Best specialized robot name ever: Gynoid

I feel a little guilty talking about this movie right now. It's a little like going to class without having fully digested the previous night's reading assignment. Sure, you read it through fairly deeply. You take notes. Maybe you had a midnight BS session with your roommate or the kid down the hall.

But maybe you were a little tired; maybe you were a little drunk. For whatever reason, you worry you might have missed something important.

That's more or less Ghost in the Shell 2's 100 minute running time in a ghostshell. It doesn't help that the dialogue is in subtitles (the way it should be) and the animation is some of the most beautiful I've seen since . . . ever. Your eyes pull double duty, straining to digest polysyllabic words stacked 10 deep while soaking up animation of unrivaled scope and grandeur. Beauty and the Beast has nothing on this.

It's a much more assured and revelatory work than it's 1995 predecessor.

Credit Mamoru Oshii with improving upon every facet of an already intelligent and fascinating premise. Yes. Everything is better.

Much of the first Ghost in the Shell felt like a fleshing out of the various philosophical topics woven into the game of Artificial Intelligence. It was about debunking the line of demarcation between man and machine. It was about finding something unique in humanity amidst the clamour of our technological near-future. Oshii was struggling with this right alongside his characters, and it showed in a somewhat lackluster visual presentation, a jumbled thesis, and a messy ending. The plot itself, a techno-noir murder mystery, felt tacked on. Still, the original Ghost in the Shell was something to behold.

In the 9 years that have passed though, Oshii definitely did his homework. In a time when everyone needs a kickass firewall for that lumpy grey mass between their ears, knowledge is immediately available to all, and the section nine detectives Batou and Matoko use all the net has to offer in contemplating their place in the vast, jacked-in world they inhabit.

They drop anecdotes about Descartes, quote Confuscious, the Old Testament, reference Rabbi Judah Low ben Bezalel and the Golem of Prague. They quote Milton. I studied English literature and I can't quote Milton.

But then, maybe it takes someone like Milton, someone with sympathy for the devil, to live as a human in a world where men are ever more becoming mechanized, and the machines they build take on the characteristics of their creators.

Maybe it took Oshii a few years slogging through the quagmire of western skepticism and self-doubt to realize that.

The plot this time--another nod to noir--is more focused and accessible, except for the beginning of the third act, when someone hacks Matou's brain. Things get a little fuzzy then, but they're supposed to.

I don't believe the philosophy involved can totally reveal itself in one sitting. Certainly, trying to flesh it out here would be pointless and boring. Suffice it to say that in Oshii's future, humanity has angst to spare and it looks like things are only getting worse.

Even the animation choices reflect a feeling of alienation, and shows such painstaking love on the part of Oshii. The movie is dominated by advanced computer graphics and lush matte paintings for its backgrounds and many of the dolls (see also: robots, see also: gynoids, see also: sexroids etc, etc). Cars, library Stacks, great post-apocalyptic landscapes are by turns vivid and dingy and exploding with detail. They burst off the screen. Batou and Matoko and the rest of the humans (as well as the gynoids who have been given ghosts [souls]), in contrast, are cell animated the old fashioned way. In this environment they seem helplessly two dimensional, out of place and almost inferior--which is just the way they actually feel. And when a gynoid, through pursed lips and with seductive langour, pleads "help me," the hackles on your neck are at full attention. Brilliant.

I took notes during this movie. I felt compelled to. I think I'm going to find some pop-culture doctoral program and write my thesis on it. The depth and breadth and sheer complexity of the imagery and symbolism in Ghost in the Shell 2 is crippling. It feels at times like Heart of Darkness, but is careful to remain far less turgid and depressing. It fully warrants a second or third viewing, to mine the depth of what Oshii is offering.

At a time when the vast majority of films--even arthouse flicks--opt for allegorical poverty rather than alienate potential ticket sales, it's all the more refreshing to see a beautiful, self-assured movie that's content to do more talking--about Milton for godsake--than shooting.

"If our Gods and our hopes are nothing but scientific phenomena, then let us admit it must be said that our love is scientific as well."

Read the full thing here.

Vile Young Things

When a first time screen writer and director sets about adapting a book by a beloved author, what does he think about? Creating a psychological tone of narration? Giving features, voices and attitudes to characters that had previously existed independently in the mind of each reader? Maybe.

Maybe he just really didn't want to blow his first writing/directing gig. He wanted a good omen. He needed a good name. Maybe he thought Evelyn Waugh's cutting Vile Bodies was too drab, too glass-half-empty. Maybe he wanted to set a lighter tone.

Why else would he take the novel's original title--which no doubt hints at Waugh's intended tone and moral--and water it down to something as limp as Bright Young Things?

The change is indicative of a series of stylistic and content choices that castrate potentially biting social satire into a bland period piece. Sure it's funny and cutting at times, but in a blithely sentimental way that obfuscates any condemnation of the characters and their cagey morals. As there's an ultimately happy[ish] ending, there can be no lamenting this particular lost generation. Theirs was excess without consequences.

Worst of all, though, it takes no pains to draw connections between Britain in the 30's and the world at large today--connections which are blindingly obvious.

It's Britain on the eve of World War II, a generation of young idle rich are doing the Gatsby from London to Dover and back. The press is having a field day. I don't know much about the history of journalism, but this era might mark the realization that celebrities and scandal tend to sell more newspapers than real news does. Bright Young Things is funny sometimes and painless almost always. Wackiness and orgies happen, then bombs drop, then everyone goes home happy. Somewhere, in the background, someone does a shot of Absinthe.

The parallels to 21st century America are blatant. For two years now millions of Americans have added to their waistlines watching Magnate's daughter Paris Hilton and her Top-40-spawned cohort travel around the country flirting with rednecks and chasing greased hogs.

Similar things exist in England, where reality TV was pretty much [re]invented and where celebrity worship there has reached the level of art form.

As it is, you could remove the actors from their starched collars and bowler hats, swaddle them in distressed denim, trucker hats and feathered boas, and you'd basically have an MTV beach party. Then give Jim Broadbent a pair of timbs and an afro just for my amusement. "What's all this," He'd ask.

If Arthur Miller could make resounding connections between the Salem of the 1690's and the Hollywood of the 1950's, then surely Fry could have taken the pains to underscore the obvious connections between the Bright Young Things and the MTV Generation. He doesn't.

He chooses instead to gloss over the deep and crippling moral and social constraints his characters live in. He deliberately and repeatedly balks at exploring vital and immediate topics like personal freedom.

Miles is a main character. Miles is also gay. Being gay in Edwardian England is a high crime. Miles' lover leaves some scandalous letters lying about. The police get ahold of them somewhere near the climax of the picture. Miles says he must leave England. Miles is never mentioned again.

In Steven Fry's Bright Young Things, characters like Miles are used as anecdotal filler, and are tossed off whenever he feels the need to reaquire the original plot--a trite comedy of errors involving a 1000 pound bet on a stakes race by a novelist you never care much about because he never really loses. Somewhere, in the background, someone does a shot of Absinthe.

All of this is supposed to mean something, it's all supposed to cohere into something about fast and pointless existence. Maybe Waugh's Vile Bodies does, but Fry's Bright Young Things definitely doesn't.

Weightless sound and occasionally funny fury

Read the full thing here.

Not "this year's" anything really

I finally saw Garden State, four months after I missed it at the Seattle International Film Festival, and probably a month and a half after its semi-wide release.

The result was something like the emotional upswell experienced by Zach Braff look-a-like and Garden State protagonist Andrew Largeman. He stops taking his pills. He usually takes lots of them. The pills he takes are prescribed to cure problems with his brain. He says they make him numb.

Amid the grass-roots, indie-fan love-fest this movie has enjoyed, numb is exactly what I was going for. Read no reviews, watch no trailers, wait it out, see the movie when it comes was my mantra. It was a hard pill, for the deluge was near-complete--I could brook no shelter. I was beset on all sides by surging, phantasmogoric buzz. Somehow I kept it at bay.

Sitting in the theatre was like surfacing from immersion in that sea.

Half-drowned and shivering, the movie unfolded itself with quirky characters and ham-fisted dialogue. Things happened that made me laugh. Things happened that made me groan. Things happened that made my capacity for suspension of disbelief nearly overheat from stress. Throughout, In the back of my mind was the one quote that had somehow evaded my filter and slipped in my buzz cortex. It now plagued me. Garden State is "this year's Lost in Translation."

It's not that at all actually. The poignancy of Lost in Translation was in its silent moments. It was the shared glances, ,the longing, the uncertainty on the faces of its characters that fueled the emotional payload that connected Sofia Coppola's dissertation on loneliness with audiences. Braff's face twitches so much you don't know what emotion he's going for--he might be trying for all of them at once, I really can't tell. Natalie Portman's character has epilepsy, which she plays like a severe case of ADHD. Tears flow and you're unsure where they've just come from.

The movie is funny. But the laughs are a completely unconnected series of kitschy sight gags and drug references. It sometimes feels as though the plot exists to suspend these things in a logical order. That's a shame.

A friend and I once had a conversation about Lost in Translation. He didn't like it because he said it offered up a problem without having the courage to put forth a solution. He's a smart guy and that's an excellent point. Coppola's movie was, though, complete and coherent.

Garden State is coherent certainly, but far from emotionally complete. It offers solutions to the existential, drug-addled dementia of its characters. The solutions though, are hackneyed and tired. It's a new gloss on the love conquers all motif. In forwarding that cause, the sometimes snappy, inventive dialogue becomes laughable, the plot sputters, the actors don't seem to know what to do with themselves.

It's a fun movie, but also kind of an unfortunate one.

Read the full thing here.

The growth of words

Last year sometime I read a book by Michael Chabon. It had won the Pulitzer, and despite my waning respect for that award, I picked up The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay expecting good things. I believe a book can't be all bad if it is at least partly about Comics.

It was, in fact, a phenomenal book. In Chabon's deft and confidently long-winded sentences, I saw what my writing might be like if I was better at doing it. It sparked for the first time a real desire to get better at writing. I wanted to work to those heights.

This weekend, while taking my friends on a tour of Seattle area book and other media stores, I came face to face with more of Chabon's work. This was a used book store, so the selection was sparse. There was a copy each of books I hadn't read, and one of the covers had Michael Douglas' self-satisfied and rheumy gaze in extreme close up. I love the movie version of Wonder Boys, but hate editions of books that have anywhere on them "Now a major motion picture from [X]" or pictures of actors. This forces real human faces into the mental space used to create the characters internally. This destroys the process of discovering a book for me.

I also like my book collection to feel timeless.

So I chose The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Chabon wrote it when he was 24. It reads like it. It has the same over-long sentences, but with almost none of the confidence I admired in Kavalier and Clay. He overwrites, forces hackneyed metaphors, struggles with narrative voice. He wastes sentences. He says dumb things, silly things. He struggles with the odd nostalgia some young men have after a first or second real love. This is a nostalgia I have and hate.

It's also a beautiful and real story I would be finishing off right now if I didn't have to pack for a trip to Boston.

It reminds me that all the literary conceits in the world are no match for characters you can care about and an accessible story. It lets me know that great authors were once insecure authors.

There are millions of insecure authors though, and most never get published. The difference, I think, is courage.

Chabon's Mysteries is a book about exactly that. Not courage in the characters themselves, who retreat into various forms of self-destruction and conformity. The courage is in the writing itself, in fleshing out ideas onto paper, and figuring out how to order them thoughtfully. It feels like a very painful autobiography. There is an internal conflict that surfaces later in Kavalier and Clay (there were also hints in Wonder Boys) over sexuality, ethnicity and identity. Where, in Kavalier and Clay, Chabon is able to affect a certain distance from his subject(s), Mysteries feels gutwrenchingly close and real. Maybe that's the difference between being 24 and being 40ish, I don't know. It makes me think though, that out of a style and temperament I hate in myself now, might one day come something admirable, something to be proud of.

From the bubbling praise on the book's jacket, I realized--maybe for the first time--that perfection in writing and crafting taut imagery is secondary to telling a passionate and enthralling story.

I think I've been preoccupied with the former for too long. I've been analyzing my own writing through the lens of well-practiced and confident wordsmiths and I think, missed much of the point of writing. Maybe that confidence comes with time. Maybe it won't come at all, but I think I need to stop worrying so much about it.

I also watched, after much anticipation and laziness, Garden State, and I can say unequivocally, it is most definitely NOT "this year's Lost in Translation." I'll probably complain about that tomorrow.

Have you heard the Shins? . . . They'll change your life

Read the full thing here.

'A dysfunction of our politics'

Who is this democracy representing? There's a certain ban that's about to expire. Don't click that link yet, just think about this for a second. If there is a piece of legislation on something, it doesn't matter what it is, that has "widespread popular support" and that the President said he would ostensibly support if it crossed his desk, shouldn't that ban be pushed? Shouldn't it be renewed? Don't representative democracies function on the assumption that if the people want something, their representatives fight for it?

Now I'll tell you that it is "supported by at least two-thirds of Americans." A supermajority of people support this bill, why would it flounder? Why would law makers let it expire?

It is, I feel, a lack of concern for the desires, opinions and fears of their constituents.

There are, of course, the patently political reasons. Fear of backlash:

Democrats are well aware that they lost control of the House of Representatives in 1994, the year President Bill Clinton signed the original legislation

excuses:

Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, dismissed the ban as "a feel-good piece of legislation"

and the utter lack of touch with popular opinion:

"I think the will of the American people is consistent with letting it expire, so it will expire," Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee

Which Americans again? I think he means the 33% who have amongst their ranks the NRA, a gun lobby that is categorically against any kind of gun restrictions whatsoever. This particular ban is on assault weapons by the way. These are weapons that have no purpose besides tactical use against humans.

I'm tempted to go on a tyrade about how these weapons are useless in mundane, non-murder scenarios like target shooting, skeet, and hunting, but that really has nothing to do with this.

Representative democracy is failing right now, it's caving to special interest groups who, because of the money they dump into campaigns every cycle, are able to exert an absurd amount of influence and undermine the integrity of our legislative system.

I'm so mad I can't think of anything funny or ironic to go along with this.

Read the full thing here.

Farce imitating [political] life

Being part the second of an informal (x)-part blog suggesting movies to watch if you are sick to death of the current race for President of the United States.

If The Candidate shows us the archetypal slide to center that is necessary to hold major public office in America, Being There gives us the archetypal centrist candidate himself.

Peter Sellers is perfect as Chance the Gardener, a true "blank slate candidate" and just what the country needs. He has no political opinions, no divisive viewpoints. He never argues. Just the opposite: he compulsively agrees with everyone. He also compulsively watches television, mimicking the movements of the actors.

He let's you call him by any name you want.

Chance has the IQ of a toddler, the wardrobe of a prohibition-era millionaire and the stunning good looks of a movie star.

He's a fantastic listener.

His speech is deliberate, direct and focused, but is so absurd and single-minded that, in any context, his words are easily interpreted to be the pontifications of a profoundly elliptical political and economic guru. He's Nostradamus meets George Stephanopolous.

Chance the Gardener (Chauncey Gardiner): As long as the roots are not severed, all is well and all will be well in the garden . . . In a garden, growth has its season. There is spring and summer, but there is also fall and winter. And then spring and summer again...
The President: (staring at Chance) ...Spring and summer... (confused) Yes, I see...Fall and winter. (smiles at Chance) Yes, indeed.
.
.
.
The President (at news conference): To quote Mr. Gardiner, a most intuitive man, 'As long as the roots of industry remain firmly planted in the national soil, the economic prospects are un-doubtedly sunny.'

Of particular import to this year's election, Chauncey's total lack of a past is instantly seen as an asset.

Dudley: But what do we know of the man? Nothing! We have no inkling of his past!
Nelson: Correct, and that is an asset. A man's past can cripple him, his background turns into a swamp and invites scrutiny.
Caldwell: ...Up to this time, he hasn't said anything that could be used against him.

Chauncey is liked wherever he goes, as he is a perfect and unassuming vessel for people's narcissism. His words are your words--your words become his. He is always and perfectly the person you need him to be. He is even able--in a scene that had me cackling and dry-heaving at the same time--to facilitate Eva's (Shirley MacLaine) self-gratification by just being with her in the room (channel-surfing late night TV).

The only people who see him for what he really is aren't nearly self-possessed enough to have the power to expose him. Even if they did, I wonder if anyone would care.

Chauncey Gardiner: He's exactly what this arrogant country--and your arrogant party--needs [wants].

An' it's for sure a White man's world in America . . . Had no brains at all, was stuffed with rice puddin' between the ears! Short-changed by the Lord and dumb as a jackass an' look at him now!

Read the full thing here.

The problem with politicians

Being part the First of an informal (x)-part blog suggesting movies to watch if you are sick to death of the current race for President of the United States. Derived from conversation on a very good blog.

I watched a fascinating movie last night. It gave me, I think, an new insight into the whole problem with politics in America (I believe this is a problem inherent in any two-party political system).

Essentially, it fosters uninteresting candidates and forces them--if they want any chance of winning--to sell out their ideals and pander to people who are opposed to them ideologically.

People make a big deal of Kerry's waffles--the entire world has. Bush has waffled more than a few times himself (of course these sites are partisan, but at least they cite their sources). Waffling is a matter of course in American politics.

But is this a weakness in candidates, or a weakness in system? It’s probably a little of the former, but I think the idea that this is a systemic problem is far more to the point, and much more worrisome.

The fantastic movie I watched last night was called The Candidate. It features Robert Redford looking hotter than ever, with mutton chops you just want to smother in applesauce and eat right off his face. It was made in the seventies, but it speaks clearly to what is happening this election cycle. It touches so perfectly on the questions I’ve been asking about these presidential candidates that watching it felt fateful--I'd totally forgotten it was in my Netflix queue.

It's about an idealistic young lawyer, Bill McKay, who gets roped into fighting an absurdly popular incumbent for senator of California. McKay has name recognition thanks to a father he’s ideologically opposed to, and that’s about it. He wins the primary going away because all the Democrats with clout are afraid to face their Republican opponent. As a candidate, McKay is a train wreck, unclear on certain issues, completely lacking views on others. However, there is strength in him. He possesses a fierce idealism and is under the assumption that this campaign is his to lose. Think of Al Sharpton’'s quadrennial primary failures. —McKay sees himself as that kind of candidate: There to force dialogue on uncomfortable issues.

Long story short, after the primaries he's a forty-point underdog to Crocker Jarmon (best. . . antagonist name . . . ever), but begins making up ground fast, not because his social-democrat platform is reaching disenfranchised people, but because his campaign handlers are fantastic at splicing his views into digestible sound bytes that are palatable to moderates and even Republicans. The less clear his stances on issues, the more he resonates with people.

McKay doesn’t like this at first, but as the gap between he and Jarmon closes, he tolerates it and eventually gets caught up. There’s a wonderful moment where he’s given the support of a union leader who is guilty of caving to business and breaking a small strike of farmers. McKay's hate for this man is palpable

Union guy: “I think you’ll find we have more in common—“
McKay: “I don’t think we have shit in common.”

Here, Redford looks like a feral dog. The room, full of various advisors to McKay, is silent for about 15 seconds. Then the men erupt in laughter, even the union boss. Finally McKay smiles too, because he doesn’t seem to know what else to do.

The next scene shows the boss introducing McKay as “the next Senator from the great state of California.”

The campaign is no longer McKay’s, it's no longer anyone's really.

The movie was strangely anticlimactic and more powerful for it. Redford'’s last lines lingered with me for hours. With the campaign over, the once confident and self-assured candidate turns to his manager and says, “"Marvin? Marvin, what do we do now?”"

The statement is simple, but profound.

When there are only two choices, the inevitable winner is not the person who electrifies the most people to his/her cause; it’'s not the candidate who convinces people he/she will push for change. The winner is the person who convinces the most people he/she’s just like them. You do that by saying as little as possible.

I found the movie fantastic at chronicling the swift movement toward center that all candidates (those that want to really win anyway) have to make in order to succeed in a two party system.

I'm sure someone is going to disagree with me on this. Bring it.

Mad plays the bass like the race card.

Read the full thing here.

You're not listening

This is an amazing (by that I mean frightening and shameful) statistic pointed out by the good folk at ladida.org. The women of America feel ignored and underrepresented.

A little snippet:

Broken down by candidate, 51 percent of the women polled said that Bush understands them not well or not at all, and 39 percent said the same about Kerry, reports KRON4.com. Women represent 60 percent of all undecided voters, according to Center for Media Research.

Frankly, that sucks. Despite one group being from mars and the other from Venus, men and women have been actively engaged in a gender equality dialogue for a long time now. Maybe not long enough, but certainly longer than I've been alive.

It's not like Feminism is over--the dialogue isn't waning. I often find myself engaged in it. My girlfriend reminds me about the feminist march of progress when I fail to clean up after myself. I remind her about it when she refuses to pick up the bar tab. If not perfectly equal, whatever inequality exists in the relationship is based more on who complains the loudest, not who has the penis. It's about as healthy as two humans living in close quarters can get, I think.

Why then, have the issues and concerns of over 50% of Americans been swept under the rug? Not even abortion is a hot button topic this election year. The ban on partial-birth abortion has been dying a slow, judiciary death for a while now and no one seems to care.

Women's primary issues and concerns, in no particular order, are:

The survey found that women are eager to hear more discussion from the candidates on issues such as violence against women, healthcare, pay equity between the sexes, and access to child care. Reproductive rights and freedom of choice were found to be particularly important issues for younger women aged 18-24.

Erm, I count at least three of those that shouldn't just be feminist talking points, but of concern to everyone. Violence against women? Healthcare reform? Pay equity? Access to child care? I'm sure there are almost as many babydaddies looking for affordable day care as there are babymommas.

So that puts the number well above 50%. Why are these issues getting no play? Maybe they are, but not really on a national level. Reasons for this? I don't know, I'll wager some guesses.

This is wartime. Like all other wartimes, war discourse rules the debate. Iraq is a valid topic, I grant. Less valid is the question of service in Vietnam and Texas, respectively, 30+ years ago.

Blame John Kerry; blame moveon.org; blame those insufferable and poorly spoken swiftboat vets for truth; blame their Republican handlers. This is bi-partisan stupidity. It's undercutting the spotlight issues, and completely obliterating the ones talked about in that survey-- each of which should be spotlight issues.

There's also the economy to worry about. People tend to forgo worrying about perks like day care and equal pay when they're unemployed. The essential and valid point that day care and equal pay should be rights, not perks, takes a back seat when no one's getting their paper. There's nothing less equal than unemployment.

I can't see this lasting though. It's going to be a squeaky tight election by all estimates (except Chris Matthews', and it's increasingly hard to take him seriously). If 60% of undecided voters are women, then I would think touching on these topics would be a great way to bolster the bottom line. It would work especially well for a populist like John Edwards.

Hopefully they figure it out. Then, hopefully, whomever figures it out stands by their promises and pushes these agendas. They probably won't, but that's a different problem altogether.

Anecdotally, I find it strange that this poll was conducted by Lifetime Television, yet had nothing to say about whether Valerie Bertinelli's snubbing for a cabinet level position is a factor in the political alienation women feel.

Incidentally, KRON4 are the same hard-hitting journalists who brought you whistle-tips, and the irascible Bubb-rubb and Li'l Sis. Once again I thank them for their vigilance. Woo-woo

Read the full thing here.

No Kaffir Boys Allowed

I'm going to be posting another blog in like 15 minutes, but this is too infuriating to let slip. From the NY Times (reg req as usual):

'African-American' Becomes a Term for Debate

"I said, 'But I am African and I am an American citizen; am I not African-American?' " said Mr. Kamus, who is an advocate for African immigrants here, recalling his sense of bewilderment. "They said 'No, no, no, not you.' "

"The census is claiming me as an African-American," said Mr. Kamus, 47, who has lived in this country for 20 years. "If I walk down the streets, white people see me as an African-American. Yet African-Americans are saying, 'You are not one of us.' So I ask myself, in this country, how do I define myself?"

***

This month, the debate spilled into public view when Alan Keyes, the black Republican challenger for the Senate seat in Illinois, questioned whether Mr. Obama, the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention, should claim an African-American identity.

"Barack Obama claims an African-American heritage," Mr. Keyes said on the ABC program "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos. "Barack Obama and I have the same race - that is, physical characteristics. We are not from the same heritage."

"My ancestors toiled in slavery in this country," Mr. Keyes said. "My consciousness, who I am as a person, has been shaped by my struggle, deeply emotional and deeply painful, with the reality of that heritage."

Some black Americans argue that black immigrants, like Mr. Kamus, and the children of immigrants, like Mr. Obama and Mr. Powell, are most certainly African-American. (Mr. Obama and Mr. Powell often use that term when describing themselves.) Yet some immigrants and their children prefer to be called African or Nigerian-American or Jamaican-American, depending on their countries of origin. Other people prefer the term black, which seems to include everyone, regardless of nationality.

So the Black descendents of Caribbean slaves, who have since fled further strife in their countries to come to America and who have fought to become citizens of this country have somehow not been "shaped by [their] struggle, deeply emotional and deeply painful, with the reality of that heritage"?

Now, it seems, African-American is not just an Ethno-Cultural distinction, it's a statement of how many lashes your great-great-grandfather/mother bore on his/her back--as well as on what continent he/she received them.

My God.

How many generations does it take to be considered an American? Does living in the Caribbean somehow strip you of African status in a way that living in America does not? What country should someone be born in that they can claim slave heritage? Is having descended from people who were torn from their homes and bound in irons and sent to work as animals thousands of miles from their home somehow not enough? Do whips hurt less in Jamaica? Does the beautiful scenery somehow mitigate suffering?

Is this the new classism in America? We've become too equal, so exclusionists have to split these kinds of hairs to set themselves apart?

This string of questions isn't some kind of Socratic literary conceit, I just . . . don't . . . get it.

Short Bio of Alan Keyes

Italy to Cornell to Harvard, what a hellish existence he's had burned into him. My mom was a military brat, does that make her like 1/4 African American? Of course not, Keyes still has a race card to play--but only when it suits him.

I guarantee Abdulaziz Kamus, the Ethiopian-born activist from the beginning of the Times story, has had to overcome more personal hardship than Mr. Keyes.

Then this:

Keyes defended the [Reagan] administration's policy against imposing economic sanctions on South Africa, a position that brought frequent criticism from black leaders.

So somewhere, whilst being "shaped by [his] struggle", Keyes came to support apartheid, or at least oppose the sanctions that could have helped end it. Was he worried about the impact of sanctions upon the disenfranchised black Africans? If so, then why doesn't he welcome these same refugees into the larger fold of African-American brotherhood? The hipocrisy is deep.

This is the new face of Xenophobia I think. This is the new front in the war against them--the war against everyone else. Not even Americans of recent African decent are allowed into the African-American clubhouse. They haven't suffered through enough left-wing battery at Cornell.

If a great white Satan like myself can be maddened by this, where are the black leaders who actually fought for equal rights? They've gotta set these people straight.

Where is Al Sharpton when you need him? Though his great-great-grandparents were probably slaves--American slaves--so I shouldn't assume he's with me on this.

It's good the two parties can share a talking point: that refugees from impoverished and war-ravaged nations haven't suffered enough to consider themselves African-Americans.

This isn't progress.

Why does no one listen to Goethe?

Read the full thing here.

The descriptive arts

A few weeks ago I gave a fairly measured review of M. Night's The Village. It wasn't what it could have been, but it wasn't what most movies are. It was somewhere in between, in the lower half of the Shyamalan Canon, in the upper, say, 25% of the rest of mainstream Hollywood.

Sorry I couldn't be more forceful, but he gave me nothing to love or hate with anything approaching zealotry.

That's why I'll never make it as an upstart Indie journalist. I can't fake zealotry, I can't mock worship or loathe something for the sake of readership.

Case in point:

"Is it me, or is this something an aged Rod Serling might have dreamed up while masturbating on crystal meth?" Village Idiot, Small World, by Steve Wiecking

The article is funny, self-consciously so. It's crammed with as many obscure pop-culture references as one man could possibly fit into a column, and most of the analogies don't hold up

"William Hurt, who’s apparently chosen to ape William Shatner’s distinguished acting technique (Mr. Hurt, we . . . want your . . . Oscar . . . back)"

Hurt sounds nothing like Shatner, he sounds nothing like anyone, neither does anyone else in town. That's the point. In hindsight, what most people complain about as clunky dialogue, I now consider a quiet statement about the nature of the community M. Night has created.

This utopia, like the language the people use, is heavy-handed, artificial and altogether vulnerable, not due to encroachment from without, but from internal collapse.

But I don't want to rehash my review. The point of this is that I'm probably not good enough at the Keith Olbermann school of pop culture journalism to pull off any kind of indie rag writing. Olbermann is a genius, no one tops him--but that doesn't stop every twenty-something in America from trying.

The problem I think is that this new wave have made Trivial Pursuit knowledge a sign of status--an end in itself rather than an added dose of color to the issue of central importance. With this shift of focus, they've also brought a liberal dose of haughtiness. It makes me laugh, probably because I'm also a twenty-something with an intellectual axe to grind. But what does it accomplish aside from establishing a loose pecking order of minutiae-obsessed vainglorious sarcasmbots?

It's also just not that hard. Ahem . . . quiet, I'm creating.

"the whole movie I felt like I was watching something dreamed up by Oscar Wilde on one of his eponymous Opium binges. He could have shat this out, typing with his tongue whilst shooting smack into his eyeball in a carriage on his way to clusterfuck Gilbert and Sullivan and still leave time to recieve the stigmata from Pope Gregory before afternoon tea."

God that's edgy. The best thing about this freeform criticism is that you get to ignore grammar, chronology, veracity and tact. Tact is the last thing you want. Tact doesn't sell free papers.

The worst part is that this is encroaching on the mainstream. Some guy on Dennis Miller (who is the smoldering wreckage of his former self) last night gave a stupid free-form rant about something or other--which amounted to nothing really.

So I've realized that not only is the political discourse being systematically stupidified, all discourse everywhere is meeting that fate.

I know this isn't the blog I promised Omni, I got worked up. I'm drafting.

Read the full thing here.

Improvisation, Evolution, the I Ching

Review of Michael Mann's Collateral

I associate Chris Cornell with Los Angeles. This is a seemingly random, neural-firing kind of association—like I associate Green Day’s Dookie with Warcraft II. It’s something that I don’t think I’ll ever really understand.

I’d like to ascribe some reason to it. I’d like to think it’s because they’re both seedy, both look like they need more one on one time with a loofah and because each has given birth to some awful music. I’d like to think Black Hole Sun fits into the equation somehow, as an expression of one of these things. The video, with its synthetic smiles and washed out cinematography certainly seems seems very LA.

So as all the various archetypes at odds in Collateral—the Feds, LAPD, the kingpin’s henchmen, our hero and antihero—descend upon a night club for a bit of climactic gun violence, it was fitting that some shit Cornell song or another would be thumping out of the theatre’s sound system. It annoyed me, set me on edge--just how I'd be if I was about to walk into the club they shoot holes in. I imagined this was the type of song any of these expendable people would listen to. It crystallized the Cornell/LA association.

I’ve never been to LA.

Tom Cruise describes the kind of place I expect to find if I ever go there:

“Sprawling, disconnected.”

Just like a Chris Cornell song—this Cornell song. Sound and Fury. Big sounds, layered guitar, throbbing base. Utter shit. It sprawls. Every note is drawn out and heavy with distortion. I guess it's technically Audioslave. But anyway you slice it, it's still Cornell's crappy self-indulgent lyrics. My apologies to Tom Morello, but your new band's singer sucks.

I’ve always liked the music in Michael Mann movies. It fits, despite my personal prejudices. I’ve always liked his camera work. The angles he dreams up fit mood at setting perfectly.

I’ve liked every movie Michael Mann has made. Even Ali. As far as I know he has never made a bad movie.

He never lets you forget where you are, who you’re with. He doesn’t waste the medium. He conveys meaning with every shot, every element—setting, music, everything. The little slider on the Plexiglas divider that separates the front and back seat of Max’ cab is always open, but Mann never shoots Cruise or Jamie Foxx through the hole. The glass is always in the way. It’s scratched, it has papers taped to it, there are fares posted. You only see the back of Foxx’ head, Cruise’s eyes. The characters are almost always obscured. When Mann tracks the cab, though, it’s usually from 100 stories directly above.

Disconnected.

Like LA, like Max, like the killer in the back seat.

Michael Mann makes movies the way Henry James wrote books, with obsessive attention to psychological details.

I hate Henry James. I might have mentioned that I like Michael Mann. James plods along, droning endlessly, obsessing over details, psychic minutia. Mann is obsessive too, but he doesn’t have the luxury of plodding along.

Cinema has a built-in metronome to deal with that.

Mann understands the pacing necessary to keep an action movie afloat. He manages to work in all the important stuff wherever he can find a moment. Revelatory glances are exchanged through gun fire. Max has a weird facial tick that always shows itself just before the camera cuts away. Mann puts this stuff in knowing you’ll miss a lot, but hoping that you’ll notice enough. That’s brave and elevates the script above formula.

It’s a familiar formula.

Cruise’s Vincent is one part Tyler Durden, one part T-1000 with a little cheeky Nihilism to keep the dialogue hip. He's the archetypal post-modern killer-philosopher.

Max has a back story that is similar to the 7/11 clerk that Brad Pitt and Edward Norton threaten to kill in Fight Club. He has dreams, but his life is on repeat. Vincent saves him from that.

Vincent kills a lot of people, but in a perverse way gives Max his life back.

Mark Ruffalo has been in every third movie I’ve seen this year. That’s an amazing feat in itself. He’s becoming one of my favorite character actors. He’s very good at transforming himself. This time he's the Latino cop who thinks there might be more going on than meets the eye.

His Detective Fanning is really close to fitting all the pieces together the whole movie. It takes a while, but he eventually gets it. Then just as he gets it, he gets it.

When almost every big budget motion picture is a thriller, all you can really ask from a director and screen writer working in that cramped intellectual space is that they try and kill off characters in unique ways at unexpected times.

Collateral gets high marks for both of those things. That it also manages Max' growth and dreams in very human terms makes a very satisfying experience.

As I said before though, this is essentially a movie of archetypal characters. Max is too human for his own good, Vincent is godlike. In the end it's a struggle against stasis--"Improvisation, Evolution, the I Ching"--it's about breaking free of the tethers that keep life in a holding pattern.

The one who does survives the night and gets the girl.

All in all it’s a great movie and Jamie Foxx does an amazing job. I got home and crossed him off my mental hate list of people who have made a career entertaining white people by doing the black thing.

That's a tough hole to dig yourself out of--just ask Martin Lawrence and Will Smith.

Asking if a Michael Mann movie is good is tautological as far as I'm concerned. "Good" is built in to every Michael Mann movie. This is conditional of course and part of the suspense of every Mann movie is worrying that this new one is going to suck. I call this inevitable downturn "Kevin Spacey Syndrome" (ex 1,2,3).

For one more year I can say with aplomb that Collateral is a Michael Mann movie and mean that it is good without reservation.

Mann goes too far toward the end though, getting very Terminator 2 with his shots of Cruise. It was like he was lifting shots directly from the James Cameron Action Movie Bible. I don't know what he was going for exactly, but I'm sure it wasn't this:

Regarding the blog title, you can tell Eastern Mysticism is hip again in Hollywood when sociopaths begin referring to it in screenplays.

Read the full thing here.

Democratic National Sleep Aid

I've watched the DNC for a grand total of 18 seconds, long enough to see Teresa Heinz Kerry fight a losing battle with the English language. Her fight was much like the one I fight daily in this blog. It struck a chord.

That was the only thing that struck me, and the experience lasted 16 seconds too long. The other two don't count because that's how long it took my brain to realize what I was watching. If I had quicker reflexes, or even a remote control, it could have been over much sooner.

It's an affront to my senses and an assault on my decency. It would surely make Ignatius J Reilly's valve close off forever. Of course, I'm not one of the > 50% or whatever of people who don't know what Kerry stands for. For these people the DNC might be useful.

The 18 seconds thing was actually a lie, I watched the NBC news broadcast before the start of the convention. The thing that struck me then was how jubilant these people were pretending to be. They were acting like John Kerry was some leftist messiah. He's not, obviously. He's the de facto placeholder that is least offensive to the most people and therefore stands the best chance of being swept to office on the wave of anti-Bush sentiment.

You know you have problems connecting with voters when your running mate--that is vice presidential pick--has a 24-point higher approval rating than you do. I wonder what this guy's approval ratings are. He's Kerry Edwards. Look at that smile. Is he some kind of sexy African-American synthesis of the two men? Probably, and it looks like he's going to be rich soon. Maybe we should rethink our nominee.

Every analyst I hear spouts the same mantra: Kerry has to ignite the base. This is probably true, but unrealistic and a little unfair. Asking him to electrify America is as futile as asking the same of a lightning rod. He's no orator. He's wordier than I am. C'mon George Stephanopoulos, you have a giant head, use it.

I do feel a little cheated though, John Kerry actually excited me once. It was probably almost two years ago now. I was living in what passes for the ghetto of Spokane, Washington. We rented a big house with bars on the windows. The bars couldn't keep prowlers out of the gaping holes in the crumbling foundation. Luckily most of the foundation was obscured by hundreds of rosebushes, which inexplicably bloomed nine months out of the year. It was an oddly magical house, and one that stank of cat urine.

The previous tenant's wife fell in with some sort of sex cult and left him with four children and no second income. He was one person and could barely manage the rent. Later, we would be six people and would still barely manage the rent.

Needless to say, the poor guy had things on his mind, and forwarding magazine subscriptions wasn't a priority. He moved and got himself a more managable life; We got his subscription to Men's Journal.

On the cover of this particular issue, August 2002, Kerry sat astride a Harley-Davidson in a fringed black leather jacket. He talked about interesting things, said that if he decided to run, it'd be nice if John McCain, his buddy, would run with him. The Bi-Partisanship he hinted at in the article was kind of nice. He seemed intent on unifying the country. He took stands on issues, he was vocal and--though this might just be clever editing--he was concise. He seemed to have something approaching the charisma of Bill Clinton, which is good, as no one ignited the base like Bill Clinton. Of course, Clinton was also a winner--which automatically fires up a group of consistent losers.

Read the full thing here.

Mitigating my shaky-cam hatred

I've discussed this with a friend and I didn't really make it known that shaky-cam has a place. For example Gladiator and Saving Private Ryan, despite how I made it sound, were good uses of shaky cam.

It also may have started more with Heat, which I don't remember really but Michael Mann has always done the handheld Soderbergh thing, so that's not so hard to believe.

The problem is that, as I mentioned, it's become Zeitgeist. It's hip, so people use it in bad places.

Bad places like in a climactic fight between two trained killers. These men know what they're doing. I want to see them pick each other apart piece by piece. I don't want to hear an "oooof" and wonder if Damon just broke homeboy's knee or poked his eye out.

A carefully choreographed fight scene is wasted on shaky-cam antics. Granted the Bourne fight scene isn't meant to be Kill Bill vol 3, as it employs the same 'imperfection' that makes the rest of the movie so good. It's a gritty scene. Spit flies, eyes bug out. It's down and dirty. So maybe a little shaky is good. But when 15 seconds of a scene is devoted to Damon's spasmodically lurching right thigh I say, "Meh"--regardless of how sexy that thigh may be. When even running down the street gets the shaky treatment I start to get annoyed.

It should be a tool to exploit, not a gimmick upon which to build 120 minutes of film.

Read the full thing here.

I like to watch movies

Brian Cox does something for the niche role of the grizzled CIA mucky-muck that I will measure all future clandestine bureaucrats against. Unlike so much that is wrong with action movies, and so much of what is right with the Bourne Supremacy, there's nothing archetypal about his character.

He’s not righteous in the face of evil. He’s not pure evil himself. He’s not a double agent.

He’s greedy, he’s out to cover his own ass, he seems tubercular. He has constructed a grandiose self-image to beat back his pangs of conscience. He'’s human.

Brian Cox is never the star of any movie I’'ve seen him in, but he’s usually the brightest spot.

It’s articulate characterization like this that makes the Bourne Supremacy work despite the annoying inconsistencies that plague all action movies.

There’s a part early on--this bothered me greatly; I'm sure you'’re going to think I’'m crazy. Jason is in India, laying low. He'’s got a bungalow, he’'s got a cute German girlfriend, he's "off the grid"--he’'s living the life. Then Jason sees him, the guy he’s never seen before. This guy, Bourne knows, is there--in that country, on that subcontinent--just to kill him. How does he know this?

"“It’'s all wrong, he’s dressed all wrong, that car’'s all wrong."” True, he’s white, has a sniper rifle flung over his shoulder, and the car's a gleaming new Kia Optima. Way out of place.

That's just good sleuthing.

About 45 minutes later we’re following the CIA operatives at work in Germany. They’re acting very stealthily. They slink out of their hotel. They mouth something into their cufflinks. They have trench coats and don’t look German in the least. They nonchalantly look both ways before getting into their . . . Chryslers?

Here is where I ask the film makers to take advice from their own script. I know nothing about the spy trade, but I know that if I'’m a German bad guy, and I see a half-dozen suits get into a half-dozen jet black Dodge Caravans, I walk the other way. Dodge Caravans. The CIA field office in Berlin thought it better to ship a bunch of American-made minivans rather than buying a fleet of CITROËN like everybody else.

A few minutes later, Bourne steals his German assassin friend's Jeep Grand Cherokee. It's not enough that, against all odds, clandestine American operatives drive American minivans, but Director Paul Greengrass expects us to believe their German counterparts are driving American SUVs as well? There could be a unicorn wearing a monocle riding shotgun and we couldn'’t get any deeper into FantasyLand.

Right, Jeep and Dodge are all Chrysler, which is owned by Daimler, a German Company. But I’ve been to Germany. Number of Chrysler’s I saw there? Zero.

I understand marketing is an important way for producers to recoup the costs of making a big-budget film. What is unforgivable is letting product placement get in the way of characterization and common sense.

The other big problem I have with this movie is the cinematography. God how I despise the shaky-cam action sequence. I don'’t know who started this. I think I saw it first in Gladiator, or maybe Saving Private Ryan. As much as I like him, Spielberg should be hung from the top floor of DreamWorks SKG by his flowing pepper gray hair until he apologizes for setting the frenetic, over-caffeinated, jiggle-tron zeitgeist upon an unsuspecting world [correction: I'm now told it was probably Ridley Scott and GI Jane that started this trend]. It’'s not that I'’m missing what the shaky fight scene is trying to do. I understand its purpose: frantic realism. I like realism. But when I choose between realistic cinema and putting off that next grand mal seizure, I choose the latter.

I'’m picking at these details because I liked the movie a lot.

I wanted perfection. In the end though, what I ended up liking the most was its dogged imperfection. Not the stuff above, that’'s still just stupid. I’m talking about the problem that thrillers have of trying to attain total completeness. We’'ll call it the Usual Suspects syndrome (see also: The Game syndrome). You take a convoluted plot and three dozen characters you don’t think anyone will ever be able to wade through, much less wrap their heads around, bring everything to a boil, then drop the pieces one by one into the audience’s lap. QED. In the above two movies that was fun, and done well. In the deluge of films that have done it since, I haven'’t been as impressed.

Luckily Greengrass doesn'’t fall into that trap. There aren'’t any epiphanies, there aren'’t any archetypal struggles of good vs evil, Bourne never dangles above a tank of piranhas while Cox dictates his whole maniacal plan. These are all very, very good things, though I'’m sure that most people will see a flaw where I see strength.

The plot wasn'’t taught enough.

Taught and thriller appear together so often they'’ve become synonymous. That bothers me. There’'s nothing taught about real life, even at it’s most thrilling. The pieces never really fit right. Screenwriter Gilroy seems to get this. Good for him.

There'’s also a surprisingly great chase scene. All chase scenes have the good and bad guys slamming into each other. This one has the good and bad guys pinballing a third motorist between them pong-style. I also liked how, despite his status as uber-agent, Bourne’'s driving isn’'t perfect. He screws up, he gets tagged by oncoming traffic. He does some amazing things, but he also gets blindsided by a truck--—not the bad guy’s truck.

As I said, comparing The Bourne Supremacy to Shakespeare is stupid. I’'m with Comrade Snowball on this one: Each movie to the best of its ability.

Read the full thing here.

Why does every movie have Nazis?

Are there any new angles from which to examine Nazism that haven't been beaten into total pastiche? Yes. Well, maybe not anymore--but there was, until Facing Windows found it. I'm not going to say any more because it's one of the film's little secrets, the central mystery. The Reich connection is slowly hinted at, nudged into your consciousness. At times I thought I had a leg up on the movie, like I'd won the battle of wits. And that's true, to a point. It's really great work, giving you this info early enough on that it sits there at the back of your mind, stewing enough that it almost seems familiar. Then, just when you're comfortable with it, in comes the obligatory twist. It's not shocking the way The Crying Game is shocking, it's more of a tragic, drawn-out moment. The results are, well, great.

I thought the movie was brilliantly written. The story is content to draw you along at it's own pace, gradually revealing the mysteries of four lives that become entangled when an unhappily married couple stops to help a senile old man who can't remember anything about himself. One of the few screenplays in a long time that has made me absolutely sick with envy.

And it's Italian, so be prepared to read.

Read the full thing here.