What a year it has been! 21 madcap hours, that's for damn certain.
I started 2005 at a house party in Campbell, California, a Silicon Valley suburb that so closely resembles the Irvine neighborhood where I spent my formative years, I kept expecting to bump into people I knew. Of course, I didn't. I didn't bump into people I knew in Irvine when I lived there. It's Southern California - no one actually walks the streets, for fear of getting contaminated brown "air" into their lungs.
Soon after midnight, we left Campbell to make the trek back to Santa Cruz. Here, I should pause to explain that the road from Campbell to Santa Cruz, the 17 Freeway, is a treacherous mountain pass that at one time held the proud title of "Nation's Deadliest Stretch of Road." My good friend Aaron had an accident on the freeway recently. And we attempted to navigate it just after midnight, on New Year's Eve, in a rainstorm. It was a great plan, one that I fully supported, if sitting in fearful stillness gripping the armrest like it contained $10 million in gold dubloons constitutes full support.
So, we eventually made our way to another house party, this one in Santa Cruz, only a short drive from my friend's condo. It was a good time, certainly a drunk time, though it was oddly reminiscent of the UCLA parties I attended back in my collegiate days. There was an eerie sense of deja vu, as if I was experiencing my college days all over again through the eyes of this new kids, who were perfectly inviting of me and my older friends. Don't get me wrong. They all seemed pretty cool to me, actually (an done of them totally reminded me of my high school friend Ariel, to an uncanny degree), like the kind of people I might have enjoyed hanging out with when I was in college. But I'm not in college any more, and this experience really drove that point home. All of the sudden, I had this new identity - old guy with no date at the college party.
Which really beats my old identity - random UCLA loser with no date at the college party.
So, anyway, just wanted to report that I rang in the New Year in style. What did you lame-o's do with yourselves? Something lame, I bet.
No, no, I'm just kidding. I'll be back home in Culver City, the city so nice they named it generically, tomorrow, so I'll get back to writing about interesting things, and not just the silly crap I've been doing with myself. Until then, I remain...
Saturday, January 01, 2005
Friday, December 31, 2004
Greetings from Santa Cruz
Just hanging out this afternoon with friends here on California's beautiful Central Coast, where it has been raining just about non-stop since I arrived. What a terrific vacation. And then I get to go home to Los Angeles on Monday and start my new video store job. 2005, here I come!
I'm just being curmudgeonly because my three more musically-inclined friends have been downstairs attempting to play "I Am The Walrus" on a set of acoustic guitars for about the past hour, and I'm getting a bit tired of hearing Aaron screech the part about custard dripping from a dead dog's eye over and over again. But the feeling will pass. Tonight, we're headed to the San Francisco area for a bit of New Year's celebrating and whatnot, but there really isn't anything more exciting than that to report, I'm afraid.
Oh, yeah, there was one more thing to talk about. I got a very intriguing comment on my previous "bestiality" post from the same guy who informed me that the word is spelled "bestiality" as opposed to "beastiality." He goes by mynym, in case you're interested.
Anyway, in response to my declaration of opposition to sex with animals on the basis of consent, here's what mynym had to say:
Consent cannot be the real reason that you want to keep that sexual taboo, given what is done to animals without their consent. I.e., hunting, butchering, etc.
It's certainly a unique argument...If you extend it far enough, it states that carniverous people by definition have no rational basis for opposing animal cruelty. You approve of killing animals for food, therefore you approve of doing anything you please to an animal.
The idea of animals consenting to something like "hunting" is also amusing to me. Kind of defeats the purpose of hunting, if you're going to have to ask for permission from your prey. Like, "Well, Mr. Deer, I'd really like to shoot you this afternoon. If I could just get you to sign this consent form...Oh, you have no opposable thumbs. And you don't speak English. Well, how about you just make a mark with your antlers?"
He also implies that I hold certain moral values merely because they are commonly acceptable, and that he's insightful whereas I am closed-minded, which is always appreciated. That's the fun of having a blog, really. Not getting any comments in response to your constant posting, except for the occasional philosopher who swings by to inform you that you're ill-informed.
Unfortunately, mynym's main argument, though appealing in its casual dismissal of commonly-held moral conceits, makes little sense. I'm okay with raising and slaughtering cows to provide hungry people with a meal, sure. Would I be in favor of slowly torturing this cow for several hours until it finally died from pain and fatigue? Of course not.
There is a big difference between finding the consumption of animal flesh acceptable and finding the torture of animals acceptable, and having sex with an animal against its will would certainly classify as torture. Or, at the very least, we consider it torture if you do it to a human being.
Certainly, mynym is aware of this, which just leads me to wonder if he is playing Devil's Advocate. I mean, I like beef and pork and chicken a lot, but that doesn't mean I think it's okay to cruelly gratify one's sexual urges on a helpless living creature.
So, that's something (albeit something unpleasant) to think about this lazy afternoon while I wait to ring in the New Year. It beats listening to my guitar-happy companions, who have now switched over to "Come Together."
I'm just being curmudgeonly because my three more musically-inclined friends have been downstairs attempting to play "I Am The Walrus" on a set of acoustic guitars for about the past hour, and I'm getting a bit tired of hearing Aaron screech the part about custard dripping from a dead dog's eye over and over again. But the feeling will pass. Tonight, we're headed to the San Francisco area for a bit of New Year's celebrating and whatnot, but there really isn't anything more exciting than that to report, I'm afraid.
Oh, yeah, there was one more thing to talk about. I got a very intriguing comment on my previous "bestiality" post from the same guy who informed me that the word is spelled "bestiality" as opposed to "beastiality." He goes by mynym, in case you're interested.
Anyway, in response to my declaration of opposition to sex with animals on the basis of consent, here's what mynym had to say:
Consent cannot be the real reason that you want to keep that sexual taboo, given what is done to animals without their consent. I.e., hunting, butchering, etc.
It's certainly a unique argument...If you extend it far enough, it states that carniverous people by definition have no rational basis for opposing animal cruelty. You approve of killing animals for food, therefore you approve of doing anything you please to an animal.
The idea of animals consenting to something like "hunting" is also amusing to me. Kind of defeats the purpose of hunting, if you're going to have to ask for permission from your prey. Like, "Well, Mr. Deer, I'd really like to shoot you this afternoon. If I could just get you to sign this consent form...Oh, you have no opposable thumbs. And you don't speak English. Well, how about you just make a mark with your antlers?"
He also implies that I hold certain moral values merely because they are commonly acceptable, and that he's insightful whereas I am closed-minded, which is always appreciated. That's the fun of having a blog, really. Not getting any comments in response to your constant posting, except for the occasional philosopher who swings by to inform you that you're ill-informed.
Unfortunately, mynym's main argument, though appealing in its casual dismissal of commonly-held moral conceits, makes little sense. I'm okay with raising and slaughtering cows to provide hungry people with a meal, sure. Would I be in favor of slowly torturing this cow for several hours until it finally died from pain and fatigue? Of course not.
There is a big difference between finding the consumption of animal flesh acceptable and finding the torture of animals acceptable, and having sex with an animal against its will would certainly classify as torture. Or, at the very least, we consider it torture if you do it to a human being.
Certainly, mynym is aware of this, which just leads me to wonder if he is playing Devil's Advocate. I mean, I like beef and pork and chicken a lot, but that doesn't mean I think it's okay to cruelly gratify one's sexual urges on a helpless living creature.
So, that's something (albeit something unpleasant) to think about this lazy afternoon while I wait to ring in the New Year. It beats listening to my guitar-happy companions, who have now switched over to "Come Together."
Thursday, December 30, 2004
Behind Those Lizard Glasses Lie The Cold Dead Eyes of a Killing Machine
You guys all know Greg Raymer, 2004 World Series of Poker Champion? 300 pound collector of fossils and wearer of silly dinosaur eyeglasses who won $5 million on ESPN this year in Texas Hold 'Em? It seems two guys tried to hold him up at the Bellagio Casino this week following a cash game, only to find that he's a troublemaking resistor.
Check out this quote from the man...He has the heart of a champion...
On a poker message board, Raymer recently wrote: "I don't write this to brag, I just want any robbery-minded people out there who hear about this to know that I'm a tough mark, and they won't get that much off me even if they succeed."
For a burly, middle-aged guys, he sure can talk tough. Did he really say "I'm a tough mark"? What, did he eat Charles Bronson?
No, I kid Greg Raymer! Actually, I guess this kind of makes him a hero both on and off the green felt of the poker table. He's the kind of sports champion all of America can get behind. Literally.
No, no, that's another joke! What I wanted to point out was that the Yahoo story concludes one of the men who held up Raymer was another competitor in his cash poker game at the Bellagio that night. Which just goes to show you how little the game of poker has progressed since Prospector Times. They're still waiting to shoot you in the back for your Ace's and Eight's.
Check out this quote from the man...He has the heart of a champion...
On a poker message board, Raymer recently wrote: "I don't write this to brag, I just want any robbery-minded people out there who hear about this to know that I'm a tough mark, and they won't get that much off me even if they succeed."
For a burly, middle-aged guys, he sure can talk tough. Did he really say "I'm a tough mark"? What, did he eat Charles Bronson?
No, I kid Greg Raymer! Actually, I guess this kind of makes him a hero both on and off the green felt of the poker table. He's the kind of sports champion all of America can get behind. Literally.
No, no, that's another joke! What I wanted to point out was that the Yahoo story concludes one of the men who held up Raymer was another competitor in his cash poker game at the Bellagio that night. Which just goes to show you how little the game of poker has progressed since Prospector Times. They're still waiting to shoot you in the back for your Ace's and Eight's.
Well, that's enough blogging for now. See you all in a few days!
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Paranoid About Androids
I just wrote an e-mail to a friend of mine at Universal about robots, and made a strange observation. The idea of robots attacking large cities has recently become something of a common theme in pop culture, just over the last few years. Consider these examples:
- I, Robot, in which Will Smith saves us all from evil artificial intelligence on the rampage
- Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, in which an evil German scientist sets a team of oversized robots against all of the world's major population centers
- The Incredibles, in which a diabolical villain creates a robot capable of leveling a city, so that he can then save the world from it and become a hero
- The Flaming Lips' album "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots," which tells the story of a brave Japanese girl who saves Tokyo from an army of, well, pink robots
- Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, in which two battling androids take out major swatches of the American landscape in a fight over the survival of Clare Danes and the dude from "Carnivale"
That's a lot of evil robots! So, it got me to thinking, why all the robot paranoia? What did robots really ever do to us, aside from grow us in fields and imprison our minds in a computer simulation of the real world while sucking out the electrical energy produced by our nervous system for their own nefarious ends?
And then I took a look over at the Sony website, at their latest robot creation, QRIO. According to the website, "QRIO wants to be friends with you." That sounds good. "He makes life fun, makes you happy." Okay, I'm still interested. "QRIO gets around on his own accord. He can dance. Recognize people's voices and faces, and carry on conversations." Hmmm, this is getting kind of creepy. Do I really want a dancing robot hanging around my house, trying to start conversations with me? I have drunk friends for that!
Here's where it gets really bizarre. "QRIO's dreams are limitless." Ummm.... "QRIO uses body language to convey a feeling of intimacy." Okay, that's it for me. QRIO has got to go. I don't want a robot conveying feelings of intimacy towards me. Unless, you know, it's a sexy chick robot. And a sexy chick, QRIO is not.
Seriously, go check out the website. It's rather unsettling stuff.
So, maybe this robot paranoia makes sense, in an odd way. I can't see an army of QRIOs wrecking havoc on Beverly Hills just yet, but you never know...His dreams are limitless.
Won't Somebody Please Think of the White Children?
More people are picking up on my "why do we only give a shit about tragedy that affects white people" meme from the other day. Okay, it may not be my meme, but it's a meme I was discussing before most other people. Plus, I just like using the word "meme."
Anyway, here's uggabugga noticing that news reports tend to be focusing on white children and how these horrific tsunamis have affected them, instead of the vast majority of people who have been affected, who are brown.
This isn't surprising, really. Journalism schools all teach students how to craft stories that will "hit home" with their readers, which these days is really just code for "make it somehow about white suburban assholes who don't matter." So 60,000 people die in South Asia, and it's a story about some white kids unfortunately trapped over there.
Or about how Bush has allocated $15 million for disaster relief, less than he will spend on the media blitz for his own upcoming inauguration. Oh, you didn't hear about that? Yeah, Bush is spending around $30 million (of your money!) on his inauguration, not counting security costs! From MSNBC:
The estimated budget for the event is $30-40 million, but that will not cover security costs.
The Department of Homeland Security has designated the inauguration as a National Special Security Event, which makes the high-profile gatherings eligible for federal money and heightened security overseen by the Secret Service.
But I digress. What I was talking about is the massive egotism on the part of Americans that requires that people just like them be the center of each and every event, story or article. We need a new President? Fuck the War in Iraq, I want a guy who's the same religion as me. You want to make a movie about the last samurai? Better put Tom Cruise in there, asshole, or I won't go to see it. This ethnocentrism just freaks me out. I find it bothersome. So, everybody, stop it, okay?
Anyway, here's uggabugga noticing that news reports tend to be focusing on white children and how these horrific tsunamis have affected them, instead of the vast majority of people who have been affected, who are brown.
This isn't surprising, really. Journalism schools all teach students how to craft stories that will "hit home" with their readers, which these days is really just code for "make it somehow about white suburban assholes who don't matter." So 60,000 people die in South Asia, and it's a story about some white kids unfortunately trapped over there.
Or about how Bush has allocated $15 million for disaster relief, less than he will spend on the media blitz for his own upcoming inauguration. Oh, you didn't hear about that? Yeah, Bush is spending around $30 million (of your money!) on his inauguration, not counting security costs! From MSNBC:
The estimated budget for the event is $30-40 million, but that will not cover security costs.
The Department of Homeland Security has designated the inauguration as a National Special Security Event, which makes the high-profile gatherings eligible for federal money and heightened security overseen by the Secret Service.
But I digress. What I was talking about is the massive egotism on the part of Americans that requires that people just like them be the center of each and every event, story or article. We need a new President? Fuck the War in Iraq, I want a guy who's the same religion as me. You want to make a movie about the last samurai? Better put Tom Cruise in there, asshole, or I won't go to see it. This ethnocentrism just freaks me out. I find it bothersome. So, everybody, stop it, okay?
This Is Just a Tribute
I first saw Tenacious D open for Pearl Jam at the Forum during my collegiate years. I'm not 100% certain, but I would guesstimate the year as 1997. Of course, this was long after they had built a sterling reputation among mavens of the underground Los Angeles comedy scene from their shows at the Largo. Anyway, I thought it was brilliant, and the ensuing HBO short films only enhanced my view of Jack Black and Kyle Gass' comedy rock project.
Now, of course, Jack Black is a huge film star and Tenacious D has released an album on a major label with guest musicians like Dave Grohl, The Dust Brothers and members of Phish, so it's hardly an underground sensation any more. I saw self-proclaimed "Greatest Band in the Universe" The D at the Wiltern a few years ago, and though it was a fun show, and the energy level was exceptionally high, the act has lost something over the years.
When they first got going, the joke was simple. Jables and Rage Cage played in-your-face, big-time arena rock, and they did they whole rock god swagger act, but they were really just two overweight guys with acoustic guitars singing songs about demons and bukkake. Now, though, when you see Tenacious D perform, it's world-famous movie star Jack Black and his comedian buddy doing a funny skit where they pretend to be rock stars. I'm not accusing Jack Black of selling out by any means. I really think he's a funny guy, and I dig a bunch of his movies, like High Fidelity and School of Rock. And I can't wait to see him star (along with the always delicious Naomi Watts) in Peter Jackson's upcoming King Kong.
But this is one case where massive popularity really did kill the act. The D isn't really funny now that their bizarre prophecies of worldwide stardom have come true, and they're actually guest-starring in Hollywood movies together (and making one of their own!). That was the whole joke in the first place.
So, anyway, all this is lead-in to the link to an interview with Wonderboy and Young Nastyman over at Aint It Cool News. It's a funny little piece where they discuss (among other things) the upcoming Tenacious D movie and their further plans to tour and continue rocking.
Now, of course, Jack Black is a huge film star and Tenacious D has released an album on a major label with guest musicians like Dave Grohl, The Dust Brothers and members of Phish, so it's hardly an underground sensation any more. I saw self-proclaimed "Greatest Band in the Universe" The D at the Wiltern a few years ago, and though it was a fun show, and the energy level was exceptionally high, the act has lost something over the years.
When they first got going, the joke was simple. Jables and Rage Cage played in-your-face, big-time arena rock, and they did they whole rock god swagger act, but they were really just two overweight guys with acoustic guitars singing songs about demons and bukkake. Now, though, when you see Tenacious D perform, it's world-famous movie star Jack Black and his comedian buddy doing a funny skit where they pretend to be rock stars. I'm not accusing Jack Black of selling out by any means. I really think he's a funny guy, and I dig a bunch of his movies, like High Fidelity and School of Rock. And I can't wait to see him star (along with the always delicious Naomi Watts) in Peter Jackson's upcoming King Kong.
But this is one case where massive popularity really did kill the act. The D isn't really funny now that their bizarre prophecies of worldwide stardom have come true, and they're actually guest-starring in Hollywood movies together (and making one of their own!). That was the whole joke in the first place.
So, anyway, all this is lead-in to the link to an interview with Wonderboy and Young Nastyman over at Aint It Cool News. It's a funny little piece where they discuss (among other things) the upcoming Tenacious D movie and their further plans to tour and continue rocking.
If You're Going to San Francisco...
Don't forget to wear flowers...Oh, wait, now I've got that damn hippie song in my head...Better put on "The Safety Dance."
Okay, it's gone. That's a good tip, by the way. If you ever get a song stuck in your head that really begins to annoy you, simply listen to Men Without Hats' 1980's classic "The Safety Dance," and it will become unstuck immediately. Of course, then you'll have Men Without Hats' 1980's classic "The Safety Dance" in your head, but what am I, a psychologist? Figure that one out for yourself.
Anyway, the original point of this post (there was one, I swear) is to inform you that I'll be in Santa Cruz and San Francisco this weekend to celebrate the New Year, possibly with whippets, so I won't be blogging for a few days. You'll just have to get your Smarmy Jew fix somewhere else...Might I recommend comedian David Cross? He's hilarious, and about as smarmy a Jew as you're likely to find.
Okay, it's gone. That's a good tip, by the way. If you ever get a song stuck in your head that really begins to annoy you, simply listen to Men Without Hats' 1980's classic "The Safety Dance," and it will become unstuck immediately. Of course, then you'll have Men Without Hats' 1980's classic "The Safety Dance" in your head, but what am I, a psychologist? Figure that one out for yourself.
Anyway, the original point of this post (there was one, I swear) is to inform you that I'll be in Santa Cruz and San Francisco this weekend to celebrate the New Year, possibly with whippets, so I won't be blogging for a few days. You'll just have to get your Smarmy Jew fix somewhere else...Might I recommend comedian David Cross? He's hilarious, and about as smarmy a Jew as you're likely to find.
Wingnut of the Year Awards
Wingnuts, for those of you who don't check other leftist blogosphere locations, are right-wing assholes whose brand of rhetoric is particularly bizarre or wrong-headed. Ann Coulter is a fine example, and probably a solid nominee for Wingnut of the Year each and every year. Other big nominees this year are sure to be Michelle Malkin ("Japanese internment was awesome!"), David Brooks ("Bad economies are actually totally good!"), my hero, the Distinguished Gentlemen from Satan's Rectum, Bill O'Reilly ("Secularists want to kill Christmas!") and, of course, Jerry Falwell, who has so many wingnuttish comments about the gays and the liberals and the Mooooslims and the Jews this year, putting a sarcastic one in paranthesis seems unneccessary.
Anyway, if you want to vote, head on over to Crooks and Liars. My thanks, as always, to PSoTD for the link.
Anyway, if you want to vote, head on over to Crooks and Liars. My thanks, as always, to PSoTD for the link.
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
Only a Carpathian Would Come Back Now And Choose New York!
Have you ever read any of the "Left Behind" series? You have? What the hell are you doing on my blog? You'd probably be more comfortable at Christian Spotlight on the Movies.
For the rest of you, the "Left Behind" books are huge massive bestselling pieces of trashy, poorly-composed fiction about the end of the world filled with characters with names like Buck Williams. It's a whole series of books that starts with the Rapture, and all the good Christians being taken up to Heaven, and then follows a group of survivors as they discover Jesus and try to save souls. The enemy, by the way, is The Antichrist, Nicholae Carpathia, who also tries to grab as many souls as he can before the End Times, um, end.
Yeah, it's dumb, but the worst part is, a lot of the fools that read this trash think that there is real Biblical prophecy around to back up all this stuff. Slacktivist is doing a great job of combing through this detestable trash and teasing out all the bizarre assumptions being made by bonehead authors Tim LeHaye and Jerry Jenkins.
When I worked at Barnes & Noble years ago, these things were the new hot shit, and all kinds of suburban assholes were buying them. All the time, middle-aged ladies would come up to the cash register and ask me if I'd read any of these wonderful "Left Behind" books, and didn't I think they were just the greatest book I'd ever read, or failing that, the only book I'd read in the past several years. And I'd always inform them that, thanks for the tip and all, but I'd prefer to read actual books by real authors, like a video game strategy guide, or possibly "Where's Waldo."
These people aren't really the kind of evil bigots at which End Times fantasies are typically aimed. They're just not really readers, so they don't have a concept of media literacy. They can't process what they read and figure out the real message being expressed. They just read stuff and think they've heard a good story, and then go watch "Everybody Loves Raymond."
I feel like this all goes back to the way we teach kids to read in public schools. First off, we only teach children to read novels. Never magazines or newspapers or other kinds of media. So, we make that mistake right away, because though I enjoy fictional pleasure reading, most Americans don't. Most Americans need to know how to read non-fiction, news media and process this information in a thoughtful way. If we trained Americans to look at a piece of media and determine its meaning, biases and journalistic value quickly and efficiently, Fox News would be out of business within a year. But we don't, so Billy O remains the Ratings King.
Secondly, we make reading long novels into homework, a chore, and we assign tests and questions about the reading, to make it even more punishing. Reading should be about exploring new ideas and making your own conclusions, not about remembering what really pisses off Holden Caulfield more than anything else in the world (HINT: phonies). This is why J.K. Rowling is kind of an international hero. The "Harry Potter" books have made children excited to read something. It has given them an ongoing story to look forward to and anticipate, and as much as I enjoyed the third "Potter" film, the books are valuable because they have given children back their imagination from TV and movies and the Internet and other media.
So, my point is that the readers of these idiot "Left Behind" books aren't to blame. It's our education system for letting students down, for not fostering a love of reading from a young age, for dumbing down the lessons so that any kids can pass and feel informed.
For the rest of you, the "Left Behind" books are huge massive bestselling pieces of trashy, poorly-composed fiction about the end of the world filled with characters with names like Buck Williams. It's a whole series of books that starts with the Rapture, and all the good Christians being taken up to Heaven, and then follows a group of survivors as they discover Jesus and try to save souls. The enemy, by the way, is The Antichrist, Nicholae Carpathia, who also tries to grab as many souls as he can before the End Times, um, end.
Yeah, it's dumb, but the worst part is, a lot of the fools that read this trash think that there is real Biblical prophecy around to back up all this stuff. Slacktivist is doing a great job of combing through this detestable trash and teasing out all the bizarre assumptions being made by bonehead authors Tim LeHaye and Jerry Jenkins.
When I worked at Barnes & Noble years ago, these things were the new hot shit, and all kinds of suburban assholes were buying them. All the time, middle-aged ladies would come up to the cash register and ask me if I'd read any of these wonderful "Left Behind" books, and didn't I think they were just the greatest book I'd ever read, or failing that, the only book I'd read in the past several years. And I'd always inform them that, thanks for the tip and all, but I'd prefer to read actual books by real authors, like a video game strategy guide, or possibly "Where's Waldo."
These people aren't really the kind of evil bigots at which End Times fantasies are typically aimed. They're just not really readers, so they don't have a concept of media literacy. They can't process what they read and figure out the real message being expressed. They just read stuff and think they've heard a good story, and then go watch "Everybody Loves Raymond."
I feel like this all goes back to the way we teach kids to read in public schools. First off, we only teach children to read novels. Never magazines or newspapers or other kinds of media. So, we make that mistake right away, because though I enjoy fictional pleasure reading, most Americans don't. Most Americans need to know how to read non-fiction, news media and process this information in a thoughtful way. If we trained Americans to look at a piece of media and determine its meaning, biases and journalistic value quickly and efficiently, Fox News would be out of business within a year. But we don't, so Billy O remains the Ratings King.
Secondly, we make reading long novels into homework, a chore, and we assign tests and questions about the reading, to make it even more punishing. Reading should be about exploring new ideas and making your own conclusions, not about remembering what really pisses off Holden Caulfield more than anything else in the world (HINT: phonies). This is why J.K. Rowling is kind of an international hero. The "Harry Potter" books have made children excited to read something. It has given them an ongoing story to look forward to and anticipate, and as much as I enjoyed the third "Potter" film, the books are valuable because they have given children back their imagination from TV and movies and the Internet and other media.
So, my point is that the readers of these idiot "Left Behind" books aren't to blame. It's our education system for letting students down, for not fostering a love of reading from a young age, for dumbing down the lessons so that any kids can pass and feel informed.
Susan Sontag, Dead at 71
Can you believe this didn't even make the Yahoo front page? I guess 50,000 or so Asians die and suddenly the American intellectuals cease to matter.
I don't know a ton about the work of Ms. Sontag. Only that she wrote "On Photography," which I was forced to read during my graduate film studies, and that she was an outspoken lefty of the Noam Chomsky variety, prone to perfectly true yet inflammatory statements like "the white race is the cancer of human history."
I was intrigued to discover, upon reading the Yahoo obit, that Sontag wrote an essay, "Notes on Camp," that helped to create the modern notion of art being "so bad, it's good." I'm not sure if this is a step forward or backward for human history, but it's certainly an achievement, I'll give her that.
I don't know a ton about the work of Ms. Sontag. Only that she wrote "On Photography," which I was forced to read during my graduate film studies, and that she was an outspoken lefty of the Noam Chomsky variety, prone to perfectly true yet inflammatory statements like "the white race is the cancer of human history."
I was intrigued to discover, upon reading the Yahoo obit, that Sontag wrote an essay, "Notes on Camp," that helped to create the modern notion of art being "so bad, it's good." I'm not sure if this is a step forward or backward for human history, but it's certainly an achievement, I'll give her that.
If You're Reading This In Damascus, Duck!
Uh oh. The Bush Administration came out today and accused the Syrian government of aiding the Iraqi insurgents. And if you're a Middle Eastern country, and you find the Bush Administration accusing you of something having to do with terror or terrorism, it's a good bet you're going to be getting the shit bombed out of you very soon.
Here's the paragraph from the Yahoo story I found intriguing:
Syria has shrugged off U.S. complaints, saying it was being made a scapegoat for U.S. failure to stop the uprising in Iraq.
Reports circulated in Damascus, meanwhile, that key support for the insurgents in Iraq was coming from a half brother of Saddam Hussein and Baath Party leaders in the Syrian capital.
Syria shrugged off US complaints? Have they not been paying attention? The last time a country in the Middle East shrugged off US complaints, Ann Coulter started talking about killing their leaders and converting them to Christianity.
And mysterious "reports" are already circulating spreading questionable intelligence about Baath Party leaders in the Syrian capital. Why do I have the feeling this isn't going to end well?
Here's the paragraph from the Yahoo story I found intriguing:
Syria has shrugged off U.S. complaints, saying it was being made a scapegoat for U.S. failure to stop the uprising in Iraq.
Reports circulated in Damascus, meanwhile, that key support for the insurgents in Iraq was coming from a half brother of Saddam Hussein and Baath Party leaders in the Syrian capital.
Syria shrugged off US complaints? Have they not been paying attention? The last time a country in the Middle East shrugged off US complaints, Ann Coulter started talking about killing their leaders and converting them to Christianity.
And mysterious "reports" are already circulating spreading questionable intelligence about Baath Party leaders in the Syrian capital. Why do I have the feeling this isn't going to end well?
Monday, December 27, 2004
Dave Barry's Year in Review
Dave Barry has just published his delightful annual wrap-up of major events. Barry is one of those guys who was very important to the early development of my sense of humor, and I still think my writing style is heavily informed by his old collections of columns.
What's that? You want a highlight, to sample the sort of humor in store for you should you click that link? How's this suit you?
The big entertainment news in May is the much-anticipated final episode of "Friends," in which Joey, Chandler, Ross, Rachel, Monica and Phoebe suddenly realize that that they are, like, 53 years old.
Not chuckling yet? Check this out:
Perhaps most alarming of all, Cher yet again extended her "farewell" tour, which began during the Jimmy Carter administration and is now expected to continue until the sun goes out.
Now go read.
What's that? You want a highlight, to sample the sort of humor in store for you should you click that link? How's this suit you?
The big entertainment news in May is the much-anticipated final episode of "Friends," in which Joey, Chandler, Ross, Rachel, Monica and Phoebe suddenly realize that that they are, like, 53 years old.
Not chuckling yet? Check this out:
Perhaps most alarming of all, Cher yet again extended her "farewell" tour, which began during the Jimmy Carter administration and is now expected to continue until the sun goes out.
Now go read.
Get Well Soon, George
Yahoo tells me that the Greatest Comedian of All Time, Mr. George Carlin, has entered a drug and alcohol treatment program for what he describes as excessive use of "wine and Vicodin."
Now, it's no surprise that George Carlin was and probably remains a drug user. Many of his routines are about drug use, he famously battled cocaine addiction in the 80's, and he played a reformed addict on his short-lived Fox sitcom "The George Carlin Show."
I guess it's George's cynicism that intrigues me about this item. He strikes me as the sort of person that would reject organized drug treatment centers immediately, finding them overly authoritarian, beurocratic and theological. I mean, I'm sure this is a medical program, not a 12-step program, but isn't the very idea that you can "kick" drinking wine if you want to kind of, I don't know, anti-Carlin?
Anyway, it sounds like it isn't too serious, and, as an enormous fan, of course I wish Mr. Carlin a speedy recovery.
Now, it's no surprise that George Carlin was and probably remains a drug user. Many of his routines are about drug use, he famously battled cocaine addiction in the 80's, and he played a reformed addict on his short-lived Fox sitcom "The George Carlin Show."
I guess it's George's cynicism that intrigues me about this item. He strikes me as the sort of person that would reject organized drug treatment centers immediately, finding them overly authoritarian, beurocratic and theological. I mean, I'm sure this is a medical program, not a 12-step program, but isn't the very idea that you can "kick" drinking wine if you want to kind of, I don't know, anti-Carlin?
Anyway, it sounds like it isn't too serious, and, as an enormous fan, of course I wish Mr. Carlin a speedy recovery.
Tin Men
I've never been the biggest Wizard of Oz fan, and the last few Muppet movies haven't been terribly spectacular, but I couldn't resist posting this incredible photo (courtesy of Aint It Cool News) of the Tin Gonzo from the upcoming Muppet Wizard of Oz anyway. This is one of the coolest-looking Muppets I have ever seen. Over at Aint It Cool, they have Kermit as the Scarecrow and Fozzie as the Cowardly Lion as well, but neither of them look this good.
7 9-11's
Like everyone else in the world, I've been following the news of this unfathomable disaster in South Asia. A 9.0 earthquake? Unthinkable, even here in Southern California, where all the buildings are retrofitted and prepared for a massive shaker. In Colombo, Sri Lanka, there isn't any money to keep buildings safe or prepare evacuation plans. When an egregriously oversized earthquake hits, that's it...your home collapses.
It's that death toll number that keeps coming back into my mind. 22,000 dead. Over 7 9/11 disasters. Most of all, it makes me feel very small. How many people dying in that disaster were young men just like me, filled with hope about their lives, possibly even thinking that this would make a great update for their blog moments before a gi-normous tidal wave hits their village and wipes out everything they've ever known about, forever. It's tragedy on a mind-numbing scale.
So, that's about all I have to say about it. I promise to go back to discussing which movies are the most 1337 now, or some crap.
Oh, just one more thought on this subject...How come, whenever there's some international tragedy in some far off place like Colombo, Sri Lanka, the American media has to give us a story about how many Americans died there? For example, right next to the Yahoo headline that reads "Tidal Waves Kill 22,000 in Nine Countries," there's a headline that reads "Eight Americans Confirmed Dead in Tsunami." Who gives a shit? It's 8 Americans. That many people die each day choking on breakfast burritos, jumping out of moving golf carts, listening to Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music" too loud. It's an insignificant story. Are our egos so massive that we can't take an interest in 22,000 people dying unless 8 of them were good white folks from Mobile, Alabama?
It's that death toll number that keeps coming back into my mind. 22,000 dead. Over 7 9/11 disasters. Most of all, it makes me feel very small. How many people dying in that disaster were young men just like me, filled with hope about their lives, possibly even thinking that this would make a great update for their blog moments before a gi-normous tidal wave hits their village and wipes out everything they've ever known about, forever. It's tragedy on a mind-numbing scale.
So, that's about all I have to say about it. I promise to go back to discussing which movies are the most 1337 now, or some crap.
Oh, just one more thought on this subject...How come, whenever there's some international tragedy in some far off place like Colombo, Sri Lanka, the American media has to give us a story about how many Americans died there? For example, right next to the Yahoo headline that reads "Tidal Waves Kill 22,000 in Nine Countries," there's a headline that reads "Eight Americans Confirmed Dead in Tsunami." Who gives a shit? It's 8 Americans. That many people die each day choking on breakfast burritos, jumping out of moving golf carts, listening to Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music" too loud. It's an insignificant story. Are our egos so massive that we can't take an interest in 22,000 people dying unless 8 of them were good white folks from Mobile, Alabama?
Sunday, December 26, 2004
The Best Films of 2004
UPDATE: I originally published my Best of 2004 list in late December. This was totally stupid, because there were a whole lot of movies I hadn't yet seen that are exceptionally worthwhile. So, I've rewritten a lot of the below content, added some films, taken some films off, and modified my comments in other subtle ways. Enjoy.
#10 - The Incredibles
These PIXAR guys are geniuses, and you combine them with the comic talents of Brad Bird (who worked on "The Simpsons" as well as The Iron Giant, don't you know), and you get the most entertaining comic book movie of the year, and possibly the best comic book-inspired films ever made. Don't listen to Ebert: Spider-Man 2 was labored and dreary whenever Doc Ock wasn't on-screen. The Incredibles creates a whole world of superheroes from whole cloth, with stunning detail and fantastic wit. The vocal talents are terrific, the CG animation has never looked better, and it's one of the most fun family films in years. Another complete triumph for PIXAR, giving them the best track record in Hollywood (and one of the best track records in movie history).
#9 - Closer
This movie is intense, man. I wasn't expecting it. I thought I was getting some Mike Nichols dramedy about love in the 00's, but instead I got a scathing indictment of infidelity and honesty that out LaBute's Neil LaBute. Nichols really sharpened his blade for this film, and he goes for the jugular, getting real, honest, raw performances from actors who usually keep their defenses up, like Julia Roberts and Jude Law. Clive Owen does some incredible work here, as does Natalie Portman, in her first "adult" role. Sure, she was the sex interest in Garden State, but Zach Braff has about as much sexual charisma on-screen as Kuato. (If you get that joke, you're a movie dork). As unflinching and gritty a portrait of the dynamics of trust as I have seen.
#8 - Napoleon Dynamite
Yes, it's silly. Yes, it's stupid. They said that about "Beavis and Butthead," too, not to mention "South Park," Clerks, Swingers and "The Simpsons." The fact is, comedy about stupidity often appears stupid itself, when actually it takes a calculated wit to pull it off properly. And Dynamite's got that kind of wit in spades. Don't believe me? Try to find a DVD copy around LA this week. It's sold out at every store. People who like this movie, who appreciate the characters populating Jared Hess' world of misfits, love it, treasure it, value it like Napoleon values his dance mix or his unicorn T-shirts. There's something so specific that star Jon Heder captures about petulant, cynical youth that's truly amazing. One of the most underappreciated films of the year, this is one of those 2004 movies I can see myself watching in a decade's time. Trust me: the years will be kind of the reputation of Napoleon Dynamite. Gosh! What do you think!
#7 - Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall...and Spring
The only foreign film in the Top 10, this masterpiece from South Korea has introduced the world to a staggering new talent, director Kim Ki-Duk. As I said in my recent review, this movie is a one-of-a-kind meditation on aging, loss, regret and renewal told with uncommon grace. I have yet to see Ki-Duk's previous, well-received The Isle, but I intend to watch it as soon as possible.
#6 - Before Sunset
I'm a big Richard Linklater fan, and Before Sunrise was always one of my favorites of his films. He can craft natural dialogue about as well as any writer working in movies today, and that's all that movie was: a very natural, off-handed dialogue between two strangers who meet and fall in love over the course of one day in Vienna. For the inevitable sequel, he took the challenge a step further: most of the dialogue between the two former strangers is now improvised, and the story is told in real time. And not only are Linklater and his stars, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, up to the challenge, they rise to the occasion, giving us a pitch perfect update of these two characters nine years after they first met on the train. As they wander around Paris, what at first seems like another fanciful, off-the-cuff dialogue quickly changes directions, as we come to realize what effect their initial meeting has had on the lives of both of these people every day, ever since. The movie becomes a meditation on lost chances, on how the decisions we make on an ordinary day can shape the course of our entire existance. It closes with one of the most beautiful final scenes in any film I have ever seen, and I would not dream of spoiling it for you. Just go rent both movies and watch them back to back, then come here and thank me later.
#5 - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Not just the best of the Potter films, not just the best fantasy film of the year, but one of the best children's movies of our time. I had the distinct feeling while watching this movie that today's children will grow up savoring it, as I grew up savoring Raiders of the Lost Ark and Back to the Future. Alfonso Cuaron takes what Chris Columbus' pedestrian adaptations made somewhat interesting and fills it with life and sorrow, with exuberance and melancholy, and with some of the best special effects of any movie this year. The English countryside becomes a character in this film, with its deep greens and greys serving to isolate the Hogwarts school. Everything seems a bit darker this time around, a bit less safe, and a bit less rote, and this makes the "magic" of the story come alive. The stakes are higher, the mysteries matter more, and the performances are more intense. And bringing in actors of the caliber of Gary Oldman and David Thewlis has really granted this whole series an aura of class and distinction that I did not expect. I can't wait for Chapter 4 if it's going to be half this good.
#4 - The Aviator
Martin Scorsese does it again, delivering this handsome, sharp, epic saga of brilliance, bravery and madness that is every bit the equal of his best work. I just finished my review of this film for the blog a short time ago, so I won't belabor the point, but everything about The Aviator sings, from the perfect evocation of the 1930's and 40's to the performances from Alec Baldwin, DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett and John C. Reilly to the encroaching insanity that Scorsese treats with empathy and care rather than caustic hand-wringing. At 2 hours and 40 minutes, it's the longest film on this list, but I felt ready to watch it a second time as soon as it ended. Another triumph from the Greatest Living American Filmmaker. Yeah, I said it.
#3 - Sideways
I thought for a while this would be my favorite film this year, but after watching #1 and #2 a few more times, I had to knock it slightly down the list. I loved Alexander Payne's Election and was lukewarm on About Schmidt, but this is clearly his best film to date. A sad and affectionate portrait of middle-age, Payne reinvents the buddy movie with this tale of two guys touring the wine country before one of them settles in for a marriage. Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church do tremendous work as Miles and Jack, the former looking to wine as an escape from the pain of his failed life and the latter looking to get laid a few times before tying the knot with his bride-to-be. It's a comedy that's more moribund than funny, the kind of comedy where you laugh so that you might not cry, and it's touching in a way few movies even attempt. Again, it's Payne's attention to the small details of his character's lives, from Miles ordering a spinach croissant for breakfast on the road to Jack's constant swirling of wine glasses to "enhance the flavor," that makes the movie so warm and affecting. I had a few issues with the final scenes, but these are quibbles, really. Payne has made the most humane movie of the year, and Giamatti gives a sincere, heartbreaking performance.
#2 - Kill Bill, Volume 2
If the two Kill Bill movies were fused together, they would be the best film of 2004, and possibly the best film of the decade (though, I don't know...Mulholland Drive?) As it is, Vol. 2 is better than the first, less an action movie than a meditation on what action movies really mean, and why we like them so much. David Carradine is absolutely killer here as Bill, and his final showdown with The Bride (Uma Thurman, as good as she's ever been) is Tarantino at his absolute best - there isn't any action, really, at the end of this long, bloody action picture, because there doesn't need to be. Everything that can be solved by violence has long been solved, whether it's escaping from being buried alive in the California desert to training in the misty mountains of China, and all that is left are two warriors, sharing notes. The joys of the Kill Bill movies, from Pai Mei's Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique to Bill's theory on Clark Kent, are too numerous to contain here on a blog. Suffice it to say that Vol. 2 feels more like a Tarantino film than Vol. 1, fusing his love of chop-socky and kung fu cliches in with the flashy dialogue and observational wit we've come to love from Q.T., and it's one of the most satisfying cinematic experiences imaginable.
#1 - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
I said back in March this was the film to beat for Movie of 2004, and though I saw a lot of good movies, nothing was really up to the challenge. Michael Gondry didn't just adapt Charlie Kaufman's words, he translated Kaufman's world to the screen. A world like our own, but with the potential for us to look inside of ourselves, to escape the boundaries of physics and come to understand one another as emotional, rather than corporeal, beings. As much as I love Spike Jonze, no one has really ever understood Kaufman on a level this deep, and so none of the prior adaptations of his work have had this sort of power or understanding. Eternal Sunshine is a transcendant film, a movie that understands more about the power of memory and consciousness than a million gimmicky tricks like Memento or Being John Malkovich. (Both of which are movies I love!) Plus, the movie looks terrific, is really funny, and features career-best work from Jim Carrey, who can really sell sincerity when directors force him to abandon his usual schtick. I have watched this movie 5 times now, and seen something new in there every single time. It's one of the most sad and tender films about lost love I have ever seen, the kind of movie that makes you want to call old girlfriends even though you know you shouldn't, because they don't really want to hear from you.
Honorable Mention:
These are movies I liked but that didn't quite have the zing to make the final list. Despite what you may have heard, this was quite a good year for cinema. I usually don't have so many runner's up:
Million Dollar Baby
I've had some intense arguments lately about this film. I thought it was terrific, a fine example of a director with decades of experience applying his craft to a traditional Hollywood story. Some friends found it, instead, to be a masterpiece of uncommon artistry and resonance. They feel it's among the best films of the decade, I saw it more as a significantly better-than-average boxing story. Regardless, there's no argument about the skill with which it's made. Eastwood has been making films long enough to get all the small details right, from the jet-black shadows that fill the movie's gymnasium setting to the straight-forward, unadorned dialogue. I could have done without a few of the film's hammier touches, like the Morgan Freeman deadpan narration or the cliched redneck trailer trash family, but these are small problems in the overall. This is Eastwood's best work since Unforgiven.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
This movie was just such a breakthrough, I feel I couldn't not include it on a list of the most notable films of 2004. Absolutely stunning visual work, and I found the story to be zippy, fun and engaging, even though most people seemed to be bored with it. A movie that knows what it is, knows what it wants to do, and has a great time getting there, I very much look forward to more work from Kerry Conran.
The Woodsman
Kevin Bacon's fine performance in this film was highly touted in the early run-up to awards season, but it never won over an audience large enough to matter in terms of Oscars. But don't let that dissuade you from seeking it out when it comes to DVD. I found it to be a searing portrayal of a man's struggle with his own personal demons, highlighted by terrific supporting work from Mos Def and some really insightful, honest direction from first-timer Nicole Kassel. In a year of auspicious debuts, from Sky Captain to Maria Full of Grace to Napoleon Dynamite, this film gives us another exciting new talent.
Hellboy
The best actual comic adaptation of the year. Guillermo del Toro proves once again that he has the visual flair to recreate graphic novels for the screen. And Ron Perlman is Hellboy. Can't wait to see a sequel.
Collateral
By the end, it degrades into a silly Training Day rip, but for most of the running time, Michael Mann's film is a stunning exploration of the dark side of the big city, with Tom Cruise as a cocky, over-confident hitman and Jamie Foxx as the cabbie who shuttles him around. One of the best-looking movies about LA I've ever seen.
Ong-Bak
I'm not sure if this will count on people's Best Of lists for 2004 or 2005. I know it was released last year, or maybe even the year before that, in Thailand. Anyway, I wanted to include it because it's incredible. Sure, the plot kind of lags, as with a lot of kung fu movies, in my opinion. But the fight choreography and stunt work here is among the best I have ever seen. These are real fights, not special effects, and you could swear at some points that these guys are making real contact with one another. A real treat for fans of visceral, intense martial arts action.
The Life Aquatic
Wes Anderson's movie lacked the heart that makes his Rushmore and Tennenbaums among my all-time favorites, but this is clearly one of the most successful straight-up comedies of the year. Bill Murray and Jeff Goldblum are hilarious, and the film's cinematography and design are, of course, top notch.
I Heart Huckabee's
Oh, this one was close to knocking off Sky Captain. David O. Russell is a funny funny guy, and also quite thoughtful, so I guess it was a natural combination for him to make a metaphysical screwball comedy. What's amazing is how well it works. Jason Schwartzman hires Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin to solve the great mysteries of his life, but they wind up creating a lot more questions for him than answers. Mark Wahlberg does career-best work as a frustrated fireman who thinks he's stumbled upon the meaning of life: nihilism.
Fahrenheit 9/11
If Kerry had won, this would have been the most important film of the year. As it is, it's an interesting historical relic, the best single piece of anti-Bush propaganda that came out of this whole miserable election year. Of course it's propaganda, but of course it's a real documentary, assholes. And what it documents is really important: the way the US government managed faked the need for a war, and sent thousands of young kids to their deaths in a country halfway around the world. The fact that it documents this truthful argument with wit and entertainment value is a tribute to the immense talents of filmmaker Michael Moore. Not his best movie, but probably his most important work.
Gozu
#10 - The Incredibles
These PIXAR guys are geniuses, and you combine them with the comic talents of Brad Bird (who worked on "The Simpsons" as well as The Iron Giant, don't you know), and you get the most entertaining comic book movie of the year, and possibly the best comic book-inspired films ever made. Don't listen to Ebert: Spider-Man 2 was labored and dreary whenever Doc Ock wasn't on-screen. The Incredibles creates a whole world of superheroes from whole cloth, with stunning detail and fantastic wit. The vocal talents are terrific, the CG animation has never looked better, and it's one of the most fun family films in years. Another complete triumph for PIXAR, giving them the best track record in Hollywood (and one of the best track records in movie history).
#9 - Closer
This movie is intense, man. I wasn't expecting it. I thought I was getting some Mike Nichols dramedy about love in the 00's, but instead I got a scathing indictment of infidelity and honesty that out LaBute's Neil LaBute. Nichols really sharpened his blade for this film, and he goes for the jugular, getting real, honest, raw performances from actors who usually keep their defenses up, like Julia Roberts and Jude Law. Clive Owen does some incredible work here, as does Natalie Portman, in her first "adult" role. Sure, she was the sex interest in Garden State, but Zach Braff has about as much sexual charisma on-screen as Kuato. (If you get that joke, you're a movie dork). As unflinching and gritty a portrait of the dynamics of trust as I have seen.
#8 - Napoleon Dynamite
Yes, it's silly. Yes, it's stupid. They said that about "Beavis and Butthead," too, not to mention "South Park," Clerks, Swingers and "The Simpsons." The fact is, comedy about stupidity often appears stupid itself, when actually it takes a calculated wit to pull it off properly. And Dynamite's got that kind of wit in spades. Don't believe me? Try to find a DVD copy around LA this week. It's sold out at every store. People who like this movie, who appreciate the characters populating Jared Hess' world of misfits, love it, treasure it, value it like Napoleon values his dance mix or his unicorn T-shirts. There's something so specific that star Jon Heder captures about petulant, cynical youth that's truly amazing. One of the most underappreciated films of the year, this is one of those 2004 movies I can see myself watching in a decade's time. Trust me: the years will be kind of the reputation of Napoleon Dynamite. Gosh! What do you think!
#7 - Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall...and Spring
The only foreign film in the Top 10, this masterpiece from South Korea has introduced the world to a staggering new talent, director Kim Ki-Duk. As I said in my recent review, this movie is a one-of-a-kind meditation on aging, loss, regret and renewal told with uncommon grace. I have yet to see Ki-Duk's previous, well-received The Isle, but I intend to watch it as soon as possible.
#6 - Before Sunset
I'm a big Richard Linklater fan, and Before Sunrise was always one of my favorites of his films. He can craft natural dialogue about as well as any writer working in movies today, and that's all that movie was: a very natural, off-handed dialogue between two strangers who meet and fall in love over the course of one day in Vienna. For the inevitable sequel, he took the challenge a step further: most of the dialogue between the two former strangers is now improvised, and the story is told in real time. And not only are Linklater and his stars, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, up to the challenge, they rise to the occasion, giving us a pitch perfect update of these two characters nine years after they first met on the train. As they wander around Paris, what at first seems like another fanciful, off-the-cuff dialogue quickly changes directions, as we come to realize what effect their initial meeting has had on the lives of both of these people every day, ever since. The movie becomes a meditation on lost chances, on how the decisions we make on an ordinary day can shape the course of our entire existance. It closes with one of the most beautiful final scenes in any film I have ever seen, and I would not dream of spoiling it for you. Just go rent both movies and watch them back to back, then come here and thank me later.
#5 - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Not just the best of the Potter films, not just the best fantasy film of the year, but one of the best children's movies of our time. I had the distinct feeling while watching this movie that today's children will grow up savoring it, as I grew up savoring Raiders of the Lost Ark and Back to the Future. Alfonso Cuaron takes what Chris Columbus' pedestrian adaptations made somewhat interesting and fills it with life and sorrow, with exuberance and melancholy, and with some of the best special effects of any movie this year. The English countryside becomes a character in this film, with its deep greens and greys serving to isolate the Hogwarts school. Everything seems a bit darker this time around, a bit less safe, and a bit less rote, and this makes the "magic" of the story come alive. The stakes are higher, the mysteries matter more, and the performances are more intense. And bringing in actors of the caliber of Gary Oldman and David Thewlis has really granted this whole series an aura of class and distinction that I did not expect. I can't wait for Chapter 4 if it's going to be half this good.
#4 - The Aviator
Martin Scorsese does it again, delivering this handsome, sharp, epic saga of brilliance, bravery and madness that is every bit the equal of his best work. I just finished my review of this film for the blog a short time ago, so I won't belabor the point, but everything about The Aviator sings, from the perfect evocation of the 1930's and 40's to the performances from Alec Baldwin, DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett and John C. Reilly to the encroaching insanity that Scorsese treats with empathy and care rather than caustic hand-wringing. At 2 hours and 40 minutes, it's the longest film on this list, but I felt ready to watch it a second time as soon as it ended. Another triumph from the Greatest Living American Filmmaker. Yeah, I said it.
#3 - Sideways
I thought for a while this would be my favorite film this year, but after watching #1 and #2 a few more times, I had to knock it slightly down the list. I loved Alexander Payne's Election and was lukewarm on About Schmidt, but this is clearly his best film to date. A sad and affectionate portrait of middle-age, Payne reinvents the buddy movie with this tale of two guys touring the wine country before one of them settles in for a marriage. Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church do tremendous work as Miles and Jack, the former looking to wine as an escape from the pain of his failed life and the latter looking to get laid a few times before tying the knot with his bride-to-be. It's a comedy that's more moribund than funny, the kind of comedy where you laugh so that you might not cry, and it's touching in a way few movies even attempt. Again, it's Payne's attention to the small details of his character's lives, from Miles ordering a spinach croissant for breakfast on the road to Jack's constant swirling of wine glasses to "enhance the flavor," that makes the movie so warm and affecting. I had a few issues with the final scenes, but these are quibbles, really. Payne has made the most humane movie of the year, and Giamatti gives a sincere, heartbreaking performance.
#2 - Kill Bill, Volume 2
If the two Kill Bill movies were fused together, they would be the best film of 2004, and possibly the best film of the decade (though, I don't know...Mulholland Drive?) As it is, Vol. 2 is better than the first, less an action movie than a meditation on what action movies really mean, and why we like them so much. David Carradine is absolutely killer here as Bill, and his final showdown with The Bride (Uma Thurman, as good as she's ever been) is Tarantino at his absolute best - there isn't any action, really, at the end of this long, bloody action picture, because there doesn't need to be. Everything that can be solved by violence has long been solved, whether it's escaping from being buried alive in the California desert to training in the misty mountains of China, and all that is left are two warriors, sharing notes. The joys of the Kill Bill movies, from Pai Mei's Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique to Bill's theory on Clark Kent, are too numerous to contain here on a blog. Suffice it to say that Vol. 2 feels more like a Tarantino film than Vol. 1, fusing his love of chop-socky and kung fu cliches in with the flashy dialogue and observational wit we've come to love from Q.T., and it's one of the most satisfying cinematic experiences imaginable.
#1 - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
I said back in March this was the film to beat for Movie of 2004, and though I saw a lot of good movies, nothing was really up to the challenge. Michael Gondry didn't just adapt Charlie Kaufman's words, he translated Kaufman's world to the screen. A world like our own, but with the potential for us to look inside of ourselves, to escape the boundaries of physics and come to understand one another as emotional, rather than corporeal, beings. As much as I love Spike Jonze, no one has really ever understood Kaufman on a level this deep, and so none of the prior adaptations of his work have had this sort of power or understanding. Eternal Sunshine is a transcendant film, a movie that understands more about the power of memory and consciousness than a million gimmicky tricks like Memento or Being John Malkovich. (Both of which are movies I love!) Plus, the movie looks terrific, is really funny, and features career-best work from Jim Carrey, who can really sell sincerity when directors force him to abandon his usual schtick. I have watched this movie 5 times now, and seen something new in there every single time. It's one of the most sad and tender films about lost love I have ever seen, the kind of movie that makes you want to call old girlfriends even though you know you shouldn't, because they don't really want to hear from you.
Honorable Mention:
These are movies I liked but that didn't quite have the zing to make the final list. Despite what you may have heard, this was quite a good year for cinema. I usually don't have so many runner's up:
Million Dollar Baby
I've had some intense arguments lately about this film. I thought it was terrific, a fine example of a director with decades of experience applying his craft to a traditional Hollywood story. Some friends found it, instead, to be a masterpiece of uncommon artistry and resonance. They feel it's among the best films of the decade, I saw it more as a significantly better-than-average boxing story. Regardless, there's no argument about the skill with which it's made. Eastwood has been making films long enough to get all the small details right, from the jet-black shadows that fill the movie's gymnasium setting to the straight-forward, unadorned dialogue. I could have done without a few of the film's hammier touches, like the Morgan Freeman deadpan narration or the cliched redneck trailer trash family, but these are small problems in the overall. This is Eastwood's best work since Unforgiven.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
This movie was just such a breakthrough, I feel I couldn't not include it on a list of the most notable films of 2004. Absolutely stunning visual work, and I found the story to be zippy, fun and engaging, even though most people seemed to be bored with it. A movie that knows what it is, knows what it wants to do, and has a great time getting there, I very much look forward to more work from Kerry Conran.
The Woodsman
Kevin Bacon's fine performance in this film was highly touted in the early run-up to awards season, but it never won over an audience large enough to matter in terms of Oscars. But don't let that dissuade you from seeking it out when it comes to DVD. I found it to be a searing portrayal of a man's struggle with his own personal demons, highlighted by terrific supporting work from Mos Def and some really insightful, honest direction from first-timer Nicole Kassel. In a year of auspicious debuts, from Sky Captain to Maria Full of Grace to Napoleon Dynamite, this film gives us another exciting new talent.
Hellboy
The best actual comic adaptation of the year. Guillermo del Toro proves once again that he has the visual flair to recreate graphic novels for the screen. And Ron Perlman is Hellboy. Can't wait to see a sequel.
Collateral
By the end, it degrades into a silly Training Day rip, but for most of the running time, Michael Mann's film is a stunning exploration of the dark side of the big city, with Tom Cruise as a cocky, over-confident hitman and Jamie Foxx as the cabbie who shuttles him around. One of the best-looking movies about LA I've ever seen.
Ong-Bak
I'm not sure if this will count on people's Best Of lists for 2004 or 2005. I know it was released last year, or maybe even the year before that, in Thailand. Anyway, I wanted to include it because it's incredible. Sure, the plot kind of lags, as with a lot of kung fu movies, in my opinion. But the fight choreography and stunt work here is among the best I have ever seen. These are real fights, not special effects, and you could swear at some points that these guys are making real contact with one another. A real treat for fans of visceral, intense martial arts action.
The Life Aquatic
Wes Anderson's movie lacked the heart that makes his Rushmore and Tennenbaums among my all-time favorites, but this is clearly one of the most successful straight-up comedies of the year. Bill Murray and Jeff Goldblum are hilarious, and the film's cinematography and design are, of course, top notch.
I Heart Huckabee's
Oh, this one was close to knocking off Sky Captain. David O. Russell is a funny funny guy, and also quite thoughtful, so I guess it was a natural combination for him to make a metaphysical screwball comedy. What's amazing is how well it works. Jason Schwartzman hires Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin to solve the great mysteries of his life, but they wind up creating a lot more questions for him than answers. Mark Wahlberg does career-best work as a frustrated fireman who thinks he's stumbled upon the meaning of life: nihilism.
Fahrenheit 9/11
If Kerry had won, this would have been the most important film of the year. As it is, it's an interesting historical relic, the best single piece of anti-Bush propaganda that came out of this whole miserable election year. Of course it's propaganda, but of course it's a real documentary, assholes. And what it documents is really important: the way the US government managed faked the need for a war, and sent thousands of young kids to their deaths in a country halfway around the world. The fact that it documents this truthful argument with wit and entertainment value is a tribute to the immense talents of filmmaker Michael Moore. Not his best movie, but probably his most important work.
Gozu
Takashi Miike's completely insane homage to both David Lynch and Francois Truffaut (yeah, I know!) is both brilliant and maddening. Like all of Miike's films, it drags in the middle, overstuffed with just plain old weirdness, but every time you start to get really bored, there's some Japanese freaky super-weirdness to bring you right back around again. It's nominally the story of two yakuza soldiers lost in a bizarre village in the country, but really it's some sort of bizarre psychosexual exploration of filial love and bisexuality. I think. Or it's about trained yakuza killer chihuahua's. I'm pretty sure it's one of those.
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
Will Ferrell is a genius. This movie isn't as good as Old School or Elf, but this guy could do most anything for 2 hours and keep me laughing. He's perfectly cast as a pompous, chauvanistic 1970's news anchor, and the rest of the cast, which includes SNL alumni David Koechner, Vince Vaughn and Christina Applegate, keep the comedy moving quickly. An amusing trifle.
Dawn of the Dead
The single best horror movie this year. I know, it surprised me too. This ultra-violent retelling of the George Romero classic goes on a bit too long, but it gets so much right that it would be churlish to complain. The opening 15 minutes or so, when the world is actually overtaken by zombies, forcing the lead characters into a mall for survival, is among the most tight mainstream filmmaking of 2004.
Ocean's Twelve
A great sequel that improves upon the original. Soderbergh wisely removes most of the actual heist footage in favor of light comedy and 1960's style shenanigans with his immense cast in Europe. I had a great time with this movie - it's light as a feather, pure entertainment and little else. And it includes the best cameos of the year.
Maria Full of Grace
A touching, heartfelt and above-all intensely realistic portrayal of a young Columbian girl's trip to America as a coke mule. This feels like a segment from Soderbergh's Traffic that was removed - it shares that film's gritty slice-of-life tone while adding in a luminous lead performance from Catalina Sandino Moreno. A fantastic debut from Joshua Marston.
The 5 Worst Films of 2004
Most movies are mediocre. Not good or bad. They just are. Someone wrote a story and someone else filmed it. It's the rare movie that's actually great, but it seems to me that a movie being truly miserably awful is a lot less rare. Why is that? Shouldn't it be a bell curve type situation, where there are very few really great and really awful movies? It's not. That's why lists like these are so easy to do, every year:
#5 - Secret Window
What the hell happened here? This was directed by the same guy that made Stir of Echoes, which is a great, underappreciated little horror film that had the unfortunate timing to open right around The Sixth Sense. This one is based on some old ridiculous Stephen King story with one of the most laughably bad, silly, predictable endings imaginable. John Turturro shows up at Johnny Depp's cabin claiming to have authored a story that Depp published as his own in a recent book. Oh, and some people wind up murdered. And there's a twist. And lots of corn. It's retarded. Includes the Single Most Overused Ending of the Year, which is will now blow for you: He's crazy! They're the same person! The movie sucks!
#4 - Dodgeball
Wowzer, when comedy is not funny, it's really really not funny. A lot of the people involved in Zoolander were also involved in this, and while that movie's no tremendous glowing achievement, it is quite watchable, and has a few big laughs, whereas every single joke in Dodgeball lands with an enormous thud. The only one that has a chance is Rip Torn chucking a wrench at some kid, and that's in the previews. Ben Stiller's character here is grating with a capital G, and Vince Vaughn seriously looks embarrassed to even be in that shitkicker. Neither of these guys have had a year to be proud of...They both need to get Will Ferrell involved in some movie they're doing, and bring out the funny, chop chop, because I'm getting impatient.
#3 - Finding Neverland
Mark Forster, you suck. Okay? You just do. You have no tact, no class, no subtlety, and no craft. You just make stories about sensitive people dying and hope that's enough to move an audience. But that's not drama, it's just maudlin tearjerking manipulative bullshit. That's how I feel about this movie, J. Depp's second entry in the year's worst list. His Willy Wonka better be the shit next year to make up for 2004. This story about the conception of Peter Pan is everything I hate about uptight costume dramas: it's self-important, bogus and fake.
#2 - White Chicks
The Wayans Brothers, I can only assume, do not spend any time with black or white people. They have no idea how people of either gender of either race speak, move, think or interact. This movie might as well be called White Aliens: the brothers don't look like chicks, don't sound like chicks, don't talk like chicks, and are not for a single moment believable as chicks. They look disgusting, disfigured, like freaks. The story, in case you missed the barrage of previews when this shitkicker opened in the summer, concerns the two worst FBI agents of all time, who foolishly think they can dress up like white girls and move incognito to foil a kidnapping plot, despite being unfunny black men with dangerously low IQ's. They proceed to engage in a whole lot of racial comedy that might be funny if, as I noted before, the Wayans had any idea how to act white or black. But they don't. All they have at their disposal are cheap, ancient stereotypes that were tired by the time Archie Bunker uttered them on national television 30 years ago.
#1 - Garden State
I fucking hate you, Zach Braff. I hope you get cancer.
This movie is fake. I referred to it earlier this year as Cinema du Poseur, and I am going to reiterate that title here. See, what Zach did is watch a lot of good movies...French New Wave movies, and David O. Russell's Spanking the Monkey, and Wes Anderson films...movies with quirky characters who move through alternate kind of realities, stumbling upon wisdom and learning about themselves and about life. And then he tried to write one of his own.
All this is fine. I've done this. It's how most new screenwriters get started.
But Zach took it a step further. He decided, why simply be inspired by other filmmakers and artists, when I can just rip off their ideas? So there's a shot from a Danny Boyle movie here, a shot from Wes Anderson here, a Shins song here (along with a blatant, "please respect me" piece of dialogue cluing the audience in to how hip and indie the filmmakers are), a Godard reference here, and when you're all done, you have a movie that looks and feels like 00's independent cinema, but that has no soul. A Frankenstein monster of a movie that wants you to like it so badly, it forgot to have an idea, a point, a message or a brain.
Garden State represents the worst of not just movies, but of art. It represents a desire to go back and create a pastiche of what's been done, rather than a desire to take what has been done and push it further. Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation says that writing should always be an exploration into the unknown. Zach Braff wants to take you where he's already been before, to let you know how cool he is for going there. Fuck him.
#5 - Secret Window
What the hell happened here? This was directed by the same guy that made Stir of Echoes, which is a great, underappreciated little horror film that had the unfortunate timing to open right around The Sixth Sense. This one is based on some old ridiculous Stephen King story with one of the most laughably bad, silly, predictable endings imaginable. John Turturro shows up at Johnny Depp's cabin claiming to have authored a story that Depp published as his own in a recent book. Oh, and some people wind up murdered. And there's a twist. And lots of corn. It's retarded. Includes the Single Most Overused Ending of the Year, which is will now blow for you: He's crazy! They're the same person! The movie sucks!
#4 - Dodgeball
Wowzer, when comedy is not funny, it's really really not funny. A lot of the people involved in Zoolander were also involved in this, and while that movie's no tremendous glowing achievement, it is quite watchable, and has a few big laughs, whereas every single joke in Dodgeball lands with an enormous thud. The only one that has a chance is Rip Torn chucking a wrench at some kid, and that's in the previews. Ben Stiller's character here is grating with a capital G, and Vince Vaughn seriously looks embarrassed to even be in that shitkicker. Neither of these guys have had a year to be proud of...They both need to get Will Ferrell involved in some movie they're doing, and bring out the funny, chop chop, because I'm getting impatient.
#3 - Finding Neverland
Mark Forster, you suck. Okay? You just do. You have no tact, no class, no subtlety, and no craft. You just make stories about sensitive people dying and hope that's enough to move an audience. But that's not drama, it's just maudlin tearjerking manipulative bullshit. That's how I feel about this movie, J. Depp's second entry in the year's worst list. His Willy Wonka better be the shit next year to make up for 2004. This story about the conception of Peter Pan is everything I hate about uptight costume dramas: it's self-important, bogus and fake.
#2 - White Chicks
The Wayans Brothers, I can only assume, do not spend any time with black or white people. They have no idea how people of either gender of either race speak, move, think or interact. This movie might as well be called White Aliens: the brothers don't look like chicks, don't sound like chicks, don't talk like chicks, and are not for a single moment believable as chicks. They look disgusting, disfigured, like freaks. The story, in case you missed the barrage of previews when this shitkicker opened in the summer, concerns the two worst FBI agents of all time, who foolishly think they can dress up like white girls and move incognito to foil a kidnapping plot, despite being unfunny black men with dangerously low IQ's. They proceed to engage in a whole lot of racial comedy that might be funny if, as I noted before, the Wayans had any idea how to act white or black. But they don't. All they have at their disposal are cheap, ancient stereotypes that were tired by the time Archie Bunker uttered them on national television 30 years ago.
#1 - Garden State
I fucking hate you, Zach Braff. I hope you get cancer.
This movie is fake. I referred to it earlier this year as Cinema du Poseur, and I am going to reiterate that title here. See, what Zach did is watch a lot of good movies...French New Wave movies, and David O. Russell's Spanking the Monkey, and Wes Anderson films...movies with quirky characters who move through alternate kind of realities, stumbling upon wisdom and learning about themselves and about life. And then he tried to write one of his own.
All this is fine. I've done this. It's how most new screenwriters get started.
But Zach took it a step further. He decided, why simply be inspired by other filmmakers and artists, when I can just rip off their ideas? So there's a shot from a Danny Boyle movie here, a shot from Wes Anderson here, a Shins song here (along with a blatant, "please respect me" piece of dialogue cluing the audience in to how hip and indie the filmmakers are), a Godard reference here, and when you're all done, you have a movie that looks and feels like 00's independent cinema, but that has no soul. A Frankenstein monster of a movie that wants you to like it so badly, it forgot to have an idea, a point, a message or a brain.
Garden State represents the worst of not just movies, but of art. It represents a desire to go back and create a pastiche of what's been done, rather than a desire to take what has been done and push it further. Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation says that writing should always be an exploration into the unknown. Zach Braff wants to take you where he's already been before, to let you know how cool he is for going there. Fuck him.
The Aviator
Watched the new Marty Scorsese film with an entirely rude audience in my hometown of Irvine, California on Christmas Day. Usually, Christmas Day movie audiences are well-behaved Jews looking for something to do while everything else is closed, but this crowd was rowdy, talkative and didn't seem to be enjoying the movie nearly as much as they should.
I pity them, because they missed one of the year's best films, and I hate them because they decreased my enjoyment just a little bit.
So, yes, The Aviator will definitely be on my list of the year's best films (coming very soon to this very website, I hope!) I didn't like it quite as much as Gangs of New York, possibly because that film is so massive and has a character as alive and intense as Bill the Butcher at its center. But it's an impressively made film, a soaring tragedy about the cost of greatness. Scorsese's Howard Hughes (played by Leonardo DiCaprio in his best performance to date) is a great man because of his outsized ambitions, and his bravery in risking all that he has to see these ambitions realized. But he also pities him, because the world can never live up to the imaginations of dreamers like Hughes, and so his movie ends not in joy and triumph, but in desolation and sorrow.
Like all of Scorsese's protagonists, Hughes lives to achieve everything he could ever want, only to see his fantasies tainted and eventually undone by paranoia, jealousy, greed and hubris. The first hour of the film feels like a rush of adrenaline, like the best sequences in the most fun Scorsese pictures. It's akin to the opening of Goodfellas, when young Henry Hill runs through the streets in his expensive guido suit, high on the power and respect granted to him by his mob associations. Howard Hughes inherits his money from his dead parents, sure, but it's his direction of Hell's Angels, his aircraft designs and his constant drive and ambition that earns him his noteriety.
Scorsese takes his time setting up Howard's success, introducing him to the world Hollywood's rich and powerful elite with some of the most luminous faux Technicolor cinematography imaginable. Between this and Kill Bill 2, Robert Richardson has comfirmed himself in 2004 as one of our finest working cinematographers. The Aviator recreates the feeling of old Hollywood epics down to every last detail.
And speaking of vivid, remarkable recreations, Cate Blanchett's Katherine Hepburn is the greatest performance given by any actor, male or female, this year. She remakes Hepburn from the inside out, fitting her voice into that sharp Connecticut argot while investing this outsized woman into reality in a way the screwball comedies of the 30's never could. In the film, Hughes meets Hepburn and is immediately taken with her. Though he would notoriously cheat on her with a variety of young starlets and wannabes, and go on to romance Ava Gardner (here played enchantingly by the stunningly beautiful Kate Beckinsale), The Aviator presents Hepburn as the center of Hughes' romantic world, the only woman who could ever keep up with his wild exuberant imagination. A late scene between the two of them, spoken entirely between a wall with Hughes already sealed off from the world in an advanced state of delusional paranoia, proves so heartbreaking and personal, it's nearly unthinkable that the subjects are two of the greatest icons of the 20th Century.
Earlier in the film, during their initial courtship, Hepburn tells Hughes that they are not like other people, and are unfit to mingle in common society. "Too many acute angles, too many eccentricities," is how she puts it, and it's an apt description. As Hughes invests in TWA (eventually buying a controlling share of the company), and takes on Pan Am mogul Juan Trippe (a delightfully menacing Alec Baldwin), he finds himself suddenly unable to deal with the spotlight on his personal life, and the demands of living as a public figure. This man, who in one scene smashes an experimental spy plane into a Beverly Hills neighborhood, and in another accompanies Jean Harlow to the premiere of his own film, the most expensive of all time, begins to come apart from all the attention, driven mad by small fears, of germs and clammy handshakes and spoiled milk.
Scorsese is at the peak of his powers in these sequences, showing a man who knows and understands that he is being driven to madness by isolation and paranoia, but who is helpless to resist his bizarre urges. I was reminded of Jake LaMotta, knowing his brother has not slept with his wife even as he makes the accusation. Or Henry Hill, snorting his own stuff even though Paulie, Jimmy and everyone else told him not to start using drugs. Men of power, men of tremendous ability, who still cannot withstand their inner demons, their feelings of predestined failure. The Aviator joins these other films as one of Scorsese's most gripping examinations of this timeless narrative.
I pity them, because they missed one of the year's best films, and I hate them because they decreased my enjoyment just a little bit.
So, yes, The Aviator will definitely be on my list of the year's best films (coming very soon to this very website, I hope!) I didn't like it quite as much as Gangs of New York, possibly because that film is so massive and has a character as alive and intense as Bill the Butcher at its center. But it's an impressively made film, a soaring tragedy about the cost of greatness. Scorsese's Howard Hughes (played by Leonardo DiCaprio in his best performance to date) is a great man because of his outsized ambitions, and his bravery in risking all that he has to see these ambitions realized. But he also pities him, because the world can never live up to the imaginations of dreamers like Hughes, and so his movie ends not in joy and triumph, but in desolation and sorrow.
Like all of Scorsese's protagonists, Hughes lives to achieve everything he could ever want, only to see his fantasies tainted and eventually undone by paranoia, jealousy, greed and hubris. The first hour of the film feels like a rush of adrenaline, like the best sequences in the most fun Scorsese pictures. It's akin to the opening of Goodfellas, when young Henry Hill runs through the streets in his expensive guido suit, high on the power and respect granted to him by his mob associations. Howard Hughes inherits his money from his dead parents, sure, but it's his direction of Hell's Angels, his aircraft designs and his constant drive and ambition that earns him his noteriety.
Scorsese takes his time setting up Howard's success, introducing him to the world Hollywood's rich and powerful elite with some of the most luminous faux Technicolor cinematography imaginable. Between this and Kill Bill 2, Robert Richardson has comfirmed himself in 2004 as one of our finest working cinematographers. The Aviator recreates the feeling of old Hollywood epics down to every last detail.
And speaking of vivid, remarkable recreations, Cate Blanchett's Katherine Hepburn is the greatest performance given by any actor, male or female, this year. She remakes Hepburn from the inside out, fitting her voice into that sharp Connecticut argot while investing this outsized woman into reality in a way the screwball comedies of the 30's never could. In the film, Hughes meets Hepburn and is immediately taken with her. Though he would notoriously cheat on her with a variety of young starlets and wannabes, and go on to romance Ava Gardner (here played enchantingly by the stunningly beautiful Kate Beckinsale), The Aviator presents Hepburn as the center of Hughes' romantic world, the only woman who could ever keep up with his wild exuberant imagination. A late scene between the two of them, spoken entirely between a wall with Hughes already sealed off from the world in an advanced state of delusional paranoia, proves so heartbreaking and personal, it's nearly unthinkable that the subjects are two of the greatest icons of the 20th Century.
Earlier in the film, during their initial courtship, Hepburn tells Hughes that they are not like other people, and are unfit to mingle in common society. "Too many acute angles, too many eccentricities," is how she puts it, and it's an apt description. As Hughes invests in TWA (eventually buying a controlling share of the company), and takes on Pan Am mogul Juan Trippe (a delightfully menacing Alec Baldwin), he finds himself suddenly unable to deal with the spotlight on his personal life, and the demands of living as a public figure. This man, who in one scene smashes an experimental spy plane into a Beverly Hills neighborhood, and in another accompanies Jean Harlow to the premiere of his own film, the most expensive of all time, begins to come apart from all the attention, driven mad by small fears, of germs and clammy handshakes and spoiled milk.
Scorsese is at the peak of his powers in these sequences, showing a man who knows and understands that he is being driven to madness by isolation and paranoia, but who is helpless to resist his bizarre urges. I was reminded of Jake LaMotta, knowing his brother has not slept with his wife even as he makes the accusation. Or Henry Hill, snorting his own stuff even though Paulie, Jimmy and everyone else told him not to start using drugs. Men of power, men of tremendous ability, who still cannot withstand their inner demons, their feelings of predestined failure. The Aviator joins these other films as one of Scorsese's most gripping examinations of this timeless narrative.
And this is not even mentioning the aviation sequences themselves, surely among the most impressive ever filmed. We open with the shooting of Hell's Angels, a remarkably complicated war film involving the use of dozens of recreated planes and an unheard-of-at-the-time 24 cameras. But the film also includes the aforementioned Beverly Hills crash landing, the breaking of a speed barrier, and the flight of the Hercules (nee the Spruce Goose) in Long Beach Harbor. Scorsese uses computer generated effects in these sequences to give us a genuine feeling for Hughes' love of flight, and the freedom it allowed him. Some of the aerial photography is truly breathtaking.