Blade Runners and Black Kids

I was going to write up a whole review of the new digital Blade Runner restoration, to which I rolled exceptionally deep last night with a contingent of Mahooligans. But it's a Saturday evening...no need to get all heady.

[[UPDATE: I eventually did write a full Blade Runner: Final Cut review. It's posted over at The Aspect Ratio.]

I'll make this as quick as possible:

The film remains visionary, provocative and fresh to this day. It's clearly one of the greatest American science-fiction films ever. Ridley Scott used to have a remarkable ability to combine conventional genre material - in this case, the trappings of detective noir and crime cinema - with thoughtful, even cerebral, contemplation. Somewhere along the line, he lost the ability, and now seems only intermittently capable of even providing moderate entertainment. (I mean, A Good Year? Matchstick Men? White fucking Squall? I mean, seriously, what the hell?



Also, this new digital restoration is unbelievably stellar. If you're not in one of the major American metropolises in which Blade Runner: Final Cut is playing...awful sorry...Check out the DVD when it hits in December. But if you are in one of those special, few, civilizated cities, you really owe it to yourself to check this out somewhere with digital projection. This is one of the best-looking film restorations I've ever seen. I've seen this movie on DVD on a plasma TV and it had nowhere near the clarity of this new version. You could make out details that have probably never before been visible - the architecture in Sebastian's '30s-era apartment building, the feathers on Tyrell's replicant owl, the gauzy reflection of neon signs in pools of rainwater. It rules.

I was just going to go on and on like that for a while...but who cares? Better to just throw together a Seeqpod playlist of the stuff I've been listening to lately and start drinking. It's the weekend.



I've really been getting into M.I.A.'s new album, Kala, which is interesting because I wasn't one of those people obsessing about her breakthrough record. But this one's a lot of fun. I'm listening to it right now, in fact. Even though it's loud and noisy and distracting, for some reason, I find it easy to write along to. Perhaps it's because I have no hope of actually understanding what she's saying half the time, even if I'm paying close attention, so I feel comfortable just leaving it on while focusing elsewhere.

Then, two songs by Black Kids, the mp3-net's obsession du jour. These two songs were on everyone else's blog about two weeks back, so I'm hardly blazing new ground when I say this, but both of them are really freaking awesome.

After that's another track plucked straight from today's hipster-geist, so I feel kind of like a poser just for including it, but I can't get it out of my head. (And why do I feel like there was already a band called Whalebones? I know there was a Preston School of Industry album with that name...maybe that's what I'm thinking of. Anyway, with that name, I thought they'd sound like The Decemberists, but they don't. They're probably more like Midlake, if Midlake can be said to have a "sound." It's really just Crosby Stills and Nash's sound. But now I'm rambling...

Then, there's a new Robert Pollard track that sounds exactly like a new Guided by Voices track would. So he really just retired the name Guided by Voices and is continuing to make the exact same kind of music. Which is fine by me. This is a great song.

Then, Calla's "Bronson," which I've been listening to for months now. I feel like I've posted this song before on here, but I checked the archives and didn't see it in there. So if you've already heard this one, feel free to skip it.

I have no idea how this particular David Bowie song made it into my iTunes, but I can't get enough of it lately. It's got that saxophone that David insisted on so frequently in the '80s and that I almost always dislike, but the effect almost sort of works here. [UPDATE: As I do so often when writing about rock history, I goofed here, implying that the song "Jump They Say" is from Bowie's '80s catalog, when in fact it appeared on 1993's Black Tie, White Noise. Oops.]

This is the only song by Misha I've heard, but it makes me want to check out more. Maybe I will some time this week. A great, laid-back kind of song that sneaks up on you; I really dig the oddly quavering vocals, like the singer's freaked out by the microphone or something.

The last three songs are female vocalists creatively reinventing old songs. M.I.A.'s "$20" isn't really a straight cover of The Pixies' "Where is My Mind," per se. It sort of slips in and out of The Pixies. My favorite song from Kala at the moment.

Frequent readers have already heard about my devotion to Bat for Lashes' debut, Fur and Gold. Here she is redoing Bruce Springsteen's classic "I'm on Fire," one of my favorites from The Boss. (I'm not really a huge Springsteen fan, but having grown up in Philadelphia, I'm required by law to like a few songs from his catalog. So I'll take this one, "Glory Days" and "Atlantic City.")

Years ago, my friend Nathan and I discussed The Beatles' overlooked masterpiece "Dig a Pony," and why it didn't seem to get the kind of recognition and respect as other Beatles tracks, even other "Let it Be" tracks. (Perhaps people don't care for the non sequitur lyrics?) That's why it was particularly gratifying to hear St. Vincent do an awesome cover of the song while opening for The National at the Wiltern last week. This medium-quality mp3 doesn't really do that performance justice, but I felt compelled to include it all the same.

George W. Bush, Master Orator

George Bush gave an extemporaneous, 75 minute speech yesterday. I honestly can't imagine having to hear this man spew lies and butcher the English language for that long in any context...but doing so off-the-cuff? Brutal...

Bush gave an intriguing description about what happens when businesses expand, as was the case here at a company run by a woman.

"You know, when you give a man more money in his pocket - in this case, a woman - more money in her pocket to expand a business, they build new buildings. And when somebody builds a new building, somebody has got to come and build the building.

"And when the building expanded, it prevented (sic) additional opportunities for people to work. Tax cuts matter. I'm going to spend some time talking about it," the president said.

He's really trying to simply restate the standard supply-side line about giving tax cuts to rich people to stimulate the economy. I love how direct he's being about it here, though. You usually hear Republicans play this game using the example of small business owners, so it sounds like they give a shit about regular, everyday, non-millionaires. (They don't.) Bush just goes ahead and uses the example of an already-rich person.

"If you own eight buildings, and I give you some more money, then you could buy a ninth building. And hey, who among us doesn't love buildings?"

Of course, there's also the matter of the President of our goddamn country discussing fiscal policy as if he were addressing an elementary school class...but I'm sure this is how it was explained to him, so it's hard to fault the guy.

He offered a pointed description of his job.

"My job is a decision-making job. And as a result, I make a lot of decisions," the president said.

Oh, not this Decider crap again. The guy doesn't realize we're still making fun of him for the last time he boasted about decision-making? A LOT of people make decisions for a living. I MAKE DECISIONS FOR A LIVING! They're not as important as George W. Bush's of course. If I link to a website with inferior information, thousands of Iraqi children aren't violently killed. But still, the mere act of deciding stuff seems to get George W. Bush in a state of near-ecstatic euphoria. It's not really that exciting.

"I delegate to good people. I always tell Condi Rice, `I want to remind you, Madam Secretary, who has the Ph.D. and who was the C student. And I want to remind you who the adviser is and who the president is.'"

No matter how we want to, pal, no one can forget you're a President OR a C student.

"I got a lot of Ph.D.-types and smart people around me who come into the Oval Office and say, `Mr. President, here's what's on my mind.' And I listen carefully to their advice. But having gathered the device (sic), I decide, you know, I say, `This is what we're going to do.' And it's `Yes, sir, Mr. President.' And then we get after it, implement policy."

Who the fuck says "Ph.D.-types"? You either have a Ph.D. or you don't.

And let's take a look at some of those great minds with whom the President has associated lo these past six years...


I'm sorry, I don't have the paper in front of me, but I do not recall Albert Gonzales being very smart...You'll have to let me get back to you on that question.


She doesn't just look creepy and insane in this photo; Harriet actually kind of looks lobotomized. Or like her entire brain has been removed via the back of her skull and George is admiring the empty cavity. "Yeah, I bet I could store up all my loose change in there, then take 'er down to one o' them Ralph's machines and get me a 10 dollar bill. That'd be nice."


Snowjob may be the smartest guy on this list, just talking raw intelligence. Just look what he's wrote about President Bush!

"The English Language has become a minefield for the man, whose malaprops make him the political heir not of Ronald Reagan, but Norm Crosby.”

Face.


Heckuva job, Brownie


This is Douglas Feith, whom Tommy Franks once memorably called "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth."

I think you all see where I'm going with this...Let's move on.

"I'll be glad to answer some questions from you if you got any," he said. "If not, I can keep on blowing hot air until the time runs out."

Admitting that you're wasting time and peddling a lot of bullshit doesn't really make it any better. It just means that you're aware you have nothing to say and are wasting everyone's valuable time, but you're too arrogant to just shut the hell up and let them go home.

Asked about global warming, he gave a lengthy account of alternative fuels.

"I'm not quite through," he said near the end. "And it's a long answer, I'm sorry. It's called filibustering."

I think he thought that this was kind of a funny, affable thing to say. A little self-deprecating humor. That's because Bush is too stupid to realize, EVEN IN 2007, the importance of global warming as an issue to Americans. They don't want to be filibustered. They actually want him to do something about it.

It's kind of like Jon Stewart was trying to tell Chris Matthews the other day. Guys like Bush and Matthews think that, when you get right down to it, all Americans want is a nice speech and a good story, and if you give them that, they'll stay with you forever. (I had a grad school class at USC, and the professor clearly believed the same thing. He talked for hours about piddling little crap like presidential haircuts and make-up and stump speeches and rhetoric as if it mattered.)

Bush keeps doing the down-home compassionate cowboy schtick that almost won the 2000 Election for him, but pathetically doesn't realize it hasn't worked for years, that the only reason he's even still in office is that most individual citizens lack the time or resources to force their elected officials to begin impeachment proceedings.

He had some fun with a woman who seemed slow on the draw when Bush called on her.

"You want a little chance to collect the thoughts, you know? I mean we're talking national TV here, you know?" he said.

"I actually wrote it down so I wouldn't get flustered," the woman said.

"It didn't work," Bush said.

You just know that was said with that crooked smirk/snarl, to denote maximum bullying aggression. What a dick.

The Kingdom

As an action-adventure movie, director Peter Berg's The Kingdom is competent but not spectacular. Much of the time, it reminded me of a television show, something like "CSI: Riyadh." Flashy editing, glossy cinematography, attractive stars with a reasonable amount of charisma reciting rapid-fire, clever-enough dialogue, solving a rather straight-forward mystery with a twist. It's the same thing you'd get every Monday-Friday on the major TV networks with a few big action scenes and some more cussing.

If this were all the film had it mind, I wouldn't knock it too badly. Sure, it's maybe a bit inappropriate, considering America's role in a horrific Middle-Eastern war, to make a film in which a bunch of super-terrific American FBI agents kick some Saudi Arabian ass. But an action film is an action film, and Berg manages to direct with enough confidence and style to make the film reasonably entertaining.

Unfortunately, the film strains for credibility on the major foreign policy issues facing our nation today. I don't really care what Aspen Extreme star Peter Berg and first-time screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan (brother of Smoking Aces and Narc director Joe Carnahan) think about the oil industry or American intervention into Middle Eastern conflicts, and nothing in The Kingdom gives me any reason to think they might have some insight into these matters.



Berg opens with one of those quick montages giving you the complete history of the film's subject in five minutes using helpful animated diagrams.. In this case, it's the history of Saudi Arabia. When we come to the 9/11 attacks, we see a big black cartoon plane collide with a cartoon building...classy...

What is the purpose of this sequence? You don't need to know any of this information to understand the film, because its politics are utterly without depth, complexity or nuance. There are Arabs, and all of them are shady (except the one Good Arab), and then on the other side, there are the Americans who are good and pure of heart and noble and brave and awesome at fighting and only want to do the right thing and go home to their proud families. They clash, the forces of good prevail, roll credits. This is the illusion of information. All the physical manifestations of being taught something - names, dates, stock footage - but nothing actually informative, and nothing that will inform the actual action of the film. Weird...

After cramming 70 years of "history" in the time it takes to list a few executive assistants and gaffers, the action begins inside a Riyadh compound for Western oil company executives. It's a beautiful day in which some beautiful white families and enjoying wholesome, extremely good-natured and decidedly pasty pastimes. (They're even listening to Dave Matthews Band!)

Then, some swarthly types in Saudi National Guard uniforms start shooting up the place, machine gunning random civilians, and all hell breaks loose. This is not some random attack, but a coordinated jihad, apparently the work of a local radical (and "Bin Laden wannabe") named Abu Hamza. A series of timed explosions combine, over the course of the day, to take the life of a few dozen oil company employees and two FBI agents.

FBI agent Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx) and his team, well, shucks, they were all really good friends with one of the agents who died in Riyadh, so they insist on heading over there to do a proper investigation. Berg and Carnahan start with some pretty wacky assumptions in this opening sequence with the FBI, and these assumptions cloud everything else that happens in the movie.

Basically, this is the story of good-natured Americans who want to go to Saudi Arabia to do a good thing and all the obstacles they face along the way. Because we in the audience know that Jamie Foxx and his team (Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper and Jason Bateman, ably giving their flat, cardboard "agent" characters flashes of personality) are do-gooders trying to do good, we never doubt their motives, and this turns everyone who second-guesses them into antagonists.

But most of the people who collide with Foxx & Co. during the course of the film (terrorists aside) make a lot of sense. Attorney General Gideon Young (Danny Huston, slimy as usual) hesitates to authorize an FBI trip into the heart of Saudi Arabia because it might threaten the position of the Saudi Royal Family, which needs to maintain the appearance of opposition to American hegemony in the region. Ambassador Damon Schmidt (Jeremy Piven) is concerned for the agents' personal safety and the fallout should one of them come to harm in The Kingdom. (Just think of how strange this portrayal is, an American administration that doesn't want to go impress our will on Middle Eastern nations while the intelligence community insists that we go ahead and intervene. It's the exact opposite from how this story played out in 2003.)

These guys are presented as scumbags, cowards who want to keep Our Heroes from doing Their Job. But they may very well be right, particularly in view of how the story plays out. Why should Americans go to foreign countries and solve their crimes for them? I'm not saying that there's no case to be made that, if Americans died in a terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia, we should go over there and investigate, but it's at least a conversation worth having. Berg's film just operates from the position that American can do no wrong - that wrongdoing is antithetical to what America's all about - so of course we should always be allowed to go traipsing through other countries, solving mysteries and helping out strangers. We're America...it's what we do...

In one scene, a very kind, patient Saudi general (Ashraf Barhom) explains to Fleury that his team will not be allowed to actually handle evidence, but will simply be there to observe the work of the Saudi police. Foxx plays the scene with maximum macho aggression. He gets in the Saudi's face and announces that he will not follow orders, that this is not how his team works. Again, I'm not justifying the Saudis behavior, but no wonder the rest of the world views Americans as testosterone-soaked, insecure bullies. That's how we're now proudly depicting ourselves.

I just find this position, lauding American Exceptionalism, objectionable, and Berg's film only compounds the problem as it goes along. It has no choice, really - once the decision has been made to present America as a beacon for light and justice in the dark, shadowy world of Saudi Arabia, there's no way to proceed but to make the Saudis themselves shifty and untrustworthy, to paint all those who oppose American intervention into foreign affairs as either terrorists or cowards. (The Republican Party has been operating from essentially this position for years.)

It's a very slippering slope that eventually leads to Berg filming Muslims at prayer while suspense music plays in the background. We're good, they're antagonizing us, and in movie-ese, this means they're bad. Very unfortunate; this is the sort of thing that will play in the Middle East and convince people who rightfully should be our allies that we hate them intensely.

Of course, I'm thinking about these issues more than the film seems to. Like I said, it tries its best to have something to say about Saudi Arabia and the oil industry and Middle-Eastern wars, but it's just too vapid. It can't get there. Honestly, save the opening Four Minute History Class, the thing could have been made in the 1990's and been no different. All you have to know is that Muslims are really angry and they have all kinds of weird rules for their wimminfolk and they don't take kindly to our freedoms (again, except for the one nice Arab who loves Americans and speaks perfect English and wants to help however he can.)

The film fares better as straight-up action, although the good stuff only appears in the sproadically-intense final half-hour. The case solved in an unsatisfying manner, the American team is on their way to the airport and back home when they are ambushed by Abu Hamza's extremists. There's a thoroughly ludicrous but expertly-shot alley shootout that reminded me of the similarly-silly minivan attack in Clear and Present Danger. And Jennifer Garner does an awesome job with her lone fight scene (really, the film's only scene of hand-to-hand combat). She's not much as an actress, but extremely convincing at kicking ass.

But that makes sense...She is, after all, an American. That's what we do.

The In Rainbows Connection

Radiohead will release their latest full-length album, "In Rainbows," in 10 days. And as if that wasn't cool enough, they're going to let you pay whatever you want to download it from their website. Which basically means they're just going to give it away for free, because most people would probably prefer to just pay nothing.

So cool. You've gotta love the Greenwood-York Experience. And not just because of their unique online marketing experiments that let me obtain their newest stuff with maximum inexpensive convenience. Also because they're the best band on Earth right now.

I've seen a lot of amazing live shows recently - Dinosaur Jr. and The National, both at the Wiltern (though not on the same night) both pop immediately to mind - but I've still never quite seen anything to match the intensity of a Radiohead show.

They played several of the new songs from "In Rainbows" at the Greek Theater in Berkeley when I saw them last here. Here are two of them - "Bodysnatchers" and "Bangers and Mash." Enjoy.

McCain Wants a Theocracy

I can't even believe this story. Seriously. John McCain, as far as I'm concerned, has officially taken himself out of the presidential race. He has absolutely no idea about what it means to be an American and demonstrates an atrocious lack of comprehension concerning our Constitution and the principles upon which our government is based. Particularly for a, you know, United States goddamn Senator.

Sen. John McCain said in an interview published Saturday that he would prefer a Christian president over someone of a different faith, calling it "an important part of our qualifications to lead."

No, that is precisely wrong. Your religion does not make you any more or less qualified to run the country. They teach you stuff like this in junior high school.

In an interview with Beliefnet, a multi-denominational Web site that covers religion and spirituality, the Republican presidential hopeful was asked if a Muslim candidate could be a good president.

"I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles ... personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith," McCain said. "But that doesn't mean that I'm sure that someone who is Muslim would not make a good president."

Later, McCain said, "I would vote for a Muslim if he or she was the candidate best able to lead the country and defend our political values."

Even worse than his ignorance is his pandering. After making a bold and, quite frankly, disgusting statement about his desire for a Christian president, he hems and haws and backtracks in an attempt to keep people like me from pointing out his bullshit. It didn't work. Now he's both full of shit and afraid to stand up for what he really believes.

Asked about Republican rivals Mitt Romney's Mormon faith, McCain said, "I think that Governor Romney's religion should not, absolutely not, be a disqualifying factor when people consider his candidacy for president of the United States."

Oh, how gracious of you, John. Of course, he's still got the whole belief in Christ thing. That's really the deciding factor, as far as John's concerned. Clearly, with his support for Premier Bush's War of Terror, he's not worried about the whole pledging to uphold the Constitution thing the President's supposed to say. Why not just replace it with a reverend asking our future Commander in Chief if he/she accepts Jesus Christ as his/her personal savior? Or, better yet, get an old priest to simply lay his hands on the incoming President and shout a few rounds of "The Power of Christ Compels You!"

The Arizona senator was also asked about the confusion over which Christian denomination he belongs to. "I was raised Episcopalian, I have attended the North Phoenix Baptist Church for many years and I am a Christian," McCain said. He added that he has considered being baptized in the Baptist church, but he does not want to do it during the presidential race because "it might appear as if I was doing something that I otherwise wouldn't do."

So, he has attended the Baptist Church for many years, but didn't ever get baptized during all of that time because he thought he might one day run for President and, in that case, wouldn't want people to think he was getting a phony photo-op baptismal, so instead he ignored the most direct, basic commandments of his seriously-held religious faith. Nice. That's almost as good as Rudy Giuliani's "I had to answer my cell phone because of 9/11" line.

Fantoche

This is one of the most incredible, trippy, impressive pieces of animation I've ever seen. It makes Jan Švankmajer look like The Cheat. Forget the Human Flipbook. Watch this clip immediately, particularly if you have just ingested an eighth of an ounce or more of psilocybin-packed mushrooms.



[Hat Tip, Sullivan]

I'm No Hillary Fan But...

she's smart. You've got to give her that. Maybe she's not quite as fast a talker as Bill, but who are we kidding here? No one is. That guy's the white male Scheherazade.

After 7 years of listening to the tortured syntactical nightmares of Preznit Stumblefuck, hearing a politician actually speak in a manner that's lucid and sensible now has the ability to shock and delight. She actually sounds kind of convincing here. I'm not fooled, mind you. Being old enough to remember the Clinton years means knowing that, behind the nice speeches, pop culture knowledge and comforting hand gestures, they're basically just sane Republicans. (A rare commodity in the actual Republican Party, but still plentiful in the Democratic.)

I didn't watch the whole debate...I've been catching up with it on YouTube. Here's about a seven minute segment of Clinton kicking everyone else on the dais' ass.



They're all going after her, directly, yet it's Biden who comes off looking like the pasty, hopeless chump. Dodd seems to think people are voting for College Comic of the Year, Southwest Region, not President. I'm all for lightening the mood a bit, but it's important to actually make some kind of point between the Bush zingers.

Seriously, she's gonna win, people. She's not my personal choice out of this crop, but she's going to smoke all these other fools. I'll take bets right now on Clinton v. Giuliani down the stretch.

The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford

We don't often think of murderers and criminals as being assassinated. Usually, they are killed, or taken out, or even executed. In fact, aside from Jesse James, the only other criminal I can recall being "assassinated" is Lee Harvey Oswald. It's a weighted term reserved for the legendary or notorious, and James was both.

James' killer, Robert Ford, sought exactly this kind of noteriety all his life, only to find it constantly unattainable. Andrew Dominik's masterful, anti-epic The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford opens with the future assassin presenting himself to Jesse (Brad Pitt) and his similarly famous brother Frank (Sam Shepard) as an eager young apprentice, hoping to learn about the outlaw life at the feet of two masters. He's stung when rejected, probably because it brings to mind all the taunts and torments passed down to him by his older brother Charley (Sam Rockwell), a member of the James Gang. Ford claimed to have killed James out of fear for his life, and in the hopes of receiving a $10,000 reward from the Governor, but Dominik's film seems to suggest that it all comes back to this initial meeting. Ford had idolized James, had seen himself following in the James legacy, and no devastation could be more complete than to be mocked and humiliated by his idol.

Of course, this is just one theory. Dominik's film wisely remains ambiguous to the end, quiet and reserved, observing these men as they navigate increasingly complex and uncertain relationships from a distance. Apart from some occasional voice-over narration (most of it likely taken from Ron Hansen's novel on which the film is based), events unfold with a keenly natural grace.

As in David Fincher's similarly-impressive Zodiac from earlier this year, there's a precision and exactness to Dominik's film; he recreates these events with an acute sense of mounting dread, allowing incidents to collect into a narrative at their own lifelike pace. We don't so much hurry from once event to the next as we connect inevitable dots. These individuals - the increasingly-paranoid James, the emotionally brittle Ford, the flippant womanizer Dick Liddel (Paul Schneider), and the remainder of James' crew - are on a collision course. We know they will find their way to one another eventually, and Dominik gives us the space to really wonder how, and what the aftermath of these encounters will be like. This is clearly one of the smartest and most satisfying films of 2007, an ingenious exploration of the weight of infamy and the despair that naturally follows overzealous ambition. It's not to be missed.



Brad Pitt's performance as James melds two of his most disparate characters. We have the unpredictable frenzy of Tyler Durden married to the enigmatic, occasionally baffling Joe Black in a single persona. By virtue of his fierce intelligence and the legends that have sprouted up around him, Pitt's James has clearly grown used to being the center of attention and the smartest man in the room. So accustomed is he to manipulating and controlling all those around him, these ploys have become a kind of second nature, until, by his own admission, he can hardly recognize himself or know his true feelings.

We encounter James as he and his brother Frank are pulling their last job together, robbing a train with the aid of a newly-assembled gang. (Their initial band of outlaws are all deceased or in prison). The robbery is unsatisfying; they don't collect all that they hoped for, and Jesse kills a man in anger and frustration. The brothers part ways, and Jesse returns to his family, entering a long, tortured descent into paranoid madness.

It's this Jesse to whom Robert Ford (Casey Affleck) attaches himself. Awed by the man's celebrity and impressed by his devil-may-care attitude, Ford at first wants only to ingratiate himself into James' circle, to impress his idol like a boy performing for his father. But as the film progresses, Ford makes some disappointing discoveries - mainly that James is just a man, and a cruel one at that. Dominik, unlike almost any of his directorial peers, demonstrates a great deal of interest in actual performances. He gives his actors space, stretching scenes on for far longer than a typical film, even a period drama, would typically allow. We don't hear about Ford losing his faith in the legendary Jesse James; we see it play out in real time, watching the events of 1881 wear down James' resolve and disabuse Ford of his childhood gunslinging fantasies.

The temptation to overplay James' mounting dread must have been significant, but Pitt shrewdly keeps it all bottled up inside, masking his outbursts and temper tantrums as playful humor or theatrics. Hence the Tyler Durden comparisons. Just as Durden knows he's really the same guy as the Narrator, but allows his alter-ego the time to figure this out, James constantly knows more than he lets on and turns each conversation into a challenge. Right up until the moment of his death (hey, it's not a spoiler if it's in the title!), James is trying to play those around him, to show them one thing while secretly plotting another outcome entirely.

The result is one of the most intense, white-knuckle 3 hour movies imaginable. Assassination of Jesse James takes its time developing, but once it has established the key relationships, the film enters a kind of desperate end game. Dominik (who also wrote the screenplay) composes this verbal gamesmanship expertly. The dialogue is reminiscent of some of Patrice Leconte's films (particularly Ridicule), with each statement secretly betraying a hidden reality behind (or, more accurately, above) the surface.

Even the slower, more elegiac sequences are riveting due to Roger Deakins' gorgeous cinematography. Still photography is a frequent motif in the film; much of the denouement concerns the still photos of James' corpse peddled in dime stores in the years after the film's events. Deakins works this into the visual structure of the film brilliantly, sometimes patterning the style to resemble images shot with an old-fashioned pinhole camera and other times allowing an eerie, photo-like stillness to settle into real life.

At one point, James lays a barricade for an oncoming train and rather dubiously stands atop the structure, willing the train to stop with his bare hands. Shot from behind by Deakins, with the train's lights catching the locomotive steam and surrounding the silhouette of Pitt in the center, we see James as Ford must have: serene, regal, larger than life, almost superpowered. No real man could live up to this kind of glamorized imagery and mythmaking, and James was a very real man.

There's an odd nostalgia in Dominik's film, but it's always unclear for what he's actually nostalgic. His film seems to argue that reality is always subordinate to a well-told yarn, that the tragedy of Robert Ford's life was finally doing something noteworthy and attaining fame only to be haunted by the path that brought him there. Yet the film seems to yearn for a time when mysterious, shadowy, highly fictionalized legends could still walk among us. (Having Nick Cave write the music for the film, and perform a song himself near the conclusion, highlights this theme beautifully. He writes old-fashioned songs about folk tales and grim fantasies, stories about a lost time in America's past that never really existed but which tells us about ourselves all the same).

In the era of YouTube, it takes very little to become well-known, and celebrity can last a few weeks before dissipating. Thousands of people today are as famous as Jesse James once was, so in a way, no one could possibly be that famous ever again. Perhaps this is the real lament at the core of The Assassination of Jesse James - real or not, this sort of shared cultural moment can't be replicated in the era of television and cyberspace. The world's too small and everything's watched too closely. This may be the singular film of 2007. See it in a theater.

Eastern Promises

David Cronenberg's transition from sci-fi and horror films to crime thrillers was both sudden and seamless. With the raw, unforgiving Eastern Promises, the splatterhouse god behind The Fly and Scanners has now entered Scorsese territory with an assured confidence. This isn't as complex a film as Cronenberg's last outing, A History of Violence, which disappointed some audiences by being a more cerebral than visceral take on the nature of bloodletting. Eastern Promises is more of a showcase for actor Viggo Mortensen, who handled the sudden transitions in Violence well but gives the performance of his career this time around as the mysterious gangland enforcer Nikolai Luzhin.

In fact, if I could identify the lone flaw of Eastern Promises, it's that by far the most compelling character isn't actually the protagonist. The rather straight-forward A story follows London midwife Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts), whose discovery of a dead mother's diary leads her into the hazardous world of the Russian Mafia (the Vory V Zakone). We get a bit of background on Anna, an explanation for why she's so motivated to find a family for her deceased patient's baby, but there really isn't much to her character, and Watts spends most of the film looking worried and forlorn while more interesting personalities pivot around her. It would be as if Goodfellas focused on Morrie the wig salesman or The Godfather spent all its time with Kay's family.



It's doubtful that any performance or subplot, no matter how intriguing, could have stood alongside Mortensen's here. Nikolai Luzhin is really an ideal film character in that he's a mass of contradictions. He's charismatic, and even friendly, but also a cold-blooded murderer. He's handsome, but covered in fearsome prison tattoos. He's interesting and worldly, but he spends his time babysitting the spoiled, psychotic son (Vincent Cassel) of a cruel and manipulative mob boss (Armin Mueller-Stahl, in the film's other great performance).

What's so amazing about Mortensen in the part is his control. He's doing a big, over-the-top character with a realistic Russian accent, but continually resists the temptation to take over a scene or overstate his presence. He really does very little for the first half hour of the movie, but you're constantly aware of his presence in the scene. He takes up all the oxygen without saying a word. And when Cronenberg finally breaks the tension, in a brutal knife fight no less, it's one of the most audacious and essential sequences in his entire catalog. (I'm a huge fan of Cronenberg's, too, so I don't say that lightly). Film students are going to study this virtuoso scene for decades; it's remarkable.

Like Scorsese's presentation of Daniel Day-Lewis' Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York, there is a sense that Eastern Promises exists largely to provide a platform for this one character and a singular director's vision. Little else in Steven Knight's script really stands out from any other garden-variety mob movies. There are a few scenes with Anna, her mother (Sinéad Cusack) and her feisty Russian uncle (Jerzy Skolimowski) that recall History of Violence in their treatment of normal people caught in a grim, violent situation wholly outside of their experience. And as I indicated, Mueller-Stahl does typically great work as the heartless criminal Semyon, who'd sell out just about anyone and anything to protect the family business. (Cronenberg's attention to atmosphere and cultural details, such as setting the bulk of the film's action in a Russian restaurant and filling the soundtrack with Russian songs and dialogue, similarly recalls Scorsese).

Eastern Promises works because that performance and that director are of such a high caliber. Clearly, Cronenberg has seen something in Viggo Mortensen that few other directors have managed to tap, and their collaborations have both been daring and thoughtful in equal measure. The film is worth seeing, really, for that knife fight alone. Everything else is just gravy.

I Don't Know? I Never Thought About It?

How can anyone say they "don't know" if the Earth is flat on television? If you're stupid enough to believe that, keep that shit to yourself. Grounds for permanent dismissal from television right there. Our young people have a hard enough time learning in the American educational system without subjecting them to Sherri Shepherd's idiocy.

"The most important thing is that I am a Christian"

That's John McCain today, unable to decide if he is an Episcopalian or a Baptist. But at least he's not one a dem mud peoples whut don' even believe in our Lord Jeebus.

Seriously, religion in modern America is getting so fucked up and tribal, it's making Biblical Rome feel like a bastion of rationality and tolerance.

The comment came after a weekend during which McCain corrected an Associated Press reporter who asked him how his Episcopalian faith plays a role in his campaign and his life. While it's well-known that McCain and his family for years have attended the North Phoenix Baptist Church in his home state of Arizona, the senator had consistently referred to himself in media reports as Episcopalian.

"It plays a role in my life. By the way, I'm not Episcopalian. I'm Baptist," McCain said Saturday. "Do I advertise my faith? Do I talk about it all the time? No."

Wait, now I'm confused. So, it's extremely important that everyone know he's a Christian, but it's not important for him to talk about his faith all the time? Seems contradictory. That statement doesn't hold together unless...he just thinks being a Christian ought to be a pre-requisite to be President. Like, "Okay, I'm qualified to be President...because I'm in the secret Jesus club. But I don't like to be painted with that brush..."

Which is kind of totally un-Constitutional.

In a June interview with McClatchy Newspapers, the senator said his wife and two of their children have been baptized in the Arizona Baptist church, but he had not. "I didn't find it necessary to do so for my spiritual needs," he said.

So he's just a faker. Someone who really believes in a religion, any religion, actually takes it's core principle and namesake seriously. It's, like, the crucial component of your personal instructions on how to live from God, not a checklist of suggestions from the D.W.P.

- Okay, not coveting my neighbor's ass, gotta remember that one.

- Good, good, turning the other cheek, I'll go with it...

- Wait, I have to get water spilled over my head? In public? Nah, fuck that one.

You don't get to pick which rites and covenants you fancy and which don't work for your spiritual needs at this time. But you certainly don't get to ignore the single most important symbolic act of your entire faith, you fucking douchebag. How can you be an unbaptized Baptist? That's just declaring openly that you're full of shit.

"Well, yes, I am a lifetime member of the KKK, but I love black people. I just like the hats. And it's good for networking. If you need some moonshine, I've got a great moonshine guy."

Is This Thing On?

NewsBusted, the hi-larious stand-up conservo-comedy podcast, actually made me physically cringe. Now, I know rhetorically, the notion of "cringe-inducing" material is thrown around a lot, but I'm telling you, I shuddered in fear at the mathematically-impossible depths to which this doofus in an ill-fitting suit sinks attempting to squeeze a laugh out of hardcore right-wing nutballery.



Conan O'Brien's mongoloid, malnourished cousin, Mark Ellis, doesn't get a single line off that's not excruciatingly hacktastic. It would have been less painful to just give him an anaesthesia-free root canal on YouTube than encourage him to do his best five minutes on clueless libruls. He clearly learned all he knows about comedy by watching, and then rewatching, all six weeks' worth of Chevy Chase Shows. But how are you going to recreate that phenomenon? Like lightning in a bottle, that Chevy Chase charisma...

Half of Ellis' statements don't even come off as jokes. More like "desperate cries for help." When he blatantly calls Sean Penn a traitor...that's I think when the clips shifts from irritating to pathetic.

And is that canned laughter? It looked like he had a studio audience in the beginning, but the laughs themselves sound really tinny and fake. Plus, there's no way actual humans were laughing at jokes about Michael Moore enjoying ice cream and Barack Obama liking Starbucks. You could give Robin Quivers 8 massive bong rips and she still wouldn't laugh at a joke about Michael Moore's weight problem. It's played...Sooooooo plaaaaaaaayed...

A while back, I discussed Jay Leno's preferred joke-writing technique, which is extremely simple:

(1) Pick a popular news story
(2) Pick a famous person who is not directly or obviously connected with the popular news story
(3) Connect the two

Ellis won't even put in this amount of effort. He's simplified the Leno style into an even more basic, and even less funny (which I wasn't even sure was possible) 2-step formula:

(1) Pick a stupid librul
(2) Insult them

Here's some free advice for anyone attempting to write sharp political humor. If you're writing a joke about how Bill Clinton loves pussy and it's no longer 1997, you suck ass. Thank me later.

[Hat Tip, Mr. Willis]

Suck it, Jesus!

So, I started another blog over at WordPress along with a friend (though she's yet to post anything over there.) Socialite Dog Party will deal mostly with celebrity gossip that I'm too embarrassed to discuss over here on my main blog. With all the news dives I'm doing at work, I end up hearing about almost all the big juicy gossipy stories anyway. Or at least, all the "accidental" vagina shots, which now compose 85% of all celebrity gossip, according to statistics I have just invented.

Anyway, WordPress blogs have that little "tagline" under the title. The default says "Another WordPress Blog", and I changed it to read "Suck it, Jesus," a play on Kathy Griffin's censored Emmy speech from earlier this week. See, because both of the site's bloggers are Jews and because a celebrity just said that, it's a perfect description of our blog! Unfortunately, WordPress seems to have no sense of humor, and keeps reverting to the generic tagline.

I've tried a non-blasphemous one, so if it's a mechanical/caching error, we'll find out soon enough. But if WordPress is trying to actually prevent me from titling my blog in some kind of anti-Christ fashion...well, that would be a big strike against them, blog platform-wise. (The second strike of the day, actually. I also discovered this morning that they don't have the capacity to embed MySpace TV videos. Which is just really silly...)

Spaced Invaders

Awesome!



[Tip of my hat to the guys (and now, gals!) at Sadly, No! for the link]

Quarantine: Day Four

DeathCold 2007 just keeps on rolling here in my apartment. In addition to my myriad other ailments and complaints, I've actually developed a sore neck from sleeping so much lo these past 96 hours. Heading out to the doctor at 3, so hopefully he'll have some helpful advice that doesn't include the old "drink plenty of fluids" line. I've imbibed a ton of fluids, usually orange juice, during every cold I've ever had in my entire life, and I'm not convinced it has ever done me any good at all. Not once have I chugged a liter of Tropicana and bounded out of bed eagerly greeting a new, no-longer-infected day. Usually, the citric acid burns the back of my throat, I get pulp mixed in my post-nasal drip for the rest of the day and that's about it.

I'm even running out of non-online reading material. I finished Bret Easton Ellis' "Lunar Park" yesterday and may have to swing by the bookstore on the way home from the doctor for my next selection. Four hours of essentially solitary confinement has made me fairly desperate for entertainment. I actually watched about 2 hours of the Emmy Awards last night before I couldn't take any more, so you know it's getting ugly around here.

A few questions about the Emmys last night for anyone else who watched:

- Has Robert Duvall lost his marbles? I'm not trying to be mean. The guy's a brilliant actor; I'm a fan, even though he makes approximately 22 bad films for every good one. But he made two really weird, rambling speeches last night that almost made me question his sanity. In the first speech, he went on and on about Westerns being the great American genre right before waxing nostalgic about filming his most recent Western, the three Emmy-winning Broken Trail, in Alberta, Canada. The second "speech" made even less sense, and wasn't really even for him, but was intended for the film's producers. Just strange.

- The little mini-films introducing the writing staffs for the nominated variety/comedy shows was the highlight of the entire broadcast. That seems kind of sub-optimal for the Emmy Award producers, seeing as it's, comparatively, kind of a minor award.



- I get that Frankie Valli is from Jersey, and The Sopranos are from Jersey, and Valli's even made a few appearances on the show, but what the hell was up with that "tribute" featuring the guys from "Jersey Boys"? I mean, a montage of "Goodfellas" with the Four Seasons in the background, okay, that I get. (He even gets name-checked in that film. "Who the hell do you think you are? Frankie Valli or some kind of big shot?") But Sopranos is set in the present day and the music is largely contemporary. They should have booked Journey.

- I'm no fan of the Fox network, but in the interest of fairness, can we agree that they probably censored Sally Field for saying the word "goddamn" and not because she was talking about Iraq? Sally Field always irritates me at award shows (and, more generally, in life). She's won a ton of these things at this point, it should be totally old hat to her, but she still has to do that lame, over-excited, spazzy, "Oh I didn't expect this!" act every single time. Compare her faux-jittery, discombobulated style to the composed grace and impeccable wit of Helen Mirren's speech. It's just embarrassing.

But watch the video for yourself...They let her rant (meaninglessly) about Iraq for a few moments, even getting in that hacky old line about "if moms ran the world, there'd be no war, blah blah blah..." They only cut her off when she started swearing.



It's a separate matter whether or not you should be allowed to blaspheme on television. I think you should. You're allowed to say racial and sexist slurs on television ("30 Rock" laced one hilarious episode this past season with epithets ranging from "queerburger" to "faggotron"), so why not "suck it, Jesus" or "goddamn"? But still, those are the rules and it seems to me, in this case, they were applied as fairly as possible. With so much to be genuinely outraged about these days, including AT&T's genuine censoring of Pearl Jam's anti-war sentiments, this is a distraction.

- What was up with that Tony Bennett/Christina Aguilera thing? They sang for about 4 minutes, the dancers in front of them were distracting and not particularly impressive, and he looked like he barely knew what was going on. Plus, she's very pregnant. What's she doing climbing on top of a piano?

- The thing about Lewis Black's whole persona and style of comedy is that the jokes themselves have to be really funny. If he's working with sub-par material, as he was last night, the whole yelling-ranting-psycho schtick just gets kind of desperate and irritating.

- Was it me or did Ryan Seacrest actually do an okay job? Not that I laughed at any of his jokes, but hiring Sanjaya Malakar's foil to host a big awards show seemed like a basic error in judgment to me. But he kind of pulled it off, kind of. Only improvement would have been to have Randy and Simon at the foot of the stage critiquing his performance mid-broadcast.

- "Hell's Kitchen" wasn't even nominated for Best Reality Competition Show. WTF?

- Was happy to see "30 Rock" win. It really is the best comedy on television right now.

This concludes the Pathetic Sick Bastard's Frustrated Guide to Watching the Emmys Because He's Too Nasally Congested to Sleep.

Prostitutes Don't Stick to David Vitter

Today is the third day in a row I've quarantined myself in my bedroom. I'm suffering from some odd illness - it's not quite a head cold, it's not quite the flu, I'm not sure what it is. (Believing myself no longer contagious, I did join my father and brother for a birthday celebration last night at Ye Olde King's Head in Santa Monica. Then I came home and collapsed.) All I know about my illness is that it sucks and I feel worn out all the time, even just after I wake up from 12 hours of fitful rest.

The last time I felt this way, I went to the doctor and he told me I had something called Pharyngitis, which is a fancy medical term for a sore throat. Since I'm fairly certain I had told him that I was suffering from a sore throat at the beginning of the appointment, this turned out to be a largely wasted afternoon, though I did get some nice antibiotics out of it that I wish I had held on to.

It would seem to be a perfect time to get some writing/blogging done, what with my total inability to go anywhere and do anything. I've got a script that definitely needs some attention. Unfortunately, my brain can't seem to focus in on anything - I have mental in addition to sinus congestion. What the hell? So, instead of just being locked in my room alone, I'm locked in my room alone with the most boring version of myself possible. And, let me tell you, that's pretty goddamn boring.

Yesterday, I actually watched Armed and Dangerous...that's how bad it has gotten. I've sunk that low in 3 days. Hopefully, my white blood cells can turn this thing around in the next 24 hours or so, or I'm doomed.

One thing I did want to talk about was this article about disgraced Senator David Vitter from the other day. It's just about how the specific claims made by a New Orleans prostitute don't seem to bode well for his political future.

On Tuesday, Wendy Ellis, a former New Orleans prostitute, presented her case at a Beverly Hills, Calif., news conference arranged by Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt. She said Vitter was one of her clients in 1999, the year he won a seat in the U.S. House.

Vitter has denied those claims, but Flynt said Ellis recently passed a lie detector test that confirms her side of the story. Ellis was previously identified as Wendy Cortez, the name she used as a prostitute.

Nothing too shocking there. The guy liked whores and didn't feel that this should keep him from running a Family Values-themed campaign. Some people are actually still surprised by revelations like this:

"The conservative anti-gay crusader liked to hook up in bathrooms with men!"

"The Family Values candidate spent money visiting whores!"

"Newt Gingrich, immediately after divorcing his cancer-stricken, hospital-bound wife on whom he'd been cheating, ate an entire side of beef and had enough room left over for a triple-serving of Boston Cream Pie!"

You just have to remember that these individuals don't think any of the rules apply to them. None. So, when they advocate any principle, from bans on gay marriage to commemorating July 12 as National Ovaltine Awareness Day, they're just advocating it for you. You should be aware of Ovaltine. You shouldn't be allowed to be gay. They're already in the Senate, so what they do is their own business.

This sense of entitlement really does explain a whole lot. It's why Republicans get so upset when liberal bloggers call them "chickenhawks." They're not avoiding sending their kids to Iraq (or going themselves) just because it's dangerous. They're avoiding it because serving America is not what Senators and Congresspersons do. They leave that to the commoners. Their job is to sit around and decide how the rest of us should act. Duh.

I mean, just take a look at this comment at the end of the Vitter article, from Louisiana talk radio host Lee Fletcher:

"The consensus even among the folks behind the scenes is that it's not going anywhere. It's been tried and it didn't stick," Fletcher said about the allegations. "What's really helped Vitter, the people going after him are a pornographer and a prostitute. And therefore they have less credibility than anybody I can think of."

See, because David Vitter is a Senator, his word automatically overrules that of a common prostitute, even though he's being accused of, you know, having sex with prostitutes. "Find a witness to David Vitter's covert use of prostitutes who has no connection with prostitution," that's Lee Fletcher's legal motto. If that kind of stupidity doesn't tip you off that these people just consider themselves better than you, and therefore above your petty American laws, I don't know what will.

Rewriting Your Dream-Banner

Man, this is totally brilliant...



Missed it on TV. Glad Comedy Central finally wised up and started streaming this stuff online.

[Hat tip: Sullivan]

Your Women...How Much for the Women?

Check out this hilarious, likely-to-be-a-hoax website Marry Our Daughter It allows prospective grooms, provided they are good Christians, to bid on teenage brides!


The late Founder and CEO of MarryOurDaughter.com

Kyra's 14 and a half. She's a real bargain at $27,995:

Kyra likes the outdoors, more the open air of the beach or the desert than the woods. She would love to live somewhere away from it all. She is bright and funny and full of life and while she has little direct experience with the opposite sex we have made sure she is aware of everything she needs to know to be a good wife and mother.

See? It's almost creepy enough to be real.

But, alas, it's not. How do I know? Well, first off, the folks at Snopes, who are always on top of such things, have pretty much declared the thing fake.

There's very little actual information on the site, save for a FAQ:

Q: WHAT IS A BRIDE PRICE?
A: The bride price is an ancient custom, somewhat like a dowry. A man wishing to marry a woman would offer her family a Bride Price in cash or kind, or sometimes offer to work for their family.

Q:WHAT IF NO ONE ACCEPTS MY PROPOSAL?
A: In that case, you might want to closely examine how you are proposing and how carefully you are matching your likes and dislikes, your goals and dreams, to those of your prospective bride.

Also, lines like this kind of give it away:

Please do not propose to multiple Daughters or you risk having all your proposals disqualified.

Plus, the "testimonials" are just too perfect:

"Thank God for your site! Our daughter was really nervous walking down the aisle, but she seems okay now and the money we got let us keep our farm and even add on a few acres."

—Mrs. Addrien L.

[Hat tip: Tristero at Digby's blog]

Dinosaur Jr at the Wiltern

Just got home from the Dinosaur Jr. show tonight at the Wiltern. Unbelievable show. Really incredible. Their new album from earlier this year, "Beyond," was impressive considering how long it has been since these guys played together, but the show tonight still blew me away. Seriously, you'd think this band hadn't taken a break since the glory days - they're still incredibly tight.

The opening act was Band of Horses, a well-regarded indie outfit best known for the single, "Funeral," a really solid song.



Unfortunately, the band's just intensely dull live. They didn't seem very into their own music. Very distant, even during the up-tempo songs and solos. At one point, I remarked to my friend Dave that they sounded like a not-at-all-fired-up My Morning Jacket, and the guy in front of my turned around and agreed. I think that's all that needs be said on the matter.

But Dinosaur Jr. was just non-stop, in-your-face intensity from minute one. They played a bunch of cool songs from "Beyond" as well as some of the old-school classics, and everything souned great - blazingly-loud noise-rock at its best, and the guys were clearly taking joy in performing. When the band's having a good time, it's just infectious.

I was actually a fan of Lou Barlow before I got into Dinosaur Jr. (I got very into Sebadoh my freshman year at college), so it was great to see him play some of his own songs, but the real treat was J. Mascis on guitar. His voice has completely held up, don't get me wrong. I guess it helps that his singing was almost more quirky and idiosyncratic than pretty, even on the classic albums. But the guy just fucking shreds.

Did I mention this concert was incredibly loud? My ears are still ringing. Seriously. But it was all worth it. Here's just a sample of the great Dino Jr. songs I heard tonight:

3:10 to Yuma

An Elmore Leonard short story provides the basis for both Delmer Daves' 1957 version of 3:10 to Yuma and James Mangold's new remake. The author, better known for crime comedies like Get Shorty and Jackie Brown, is a master with plot, and the set-up for 3:10 brings a variety of colorful characters together in an intense situation so smoothly, you don't even realize you're watching a complicated story coalesce.

Down on his luck rancher Dan Evans (Christian Bale) desperately needs money to save the family business. (As the film opens, Dan's banker has sent a few employees to set fire to his barn.) When an unscrupulous railroad official (Dallas Roberts) offers Dan $200 to escort the infamous murderer Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) to Yuma, where he'll be arrested and sentenced to hang, Dan has no choice but to accept, despite his concerned wife's (Gretchen Mol) protests.

In Daves' original, the tension between these two men drives the entire film. (The entire second half of the 1957 version, in fact, takes place in a Yuma hotel room, as Evans and Wade converse while awaiting the titular train.) Mangold sets his sights on larger themes about redemption and sacrifice, and clearly sees this story as an excuse to work in as many classic Western scenes, conventions and set-ups as humanly possible. For the most part, it works...until it doesn't.



I think my largest problem with Mangold as a filmmaker is that he doesn't seem to respect his audience. His "thriller," Identity, contains arguably the lamest twist ending in recent film history. His last film, Walk the Line, while well-made, includes some truly groan-worthy dialogue, as when Reese Witherspoon chirps "you cain't walk no line!" to our hero, in a ludicrously obvious echo of the film's title/theme.

Here, too, the script by Halsted Welles, Michael Brandt and Derek Haas occasionally gets silly, as when Ben Wade repeatedly tries to charm women by asking if they have green eyes. But that's not the film's largest problem by a longshot. I'll try my best to avoid spoilers, but it must be said that the last 15 minutes of 3:10 to Yuma are intensely silly, even ridiculous. It's as if Mangold thought that 100 minutes or so of really watchable, entertaining Western action would put everyone in such a positive, upbeat state of mind, they'd overlook the fact that his conclusion makes no sense - he tries to fall back on our goodwill towards his movie. This is not a strong bet.

Now, if it were just a plot twist or two that seems far-fetched, that I could deal with. That wouldn't ruin an otherwise solid movie (and Yuma really is a solid, well-done genre film for that first 100 minutes). But the conclusion of the film seems to cancel out all that has come before. A character makes a transformation that feels terrifically out of touch with all that has been established about his character; not only are his choices not foreshadowed by the screenplay, they are not set-up in any way. A man suddenly decides to change everything about himself and his life, for no real reason, and nothing we have seen about him before indicates that he'd be likely to do such a thing.

The film seems to say that anyone can be redeemed, that our present actions say more about who we are than our mistakes in the past. But Mangold fails to show us anyone actually redeeming himself or herself, save for the one character who was pretty much good from the beginning. Everyone else's redemption just sort of arrives, on cue, out of nowhere like a gift from Screenplay Heaven.

The pat, on the nose conclusion is particularly disappointing because Mangold, his writers and cinematographer Phedon Papamichael (who also shot Walk the Line) get so much right. The action scenes in particular far exceed any recent Western. (I honestly can't think of a single contemporary Western to build to a shootout as intense, gritty and stylish as 3:10's climax.) The film feels natural and authentic, not glossy and overly-polished like so many Hollywood period films. And it's amazingly permitted to be violent, and to show the consequences of its violence. Some scenes in 3:10 are surprisingly brutal, not because I'm shocked to see such gore depicted in what was once thought of as a family genre, but because the violence in such films tends to be fraudulent, delighting in the kinetics of a gun battle without wanting to linger on the aftermath, with its resultant blood and dead people.

Performance-wise, Christian Bale's kind of saddled with the non-arcing, predictable straight-arrow ranch-hand part, flatly played by Van Heflin in the original. He's good but it's a pretty staid, reserved turn. Western vet Russell Crowe (you'll recall, he was Cort in The Quick and the Dead) has the showier role as the steely, unflappable criminal Ben Wade, and makes the most out of every scene. The last time we got an appearance from this Russell Crowe, rather than his phone-lobbing, overacting, Oscar-grubbing doppelganger, was 2003's Master and Commander. Before that, 1999's The Insider. Once every few years, Crowe just finds the right role and absolutely kills it, and he's so good in 3:10 to Yuma, I'm willing to overlook Cinderella Man.

The supporting cast is likewise above reproach. Ben Foster, whom I recall most clearly as Claire's squirrely, bisexual art school boyfriend on "Six Feet Under," goes big and theatrical as Wade's psychopathic right-hand man Charlie Prince, and it somehow works. (His performance reminded me of Michael Biehn's in Tombstone, but in a good way.) Peter Fonda gives terrific "old coot" as a Pinkerton detective trailing Wade. And "Firefly" veteran Alan Tudyk injects some much-needed levity in a minor role as the Bisbee, Arizona town doctor.

I was really really with this movie for a while, which made the peculiar conclusion all the more unsatisfying. After the jumbled third act of Copland, the sub-sub-sub Shyamalan idiocy of Identity and now the highly questionable turnabouts in the last moments of 3:10, this is clearly something Mangold needs to work on. Endings matter.