To his credit, he didn't and as it proceeded I realized it was actually a very interesting documentary about Evangelical Christians and their belief in the rapture. And so then I demanded he plug his computer into the TV so we could watch it on the proper screen for movies and things. The movie's thesis is fairly simple. Essentially, Evangelical Christians believe that the rapture is coming due to their very literal interpretation of the Bible. They read it as prophecy, and so they see conflict and disaster as harbingers of end times. In particular, they see wars and battles in the Middle East in this light. They also see any attempt at making peace in the Middle East as the work of Antichrist. Because of their significant influence on the U.S. political establishment and their strong friendship with the state of Israel, this is somewhat creepy. As a non-evangelical minister and theological scholar says in the movie, if a military superpower envisions itself at the center of the Book of Revelations or Book of Daniel, these religious stories can quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy. There's also the issue of the Evangelicals' special love of the Jews. This love is special, Gershom Goremberg explains, because it involves loving a people with the caveat of hoping they will renounce the very core of their identity (their faith) or else burn in hell for all eternity. As interesting as the subject matter was, I was even more impressed by the sensitivity of the filmmakers. Despite how I have described it, they did not demonize any of the Evangelical Christians that they followed around and interviewed throughout the movie. In fact, they did very well in humanizing them. These are people who are willing to be honest and open about their deepest beliefs which is not an easy thing to do (although obviously easier for them in a predominantly white Christian country with constitutional protection of religious conscience like America). They deserve a measure of respect, however much one might disagree with them. I would highlight some of these very human moments if I hadn't already gone on way too long, but in short it's a documentary well worth seeing.

Kids

1995. 91 min. USA. Directed by Larry Clark. Watchdate: 12/14/2010.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that this turned out to be an X-rated after school special with fetishistic tendencies. But I was. It was uninhibited in ways I didn't expect, and conventional in ways I didn't anticipate. Casper was the most interesting character to watch, even though he was somewhat tangential to the main plot. I thought Telly was basically the tragic version of McLovin, but maybe it was just Leo Fitzpatrick's face and voice. I also noticed there was also a very bothersome ratio embedded in the movie. The amount that any particular scene or sequence was fucked up, disgusting, horrible and difficult to watch was proportional to how good and important that particular scene or sequence was. Thus, the beating scene and the various HIV-spreading sex scenes were the most powerful parts of the movie despite being truly awful to behold. Particularly the very last sex (rape) scene, which gives a whole new meaning to the word "unknowing." Sometimes looking at the movie felt like watching so many car crashes.

226 Movies, 351 Days

2011-01-23T12:05:00.000-08:00

I watched 232 movies in the 365 Days of 2010. Here are the 226th, 225th, and 224th movies I watched:

I Love You Phillip Morris

2010. 102 min. USA. Directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa. Watchdate: 12/17/2010.

Glenn Ficarra and John Requa seem to specialize in fucked up criminal fairy tales like Bad Santa and this movie, which was really a whole lot of fun. Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor are both at the top of their game, and the movie plays like a dark comedy version of Catch Me If You Can with more complex political and psychosexual undertones. I'm a big fan of the con artist subgenre perhaps best defined by classic 70s movies like The Sting and Paper Moon, and this is really quite an inventive entry into that tradition because it subverts the form nearly as much as it follows its well worn patterns. It's treatment of AIDS in particular really has to be seen to believed. But I think my favorite bit involves a scene in prison where McGregor pays off a large black inmate, Cleavon, to play a romantic song so that McGregor and Carrey can dance together. After Cleavon is insulted when McGregor tries to make him promise to actually play the song all the way through, as Cleavon's "word is [his] muhfuckin' bond," Carrey and McGregor dance sweetly to the song. While the camera continues to linger on Carrey and McGregor's romance, the prison guards call lights out and ask Cleavon to turn off the music. Because Cleavon's "word is [his] muhfuckin' bond," he refuses and as Carrey and McGregor continue to dance and gaze into one another's eyes, the background sound becomes a cacophony of Cleavon shouting and battling the guards with hilarious gusto. The scene is pitch perfect, as is much of the movie.

White Material

2009. 109 min. France. Directed by Claire Denis. Watchdate: 12/16/2010.

I had heard a fair number of superlative things about White Material, and so I felt it was my duty to go and see it when it came to my local cinema. I caught it on the very last day it played, and I'm glad I did. First, I need to say that I'm not sure that I'm mature enough to fully appreciate what the movie had to offer. I got a similar feeling after watching my first Tarkovsky, although since then on reflection Stalker has already lodged itself pretty firmly on my favorites list. ANYWAY, I was compelled by Isabelle Huppert's fanatical dedication to conserving her home and traditional life. This goes beyond the normal if slightly irrational human tendency towards loss aversion. It was more like loss perversion. It was riveting to see her son reciprocate this aberrance even more rawly, and then her ricochet his madness back onto her own father-in-law. Did she do it out of derangement, vengeance, pity? This is the question that echoed in my mind as I left the theater. To have this rich domestic drama play out against the backdrop of post-colonialist strife was almost too much to take in at times, especially at the subtly discordant rhythms that Denis used in pacing the story. It was horrifying, yet almost beside the point, to see the quiet slitting of the throats of the child soldiers while they slept off their drug and snack food induced stupor in what was for me the most memorable sequence of the movie. I don't know, I'll have to see it again to know at all.

Bye Bye Brazil

1979. 100 min. Brazil. Directed by Carlos Diegues. Watchdate: 12/16/2010.

"One more thing: I give the orders. In love we can improvise, but not in the whore business. The whore business must be very well administrated." - Jose Wilker as Lorde Cigano in Bye Bye Brazil

I had a few problems with Quilombo, the previous Diegues picture I saw. After seeing this movie, I have realized that he simply did not quite pull off the hugely ambitious project he undertook in Quilombo. A historical epic with that kind of scope, one that includes centuries of ethnic and political conflict, has rarely if ever been achieved. In Bye Bye Brazil, Diegues attempts something less ambitious but pulls it off beautifully. The story isn't as huge, but the execution is nearly perfect. The movie is about a ragtag carnival troop that travels around Brazil in an open air caravan. But the travels are an artful metaphor for the profound changes that swept the world in the 20th century. Jose Wilker was absolutely hilarious and brilliant and movie features a multitude of wondrous moments. In these sorts of ways it reminded me of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. But the movie really gets good when it begins to portray the tragic farce of the age old institution of whoring. I'm feeling somewhat inarticulate about it at the moment so I might have more to say once I watch it again, but I really can't recommend it highly enough. It's a real gem.

PS - If you have Netflix, Bye Bye Brazil is on Instant Watch. I'm just sayin'

Tom Cruise, Before All the Crazy

2011-01-22T17:23:00.000-08:00

I watched 232 movies in the 365 Days of 2010. Here is the 227th movie I watched. It was a doozy:

The Firm

1993. 154 min. USA. Directed by Sydney Pollack. Watchdate: 12/19/2010

Being home over the Holidays meant watching a lot of TV because TV still exists there unlike in Berkeley where it has been subsumed into the cauldron of the Internet. The Firm was on HBO or somesuch channel, and I decided not to turn it off. I'm happy I didn't because boy, it is something else, I'll tell you. It's the sort of rumbling potboiler that almost seems like a parody of itself because it relies so much on convention while at the same time establishing conventions that have since been endlessly copied. It's also the quintessential Tom Cruise vehicle because it's a thriller where Cruise gets to swing between being the good guy and the bad boy as a function of the plot as well as of his own persona. And it's based on a book John Grisham so it has his fingerprints on it as well, particularly his interest in the American South as a setting. Apparently the South is an absolutely ridiculous land peopled by catfish farmers, Elvis impersonators, and half-crazed private investigators. The wild eyed Gary Busey portrays the latter role to great effect:

Aside from Busey, Cruise, Jeanne Tripplehorn as Cruise's wife and the always excellent Holly Hunter as Busey's bereaved squeeze, the entire movie plays like some sort of bizarrely dreamed conspiracy of the gray eminences of Hollywood: Gene Hackman, Hal Holbrook, Steven Hill, and Paul Sorvino. Most frighteningly, the bewhiskered visage of Wilford Brimley emerges to menace our hero in a fashion as flamboyant as can be imagined:

There are also several early versions of roles we all eventually come to know and love. Joe Viterelli shows up as his trademark smirking mafioso:

Likewise, Ed Harris appears for the first time as the paranoid hallucinogenic apparition that he would later reprise in A Beautiful Mind:

Of course in spite of all the danger, Sydney Pollack and Robert Towne have it all figured out for Tom Cruise with a clockwork plot as good as Chinatown's except without all the pathos and psychological complexity. Still, Cruise has ample opportunity to run like a maniac, sweat like a teenager and generally bound around with ingenious precision like a good action star should.

The movie is in many ways a very colorful dress rehearsal for Mission: Impossible which also utilized Robert Towne's writing and a classic 70s director to create a ludicrous exercise in top class Hollywood adventure entertainment. Not only that, but The Firm features a soundtrack that oscillates between bad early 90s pop rock and white bread invocations of Bayou piano jazz (Jelly Roll Morton eat your heart out). Yet although I will jape endlessly about the movie's eccentricities and yes, flaws, like its tendency to sometimes feel like an after school special about "the law" - I still have to admit that I admire it in some way. After all it truly succeeds in being a breathless, diverting meditation on how an individual finds some measure of freedom in a world dominated by the public coercion of a bumbling, overreaching government and the private coercion of corrupt, ruthless business interests. That has to count for something, right? So do yourself a friggin' service and Netflix this shit like now! You shant be disappointed.

PS - They went to great lengths to make David Strathairn look like Tom Cruise's older brother at the end of the movie. This also amused me.

229 Movies, 355 Days

2011-01-20T17:36:00.000-08:00

I watched 232 movies in the 365 Days of 2010. Here are the 228th and 229th movies that I watched.

127 Hours

2010. 94 min. USA/UK. Directed by Danny Boyle. Watchdate: 12/21/2010

So first, a realization. James Franco is almost always as good or better than the movies he appears in. This holds true both in good movies (he's pretty much the best thing in Pineapple Express) and in terrible ones (he's practically the only good thing in Howl). This is definitely true here too, as he is terrific while the movie itself has problems. It's not bad by any means, but it does begin like a television commercial and too often has the feeling of being that sort of slick contraption. There's also one moment near the end that smacked of sentimentalism partly because of the brief and thankfully abortive deployment of one of those Feist/Spektor/Enya type sirens in the musical score. Other than the those two noisome flaws, the movie works fairly well. It does not rely too much at all on flashbacks and hallucinations which must have been awfully tempting given the kind of story that it is. And it's actually very effective and even somewhat brilliant when it focuses on its harrowing central premise. It's a really great story that must have been stratospherically difficult to approach as a cinematic subject and yet one still would have hoped it could have been made into a much better movie than what we actually got. Lastly, I think a better title for the movie would have been James Franco Drinks His Own Piss, Saws Off His Own Arm.

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

1975. 109 min. Germany. Directed by Werner Herzog. Watchdate: 12/19/2010

The non sequitur beginning and unbelievably sequitur ending of this movie stand out to me most especially. I don't even know what to say about the beginning except that I almost forgot it happened and it reminded me of Andrei Tarkovsky. The Mirror starts in a somewhat similar, if more coherent way. The ending is really amazing in a completely quiet, understated way. The procession of death on the mountain, which was visually reminiscent of both Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Kurosawa's Dreams, appears so suddenly and briefly that it works exactly as it should. But after that it gets even better when the scientific aristocrats do the autopsy and see that Kaspar Hauser's brain and liver have an abnormal shape. Then the stenographer walks out onto the street, calls the stagecoach over to him, hands the coachman his hat and then tells him to leave because he's going to walk home. And then he starts walking home and he says to himself as he starts walking home "What a wonderful, what a precise report this will make! Deformities discovered in Kaspar Hauser's brain and liver! Finally we have got an explanation for this strange man..." At that point, I laughed really hard. And then the movie ends as the stenographer walks off into the distance. And then I was sad and I wasn't sure why. But I think it's because Herzog made one of those movies, as he tends to do, that starkly reveals humanity's blind spots. It's very funny when you actually see one of those blind spots. However, it also can be quite depressing, or even terrifying. I was pleasantly surprised to see Brigitte Mira, so excellent as the lead in Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, pop up here as the maid. Kaspar asks her why women aren't allowed to do anything important. It's a scene that wouldn't have been out of place in either movie.

PS - Hey, I'm actually following up on this project I started! I am highly impressed with myself.

232 Movies in 365 Days

2011-01-19T23:25:00.000-08:00

In 2010, I watched roughly 232 movies. I did this for various reasons, of which I will list a few of the most sensible ones below:

There were a ton of movies I had always meant to watch but never got around to and I decided to just make time to actually watch them.
It seemed to be a more stimulating way to procrastinate and waste time than farting around on the Internet or watching television. (If you don't see much of a difference between movies and television, you're either much less of an intellectual than I am or much more of an intellectual than I am. Don't worry though, the difference is probably at my expense either way.)
I got Netflix towards the end of 2009. It has a massive back catalogue of movies from nearly every decade and country that has produced movies. As you might imagine, once you fall down such a rabbit hole, it can be very difficult to return to your waking life.

Perhaps someday I will reflect seriously on the nature of what might be a metastasizing addiction of a sort, but for now I'm just going to post brief reactions to each movie I watched last year in reverse chronological order. That is, I will begin with the movies I watched at the end of 2010 and end with the movies I watched at the beginning of 2010. To make things more complicated I will spread out the posting of these reactions over the next 101 days or so. My plan is to post 2-3 each day. We'll see how that pans out. But without further adieu, the last movies I watched in 2010:

The Nines

2007. 100 min. USA. Directed by John August. Watchdate: 12/31/2010

There are a few very compelling ideas and themes contained in The Nines. There are even several indications that John August knew how to execute some of these ideas. And while the movie was interesting enough to watch, it ultimately just felt like an overlong television episode, albeit one that deftly switched between imitating the tones of shows as disparate as The Office and The X-Files. August is an accomplished screenwriter, and had he worked with a director like Spike Jonze or Michel Gondry or Rian Johnson, I think this may have had a chance to become a great movie. As I said, he's got some really unique ideas that are heady in that sort of Charlie Kaufman way but without actually being at all derivative of Kaufman. But as it is, it's a lot of promise without much of anything especially worthwhile to show for it.

Mo' Better Blues

1990. 130 min. USA. Directed by Spike Lee. Watchdate: 12/30/2010

Spike Lee utilizes a ravishing color palette (lots of red) for his love/hate letter to jazz music and musicians. Beautiful photography and Denzel Washington near the top of his game are reasons enough on their own to watch this, but there are also a handful of truly brilliant scenes. I especially loved the one where Washington and Wesley Snipes have an argument that reflects various views of art vs. entertainment and what role the audience plays (does the audience follow the creator or the other way round?).

The Fallen Idol
1948. 95 min. UK. Directed by Carol Reed. Watchdate: 12/26/10

This is the kind of movie that sneaks up on you about halfway in. I had been enjoying it enough for what it seemed to be, particularly the performance of the lead child actor. Bobby Henrey played the child, Phillipe, and gives an absolutely superb performance. But then suddenly I found myself totally and completely engaged because Carol Reed (and his collaborator, Graham Greene) put all the pieces in place so carefully without me even noticing to set up a hugely suspenseful drama. The hide and seek scenes were beyond brilliant, as was the sequence in which Phillipe runs off into the streets of London in the middle of the night. They do a really excellent exploration of a side of childhood that isn't often covered, it was sort of reminiscent of J.D. Salinger's writing in that regard. It's a top caliber movie in nearly every way.

PS - Another, less sensible reason I watched 232 movies last year is because I think it would be really cool if I could write movies for a living. Like that would be a pretty kickass job. And I was thinking that if I want to do that job, I will probably need to watch a lot of movies to get a sense of how they work. Also, I will need luck, if there is such a thing.

Top Five Favorite Albums of 2010

2010-12-07T03:29:00.000-08:00

5. Wu Massacre - Raekwon, Ghostface Killah & Method Man

This cracks my top five for the album artwork alone. I got to see the Wu Tang Clan live this year, and they were actually fairly underwhelming - all shouting over each other and sich. But Method Man is a beast and Ghostface Killah has an inimitable style, both of which made this album quite enjoyable. The three standout tracks are "It's That Wu Shit" along with "Our Dreams" and "Gunshowers" but the whole album has a brisk energetic tone to it which I dig. There's a big gap between this and the rest on my list, except for the album art where it matches or exceeds some of the other awesome album covers of this year.

4. Down There - Avey Tare

Avey Tare of Animal Collective deploys some pretty groovyspooky beats and bleats on this record. I especially like "Ghost of Books" which has a fairly mesmerizing end refrain that I was repeating a lot with variations on a recent mountainside trip. As with some of my favorite Animal Collective and related solo act materials, I love the feeling he establishes of being up in outer space and also right beside a homey campfire simultaneously. I love the madhouse avant gardeish take on 1966/67 Beach Boys and Beatles harmonies and song textures. I love the seductive dream of musical entheogenic insanity which combines a sense of isolation with a staunch belief in total collectivity. The album also features some amusing interstitial snatches of dialogue. These bits are both funnier and less forced than the comedy sketches that pop up on albums like the aforementioned Wu Massacre (though Tracy Morgan is pretty amusing on "How to Pay Rent Skit" come to think of it). Purely for the goofy mantras it has planted in my head, this album makes my top five.

3. New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh - Erykah Badu

There's also a big gap between Down There and this record, which might have a fair claim of tying with number one and two on this list. Erykah Badu takes neosoul into new dimensions with this album, particularly with the first and final tracks. The opener, "20 Feet Tall," is an ethereal declaration of unsettled confidence while the closer "Out of My Mind, Just in Time" is a chameonlike opus dedicated to exploring the psychology of longing and coping. In between, one can get lost in the smooth and sensual diversity but "Can't Turn Me Away (Get Munny)" is undoubtedly the most fun song on offer. It combines two other versions of the same song into one feisty, lusty cover. It's too soon for me to say whether it matches the masterful New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) but it most definitely comes close which is quite a feat for any self-conscious follow up. Erykah Badu is a musical visionary with majestic horizons on the brain and I really can't get enough of her.

2. Highway Rider - Brad Mehldau

Speaking of visionaries, Brad Mehldau is this generation's Bill Evans. Like jazz innovators of the past, he is not content with following the old formulas and conventions of his (hopefully) ever evolving genre. The previous record he made with producer Jon Brion (who movie fans will note has scored Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Synecdoche NY, and I Heart Huckabee's among others) was the sonically ambitious Largo which was also easily one of the coolest achievements of contemporary jazz. Highway Rider takes the next logical step and brings in a full orchestra to go all out for the gold and the grandeur. It works out superbly, with Mehldau's compositions working beautifully not just with his fabulous trio but also with guest saxophonist Joshua Redman and the rest of the orchestra. This a double album that actually has very good reason to be a double album, as it is filled with a diverse array of fascinating musical ideas. "John Boy," "Don't Be Sad," "The Falcon Will Fly Again," "We'll Cross The River Together," and "Capriccio," are all worth mentioning as standouts which gives an idea of how well this album soars and sparks throughout its considerable runtime. Of course, it would be irresponsible to omit the epic double song endings to each disc -- "Now You Must Climb Alone" flows gorgeously into "Walking the Peak" while "Always Departing" / "Always Returning" provides a suitably splendorous close to one of the most transcendent fusions of jazz and classical music since George Gershwin. I was lucky enough to catch the Brad Mehldau Trio playing a live show around when this album came out in the spring of this year (and I got a pretty good recording of it with my cheap digital tape recorder). Mehldau only played a frenetic, rollicking version of "Into the City" from among all the tracks on Rider during both concerts I saw that night (early and late show) but this is understandable since most of the album requires the presence of a saxophonist or an orchestra or both.

1. Cosmogramma - Flying Lotus

The easiest way to explain why this is my favorite album of 2010 is to say that I listened to it a good 20-25 times all the way through without stopping before I felt comfortable listening to any of the tracks individually. Cosmogramma is really an album, that is a set of songs that is meant to be listened to together as one full work just like a movie is a set of scenes meant to be watched together as one whole. It is an electronica album that glories in the magic of computers while bursting from their considerable constraints with lots of live instrumentation. It is a hip hop album but not a rap album, unless you count goofily sexed riffs on the word 'satellite' as rap. It is a jazz album in that it explores rhythm and melody without a sense of arbitrary boundaries. It is a pop album that eschews vocals as anything other than another set of sounds to dance with - well, it's not really a pop album but I think it's fun in the same way that great pop music is. The songs echo and quote each other, and often songs transform without much warning which is one my favorite musical tricks. Flying Lotus might be the most promising young musical artist working today. I also got to see him work his unique voodoo live earlier this year, opening for Atoms for Peace no less. It might be the best show I've ever heard. I will not single out any particular tracks in keeping with my belief that the album should be subdivided as little as possible but as you might be able to tell, I highly recommend obtaining a copy so that you may have your mind blown all over yo ass. It's truly a resonant revelation.

PS - Albums not on this list because I have not fully explored them, but are likely to bump off Wu Massacre at least when all is said and done: Carry Me To Home - The Deadly Gentleman ; Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty - Big Boi; Antifogmatic - Punch Brothers ; Shame, Shame - Dr. Dog

What?

2010-11-30T23:51:00.000-08:00

Google TV? Where have I been? What episodes do they play? Where have I been? I need to make my billions so I don't miss out on these things.

PS - With apologies to Miss Maya Songbird

Harry Potter and the Deathly Disappointment at the Drastic Decline in Quality of This Once Promising Movie Series, Part I

2010-11-20T12:04:00.000-08:00

So I saw the new Harry Potter movie and I have to tell you, it was a major let down. After the hours of entertainment and consistent excellence of the previous six movies, I was shocked that the producers allowed such a collapse in standards for the penultimate episode of this multibillion dollar worldwide franchise.

First of all, the special effects were a mess. I mean, animatronic owls? Really, guys? I remember the previous movies had state of the art computer generated graphics, and there was some of that in this one but other parts just looked cartoony. Some of it actually looked to me like hand drawn animation, which I thought did not mesh well with the rest of the movie.

A lot of the actors' English accents did not sound authentic. Some would drop in and out of different accents, others just spoke in a way that was nearly impossible to understand. The wands they used looked cheap, as if they were made out of plastic. They looked like toys you could buy at the store.

Many of the sets were very poor. The paint was cracked and honestly some of it looked like the kind of backdrops you would expect in a high school stage production, not a $200 million blockbuster. There were also a lot more house plants lying around than I think would be in a place like Hogwarts.

I was also thrown off by the giant monster truck rally that occurs in the middle of the movie. It completely derailed the story and felt very forced. The long shots of monster trucks loudly revving their engines really took me out of the world of magic and wonder that the filmmakers tried to create.

The product placement was crass and unsubtle. Ron Weasley never mentioned that he liked Mentos in any of the other movies, but in this one he seemed to take out mints every time he was on screen. He held the Mentos packaging in a way that was really unnatural and seemed to designed to get Mentos as close to the screen as possible.

Sometimes, in the middle of a scene, I got extremely frustrated because the camera would drift off away from the main action and just linger for a long time on staircases and other parts of the set. You could still hear the dialogue, but it was really difficult to follow what was going when you couldn't actually watch the actors perform their parts. Come on, that's like moviemaking 101 guys.

I thought it was very unnecessary to bring back Dumbledore after he died in the last movie (spoiler alert). But the way they decided to do it made it even worse. Portraying the deceased wizard as a brain in a vat was tasteless to say the least. Especially because the "brain in the vat" actually just looked like a lump of clay in a murky fish tank. The scenes where the characters just sat with Dumbledore's brain looking uncomfortable were not very dramatic. There was no dialogue, and the actors would enter and exit for seemingly no reason.

Denzel Washington seemed like an odd addition to the cast. I know he's a great actor, but his intensity seemed to frighten the children in the audience as well as many of the other actors in the many scenes he was in. I don't want to say affirmative action played a role in his unusual appearance in a movie of this kind, but I'm pretty sure affirmative action played a role in his unusual appearance in a movie of this kind.

All in all, it was a very poor experience from start to finish. Which reminds me, the movie was way too long. I remember the other movies were all well over two hours and I had no problem because they were adapted from very dense books that I have no intention of ever reading. But this one clocked in at nearly four hours, which I think is testing the limits of what's an acceptable running time for a children's movie. I actually left halfway through because I was bored and hungry. I made myself a ham sandwich and took a nap but when I woke up I remembered that I wanted to see the ending. So I went back to the theater to catch the last couple of scenes. When the credits rolled I realized why the movie was such a disaster. They had like twelve directors on this thing! Talk about too many cooks in the kitchen. Knowing that, the bizarre tonal shifts - like when a dramatic scene would suddenly turn comedic without warning - made a lot more sense. It's the worst movie I've seen since The Last Airbender (I know, I shouldn't say things I can't take back, but I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that it really came close to matching how bad The Last Airbender was).

Here's hoping Part II is better.

PS - Hermione was not naked in a single frame of this movie as far as I can tell. This was very annoying because I think that actress would look good naked and also I'm pretty sure there's only one movie left so they are running out of opportunities to have Hermione be naked for a few scenes. I know it's sort of a minor quibble considering the monumental raft of problems with the rest of the movie, but it's important to point out some of the obvious ways they could have redeemed the really shoddy work they did.

Am I Allowed to Listen to Hip Hop?

2010-11-18T17:38:00.000-08:00

It occurs to me that in my last two betamax posts, I have made fairly showy references to two major rappers in a way that makes my love of hip hop rather conspicuous. It's true that I had a rather torrid affair with hip hop this summer. I discovered that Jay-Z is all of the following (using his words not mine): the "ruler," the "best-rapper-alive," an "American Gangster," a "black superhero," a "muhfuckin' renegade," as "real as it gets" (which is why they "feel him in the favelas in Brazil" since as you know "real recognize real"), made "from the cloth of the Kennedys" etcetera, etcetera. Here's a guy who apparently has the President of the United States "on the text" and is not afraid to tell the whole world about it. I have absolutely nothing in common with this giant who is from "the murder capital where [he] murders for capital" and yet I listen to his rhymes nonstop.

Look at that punnum! Best rapper alive, yo! Best rapper alive!

Ahem. Anyway, at the end of the summer I had the privilege of seeing the singular Snoop Dogg close the Rock the Bells festival at the Shoreline Ampitheatre. Snoop played his classic album Doggystyles in its entirety along with several songs from Dr. Dre's 1992 masterpiece, The Chronic. Needless to say, he was easily the best of a lineup that included such luminaries as the Wu Tang Clan, Lauryn Hill, A Tribe Called Quest, KRS-One and Rakim among many others. His bass lines were sweeter than candied yams on a warm, moonless night.

If Jay-Z is the best rapper alive, Snoop Dogg is the smoothest. Which brings me to whether I am allowed to listen to hip hop. If I have absolutely nothing in common with Jay-Z, I may share even less with Mr. Snoop Eastwood (yes, he actually calls himself that). As a white kid from the suburbs, I am about as far from Jay-Z as you can get. Still, I am fascinated by how Jay-Z has "too much ambition" and "gotta be the best" maybe because I detect a tiny sliver of insecurity behind seemingly endless layers of arrogance. With Snoop, what's crazy is how insecurity doesn't even seem to cross his mind. He just doesn't give a fuck. He is America's stoner par excellence. He can convince you of anything with a playful whisper. He was once a member of the Crips, and he beat back a murder charge. Yet his meditative, laid back coolness would make a zen buddhist monk on the verge of nirvana look like a sweating, drunken Richard Nixon on the eve of resignation. I couldn't be that cool if I was the first man to set foot on Mars while simultaneously making Scarlett Johansson come for a worldwide audience.

Wikipedia sez that gangsta rap has been accused of "promoting violence, profanity, sex, homophobia, racism, promiscuity, misogyny, rape, street gangs, drive-by shootings, vandalism, thievery, drug dealing, alcohol abuse, substance abuse and materialism." Should a nervous paleface such as myself really be allowed to embrace all of this? Maybe not.

But this is America. Who the fuck's stopping me?

PS - I want to highlight one of most philosophically self-reflective moments in all of gangsta rap. Dr. Dre's song "Big Egos," which appears on the album 2001, is a truly trenchant exploration of high self-esteem and narcissism. At one point, after saying he hits switches and makes bitches eat bitches, he adds wistfully "See me grab my dick every time I pose for pictures." One could interpret this as referring to the listener. So is it we who see him grab his dick every time he poses for pictures? I prefer an alternative explanation first proposed by my friend Tommy O'Mahony (who also helped developed the betamax idea that my previous post was based on, credit where it's due). Tommy believes that given the context of the previous line which pointedly uses the pronoun "I," it only makes sense that the next line is also referring to Dre himself. At that moment in the song, Dr. Dre takes pause and notices that in every picture he sees of himself, he is holding his own dick. What epiphanies ran through his mind as he came to this realization? We may never know, but it sure is fun to think about.

This Thing You Are Reading Is Now Called A Betamax

2010-11-15T00:23:00.000-08:00

My friend Ben Stanton has just started something that unfortunately bears a name that makes him want to vomit. It's the b-word. No, not those that Snoop Dogg has in the living room getting it on (and they won't leave 'til six in the moan-nin'). Still can't guess? Fine, I'll ~~say~~ write it. That doesn't mean I have to like it. Blog. The word is blog. Ben is right: it's quite repugnant. It sounds like the kind of thing you should flush down a dark hole or bury in the sand so no one will ever have to see it.

I have always found this particular b-word loathsome, as has Maddox, and he's always right. I'm glad Ben has added his two cents to the matter, since it made realize something. We are not passive spectators in this world of b-words that we call an i-word. There's no good reason that putting words on a screen so that other people with other screens can read those very same words should have to be referred to as the b-word. Or at least not that b-word. We can think of our very own b-word if we want. We have the power! Or at least I think we do. And being an American, I'm just going to assume we do and if not then the U.N. can write a resolution of condemnation that no one will know or care about.

Here's my humble proposal. We pick a new b-word. Something better than bleching. Blogging is worse than bleching, so that's out for starters. Belching might be somewhat accurate, but it's not much of an improvement except in its greater honesty. Bowling is already something else that people do (usually right after saying "Fuck it, man") so that won't work. Beeping is too binary. Booping is just silly.

Wait. I've got it. Let's just repurpose an old school techno word from the 1980s that has since fallen into disuse. It will be recycling neologisms, so it will be good for the linguistic ecosystem on which we all depend for nearly all our precious communication. It will have the ring of instant nostalgia that VH1 has taught us all to love. Most of all, it won't be that gross word "blogging." It will be the perfect b-word.

It will be betamaxing. That's right, betamaxing. You know what I'm doing right now? Betamaxing. What does that make me? A betamaxer. And what are you reading? A betamax.

Unless you can think of something better. In which case, I'm all ~~ears~~ eyes.

P.S. - Seriously though, you have to admit that betamaxing is an elegant replacement. What better way to commemorate a dead technology, one that Sony thought would dominate the marketplace but ended up getting ignored in favor of VHS (which is also a dead technology but somehow couldn't replace the word blog). It has the added advantage of sounding a bit like masturbating, which let's face is what blogging really is.

Don't Worry About the Government

2010-11-11T22:52:00.000-08:00

In the days leading up to November 2nd, I got paid to knock on doors for the reelection campaign of Congressman Jerry McNerney. In the last day or two it's been reported that he will likely win the extremely close race by a margin of 1000 votes or so. I'm glad that I can retire from the soul-crushing game of party politicking with a wry grin. My retirement could very well be Jay Z like in its brevity. Nevertheless, I am excited that it may allow me more time to spend on mirthful pursuits such as drugs, movies, and girls.

Hoo-rah.

Health Care Postscript

2010-03-28T13:27:00.000-07:00

There's been some discussion on liberal blogs lately about the true meaning of the recent health care reform victory that has reflected some of my own thoughts. It is a great progressive acheivement, and yet the legislation itself is pointedly centrist, even Republican. This has struck me as quite a contradiction. But over at Jon Chait's blog, a commenter known as 'Virginia Centrist' has articulated an accurate dissection of this idea:

I think the answer here is that this isn't really an ideal moderate Republican plan. It's a plan that a few moderate Republicans have proposed before...but they only proposed it as an alternative to an incredibly liberal plan. Very few moderate Republicans have fought for a plan like this or even supported one. Their support was nominal.

The exception was Mitt Romney...but even he was working with a huge liberal Democratic majority (8-1 in one legislature).

In a vacuum, would any Republican actually seriously push for this plan or any other healthcare plan? No. They simply don't care about healthcare. It's not on their agenda. So it's hard to really ascribe the plan to any of them and be 100% accurate. It works as a political rhetoric, but it's a stretch in practice.

I think this is a progressive victory. We're providing public insurance (Medicaid) for [~15] millions, spending on public health clinics, giving subsidies to millions, and we're moving towards a system where private insurance companies are more like heavily regulated utilities. That's a system that can work, and has worked in other countries.

There are many ways to skin the healthcare cat. There are many different systems that can work. We're heading towards the heavily regulated private market approach. That's fine.

One note: if progressives continue to enjoy political success for the foreseeable future, it's likely that some kind of Medicare buy-in or public insurance option will be added to the reform structure. If this happens, I would argue that something like French system of insurance may evolve over the coming decades. All else being equal, we're looking at a Dutch or Swiss system as a worst case scenario. Both countries acknowledge health care as a right, legally and culturally. That's why the Affordable Care Act is an historic progressive achievement.

No More Compromises (or How Harry Reid Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Tell Joe Lieberman to Go Fuck Himself)

2009-12-05T22:14:00.001-08:00

The word out of the developed world's most dysfunctional national legislative body is that there is going to be some kind of grand compromise suckdown on the public option of the health care reform bill next week. Here is my message to every Senate Democrat except Bernie Sanders, Sherrod Brown and Roland Burris (!), the only three US Senators who so far are actually standing firm with progressives instead of preparing to fellate Joe Lieberman:

Don't use the existence of the filibuster as an excuse to dodge responsibility for creating subpar legislation. Everyone knows the Democratic caucus has the power to get around the filibuster or end it, so don't expect progressives to cut you slack when you sell us down the river in deference to minority rule. Progressives worked hard to elect President Obama and the very large Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. If we don't feel like we're being represented in Washington, we aren't going to work very hard for you in 2010. That's not a threat, any "political scientist" can explain how base motivation works. So fight for us like your job depends on it...because it actually does.

More on the public option here and here and the filibuster here.

Fire This Clown

2009-11-10T17:15:00.001-08:00

I've long been concerned that Doug Elmendorf has been a less than fair referee on health care reform, but what he said about global warming makes it clear that he's a clown unfit to fill Peter Orszag's shoes: "Most of the economy involves activities that are not likely to be directly affected by changes in climate." Check out this Truthout article for a more complete description of why this claim is bogus, but you don't really need much more than an elementary understanding of the anthropogenic global warming trend to know that it spells doom for the U.S. economy as well as ever other economy on the planet. I understand that Elmendorf is trained in the narrow thinking of short term cost-benefit analyses, but as Congress' accountant he should figure out a way to accurately express the economic conclusions of climate science or he should resign.

"A Cancer Growing Inside the World's Greatest Deliberative Body"

2009-11-09T11:19:00.000-08:00

This weekend's House vote to pass historic health care reform legislation sends President Obama's central domestic policy priority sailing towards the legislative end zone. In addition, the House passed major energy/environment legislation earlier this year, another major Obama agenda item. Both bills now await consideration on the floor of the United States Senate. As we work to push our Senators to do the right thing on both bills, it would be wise to keep the recent comments offered by Chris Hayes in mind:

The filibuster has become a cancer growing inside the world's greatest deliberative body. What was once a rarely invoked procedural mechanism has metastasized and turned into a de facto supermajority requirement for any legislation. In the 103rd Congress (1993-94) there were forty-six votes on "cloture," the motion to override a filibuster and allow something to be considered on the floor. In the last Congress, the 110th, the first one in which Republicans were in the minority, there were a record 112. Even without the filibuster, our system already has more choke points where legislation can die than almost any other liberal democracy. It's rare for one party to control both houses of Congress and the White House, and to have as solid a majority as the Democrats currently do. But the filibuster confers such power on an obstinate minority that it distorts the relationship between elections and governance in a way that dangerously attenuates democracy itself.

Right wing obstructionists be warned: the progressive movement that elected President Obama and substantial majorities in both national legislative bodies will not be abide the subversion of democracy by an entrenched minority.

A Gilded Planet

Ghost Pepper Zombie Crackheads

The Art of the Pregnant Pause

The Future of "Public" Higher Education

No One Can Be Happy But Me

February Resolutions

Seeing "The Body Electric - A Scientific Fiction..."

The Elemental Creep

Power Relations

A Dozen Snazzy Dresses and a Car

Lying About Occupy Oakland

Great Expectations

Will Alexander Visits the Archive to Study Biology

Happy Birthday, José Martí!

The Top Ten Funniest Wikipedia Articles of All Time

Somebody is Waiting in the Hallway

Dearest Watson

Will I Remember To Tell You I Told You...

The Fabricationist Manifesto

On Being Right

The Wild Street Kids of Telegraph Ave

The Decline and Fall of a Decorated Veteran of Christmas Past

The Fabrication of a Word

Giggle Christ

The Basement Arcadist

A Thief Sleeps on the Couch Downstairs

Eager Visions

Invective Incitement

The Great Rock Hunt Tour Adventure

Dripping Noise (From Your Damn Mouth)

GUEST POST: A Mostly Speculative and Acerbic Look at the Fall 2011 Pilot Season

Fans Away the Native Fumes

The Undulating Earth

The Diaries of Nicholson Cage

Hooligan Circus Political Technique

Customer Review: HP7-P2

Anothering

"Making Movie History"

The Ghosts of Electricity

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Selections from "Thai Travels" No. 4

Selections from "Thai Travels" No. 3

Selections from "Thai Travels" No. 2

Selections from "Thai Travels" No. 1

Masters of the Compendium

The Mind of Alexandra Anixter

: Power Police : Merry Musicians :

Ritual and Retrogression

You Don’t Need the Boss, the Boss Needs You

But Really, America is Not Broke

Don't Worry About the Market

182 Movies, 285 Days

Too Many Movies, Too Many Days

Movie Mania

A Dream Upon Waking

198 Movies, 310 Days

Tom Noonan Spotlight

199 Movies, 315 Days

Comedy as Anarchy: Richard Lester's The Knack...

All Eisenberg, All the Time

Something Something Days, Something Something Movies

Double Sevens

Ranulf the Unready (or Eat, Pray, Sin)

Double Feature at the Stanford Theatre

332 Days, 213 Movies

341 Days, 219 Movies

Birthday Viewings

222 Movies, 346 Days

223 Movies, 349 Days

226 Movies, 351 Days

Tom Cruise, Before All the Crazy

229 Movies, 355 Days

232 Movies in 365 Days

Top Five Favorite Albums of 2010

What?

Harry Potter and the Deathly Disappointment at the Drastic Decline in Quality of This Once Promising Movie Series, Part I

Am I Allowed to Listen to Hip Hop?

This Thing You Are Reading Is Now Called A Betamax

Don't Worry About the Government

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