Thoughts on Tonight's Debate

As I did last night for the GOP debate, I liveblogged tonight's Obama-Clinton face-off at the Kodak Theater for Mahalo. It seemed, to me anyway, that Clinton walked away with the victory tonight.

Not that Obama did poorly. In fact, he made some excellent points I had never heard him make before, which is more than you can say for any of the Republicans. (Ron Paul made some excellent points last night, but they're the same excellent points he interjects whenever moderators give him a moment to actually speak).

I think Obama's answer tonight on immigration is my favorite statement on the topic from anyone in this presidential race thus far. (He actually implied that moderator Wolf Blitzer was "scapegoating" illegal immigrants for problems that aren't their fault. Face!) I don't like his health care plan all that much, but I agree with him that forcing everyone to buy insurance, even if you make it less expensive, isn't the way to go. And unlike Clinton, who hedges on the war and still can't help but talk about the Middle East like a Republican, I believe he's sincere when he says he will get us out of Iraq quickly and avoid "mission creep."

But still...just about every single major argument you could make against nominating Clinton was made tonight at the Kodak, and she came off really really well anyway. People get so caught up in what people say about Hillary Clinton, they forget about the fact that she'd have to be extremely good at what she does to inspire such animosity in the first place. There's a reason she and Bill have long been considered "unbeatable" in a major election. Cause they're almost unbeatable.

To me, the Big Question for which she's never had a good answer is the Clinton Dynasty one. "Why should we elect the former First Lady of a decent but not-terribly-distinguished administration when what the country so desperately wants is to change course and try a new strategy?" If ever there were an awkward time to try a husband-and-wife Presidential pair, it's right after we gave this miserable father-and-son duo a try.

Her answer tonight was...not much to speak of, really. She wants to be judged on her merits, not because of her husband. It's a non-answer. But she still sold it, and I came away from the debate tonight thinking that this was pretty much a non-issue, something that won't stick in a general. Because even though I find her answer unsatisfying, she's probably right - I doubt most people will make the decision to vote for or against Hillary Clinton based on this question, and this is ultimately a symbolic point that lacks pragmatic implications. Should she win the nomination, voters in November will decide whether or not they care for the woman and her policies and select a president accordingly. She's already received the benefit of being a former First Lady - massive fame and notoriety. That's over...now it's up to whether or not she can out-argue Obama (and later, maybe Romney or McCain. Or, and I hope I'm wrong about this, Bloomberg.)

Otherwise, Obama barely made a dent. HilRod ably managed to shift most of the blame for Iraq on to Bush and paint herself as the dutiful public servant misled by an untrustworthy, unpredictable superior. Going so far as to call Bush "obsessed" with Iraq was a clever move. This isn't about her voting for war all the time, which she does. It's really about Bush's personal insanity. She has Obama speaking her language about the war, not the other way around.

This isn't entirely Clinton's doing. The way Wolf Blitzer phrased the questions started with some of her pre-assumptions, including that the Glorious Surge of Saint Petraeus was a grand idea that's working extremely well. But still, it helps her. Clinton's savvy enough in her evasiveness, Obama can't really find any daylight between their positions (even though I sense there would be a HUGE difference in the approach of an Obama or Clinton Administration). So he's reduced to making arguments that are essentially silly. "I'll be able to say to a Republican that I opposed the war all along, whereas she can only say that she opposes it now."

So maybe they won't call you a flip-flopper. But the Republicans will just come up with some other stupid chant for the yokels. That's what they always do, and it's how they win. And it's not like there'd be any lack of cheap ammunition against the first serious black presidential candidate among the mouth-breathers. The drawling simpletons in Dumbfuckistan already delight in calling him Barack HUSSEIN Obama and spreading gossip about him being a drug-dealing pimp. So what if he has a slightly better zinger than Hillary on one debate question? Is that really the best case he can make for himself?

Frozen Grand Central Station

This "mission" from Improv Everywhere is truly brilliant. Over 200 people freeze in place for five minutes in the middle of Grand Central Station. The crowd actually applauds when they unfreeze and go about their business:

Reaganitwits

Today's Mahalo Daily is an excellent rundown of last night's Republican debate. How many times could they possibly work the name of Saint Ronnie into a 90 minute broadcast? Let's watch:

Live From Mahalo HQ, it's GOP Liveblogging!

Brian and I will be liveblogging tonight's GOP debate in Simi Valley from Mahalo HQ in Santa Monica. Please join us for what's sure to be an invigorating discussion about how we need to kill a lot more foreigners while praying in school.

John McCain? Really?

I know the Repubs didn't exactly have a ton of inviting options this time around, but I have to say that I'm surprised to see John McCain their likely nominee. He won Florida tonight, which killed Rudy's chances and made it very difficult for Romney to bounce back. And Huckabee hasn't won a thing since the Iowa Caucus, which is itself only slightly more meaningful than winning the raffle at the Iowa State Fair.

I will say this for John McCain: he was the only one of the major Republican candidates who stood a chance (sorry Paulistas) that has consistently opposed torturing people. To my mind, understanding that it's wrong to kidnap people and subject them to torture is mandatory to be considered a sane human being, let alone be eligible for the presidency. So that means Romney, Giuliani, Huckabee, Tancredo, Hunter...they were all out of the running before any campaign could begin.

But how can anyone actually get excited of electing this dotty old warmonger? I mean, yes, he's a war hero, but honestly, being brave under fire and fiercely loyal to one's brothers-in-arms, commendable though these traits may be, has very little to do with being president. A president's actual job involves a lot of politicking and crisis management. Vision, leadership, steadfastness, savvy...all important qualities frequently invoked by politicians to make a case for their candidacy. Willing to take an unbelievable amount of shit for an unbelievably long amount of time for your country? Honorable...but I still don't think we should bomb Iran or overturn Roe v. Wade, thanks all the same.

I don't always agree with Barack Obama's positions (in fact, to be honest, I rarely agree whole-heartedly with Barack Obama's positions), but his essential argument for himself makes some sense to me. "I'm good with people, I represent a new generation of politicians who's not tied down by old rivalries and ways of doing things, and I'm ready to upend the way we think about running our federal government." What's McCain's argument? "I've always loved America, so make me President"? "Come on, you guys, it's my turn"? Or there's always Joe Scarborough's suggestion:

"Less jobs, more war"

I Say, I Say, Now See Here, Boy...

I liveblogged Bush's State of the Union speech, so I could provide a response to what he said...but he didn't really say anything. At least, he didn't say anything he hasn't said pretty much every day since 2003. Watching it was like being transported through time...Freedom is on the march! No Child Left Behind is a rousing success! Upper-class tax cuts are necessary to give our economy a boost! I can't imagine even someone as deranged as George W. believes that this warmed-over dross would still be inspiring in 2008, so maybe he was going for some sentimental value? Hoping we'd remember the good times, even though there haven't been any since he wrestled control of the ship of state and sent it careening into a rapidly-dissolving iceberg? Some new kind of nostalgia, perhaps? Shitstalgia?

Anyway, to my mind, the biggest political story of the young year isn't Bush's latest speech or even Teddy K's endorsement of Barack Obama. It's the sad loss of Fred Thompson from our Presidential race.

Naturally, I do not want Fred Thompson to be President. At all. In fact, except for Huckabee or Giuliani or Dick Cheney or George Bush getting elected again, that's pretty much the worst thing that could happen. But he had no chance of winning in a general and he's by far the most entertainingly ridiculous presidential candidate of our times. (And I'm including John Kerry, Michael Dukakis, Lyndon LaRouche, Ross Perot, Pat Paulsen and Alan Keyes here.)

Here's a clip of Fred begging an audience to applaud for him:



Here's Fred's really embarrassing "smackdown" of Michael Moore, essentially performing a ridiculous unfunny skit as an excuse to avoid having an actual debate about issues:



Now, Star Parker from the always-reliable Townhall.com is going to tell us why Fred had to drop out of the race...turns out, he's too liberal.

On the social agenda, the difference between Thompson and Mike Huckabee was palpable and significant. Huckabee understands that abortion, like the slavery issue years ago, is not a matter of constitutional nuance. It defines our core moral structure as a people and cannot be legal in a nation that exists "under God."

Wow...that is some vintage crazy...I'm intrigued how anti-abortion zealots can compare the legality of the procedure to both slavery and the Holocaust. Those things are both evil, but they're otherwise not very much alike. Can abortion be like both these institutions at once?

And what's with the "under God" thing? Star's aware that the Pledge of Allegiance is not actually part of the Constitution, yes? The Constitution uses the phrase "In the Year of Our Lord" but never once the word "God." Face. So, because we're not "a nation that exists under God," we don't have to listen to his opinion on reproductive rights. Thank God.

Having grown weary of making up some silly, factless analysis for why Fred Thompson had to drop out of the race, Star now relates blatant falsehoods about public opinion polls:

Polls show that public opinion on abortion is moving in the direction of Huckabee. Americans sense the need for moral leadership and it just wasn't there in Thompson's tepid social conservatism.

Except that, you know, it isn't. Here's USA Today:

The most basic truth is that three decades of debate have done virtually nothing to change public opinion on the central issue. Abortion is legal, and most Americans want to keep it so. Much as in 1975, only 18% of Americans would make abortion illegal in all circumstances, according to a Gallup Poll conducted in May. No matter how sincere and heartfelt the beliefs of abortion opponents, banning it or curtailing access still imposes one group's religious beliefs on other individuals.

Yeah, that link in that excerpt is to an actual Gallup poll that actually says the opposite of what Star just said. She doesn't link to any polls. The page does, however, link to a site where I can buy a hilarious conservative T-shirt, perhaps advocating my love of firearms or Ronald Reagan's dessicated corpse.

Then Star rants about how Thompson didn't want to cheat Americans out of Social Security benefits and health care enough, even comparing him to (gasp!) Barack Obama, whose agenda presumably consists of drinking the blood of every last wealthy white American while showering newly-arrived illegal immigrants with jewel-encrusted scepters.

And then there is the moral issue that free people in a free country should not have their income confiscated because politicians have concluded that they can't take care of themselves. Shouldn't you at least have a choice?

So, she starts by talking about how we're a nation "under God," and finishing by calling Universal Health Care immoral? It's just...really unthinkable to me that anyone could hold these two thoughts in their head at the same time. "I'm a good God-fearing Christian. FUCK THOSE POOR PEOPLE!" It's like being a married bachelor. I'm pretty sure Jesus was in favor of universal health care.

Not long ago, when the Republican Party was an exciting place to be (remember the "ownership society"?), transforming Social Security to an ownership system was one of the important pillars of reforms being put forward to address causes rather than symptoms of our nation's growing problems.

There were people actually EXCITED about that ownership society bullshit? Man, nerding out about senseless GOP rhetoric is more lame than being heavily into fanfic. I'd rather obsess about "Battlestar" slash than some random, half-decade-old Cato Institute crap.

If Republicans are to again capture the high ground in the battle for leadership of this country, it must be understood that the failure of the Thompson candidacy was as much substance as style.

As in, he has no substance? I think I might actually agree with this sentence...Amazing.

Movie I Watched This Week

Bunch of stuff I didn't get around to reviewing. Here's a quick round-up.

Rambo

Stallone's update/farewell of his most beloved, legendary franchise, Rocky Balboa tried to pretend all the silly, cartoonish sequels never happened and return to the plain-spoken sincerity of the original film. I figured he'd probably do the same thing with his John Rambo character - return to the melancholy grit of First Blood and banish all that nonsense about traipsing around Afghanistan out of the canon.

But the new Rambo feels just as cartoonish as Rambo III ("Rambo Goes Mujahideen!"). And because, like Rambo the Third, it's also about Rambo intervening in a real life war, so it's just as inappropriate.

Did I say the film was inappropriate? Well, I'm going to say it a few more times. Because Stallone's set the film in the genuinely war-torn nation of Burma and demonstrates a Gibsonian tendency to linger on and fetishize abhorrent, disgusting images of brutal violence. I may have seen a few more movies that contain more close-up shots of individual acts of violence than Rambo (Ichi the Killer?), but I can't easily recall the last film that had this amount of violence against children or this many bodies exploding.

Rambo, who now operates a boat-and-snake-hunting service in Thailand, is hired by some naive but well-meaning missionaries, including Rita from "Dexter" (Julie Benz), to take them into Burma to help some oppressed villagers. He doesn't want to, but Rita from "Dexter" is persuasive. These scenes feature intensely cornball dialogue. Rocky Balboa, by virtue of being something of a likable simpleton, can sometimes deliver a line that would sound ridiculous coming out of the mouth of any other sane human. But Stallone kind of writes every character like he or she is Rocky; everything's folksy, sentimental, mawkish and utterly sincere.

Once we arrive in Burma, the movie is essentially a carnage promo reel. Think "Satan's Screen Saver." The Burmese army enters villages, rapes women and children, and generally just turns every living thing into CG-enhanced red goo, much of which is splattered directly into the camera. Then we get some scenes of Rambo laying waste to the bad guys, and then the film's over.



Stallone's obviously been watching his directors for his entire career, and he definitely knows his way around an action scene. (He's a bit klutzy with CGI, particularly when using it to show us grenades exploding peaceful villagers in close-up). The final showdown in the film can't help but remind older viewers of the heydey of '80s action, when almost every film concluded with a massive, explosion-heavy, machine gun-enhanced faceoff between the forces of good and evil. Many of these films were even set in Asian jungles! It's exciting and even "fun" on that level; it's hard not to root for Rambo when he's doing that snarly yell thing while pumping lead into 50+ dudes at once.

But I can't really put any kind of stamp of approval on such a simple-minded and inappropriate (there's that word again) appropriation of a real-life conflict. People are actually being murdered every day by a repressive regime in Burma. Is a massacre across the world really an ideal subject for a silly, simple-minded action movie? When Paul Verhoeven makes a movie in which a guy explodes thousands of people for fun, he at least has the taste to set it in space or Nazi Germany.

Teeth

Teeth has exactly one joke. One. If you think the very notion of a woman with teeth in her vagina, that she can use to defend herself from rapists and perverts, is funny, you will love this movie. I probably would have fallen into this category for the vast majority of my teen years, particularly those teen years before I had actually seen or interacted with vaginas. (Which was, let's be honest, most of them).

Because I wasn't laughing hysterically at all the talk of pee-pees and hoo-hoos, Mitchell Lichtenstein's debut feature grew old pretty quick. Unsure if it's supposed to be a send-up of teen abstinence education, a gross-out comedy/horror midnight movie or a cerebral Cronenberg-style mindfuck, it is none of these things. It's really not much of a feature at all; more like a series of sequences in which Dawn (Jess Weixler) encounters a man, slowly begins to trust him, and eventually cuts off his penis with her vagina.



Audiences likely to be pleased at the sight of a severed penis on screen, naturally, will find a lot to like about Teeth. It may have the highest severed-penis-count of any American film ever made. I'm not saying you couldn't make a good movie which featured numerous loving close-ups on severed penises, but I am saying that you've got to give me something else aside from the mutilated gonads. The movie's just not funny enough to be a comedy, not clever enough to be a satire, not scary enough to be a horror movie, and doesn't bring any kind of original insight into the already-warmed-over subject of the vagina dentata. So it's reduced to, essentially, the level of schtick. "How will this guy's penis get cut off?"

It's a shame, because Jess Weixler gives a way better performance than the movie deserves. She was so good in the opening sequences, in which Dawn's firmly-held (huh huh) belief in abstinence is challenged by the arrival of a cute young Christian named Tobey (Hale Appleman), I wish Lichtenstein had just made this movie (sort of like Election but with virgins) instead of all the adolescent vag humor.

Otto Preminger Films

Went last night to the Egyptian to see a double-feature of Otto Preminger films: Bunny Lake is Missing and The 13th Letter. In between the two features, Foster Hirsch interviewed Bunny Lake is Missing star Carol Lynley in a showing of pompous asskissery worthy of James Lipton himself. Hirsch is an esteemed author and film professor, but honestly, this was among the most vacuous "Q&A" sessions I have ever attended. He's written an entire book on Preminger, yet his insights made me want to smack my forehead in the exaggerated style of a Tex Avery wolf, each and every time.

In one scene of Bunny Lake, a TV in a pub is playing a performance from psychedelic '60s favorites The Zombies, and Hirsch pointed out that "all the customers in the pub...look like zombies." Um, no they don't, they look like customers in a pub. This is the exact kind of thing I used to hate in film classes. Stupid, "pithy" little observations that don't provide any kind of real insight into the film or filmmaker and serve only to call attention to the observer's cleverness.

He also referred to the second film, the well-shot and acted but ultimately forgettable The 13th Letter, as a film noir even though it demonstrates not one of the genre's defining characteristics. A melodrama set in a small village mainly shot amidst bright afternoons starring a wholesome and stalwart doctor defending his good name from letters that besmirch his reputation? How is that film noir?

But enough about this guy.

Bunny Lake is Missing is brilliantly shot and amazing for about 90 minutes. According to Hirsch, Preminger hated the original ending of the novel on which it's based, and it took him 10 years to get the new ending right. (Hirsch never told us how the book ends, however. He must be some great professor.) Anyway, Preminger never did get that ending right.

Ann (Lynley) and her daughter Bunny have just arrived in London and moved into their new flat. Ann drops Bunny of at school in the morning, begins unpacking and running some errands, but when she goes to pick the child up, no one has seen her. Ann's brother (Keir Dullea) and a police inspector (Laurence Olivier) are called in, but strangely, there seems to be no record whatsoever of the child's existence at all. Is Ann insane? Did she invent Bunny? Or is someone trying to make it look that way?

It seems like a few movies have used this same kind of set-up, and none of them ever figures out how to make it work. Flightplan recently used the gimmick and its ending was an epic disaster. Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes is similar as well, and though it fares better than Flightplan, I still wouldn't rank it with The Master's better work.

Still, it's intriguing for the vast majority of Bunny Lake, as the mysteries begin to pile up and The Inspector begins to scrutinize the odd behavior of Ann and her brother.



Preminger has set the film in a London that's spectacularly creepy and unsettling. Everyone has an unctuous manner, a bad attitude. The men are smarmy and the woman are cold. Preminger used actual locations, not sets, and he and cinematographer Denys Coop delight in lighting and exploring peculiar cavernous as Ann continues her relentless search for Bunny. Two sequences in particular stand out: Ann's fleet escape from a dank, factory-like hospital and her search through a doll "hospital" for tangible proof of Bunny's corporeal existence.

So the movie's not Laura or Angel Face, but it's still incredibly solid. Terrific, even, until that ending, which somewhat resembles classic '60s thrillers like Psycho or Peeping Tom but just lands with a thud. Probably because it doesn't fit with the rest of the film. Or maybe because it makes no sense and is stupid.

More Fun Stuff with Ellen DeGeneres!

This is just...not appropriate at all. Check out Ellen DeGeneres' front page today:



Fun!

In Which I Take the Funny Viral!

First, watch this:



Then, my take:



Comedy!

UPDATE:

I totally forgot about the best side-effect of posting a video on YouTube...INSANE COMMENTS!

So far, I have three. They all RULE in their own unique little way, like deranged snowflakes.

swishersweets2008

dude.. what the hell is wronge with you.

bpmca69

i was in that limo too. that guy was blowing the chimpanzee.

[May I just add that this is particularly clever considering that the entire joke of the video is that I am admitting to engaging in perverse sex acts with fringe political candidates? Is he heckling me or trying to play along?]

themaclady

Obama Hussein Barack is the fringer...

[So many questions...Did she spell his name backwards intentionally? Are we actually going to have to hear about Obama's middle name for another calendar year? Is "fringer" actually a word? Okay, I know the answer to that last one, but...you get what I'm saying.]

Keep 'em coming, YouTube lunatics.

UPDATE #2:

More comment madness! This next one may be the best response I have ever received to anything I have ever done, ever:

Fesheca

Well Buster, that's probably the most feeble attempt I've seen to smear a candidate. To stretch the truth is one thing, but to make up ridiculous stories is another. I see your buddy "LarrySinclair0926" is doing an identical video like this for OBama. You guys aren't just stupid...You are why women have abortions.

[How could anyone have seen Larry Sinclair's original video, recognize that mine was done in the identical style and not get that I'm doing a parody of him? IT'S NOT POSSIBLE, I TELL YOU!]

UPDATE #3:

The "views" stat on YouTube hasn't changed since early this afternoon (around 1700), but I know people are watching the thing, because the comments are coming in fast and furious. Most of them are complimentary, which is very nice. Some of them are really disgustingly racist, violent and horrible. I've been deleting them thus far, but I know eventually I'll get tired of doing this and they'll overtake the entire page. There truly are a lot of sad, insane, ferociously angry people out there.

One guy has posted two "response" videos, featuring himself discussing, at length, some perverse sexual proclivities of other candidates. It seems like he's continuing the joke, but in a vein that, I must say, is fairly creepy. I think the thing to remember here is the key role of a director. I had the multi-talented Michael Gallagher behind the camera telling me to keep the thing under 2 minutes. I think Mitt Romney dendrophilia guy would benefit from an collaborator of some kind. Or a prescription for Lexapro.

Less Than 1% Real Joost

I've been so enjoying Hulu, the free streaming video site where I just watched the entire first season of "Arrested Development," I completely forgot that I still have a beta membership to its competitor, Joost. I went back over to Joost for the first time in a few months today.

The problems began immediately. See, Joost requires you to download software to watch videos (unlike Hulu, which plays videos right there in your browser). But apparently, the beta software I had downloaded a few months ago was no longer operational, not that there was any actual message letting me know this. So, I deleted the old version and went back to the website and downloaded the newest Joost. The whole operation probably took 5 minutes, but it would have been nice if the old software had just told me to download the latest counterpart, rather than just giving me an error message.

Once I downloaded and started up the software and gave them a lot of information they really shouldn't need, I was ready to watch shows. Unfortunately, there is next-to-no genuinely worthwhile content on Joost. They have a lot of film channels, but they're almost entirely devoted to short films. (One "horror movie" channel was devoted to a few, old public-domain black-and-white horror movies, such as you might find on late-night UHF television in the '80s. Most of these can be obtained on DVD for under $5.) Seriously...this is their heavily-invested business plan? Post a couple of public domain horror movies and some shorts?

I was excited to find, on the Saturday Morning Cartoons channel, some Rocky and Bullwinkle episodes, but they don't even have a single full story arc. (Fans will recall that Rocky and Bullwinkle stories carried over from week to week). Weak.

Hulu, on the other hand, contains whole seasons of its shows, and in many cases, that means the current season. So if I miss "Family Guy," it's streaming, free, online (with a few commercial interruptions so money can be made) a few days later. Now that's in the neighborhood of what I'm talking about.

(I see that Hulu has just added several whole episodes of "What's Happening" to their line-up. Well played.)

So I'm not sure if Joost saw itself as directly taking on Hulu, but so far, it's a total rout. (Not only in terms of content and the pain-in-the-ass of downloading software just to watch videos, but the Joost interface also leaves much to be desired. It crashed once on me, froze my computer temporarily on another instance, and twice, I clicked a video on a menu only to be told that it wasn't currently available.)

Joost calls itself "Free Online TV," but that's using the notion of TV pretty loosely. Most of their content reminds me of what you'd see on a public access channel, or the channel in your hotel room that tells you about all the great amenities, maybe featuring Eric Estrada showing you around the resort, letting you know where the clubhouse is located so you can get clean towels.

It occurs to me now that Joost is brought to you by CBS, a Mahalo investor, and the same VC firm that is invested in Mahalo, so maybe I shouldn't even go ahead with this post...I might make some powerful enemies. But hey, I'm helping out the Joost people. Everyone loves feedback, right?

Ledger Domain

As my job largely concerns news aggregation, I spent most of this afternoon compiling pages about Heath Ledger's untimely demise. It can get a bit grim around the Mahalo News section on days like today.

Anyway, I realize that, in some ways, this implicates me in the media's saturation-level focus on grim celebrity news, whether it be Heath Ledger's and Brad Renfro's deaths, Eminem's weight problem, Owen Wilson's suicide attempt or even La Lohan's trips to the police department and/or rehab. My excuse is actually identical to the archetypal "sleaze journalist." I write pages about whatever's being searched. Majority tastes dictate my focus.

A look at Google Trends right now, hours and hours after the news of Ledger's death broke, confirms that he's the main concern of Americans at this moment in time.

Among the top searches are Ledger's name, searches for "Keith Ledger" by idiots who don't know his actual name and presumably don't know how to get to any news sources to find out, his former fiancee Michelle Williams, the term "heath ledger found dead," his daughter Matilda Ledger, his film "10 Things I Hate About You," the term "michelle williams heath ledger," his film "Brokeback Mountain," Gemma Ward (a model Ledger was rumored to have dated) and "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus," the Terry Gilliam film which Ledger was in the midst of filming.

So it's not a mystery why Mahalo or anyone else is covering the story so enthusiastically. That's what the public wants, and the media only exists to inform and entertain the public. Interestingly, right now, all the cable news channels are running with the story on their front page. CNN.com, MSNBC.com and FoxNews.com clearly think that's what everyone wants to see. Unsurprisingly, FoxNews.com goes with the most melodramatic, tabloid graphic, showing people crying at a Ledger memorial:



"Tears for Heath"...Wow...

I'd also like to point out that this was featured just below the Ledger story on FoxNews.com just now:



It's an O'Reilly Factor INVESTIGATION! I actually saw a bit of this interview at work today (I watch Fox News at work! Just like Dick Cheney!) and it was hilarious and awesome. I'd love to embed it here or provide you with a direct link, but FoxNews.com has apparently not updated their technology since the late '90s, so it's only available in the next 10 minutes or so on their actual website, in a shitty little pixellated box after you watch an ad. I guess they blew the entire year's website budget on Sean Hannity's Brylcreem. The best part of the segment was when the (I swear this was his caption) "Expert on Demonology and Mystical Theology" said that he has scientific evidence of demonic possession. It's like, "did he just say that on national television? Cause...that's clearly not at all true."

But back to Heath. I was intrigued that, though obviously the Google-searching public and the cable networks felt this was Top Story material, a lot of newspaper's websites (like NYTimes.com) and even web news sites didn't feel the same way. This was the headline box on Yahoo! News just now:



Heath's not even in second place! Is this based on genuine market research, I wonder? Does Yahoo! know that it's news readers are primarily concerned with politics, then economic and business news and then celebrity gossip? Is this just an editorial decision by the staff of Yahoo! News, who personally felt that the story about Bush lying was more important than the movie star who took too many sleeping pills? I'm curious...

RIP Heath Ledger

Wow, this is surprising. I never thought of him as one of the REALLY TROUBLED, NEAR DEATH celebrities. I'm sure we'll get more info in the days to come.



Is it bad that my first thought was, "Oh crap, I hope this doesn't impact the release of The Dark Knight!" At least I had the class to regret this reaction afterwards...

Calacanisfield

Fairly amazing Mahalo Mash-up the podcast team threw together. Check it out:



Masterfully done.

New Destroyer FTW!

The new album from Destroyer (singer/songwriter Dan Bejar), Trouble in Dreams hits on March 18th, but the song "Foam Hands" is already making its rounds around the blogosphere. I can't wait to hear the whole thing.

Conan + Colbert = Comedy

Weitz and Darks

So it seems Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy will not make it intact to the movie screen any time soon. After the The Golden Compass' holiday season box office belly flop, New Line has no desire to invest in two more controversial atheist fantasy films that don't seem to interest Americans. (The movies did better overseas, where audiences are smarter and therefore more receptive to this kind of message. Wait, did I say that out loud or just think it?)

This is a shame. Not because The Golden Compass was terrific - it was stridently mediocre and rushed, rushed, rushed. (Here's my original review). It's a shame because these books get better as they go along, and because the one-half of the team o' doofuses responsible for American Pie, surely one of the most overrated comedies of our time, messed up the only adaptation we're likely to get in the near future.

Why was Chris Weitz put in control of this project? What in his filmography convinced the New Line execs that he was up to adapting a popular, controversial series of intricately-plotted fantasy novels, or any film series told on kind of massive scale? Before this, he directed American Pie with his brother, then the miserable Chris Rock disaster Down to Earth, then the slightly-above-average Hugh Grant comedy About a Boy, then an unsuccessful pilot.

Um...what? "Hey, he did that one where Chris Rock turns into a fat old white guy and dances silly! I'm sure he can handle armies of talking polar bears and witches battling hordes of heavily-armed troops." It'd be like getting Eli Roth to helm "Rainbow Brite: The Movie" Not appropriate...

I'm not really trying to say that it's Weitz's fault that the next two books in the series won't get made, or that American didn't go see Golden Compass en masse. (Though it is his fault that the first movie isn't better). As soon as Americans are told by their churches and media that something is anti-religion, and therefore offensive, they pretty much accept this judgment and even start repeating it themselves in everyday conversation. The message went out from a few prominent sources...The Golden Compass is against God. So Americans stayed home. It's really as simple as that.

That is happens to be true that the His Dark Materials trilogy preach against organized religion is immaterial. I have seen this same phenomenon happen this week with Cloverfield. As soon as newspapers and Fox News began telling the world that Cloverfield mocked 9/11, this verdict was pretty much accepted as holy writ. (A friend told me about a radio call-in show in which a woman who clearly had not seen Cloverfield argued that the only appropriate use of 9/11-style imagery would be to "let everyone know how evil Al-Qaeda is." This is the level of our cultural discourse.)

It was pretty optimistic of New Line to imagine that a few big stars and a nice trailer might make Americans ignore a film series' anti-religion bent. We're talking about a country that's considering electing mad Baptist Mike Huckabee, who wants to actually revert to a Bible-based legal system.

Fast and Loose Change

Fairly brilliant bit of YouTubery here, synching up all the candidates with David Bowie's "Changes." Enjoy:



[Link via Sadly, No!]

Cloverfield

The hotly-anticipated Cloverfield is not the fun monster movie I expected after seeing that cryptic trailer before Transformers. The now-famous shot of the Statue of Liberty's severed head careening down a Manhattan street recalls the White House explosion from Independence Day, one of the most openly, even proudly, brainless popcorn films ever made. But Cloverfield is not a goofy one-off; its premise and style may encourage comparisons to Godzilla and Blair Witch, but it doesn't feel like watching either of those light entertainments.

Matt Reeves' and JJ Abrams' first-person disaster film is pretty plainly about the 9/11 attack on New York (among other things). I'd go so far as to say it's the best, most provocative mainstream film I've seen dealign with 9/11, repurposing the imagery of that day in a context abstract enough to feel appropriate, not cheap or exploitative. Movies like United 93, recreating actual incidents from 9/11 cinematically, can't ever explore terror as a topic and remain respectful to the fallen. Cloverfield, by removing all the historical and geopolitical context and just keeping the sensibility, can get away with actually making us think about how we experience tragedy, and how technology both immerses us in and shields us from our surroundings.



The film we're seeing is allegedly the property of the United States Government, a homemade chronicle of a monster attack on New York City found in "the area formerly known as Central Park." The attack has actually been taped over footage from an earlier date, in which Rob (Michael Stahl-David) and Beth (Odette Yustman) share a beautiful day together at Coney Island. Both joy and terror inspired someone to turn on the camera, and though the sad memories eventually overwhelm the happier ones, they're never completely erased.

On the night of the attack, Rob's brother Jason (Mike Vogel) and Jason's girlfriend Lily (Jessica Lucas) are throwing him a going-away party. He's headed for Japan to take a new, high-powered executive job. That is, he was headed for Japan, until a massive creature decides to wreck havoc on the streets of his home town.

The bulk of the film is "shot" by a different character, Rob's friend Hud (T.J. Miller) who was manning the video camera at the party. It's a testament to the strength of Drew Goddard's writing that Hud comes to feel like a relatable character with a clear, recognizable personality. He's represented entirely through brief scripted asides and Miller's voice acting - he's maybe on screen for a total of 2 minutes. There's not a whole lot of talking in Cloverfield at all, aside from the expected screaming and barking orders ("run!"), but what dialogue there is in the film is extremely crisp, realistic (as it would have to be for a film resembling a home movie) and occasionally even funny.

What follows, in terms of plot, is an entirely routine monster film. The heroes attempt to escape Manhattan via the Brooklyn Bridge, but can't make it across before it collapses. Rob becomes obsessed with rescuing Beth from her collapsing high-rise apartment building. The military tries to clear out civilians so it can wage an increasingly futile battle against the unknown menace. But because we're seeing all this (or hearing about it in some cases) from the perspective of a few scared individuals not directly involved with the main action, everything feels more real and disturbing than a movie this goofy has any right to feel.

From a filmmaking standpoint, director Matt Reeves' work here is significantly impressive. Cloverfield is a large-scale action-effects film composed of a lot of long takes shot on a single handheld camera. Some of them, such as the scene on the Brooklyn Bridge or a chase sequence in an abandoned New York subway tunnel, use the limited and intimate perspective of the handheld camera expertly to build suspense.

In many ways, the film is about the technology with which it was made, about the way Americans spend their entire lives interacting with media. Cloverfield constantly draws attention to its camera; the action, we're reminded repeatedly, is not unfolding in the present moment, but only exists for us in the audience because Hud kept that camera on. His life is being lived and recorded simultaneously. (He states outright at a few points that people in the future will need to see how this all went down.)

At times, the camera seems to make events more real and immediate for him - he uses the light to guide his way in the subway, and night vision to find enemies lurking in the shadows, and gets his first good look at the monster by rewinding his own tape. But at other times, he seems distanced from the horrors swirling all around him because he's viewing that world through a small lens. Would he be bold enough to rescue Beth without the camera? Could Hud bear to look the monster in the eye if he didn't need to point a camera there for posterity? And isn't what he's doing, watching a tragedy through the viewfinder, pretty similar to what we are doing in the audience, looking at a horrifying event via technology that makes it less present and scary?

It's worth noting that Reeves and Abrams remain 100% faithful to their elaborate concept the entire time: If they need to give you extra information or show an establishing shot, the characters will pass by a television set turned to the local news. I appreciated how nothing is ever explained; no one has time for expository monologues because they're too busy running for their lives.

Which, of course, brings me back to 9/11. Anyone who recalls seeing the footage streaming in from New York that day will recognize aspects of Cloverfield's visual palette. Collapsed buildings coat busy streets and hundreds of pedestrians in a fine, gray dust. Mobs of stunned New Yorkers trudge slowly across bridges, desperate to find any kind of safety and shelter. These images can't help but make any American feel vulnerable - we're threatened, in this scenario, not only by an external danger but by the very structures we've build up around us to make us feel safe and comfortable, like our cars and our planes and our apartment complexes.

Though it's not always pleasant to watch this movie and relive the shock and chaos of 9/11 (an opinion expressed thoughtfully by Stephanie Zacharek in Salon), it's cathartic to feel vulnerable safely, within the confines of a monster movie. Just as the original Godzilla reflected the Japanese people's suffering and lingering fear after the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Cloverfield speaks to Americans who are still just starting to deal with the trauma of being attacked on our home soil. Perhaps this effort really does, as Zacharek opines, treat 9/11 carelessly and without respect, but I don't think so. Like all horror films, it must first access our phobias before it can exploit them, and Cloverfield very potently speaks to our collective fear of rampant, unstoppable urban decimation.

I Drink Your Milkshake!

Yup, definitely the movie of 2007.



Check out the Mahalo page I made!

Southern Man...

This Lawrence O'Donnell post on HuffPo is strange and hostile. Now, I find John Edwards to be the most appealing of the three candidates for president based solely on their rhetoric, and so thus far I've felt like he'd probably get my primary vote, but I realize this has very little with how he'd actually do the job of president and would be okay with voting for any of the remaining three viable candidates.

Having said that, I feel no particular loyalty to John Edwards as a person, and have not felt the need to jump to his defense before. But this post just feels kind of out of line.

John Edwards is a loser. He has won exactly two elections in his life and lost 31. Only one of his wins and all of his losses were in presidential primaries and caucuses. He remains perfectly positioned to continue to lose with a Kucinich-like consistency. Nothing but egomania keeps Edwards in the race now.

By this logic, anyone who runs for President and does not actually become president is a loser. "What? Edwards didn't win every primary he entered? He's just like Kucinich!"

A loser like Edwards has no status or dignity to lose. Campaigning and losing is his life.

See? Am I crazy or is this just really, really extreme? I mean, say what you will about the guy and his soaring cheesy-poof working class hero routine...he has a lot more dignity than any of the yokels in the Republican race, eagerly raising their hands to proclaim their lack of belief in science and bickering about who loves waterboarding the mostest.

So, he will continue his simple-minded, losing campaign and deny Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton the one-on-one contest they deserve.

And here we come to the crux of the issue. O'Donnell wants Barack and Hillary to get to face one another individually because...well, because they deserve it. No, I'm not sure why either. I mean, HilRod won a primary and B.O. snagged a Caucus win, but that seems a bit arbitrary. "Well, you're in because of New Hampshire and you're in because of Iowa. Everyone else, screw off!" I've been to Iowa, and I'm not sure I'm ready to turn over the keys to the nation to any state that's economy is still barn-based. Where I come from...not a lot of barns. Not sure the barnfolk have my best interests at heart.

Actually, as O'Donnell reveals in a bit, there's a reason beyond the whims of Granite Staters that Hillary and Barack deserve to have a run-off for the nomination, and why that's more important than Democrats across the country, you know, getting to decide whom they'd like to nominate.

If John Edwards stays in the race, he might, in the end, become nothing other than the Southern white man who stood in the way of the black man. And for that, he would deserve a lifetime of liberal condemnation.

Groan...

Believe me, folks, it's not that I wouldn't like to see a black guy become president. I'd really like to vote for a black guy or a white woman. Or a black woman. Or a transgendered Native American. As long as they're not a warmongering asshole or ranting about kicking out the immeygants and conforming the Constitution to the Bible, I'm good with it. I think it sends exactly the right message, both here at home and abroad, and that it would represent a genuine shift from the Bush years, the kind of major step that would confirm in all our minds that we're putting this bullshit behind us.

But you don't vote for someone just because of their race, as O'Donnell seems to suggest. He goes way further than that! Not only should you vote for Barack Obama because he's black (blackness apparently outweighing femaleness in the Presidential Desirability-o-Meter), but it would be a crime to liberalism to even consider standing between him and the presidency. O'Donnell at no point praises anything about Barack Obama. Just his color. I guess it's better than refusing to consider him for president based on his color...but it's not better enough.

Maybe Edwards is already not a factor in the campaign because Edwards voters would split evenly between Senators Obama and Clinton if Edwards dropped out. But we'll never know unless Edwards does the right thing and gets out of the way of the only two candidates who have a chance to get the nomination.

So here, O'Donnell basically concedes that he's not even sure Edwards dropping out would make any kind of real difference at all. But he should drop out on the slight chance that it might negatively impact history, or whatever. This is total Dick Cheney logic: always act based on the absolute worst case scenario, things that theoretically could, but almost assuredly will not, occur.

The white male monopoly on the Democratic nomination has finally come to an end. Someone has to tell John Edwards.

Look, I sympathize with this sort of thinking, even though I think O'Donnell comes off really poorly in this mini-column. But to vote for someone because of what their gender or their color represents is just as bad as voting for them because you'd like to get a beer with them. It has nothing to do with anything that matters.

I prefer John Edwards because I strongly agree with the central message of his campaign. Hillary says: "I have the experience in Washington to get things done whereas these guys are amateurs." Barack says: "I am able to bridge divides and bring people together in order to get things done, whereas these two are divisive figures." John says: "The problem isn't experience or partisanship, but large greedy corporations and wealthy individuals who stand in the way of rational, fair solutions. And these two have already been bought by these interests." That last one sounds about right to me.

As a way to choose a president, it's superficial, but that's about all we have to go on. They've all cast votes with which I disagree. They've all said and done stuff that makes me not want to vote for them at all. I really hate Edwards hedging on something as simple and obvious as gay marriage, find all the dewey-eyed "son of a mill worker" crap to be embarrassing and laughed out loud tonight when he said his greatest weakness is caring about the suffering of others too much! So knock him because of that. But not for having the temerity to run against a woman and a black person. It's called a fucking primary...That's what politicians do. Run against one another in them.