Melpocalypto

I met Mel Gibson once. Back in my Daily Bruin days, I only got to interview celebrities at "junkets," or round table sessions with as many as 12-15 journalists, typically held in a cramped room (not a suite...a room with a table in place of a bed...) at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons. Mel was one of the only subjects EVER to agree to a one-on-one interview with a student journalist. At the time, I thought that was pretty cool.

Even more cool, from the writerly standpoint, was his directness. This is not a guy to mince words. The movie we discussed was Payback, which he had taken away from writer/director Brian Helgeland to finish up himself. Generally, in that sort of uncomfortable situation, subjects would recite pre-approved spin from the studio's PR department:

"We just didn't see eye to eye on some issues, Brian wanted to move on to another project, blah blah blah."

Gibson gave me pretty much the whole story without pulling any punches, at least from his perspective. Furthermore, he went into detail about why Helgeland's version wasn't particularly good and what he thought of the guy's attitude towards criticism and all that kind of interesting, personal information. He's an intense guy but also gave me the impression of being really sincere about his work, and also particularly friendly and approachable for a guy who has been internationally famous since the early 80's.

He did not ask me if I was a Jew or bring up Judaism once. I wonder now, looking back, if that was on his mind at the time...

Lt. Steve Smith, in charge of the detective bureau for the Malibu/Lost Hills station of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, confirmed to me just now that "the contents seem to be similar" between the official reports and the four pages posted by TMZ.com on the Internet alleging Mel Gibson made anti-Semitic slurs -- "fucking Jews" and "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world" and asking the arresting deputy "Are you a Jew?" -- during his DUI arrest early Friday morning. Smith denied TMZ.com's charge that the sheriff's department was involved in a "cover-up" of Gibson's alleged anti-Semitic tirade detailed in deputy Jim Mee's first arrest report.

Anyone paying attention during Passion of the Christ probably noticed that Mel has kind of a Jew hang-up. At the time, I found the mainstream denial that the film was anti-Semitic to be kind of cute in a way...Americans are so distanced from that particular strain of pernicious historical European anti-Semitism, they don't even recognize it when they see it. Hook noses and flowing golden robes and long beards and general bloodthirstiness don't communicate "Jew" to them...Just "evil guy." It's kind of refreshing.

But others caught on to when the guy was really saying. Not even so much that "Jews killed Jesus," which is pretty much what the original story has to say. But "Jews are responsible for evil," as if villainy just radiated from their religious leaders and community in the same way that goodness radiated from the Savior.

And let's not forget Hutton Gibson, Mel's deranged father. Here's my favorite HG moment came when he did a phone interview on a random radio show called "Speak Your Piece." Here's his theory on the Holocaust:

"They claimed that there were 6.2 million [Jews] in Poland before the war, and they claimed after the war there were 200,000 - therefore he must have killed 6 million of them," he said. "They simply got up and left! They were all over the Bronx and Brooklyn and Sydney, Australia, and Los Angeles."

Yes! This is totally reasonable! Also, some of them fell into a rabbit hole and found themselves in Wonderland or stumbled into Narnia via an oddly-placed piece of antique furniture! Which is really too bad for them, because I've heard they're not too keen on the Jews in Narnia. Only started admitting the Irish a few years back...

So, okay, his Dad's batshit insane. That's fine. He's allowed. Mel doesn't neccessarily agree with that stuff, right? Right?

Hutton Gibson in statements has decried the Holocaust as "fiction" and claimed there were more Jews in Europe after World War II than before. The younger Gibson, however, has repeatedly denied his movie was anti-Semitic. But the actor/director's views about his father's Holocaust denial have been under scrutiny. When asked by an interviewer in early 2004 whether the Holocaust happened, the actor / director / producer responded that some of his best friends ''have numbers on their arms,'' then added: ''Yes, of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps.'' But in the same interview, Gibson said his father, Hutton Gibson, had ''never lied to me in his life,'' and Holocaust scholars have cited those and other statements as evidence that he has failed to disassociate himself clearly from his father's views.
Two odd things...He says "some of them [died] in concentration camps." He doesn't say "were killed" or "death camps," indicating that it's possible he agrees with his father - that the Nazis had work camps, but didn't kill anyone, and that Worldwide Jewry has purposefully fudged the numbers to garner fraudulent sympathy. Also, the "my father never lied to me" thing. It could mean that he thinks his father's right about the Holocaust. Or it could me he thinks his father thinks he's right. In other words, it's not a lie if Hutton believes it, even if Mel knows it's kind of nutty.

I can't say for sure. But the evidence is starting to stack up against this guy. I just hope there's not some hook-nosed little weasely guy lending money to all the Mayans at a usurious rate in Apocalypto, or there's going to be some problems...

You have to wonder if this recent Israel-Lebanon tension is going to increase anti-Semitic sentiment in this country. I'm in kind of a hard spot...I vehemently disagree with Israeli policy and feel that they are trying to pull us into a disasterous larger war in the Middle East. (Yes, that's actually possible.) But I really hope Americans don't get too angry with Israel over this, because that tends to turn into more generalized anti-Jew sentiment after a little while. Look, I don't think Jews run the world or start all the wars or anything juvenile like that, but when Israel leads the way in fomenting a massive, horrifically bloody world conflict...well, it gives credence to these loopy, fringe ideas. Suddenly, the idea of angry Jews with an agenda doesn't seem so far paranoid and delusional.

And, of course, a beloved, popular celebrity who's seen as the mouthpiece for a large segment of the American religious population starts speaking these sorts of ideas, even drunk to a bunch of cops, it doesn't bode well for anyone.

V for Vendetta

Alan Moore, the eccentric genius behind the graphic novel V for Vendetta (along with illustrator David Lloyd) has had some bad experiences in Hollywood. Two of his previous works, Jack the Ripper chronicle From Hell and the literate fantasy League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, have been transferred into useless, dumbed-down turkeys gathering dust in bargain bins throughout the country. He's even been sued by screenwriter Larry Cohen, who claimed that the film League of Extraordinary Gentlemen borrowed heavily from his unproduced work and that the entire series of comic books was an elaborate smokescreen designed to hide the theft.

So it's understandable that Moore wouldn't take any interest in the film version of V for Vendetta, going so far as to demand his name be removed from the credits. Furthermore, I'd say it's pretty likely that Moore would dislike the finished product, not neccessarily because it takes liberties with his original book (no adaptation would be possible otherwise), but because it essentially steals his initial conceit to tell a completely different story.

Published in the late 80's and set in a totalitarian London of the near future, Vendetta functioned as a bitter takedown of the policies of Margaret Thatcher and the conservative English government of the time. This new film, written by the Wachowski Brothers and helmed by their Matrix assistant director James McTeigue, uses the structure, motifs and much of the dialogue of Moore and Lloyd's book but reconfigures everything to speak to contemporary America instead. It's at once strikingly similar to the novel (which I read and enjoyed immensely a few years back while working at Barnes & Noble) and also a complete and total departure. It's also one of the best and most important films of the year, a strident and unapologetic screed against the Bush Administration's media-enabled power grab and its devastating aftermath.



Though it takes place in a dystopian future, V for Vendetta doesn't make some rhetorical, slippery slope, worst-case-scenario kind of argument. The Wachowskis and McTeigue aren't so much saying "if we keep going down our present path, this might be where we end up." More like "wake up, people! This is happening right now!" There's a tremendous sense of urgency to the film (as there was in Moore's book), and it's worth noting that all of the transgressions committed by the regime at the film's center mirror the real, admitted activities of the American government. Everything from the black hooded terror suspects to the vehement distrust of Muslims to the frothing newsman who resembles Christopher Hitchens and sounds like Bill O'Reilly should feel familiar to American audiences.

The film's fantasy element serves mainly to keep things lively and entertaining, and to attract teenagers and dimwitted adults who wouldn't normally pay $10 to see a film that includes sociopolitical commentary. But make no mistake - this is a polemic, more angry and radical than anything Michael Moore has done to date.

The man in the Guy Fawkes mask known only as "V" (Hugo Weaving, giving a wonderful performance without ever showing his face) opens the film by saving intern Evey (Natalie Portman) from sleazy, violent cops. He then moves right into blowing up London's Old Bailey. "Violence can be a tool for good," V explains, and he really means it. In the cause of bringing down the invasive, power-mad and corrupt government of Chancellor Adam Setler (John Hurt) via mass revolution, V will be called on to kill several people eand blow up yet another beloved London landmark.

But what makes the film surprising, and what gives its attacks on structural systems of control real bite, isn't the lionization of a violent anarchist. It's the repeated and obvious parallels to American life, attitudes and policy in the year 2006, the frequently ingenius way in which the Wachowskis and McTeigue have managed to make a 16 year old book relevant to this moment in time. It can't have been an easy feat, despite the novel's pointedness, depth and broad historical perspective, yet it feels effortless.

The insights made aren't exactly groundbreaking. Violent tragedies are seized upon (or created) by leaders to create excuses for wars of conquest or domination. Repetition and media saturation can allow falsehoods to take root in the public consciousness. The threat of torture or imprisonment without trial are useful not for interrogation but intimidation of the populace at large. Authoritarian governments rely on exclusionary or eliminiationist rhetoric to unite the masses against common foes and distract from more pressing issues of the day. Anyone who has been paying attention to the news lo these past few years will find little that's brand new and surprising.

But seeing everything put together within the confines of an entertaining fictional story, having the whole case laid out before your eyes in the course of 2 fast-moving hours, makes it clear and identifiable in a way that years of reading Media Matters and listening to Democracy Now never could. Watching V for Vendetta was a simultaneously exhiliarating and disheartening experience - exciting to see filmmakers getting so much right, really taking an audience on a whirlwind tour of the shadowy truth behind CNN's version of reality, and yet depressing to see just how bad things have become in only a few short years.

Taken on purely the level of cinema, I must say that the film is clearly the work of a first-timer. The opening few minutes unfold awkwardly, as do some sequences during the occasionally-slack midsection. You sense that McTeigue can't quite figure out how to initially get the audience involved in this story, mainly because of V's generally inscrutible nature. He's the kind of hero that must be warmed up to slowly, with his oversized mask frozen in an eternal, creepy smile, his deformed hands covered over with tight black gloves and his penchant for alliterative, allusion-heavy monologues. Once the story gets going (and in particular, once Stephen Rea is introduced as Police Inspector Finch), the film finds its footing.

Budget constraints likewise appear to have been a factor. The action scenes, mainly involving V disarming cops (known as fingermen) with knives, look pretty good, but they are brief and infrequent. Likewise, there isn't really much to the film's concept of Future London. A few back alley sets, a boardroom that's nothing more than a long table and a massive monitor featuring a perma-close up on John Hurt's face and V's book-lined apartment are the locations for about 90% of the movie. For a movie with this many ideas on this kind of scale, things feel a touch claustrophobic.

Audiences hoping for Matrix-style spectacle must have been disappointed. This is not a film about knives whooshing through the air or huge CG-laden set pieces. V for Vendetta ignores Michae Bay-isms to focus on some highly unpleasant truths about the direction we're headed as a country. When it's not implying that the American government may have been behind the 9/11 attacks or suggesting that blowing up a building can serve a positive, rational purpose, the film eventually settles on a making a direct, straightforward argument:

When a government ceases to truly represent its people, when it turns on the masses as a way of sustaining itself, it's the duty of individual citizens to reclaim their country from their own leadership. In the movie's world, there's a born leader with 20 years to plot out a course of action and sweet martial arts skills. Reality hasn't provided the American people with this kind of head start, but a really strong, well-made and intelligent film on the subject will have to do for now.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Generally, the sequel to a massive box office hit gets approached in one of two ways. Either you remake the original film with a larger budget or you blow up and expand the universe of the first movie, filling in the backstory, adding a new villain and an entirely new dimension to the story. Ghostbusters 2 goes the first route while Gremlins 2 opts for the second. Jewel of the Nile goes for the former while Back to the Future 2 aims for the latter.

The follow-up to Disney's ride-based smash hit Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl incorporates both standard sequel elements, rejiggering the plot of the first film into a much larger, more epic-scale story with the pirates' immortal souls at stake.

Coming as it does from uber-Producer Jerry Bruckheimer, it's not surprising that Dead Man's Chest crams just about every well-known pirate trope into a 2.5 hour smorgasboard of spectacle. J Brucks is a guy who doesn't know when to say when. He seems to view a film's quality as proportional to its length and cost to produce.

What is surprising about Dead Man's Chest is how well it all comes together despite the cumbersome running time, largely uninteresting supporting cast and the somewhat senseless, chaotic set pieces. The rare sequel that improves on the original film, Dead Man's Chest reminded me at times of the classics of the swashbuckle and adventure genres, in particular Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It's not quite as good as that, granted, but this is about as close as modern Hollywood gets. (It's the only even passable entertainment offered thus far in Summer 06).



Star Johnny Depp won all the praise the first time around, garnering an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of the fey and self-obsessed Captain Jack Sparrow, and he's once again fun to watch in the role. Director Gore Verbinski smartly gives him some room, lets him stretch out in the character and take some peculiar chances. He sashays and daintily skips his way through the movie, providing for some measure of entertainment value from even the most dry of expositional sequences.

Having said that, I think Verbinski deserves the lion's share of the recognition this time around. Like the original entry, this film is about a 20 minutes too long, but the pacing is better. Though the climax is arguably larger than the ghost ship seige and subsequent battle that closed out the first film, it's more tightly coiled and intense.

Additionally, the Industrial Light and Magic special effects have improved from the already-impressive first movie. The villainous Davy Jones (Bill Nighy, unrecognizable behind heavy-duty make-up) commands a crew of mutant sea creatures, pirates who have traded in their souls in exchange for 100 years of immortality. Actually, not to get sidetracked, but an interesting case could be made for this entire franchise being an extended guilt metaphor. This is the second film in a row in which characters are forced to make up for the sins of Jack Sparrow's past. In the first film, they help him weasel out of a curse he should be under for stealing gold. This time around, they're helping him weasel out of a deal he made with a Devil-like sea captain. Likewise, all the villainous pirates suffer for some horrendous evil in their background. The endless searches for these artificats, the hardships endured at sea in order to undo the crimes of the past, it's all part of a larger redemptive quest for all involved. There's even the further implication that Will fights to make up for his father's poor judgements and Elizabeth fights to atone for her father's prissy cowardice.

But anyway, back to the effects. Each individual monster has different deformities - Jones peers from pale human eyes but has a squid face, Bootstrap Bill (Stellan Skarsgard) has barnacles growing out of his body, others resemble mussels or clams. The amount of work that must have gone into designing this group of phantoms boggles the mind, but was totally worth the effort. (Again, their hideous physical features mirror their fatal misjudgement - choosing the lonely life of the sea instead of a life spent in a community with other humans. Magic forces them to own up to their errors.)



Verbinski and his screenwriters, Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott, stumble occasionally as they move along this rather unlikely trilogy. I honestly can not figure out why they felt the need to bring back so many characters from the first film. It would seem like an ongoing franchise focused on the many adventures of Captain Jack, the only truly popular character from the first film, would be the wisest strategy.

Keira Knightley, beautiful though she may be, adds nothing to the movie as the headstrong Elizabeth. Am I the only one who notices that she plays every scene in every one of her movies in exactly the same way? Stare off into space hazily 90% of the time. Every once in a while, suddenly snap to attention, curl up her lip into a snarl and say something headstrong to the nearest male. Then stomp off. Orlando Bloom likewise brings very little to an adventure franchise. They're both dull actors and their scenes together are lifeless. (Wisely, I don't think there's a single sequence in the entire film featuring just these two, leading me to believe that Verbinski knows how boring they are on screen and just needs a requisite amount of attractive young people in his movie to bring in the teenagers.)

If they had stopped with bringing these three back, that would have been fine with me. Maybe not advisable, but fine. But why bring back Jack Davenport as the snobbish Commander Norrington? I watched the first film not all that long ago and had still forgotten this character even existed? Lee Arenberg and Mackenzie Crook return in their underwritten, stupid comic relief characters from the first movie and continue to flail around in the hopeless pursuit of cheap laughs. Tom Hollander as well returns as the scheming Cutler Beckett, who has pretty much nothing at all to do in the story and whose presence is totally unneeded considering the menace already presented by Davy Jones and his ghostly ship The Flying Dutchman.

I mean, with all the big action beats Verbinski has designed here - including a few fights with Jones' dreaded sea beast The Kraken - and all the creative new characters, there wasn't any need at all for this much continuity. The supernatural mythology of this universe has been deepened to such an extent that continuing to focus on the governmental authority in Port Royal feels superfluous, is what I'm saying.

I've heard two different complaints from friends and customers about the movie in the past week. Some, including Ari of The Apsect Ratio, argue that the first hour lacks punch and takes forever to get going. Others feel that the ending, which strongly hints at the direction of the third film, At World's End, is unsatisfying and leave the audience hanging. I disagree on both counts.

I felt like the movie kicks into high gear right away. In fact, the opening passages moved more swiftly than the first time around. Instead of a long sequence in which Will (Bloom) and Elizabeth (Knightley) are arrested, we get a brief montage ending with them behind bars. When Will sets out to find Captain Jack, rather than the expected "search sequence," Verbinski cuts to the chase and delves right into one of the film's most inspired action scenes, a frenzied pursuit by kill-crazy cannibalistic islanders.

Likewise, the ending felt like fair game to me. The story of Dead Man's Chest, in which Jack, Will and Elizabeth team up to steal away the secret of Davy Jones' magical powers, comes to a downbeat conclusion, but it's a conclusion nonetheless. Really, it's as if this movie ends and then we get a two-scene preview of the next movie at the end, a little pre-teaser teaser. If that next movie's as good as this one, I'll be sorry to see this series come to an end.

Zion! Hear Me!

At one point, this was going to be a Braffy Nomination post for "World's Worst War Criminal." Since devising that category and beginning work on the post, an actual war has broken out, making the entire concept significantly less amusing. Okay, an additional war has broken out on top of the many previous wars that continued to rage. For reference, here's Billmon's attempt to list all the conflicts currently going on in the Hellscape Formerly Known as the Sovereign Nation of Iraq and the Greater Middle East.

We've got: Israeli Jews fighting Lebanese Shi'a and Palestinian Sunnis; Palestinian Fatah militants who've stopped fighting Hamas militants, but only because they're both fighting the Israelis; Saudi Sunni fundamentalists issuing fatwas against Hezbollah Shi'a fundamentalists; Egyptian Sunni fundamentalists backing those same Hezbollah Shi'a fundamentalists; Iraqi Sunnis killing Iraqi Shi'a and vice versa; Iraqi Shi'a (the Mahdi Army) jousting with Iraqi Shi'a (the Badr Brigade); Iraqi Kurds trying to push Sunni Arabs and both Sunni and Shi'a Turkomen out of Kirkuk; Turks threatening to invade Kurdistan; Iranians allegedly shelling Kurdistan, Syrian Kurds rebelling against Syrian Allawites who are despised by Syria's Sunni majority but allied with the Lebanese Shi'a who are hated and feared by the House of Saud and its Sunni fundamentalist minions. Oh, and American and Israeli neocons threatening to bomb both Syria and Iran.

So, yeah...Even though I had a great amusing summary all set to go for the Dick Cheney nomination...I'm going to have to give that idea a pass, and delay this year's Braffies even further while I come up with some fresh category ideas. Hardly the greatest tragedy of the week, but disappointing to me personally nonetheless.

Honestly, it's hard for me to even write about the horrors going on in Iraq and Lebanon any more. I feel limited in a number of ways. Mainly, I try to keep things somewhat light and funny around here. I figure no one comes to check out my blog for hard-hitting socio-political commentary but instead seek a platter of snide commentary featuring only a small side dish of actual current events.

Also, I can't help but feel like, in these war posts, I've begun to repeat myself. Crushed by Inertia began in November of 2004, already a year-and-a-half after the armies of freedom marched into Baghdad. (You can tell they're the armies of freedom because they're the ones bumping Limp Bizkit albums while they blow up your house.) I was already experiencing what some more clever bloggers than I have deemed "outrage fatigue." 4 years of President Curious George had put my shrillometer into a kind of permanent overdrive. There aren't many crimes I haven't (rightfully) accused the GOP and its sycophantic followers of committing (I'm looking at you, Sean Hannity), and I'm afraid the time when I will run out of synonyms for "asshole" is drawing nigh.

Posts about Israel enhance my discomfort. I am a Jew and I frequently differ from other Jews, even close family members, about the attitude and behavior of the state of Zion. For example, I feel that underground raves take up vital time and resources that should be focused on keeping out robotic squid monsters, whereas others prefer to live for the moment, de-emphasizing the mechanized tentacled threat by dancing the night away.

NO, I'm kidding. I feel that, despite Israel's right to exist, neighbors and enemies have genuine and legitimate greivances that are routinely ignored not only by Israel but also the United States. We're talking about an apartheid state. Americans couldn't tolerate the notion of apartheid when it was happening in South Africa. Yet not only does the second-class citizenry of Palestinians not seem to upset anyone unduly, to voice any opposition to the practice earns one the proud label of "anti-Semite."

Now we have Israel responding to a terrorist action by Hezbollah with a full-on assault on the people of Lebanon. I have seen some images from Beirut over the last few days and they are absolutely some of the most vomit-inducing, reprehensible glimpses of inhuman cruelty imaginable. I will not post them here because then I wouldn't be able to load up my own blog for fear of seeing them again. You can look at them here, if you so desire. Be warned: war is icky and gross.

Law perfesser Alan Dershowitz doesn't seem to think so. He's too busy defending everything Israel does than considering the consequences of lobbing missiles into residential neighborhoods for several weeks at a time. In the LA Times, he has argued that anyone not elderly or crippled currently living in South Lebanon in in league with terrorists and therefore fair game for Israeli Death from Above. What's fascinating is that Dershowitz employs exactly the same excuse for killing Lebanese civilians that Ben Stein offered for the government ignoring Katrina victims.

"Hey, they could have left! But they didn't! So who cares if they die?" I think it's helpfully dehumanizing for these guys to think of those remaining in disaster/war zones as ignorant clods, helpless Victims of Choice flailing about in the wildnerness waiting for some kindly Good Samaritan to come along and give them a handout. It plays into that old "welfare queen" fiction perfectly, as if anyone would opt to remain in a war zone or a disaster area or to live on public assistance.

Normally, when these sorts of things happen in the Middle East, you can count on the Americans to step in and try to negotiate an immediate cease-fire. Just to help stop the killing, even if it's only temporarily. Our War President, loving war as he does, has decided to sit back, enjoy a delicious buttered roll and wait for Jesus to come and whisk him away up to Heaven.

"I wonder," George thinks as he slathers some more imitation margerine on his bread and takes a moment to admire the German Chancellor's ass as she passes by, "When the Rapture comes, will I just suddenly find myself standing in Heaven? Or will I actually feel my soul rush up through the clouds and into God's Kingdom? Because I do get kind of motion sick, and it would be awfully embarrassing to have my first meeting with Jesus and then have to leave to go throw up."

After all, why would Bush intercede if there's even a chance our guys are going to kick a lot of brown-people ass? Let the Israelis take our American weapons and use them on Hezbollah for us! Brilliant!

We’re looking at incredible increases in U.S. military aid and weapons sales to Israel. Military aid stands at about $3 billion a year. That’s about $500 for every Israeli citizen that the United States provides on an annual basis. And then, weapons sales, most recently, since the Bush administration came into power, we’re looking at $6.3 billion worth of weaponry sold to Israel.

Israel's relationship with the United States is unique in a number of ways. And one of those ways is that essentially the United States provides 20% of the Israeli military budget on an annual basis, and then about 70% of that money that is given from the United States, from U.S. taxpayers, to Israel is then spent on weapons from Lockheed Martin and Boeing and Raytheon. Most other countries don't have that sort of cash relationship, where they go straight to U.S. corporations with U.S. money to buy weapons that are then used in the Occupied Territories and against Lebanon.

That's from an interview on Democracy Now.

So there you have it...For perhaps the first time in CBI history, I'm left speechless. This war in Lebanon is our war. Israel's fighting it, but we've given them the weapons and the go-ahead. It's on us.

Damn, we're smooth.

Tsotsi

2006 Oscar winner for Best Foreign-Language film, South Africa's Tsotsi has repeatedly been compared to the masterful Brazilian epic City of God. I could not explain this comparison to you with any sort of clarity. They both take place in slums Third World nations. They are both shot in a fevered, gritty yet colorful style accented by the occasional use of handheld cameras. Umm...Okay, that's it.

Whereas City of God mashes together a spastic crime thriller and a lesson in the History of the Rio Slums, Tsotsi simply places a familiar, Western, sentimental narrative in a lively, well-sketched South African setting. With a few changes, the film could just as easily take place in South Philly or the South Side of Chicago as South Africa.

Perhaps I'm being unfair. Tsotsi has a strong sense of place. The soundtrack overflows with percussive local music, the dialogue melds together a variety of dialects (including Zulu, Afrikaans and English) and the nation's horrific AIDS crisis quiety provokes nearly all the on-screen action in subtle or unspoken ways.

At its best, the film provides a relatively clear, humane and recognizable portrait of how one cyclically impoverished, forgotten neighborhood functions. It's just that writer/director Gavin Hood (adapting a novel by Athol Fugard) falls back too frequently on genre conventions or maudlin manipulation to move along the regrettably familiar storyline. Surely there's some more captivating or telling story out there about the slums of Johannesburg, without falling back on the old "criminal finds a baby" routine.



Alas, that's the long and the short of Tsotsi, which strictly in terms of narrative has more to do with Three Men and a Baby or...ugh...Father Hood than the audacious City of God. The titular nickname, local slang for "thug," belongs to the film's hero (the soft-spoken and effective Presley Chweneyagae) and sums up his character fairly well. In the opening, we see him and his gang rob a man in the subweay, stabbing him in the process. While celebrating the score over drinks, he gets into an argument with friend Boston (Mothusi Magano) and nearly beats the poor guy to death. Running away from the bar, he steals a woman's car and shoots her in the gut, only to discover her infant son sitting in the back seat.

And I think that's about all I need to tell you about the story. Do you think maybe finding this child will have some kind of effect on Tsotsi's outlook? Might it cause him to reconsider the horrors of his own childhood and how they have affected his personality and behavior? When done really well, a quaint formula like this can still inspire an audience. It is possible. But Hood's film is just too simple and straight-forward, the lessons learned excessively easy and obvious.

In the film's best scene, Tsotsi takes his new youthful charge to see a pile of hollow concrete tubes in a field overlooking Downtown Johannesburg. This is the place where he grew up, a homeless child forming a makeshift community with other abandoned kids. Now, other children live there. The sequence makes this sort of endless suffering tactile, really palpable. In an odd way, it closely approximates a familiar scene from American films, including Annie Hall - the return to the childhood home. Here, the idea has been perverted - a hopelessly impoverished young man inspecting the hovel in which he once squatted, passing on some kind of knowledge or experience to another generation of abandoned kids.

I wanted much, much more of that and less changing poopy diapers. I've seen the "hard man has to change gross poopy diapers" thing a million times. Anybody remember Three Fugitives? Thankfully, there isn't a shot of Tsotsi getting hit in the face by stray wee-wee, but there might as well be. And it's not just what Chili Palmer would call the "three guys find a baby and then they start acting like three grown-up assholes" genre material that feels perfunctory. A subplot in which Tsotsi first threatens and then bonds with a single mother (Nambitha Mpumlwana) takes up a lot of time and goes nowhere.

Even the argument with Boston, the conflict that initiates all of the film's action, begins over nothing and is resolved easily through a single conversation. Local color will get you pretty far in this kind of film, which is as much about giving your audience a distinct and immersive sense of place as it is about a powerhouse narrative. But all the authenticity and earnestness Gavin Hood can muster doesn't overcome the faint stink of by-the-numbers predictability hanging over Tsotsi, a familiar narrative skulking around in a strange and unfamiliar world.

Eddie Murphy to Marry Scary Spice

For real!

Eddie Murphy and former Spice Girl Mel B are reportedly set to wed in September. The couple - who met at a party in Beverly Hills last month - have reportedly booked the plush Roosevelt Hotel, in Los Angeles, for their "dream wedding". Mel, 31, and Murphy - who is 14 years her senior - are reportedly planning to tie the knot in an intimate ceremony attended by just close family and friends.

Think about it...This makes sense. We all know Eddie has kind of a thing for men dressed as ladies.

Also, just like a certain former British pop star, Eddie's female companion derives great pleasure from the frequent attendence of festive social gatherings.



That has got to be the most delightfully egomaniacal music video ever. Eddie and Rick James show up at the studio, Eddie sings an incredibly dippy 80's pop hit and everyone dances around with big, dopey grins as if this is the first time in their lives they have actually heard music.

The Airing of Grievances

I know I say this all the time, but I think the President is acting like an even more enormous, dim-witted fuck-up than usual lately. I think it started around the time he made fun of that blind guy at the press conference. When I wasn't paying attention, he progressed from a hideous, shameful national embarassment to the political equivalent of Steve Martin's Ruprecht character in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

Here's a brief laundry list of his recent gaffes, for those of you who don't pay attention during the Moment of Zen at the end of the "Daily Show":

- Bush deflects serious questions about the devastating violence in the Middle East to focus on the barbecued pig he'll be enjoying later that afternoon.

- In a joint press conference with Vladimir Putin, Bush implies that he'd like to see Russia embrace more freedoms...like Iraq. Putin replies that he doesn't Russia to have a democracy anything like Iraq's. Ba-zing.

- During a G8 summit, Bush speaks with food in his mouth, curses, misues the term "irony" and addresses the Prime Minister of Britain as "Yo, Blair!"

- A few days later, at the same G8 conference, Bush awkwardly attempts to give German Chancellor Angela Merkel a neck massage. Who the fuck is this guy? We elected him to serve as our representative to the world, and he's sleazing around this crucial diplomatic event like Schneider from "One Day at a Time."

- Bush's initial response to the Israel-Lebanon conflict was to issue a series of rambling, incoherent statements - statements so meaningless, they seemed to indicate a general confusion about contemporary world events.

Still not convinced? Take a look at this photo:


Look, ma, no brains!

And...sigh...this one:



That's, of course, a still from Universal's can't-miss upcoming holiday comedy, Three Men, A Baby and a Complete Fucking Douchebag.

If we ever plan to restoring any international respect of any kind (if such a thing is even possible), I think we should start openly acknowledging that we all know he's an idiot. At first, maybe slip it in there casually. Have the Secret Service pin a note to his jacket alerting other world leaders that our President has "special needs," and that they may need to repeat important points to him several times and/or bribe him with an extra serving of applesauce in order to gain his attention.

Then, get a little bit more bold. Have him conduct all his public addresses in front of back drops counting down the number of days until he's no longer President. Get him a Presidential tricycle to ride around on, to make sure he doesn't fall off. Dress the Secret Service in "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts. You know, have fun with it...Let these other countries know we're not just a bunch of Rapture-happy fast food and violence junkies, that we have a sense of humor about Our Retarded Deciderer.

Winning is Everything

Not to toot my own horn, but I have won a contest over at Tbogg's place. The challenge? To predict the ending to M. Night Shyamabamahamalan's latest opus, Lady in the Water. You can check out my suggestion, which thankfully met Mr. Bogg's strict standards for snark, right here.

(And might I also add, welcome Tbogg readers joining us here for the first time. Make yourselves at home.)

While we're on the subject of one M. Night, there's a few things I'd like to discuss.

(1) This "tell-all" book in which the guy complains that Disney executives didn't believe in his creative vision

This book comes out next week, written by a Sports Illustrated writer with Night's full blessing, talking about how those fools at the Mouse House didn't sufficiently worship his genius, forcing him to leave the studio for Warner Brothers. It's called, get this, The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale. Oh, Christ.

Disney production President Nina Jacobson gets the worst drubbing. Jacobson and Shyamalan enjoyed a close, albeit sometimes combative, relationship. Over six years, she shepherded his four Disney films including "Unbreakable," "Signs" and "The Village."

On what would have been their fifth collaboration, their bond so eroded that the two didn't speak for more than a year. At a disastrous dinner in Philadelphia last year, Jacobson delivered a frank critique of the "Lady in the Water" script. When she told him that she and her boss, studio Chairman Dick Cook, didn't "get" the idea, Shyamalan was heartbroken. Things got only worse when she lambasted his inclusion of a mauling of a film critic in the story line and told Shyamalan his decision to cast himself as a visionary writer out to change the world bordered on self-serving. But Shyamalan gets his revenge on Jacobson in the book, in which he says he had felt for some time that he "had witnessed the decay of her creative vision right before his own wide-open eyes. She didn't want iconoclastic directors. She wanted directors who made money."

But wait...there's more. He's not just a whiny egomaniac. I think he may have some kind of full-blown mental illness.

"Sometimes Night would close his eyes and see little oval black and white head shots of Nina Jacobson and Oren Aviv and Dick Cook floating around in his head, unwanted houseguests that would not leave," Bamberger writes. "The Disney people had gotten deep inside his head, interfering with the good work the voices were supposed to do and it would be hell to get them out."

Hearing...voices...I thought he meant that metaphorically. Like, "the voices that inspire me to create tepid, overbearing allegories like The Village!" But, no, he means actual voices. In his head. Nice...

Here's the best/worst part:

The book's most revealing scene is the tense dinner of Feb. 15, 2005, and its aftermath — referred to by Shyamalan's colleagues as "The Valentine's Day Massacre." The setting was a fancy Philadelphia restaurant, Lacroix, not far from the farmhouse where Shyamalan, his wife and two daughters live. But from the start, the book says, the dinner seemed doomed. The tables were too close together, and "Night felt that other diners could hear their conversation." Seated next to Shyamalan, Jacobson aired her problems with the script. Criticisms "came spewing out of her without a filter," Bamberger writes.

"You said it was funny; I didn't laugh," the book quotes her as saying. "You're going to let a critic get attacked? They'll kill you for that! Your part's too big; you'll get killed again! What's with the names? Scrunt? Narf? Tartutic? Not working. Don't get it. Not buying it. Not getting it. Not working."

Her words went over like spoiled fish. "She went on and on and on," the book says. "Night was waiting for her to say she didn't like the font" his assistant had printed the script in. After way too many courses, Disney executives walked Shyamalan and his agent to the elevator, and Cook asked to speak to the director alone. "Just make the movie for us," Cook said, hoping to keep Disney's most important director in the fold. "We'll give you $60 million and say, 'Do what you want with it.' We won't touch it. We'll see you at the premiere." Shyamalan said he couldn't do that. He couldn't work with those who doubted him. As Cook and his team left the hotel, Shyamalan broke down and cried.

They offer him $60 million to make a movie from a script no one at the studio believes in. His response? Not an effusive "thank you!" Not appreciation for the vote of confidence. He starts to cry.

What a massive sense of entitlement. It's not enough these people are willing to risk that kind of scratch on you based solely on your past performance. They also have to give proper deference and respect to any fool screenplay you come up with, no matter if they think it's stupid and includes a character named Narf?

Anyway, I already wasn't too hyped for Lady in the Water. But after reading this article, I'm not sure I can ever take this guy seriously again.

(2) The declining quality of his filmmaking

I like Sixth Sense a lot. It's good. Well-made. Tight. Many people have told me that they predicted the ending. I caught on before the actual reveal in the film, but only by a few scenes. It works well the first time you see it, terrifically the second time, when you notice all the small, clever details he worked in there...and then you pretty much never need to watch the thing again.

I love Unbreakable. Love it, love it, love it. I know Tbogg over there has complained about the film, calling it implausible and silly. Well, yes, it's implausible. Mainly, I don't think a guy could reach Bruce Willis' age without detecting that his body's impervious to damage. I mean, everyone (everyone!) hurts themselves at some point during their lives. If you get to 40 and you've never had a cold or injury...you might want to look into that.

I still think it's a superior film, however, for two reasons. Technically, the thing is a goddamn marvel. It's beautifully shot and rendered with tremendous attention to detail and care. This is the sort of film that should be nominated for Best Costume Design around award season, because the designs actually enhance the film's central themes and aren't just pretty or ornate. It's also told with patience. There's a calm, a stillness to Night's direction here, in one of the rare modern American films that doesn't aspire to give the viewer a wicked head rush.

Signs is again well-shot and expressive, and has a few scenes I enjoy, but the entire second half is irredeemably stupid. I don't mind if a movie wants to argue in favor of belief in God - plenty of films have in the past - but it should at least try to make a real argument. "You should believe in God because he makes little girls leave glasses of water around that eventually repel foolish aliens for just long enough so that Joaquin Phoenix can smash the shit out of them with a spare baseball bat" isn't working for me.

And as I said above, I found The Village insulting. Night breaks one of the essential, "unbreakable" cinematic rules...Once you've revealed the big twist to your movie, you can't just keep pretending the audience doesn't know what's going on. We're told there are monsters in the forest, then we're told there aren't really monsters in the forest and then, finally, we're supposed to be afraid of...more monsters. Um...what? There aren't really monsters in the forest, dumbass! Remember? You made the goddamn thing...

(3) His obnoxious American Express commercial

You know these commercials, with popular directors shilling for a credit card company? I hate the M. Night one, in which he sits in a restaurant imagining all kinds of "Twilight Zone"-esque creepy situations, and then pays with an American Express card. But not as much as I hate the Wes Anderson "I'm-a-charming-goofball-whose-movies-are-spontaneous-gems-of-whimsy" entry.

The whole vibe of these spots strikes me as pretty much the exact opposite of what you want from advertising. "Hey, look at us, we just walk around all day and create magic in exchange for millions of dollars! Doesn't that sound like fun? Why not get our same credit card? You won't get paid to just sit around and think up shit, because you're not a genius like me, but at least you'll have a credit card. Now, get out of here! I'm conjuring up some more brain gold!"

(4) The twist ending thing has become a curse

He needs to stop. Clearly, the twists no longer work because we know there's going to be a twist. It's a Shyamalan movie, there's going to be some sort of Big Reveal in the final few scenes. Kind of kills a lot of the initial shock value, which is what makes twists work in the first place.

I predicted it at Tbogg's and I'll repeat it here: I think I've figured out Lady in the Water just from the marketing. It's about a guy who works at an apartment building who finds a mermaid named Story, right? And then there's a wolf that comes through the same other-worldly portal as the mermaid and starts terrorizing people. And the tagline on the poster for the film is: "Some bedtime stories are real."

I think it will turn out that the janitor, played by Paul Giamatti, is telling this bedtime story about a mermaid to someone. Think about it...there's a big bad wolf, water imagery, innocent villagers...All the makings of a classic fairy tale. (It's even in the title of his new tell-all book!) If this is true, and for Night's sake I hope I'm way way off, then clearly the Disney folks were right all along. Such an ending would be shallow and manipulative. Kind of like Signs and The Village!

For the Benefit of Dr. Rice

I never watch these Sunday morning political TV shows. In part because I am never, ever awake on Sunday mornings, ever, but also because it's soul-suckingly depressing to sit and home and watch Republican blowhards deliver their weekly Rove-approved talking points to the American people.

Shows like "Meet the Press," "Fox News Sunday," all those ridiculous pundit-fests, they're not about news, in that nothing anyone ever says is subjected to fact-based scrutiny. It's about delivering propaganda. This is when we hear the arguments we'll be having all week for the first time - Social Security is in crisis or Iran must be stopped or North Korea must not be stopped or everything Israel does is right unquestioningly all the time and if you don't think so you're a spineless Jew-hater. You know, thoughtful sociopolitical discourse like that.

Occasionally, public figures go on these shows and screw up by saying something that's actually telling or informative. They don't mind to, of course. The goal is to talk confidently while dispensing as little genuine information as possible. But every once in a great while, a tiny wisp of truth sneaks past all the fetid, already-debunked horseshit. This morning, that happened not once but twice! Thankfully, Think Progress was there to document these atrocities (as Atrios might say), so I could get the full 14 hours of rest my body needs each night.

First off, on ABC's "This Week," George Stephanopoulos asked Dr. Condi Rice an interesting question about her colleague Dick Cheney just making stuff up to sound like he knows what he's talking about. Unfortunately, George didn't couch the question in exactly those terms. I'm paraphrasing.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But before the war in Iraq many argued that going into Iraq would stir up a hornet’s nest. The administration strongly disagreed and here’s what Vice President Cheney had to say in August 2002.

Here, George shows a helpful video clip of Deadeye Dick:

CHENEY (VIDEO): I believe the opposite is true. Regime change in Iraq would bring about a number of benefits to the region, extremists in the region would have to rethink their strategy of jihad, moderates throughout the region would take heart, and our ability to advance the Israeli/Palestinian peace process would be enhanced.

At least he said "I believe..." at the beginning of this senseless and woefully inaccurate account of Baghdad's Life After Wartime. You couldn't actually say he's lying, because he's just predicting shit that he thought would happen. At the same time, this is not a guy whose advice on world affairs you'd want to keep taking. He's got a gift for prophecy on roughly the same level as Carnac the Magnificent.

(Okay, to be fair, extremists in the Middle East have rethought their strategy of jihad, post-invasion. Instead of plotting the murder of Americans discreetly over the course of several years, they can now simply walk outside and shoot directly at American soldiers. Think of all that saved time!)

Anyway, back to George:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Extremists now appear to have been emboldened. The moderates appear to be in retreat. There is no peace process. There is war. How do you answer administration critics who say that the administration’s actions have unleashed, have helped unleash the very hostilities you hoped to contain?

To be fair, there's no good answer Condi could possibly provide to this question. Dick was totally full of shit, it's now painfully obvious to everyone who cares to pick up a newspaper or read a website not sponsored by the National Review and now George is calling her on it on national television. She's left without any real quality rhetorical options.

Okay, well, maybe one..."George, you are exactly right. My colleagues in this administration and I have serially manipulated the American public about this war for the past three years and we can no longer hide the evidence of our misdeeds. Therefore, I will resign my post as Secretary of State, effective immediately, and agree to testify openly at any War Crime proceedings the people of the world wish to bring against me or any other member of the Executive Branch." That would be a pretty good answer.

But short of a letter of resignation, there's no satisfactory answer that Dr. Rice could possibly provide. Having said that, the answer she did come up with is a real humdinger:

RICE: Well, first of all, those hostilities were not very well contained as we found out on September 11th, so the notion that policies that finally confront extremism are actually causing extremism, I find grotesque.

Maybe, what with all the pressure and strain of running a failed foreign policy machine, she just up and forgot the meaning of the word "grotesque." Perhaps she thought it meant "captivating." Or "worthy of careful consideration."

So, for the benefit of Dr. Rice, a brief primer of grotesquerie.

NOT GROTESQUE: Women widowed by the September 11th attacks pressuring their government to thoroughly investigate and competely report to the American people the events of that day
GROTESQUE: Implying that these women never loved their dead husbands

NOT GROTESQUE: Gay marriage
GROTESQUE: Anyone actually marrying Star Jones

NOT GROTESQUE: Burning an American flag as part of a peaceful protest or performance
GROTESQUE: Burning an Iraqi prisoner as part of a violent and useless interrogation

And finally...

NOT GROTESQUE: Asking challenging questions to high-ranking government officials about failed wars of choice
GROTESQUE: Implying that it's immoral or disgusting to question authority

Okay, hope that clears everything up for you, Condi...

Did you know that Fox has a roundtable news show called "Fox and Friends"? Isn't that a childish name for a show that's theoretically about the most vital issues of the day? I kind of respect how openly the Fox News Channel courts mental midgets and the illiterate. Like how O'Reilly always reads the words that flash up on screen for the viewers, in case they can't get through two or three simple sentences on their own. It's noble, in a way. Those people need TV stations, too, you know!

This next item doesn't come from "Fox and Friends." It's a clip from "Fox News Sunday." I just think that name's stupid and wanted to mention it while it's fresh on my mind.

On "Fox News Sunday" this morning, one of my personal favorite right-wing nutjobs, Bill Kristol, faced off against Juan Williams. We start with Kristol, responding to the notion that our problems with Iran stem from our own incursion into Iraq:

KRISTOL: No, it’s a result of our deducing from the situation in Iraq that we can’t stand up to Iran. I mean, when we stand up over and over and say Iran is shipping Improvised Explosive Devices into Iraq and killing U.S. soldiers, and Syria’s providing a line for terrorists to come into Iraq and kill U.S. soldiers, and that’s unacceptable. That’s not helpful. And then we do nothing about it.

He never says, but what exactly would Bill like us to do about it? Kill 'em all, most likely. Kristol around here begins to openly call for war against Iran. When will enough ever be enough for this people? And that's exactly what Juan Williams had to say.

WILLIAMS: Well, it just seems to me that you want…you just want war, war, war, and you want us in more war. You wanted us in Iraq. Now you want us in Iran. Now you want us to get into the Middle East, where I think there’s a real interesting dynamic at play.

Exactly.

War, war, war, war, war. It's all these guys have left to go on. Nothing else. They want to keep winning elections in '06 and '08 and they have nothing except keeping voters afraid by entering new wars.

Their domestic agenda is to fuck you over and give money to large corporations. With the money the Pentagon has wasted since 9/11 - not used on supplies for our troops but wasted on planes that will never fly - we could educate, feed and provide health care services for every single American. And maybe even have enough left over to give everyone free Internet!

Their governing philosophy is to do whatever they want regardless of what the Constitution says. Their standing with the rest of the world and level of respect is, um, bleak to put it nicely. All they've got is "national security," which is code for "war against the browns." The rhetoric will only get more insane and fevered as the months wear on.

If You Can Dodge a Wretch, You Can Dodge a Ball

Did you know that Rush Limbaugh has a brother who's also an arch-conservative? It's horrible yet true! And that's not even the worst part. If this David Limbaugh column from Human Events Online (brought to my attention by the absolutely essential World O' Crap) accurately represents this guy's intellect and writing ability, it appears that Rush may actually be the smarter and more worldly of the two! David probably wouldn't have even tried to hide his pseudononymous prescription bottles when going through customs - he'd just hand the nice lady the illegal container of boner pills and ask if he can ride on the baggage claim conveyer belt.

Maybe I just have the SAT Verbal section on the brain this week, but I'm not sure Dave's entire column has a single sentence written in proper, gramatically correct English. Even the headline is awkwardly composed:

Targeting Dodge Ball and Other Inanities

What Dave means to say is that "secular liberals" are targeting dodge ball in public schools, and that his column will attack this and other inanities. But that headline sounds like he's actually planning to attack dodge ball, along with other dodge ball-related inanities. Maybe Human Events Online should hire some Copy Editors Offline.

(I don't want to get too off-topic, but as long as we're talking about publications that could use better fact-checking, do any of you happen to read the free publication LA Alternative? I didn't think so. If you did, you may have noticed the following egregious error from their "Calendar of Events" this week (emphasis mine):

When you think ’70s cool, you probably think of the obvious names-James Taylor, Warren Oates of Hall and Oates, Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. And for good reason, too: the three men starred in Two-Lane Blacktop, the drag-racing classic that inspired the Cannonball Run. Taylor, Wilson and Oates are never given names (rather, they’re referred to as “the Driver,” or “the Mechanic”) because the important things in this movie are the fast cars (a ‘55 Chevy and a Pontiac GTO), the hot girl (Laurie Bird) and the open road (Route 66 before the major interstates). Showing as part of a double feature with Cisco Pike, which stars troubadour Kris Kristofferson in his film debut. 7:30 p.m. New Beverly Cinema, 7165 Beverley Blvd., L.A. (Max Read)

Now, okay...They misspell Beverly Blvd...That's not such a big deal. But guys...WARREN OATES WAS NOT THE GUY IN HALL AND OATES! That was New York musician John Oates. Warren Oates is a totally significant, beloved 70's actor. That's not a casual kind of error - someone really really needed to catch that one.

Even worse, I wrote them an e-mail two days ago informing the editors of the mistake, and have not yet seen a response or a correction. If you check online, the mistake is still there. For me personally, I could give a shit less...But you would think a real paper would want to fix such an embarrassing mistake...)

Fortunately, Human Events Online doesn't have to worry about these sorts of issues. As the kind of outfit that will publish rants by Michael Reagan and Ann Coulter, they clearly don't see the publication of facts and accurate information as central to the business of running a news website. Let's face it...That stuff is BO-RING! We could all learn a simple lesson from our President: When you just make stuff up, everything turns out the way you want! It's like being your very own DECIDERER!

Anyway, on to David's column:

There was a time in this country when public school teachers could focus on teaching the basics. Today, unfortunately, they are all too often preoccupied with accommodating the silly concerns pervading our society.

To what concerns do I refer? Oh, those such as banning the innocent children's games of dodge ball, cops and robbers, musical chairs, steal the bacon and tag. You heard me right -- it's not just the allegedly sadistic and violent game of dodge ball that schools are trying to outlaw.

Actually, every time I eat a large, greasy breakfast, I wind up playing "pass the bacon" for the rest of the day...Here's a strategy tip - try and eat some roughage, perhaps some whole wheat toast on the side.

But seriously, folks...That first paragraph perfectly demonstrates the murky, shallow thinking that pervades David's entire piece. Because some school administrators have become concerned with the violent and cruel aspect of dodge ball (a rather large aspect of that particular game), somehow this eats up time that would otherwise be spent on education. How? Are teachers really interrupting class time to discuss the lasting traumatic effects of dodge ball games? Are school supplies that would otherwise be used by children instead diverted to laboratories where advanced experiments calculate the specific effects of dodge ball games on the child psyche? Or do you think David's just talking out of his ass, trying to invent a national crisis when really you just have some concerned teachers and parents?

Call me nostalgic for my childhood if you wish -- for the days of Beaver Cleaver and Andy Griffith -- but I long for the times when cockamamie ideas didn't pass for reasonable.

The sad thing is, Dave feels bittersweet nostalgia for the fictional environments presented to him on antiquated sitcoms. He's whistfully recalling "Leave it to Beaver" as if it was a reflection on his own life, instead of a TV show he used to watch as a kid. Unless your name is Ron Howard, I think I can safely say your childhood was nothing like "The Andy Griffith Show." He's nostalgic for an imaginary past that never was, kind of like Bill Murray in Scrooged. Hey, Dave, that wasn't you who scored the winning run, that was the kid on "The Courtship of Eddie's Father!"

Bring back the days when kids were allowed to have some harmless fun without certain hair-brained, social engineers coming unglued.

Not to belabor the SAT thing, but here's a guy who makes his living by writing and he can't put a simple sentence together. This would get knocked down on the Written portion of the SAT for three reasons - you don't need a comma between "hair-brained" and "social," you don't need the extraneous word "certain" and the use of the slang term "hair-brained" isn't really appropriate for professional writing.

Not to mention the most obvious point: Only a goober this bent out of shape over children playing dodge ball. Who cares? If they can't play dodge ball, kids will just come up with a different technique for identifying schoolmates who can't physically defend themselves as targets for future abuse. They may all smell and look kind of stupid, but some of these kids can be pretty wily.

Dodge ball is an easy target for the sourpusses because it involves students -- heaven forbid -- trying to hit other students with a dastardly rubber ball. And at least once in recorded history, one of those children was hurt.

Dave struggles mightily to miss the point here. As far as I can tell, the risk of serious injury isn't the #1 reason educators worry about dodge ball. I would think it's obvious that the controversial aspect of the game is its inherent exclusionism and innate cruelty. Players are singled out and made into targets and then are pelted by the other team with rubber balls. There's no strategy, it's less than ideal for exercize purposes and rather than fostering teamwork, it requires an aggressive, individual approach. In short, it's probably the worst game to push on children if the ultimate goal is physical fitness or confidence-building.

A reasonable counter-argument could certainly be made. "Playing effective dodge ball requires constant attention, both to the movements of the ball and to the opposing team, which in turn develops focus." Or "dodge ball fosters good sportsmanship, as children discover that it's more fun to play the game working in tandem with fellow players and trying to avoid hurting anyone." Or even just "kids like dodge ball and allowing them to play during school hours encourages physical fitness and keeps students active." I don't really agree with any of these points, but they are at least based on some kind of logical reasoning.

Dave apparently isn't clever enough to come up with any points like these, so he just sputters against invisible foes who want to ban dodge ball because someone could put an eye out.

For the record, we played the game all the time in Coach Russell's PE class at Franklin school, and I can't remember a single injury, even among the girls who played with us boys. Sure, when the ball hit you it stung slightly, but that was part of the fun of it. Real injuries were much more likely to occur in touch football or softball, which ought to tell you how likely they were.

Keep on fighting the good fight, Dave. That fictional person who believes that dodge ball threatens the lives of our young people won't know what hit him!

So, under the pretense that dodge ball is too dangerous, there is an increasing trend among school districts across the country to ban it. But this seems more of a convenient excuse, as does the objection that the game provides a poor cardiovascular workout.

Yeah, who cares if PE classes provide children with a good workout as part of a general promotion of robust health! It's far more important we allow them to hurl gymp equipment at one another for an hour each day! Cause, dammit, that's how it was for The Beav if I'm remembering that particular episode correctly!

Reading below the headlines we find that other reasons are motivating those who seek to purge these schoolyard games. One major reason, according to the Los Angeles Times, "is that the game can hurt children's feelings."

How does dodge ball cause this irreversible emotional trauma? Well, it is a contest of elimination where the last player to avoid being hit wins. So, like the perilous games of cutthroat in billiards and the heartless musical chairs, dodge ball is a game of exclusion -- a capital crime in these times of politically correct inclusion.

I recall how sad I was when my elementary school cancelled its long-running Billiards program.

Really, can any one man be so stupid? Dave, maybe the children have hurt feelings because other students are whipping large inflatable balls at their face? I mean, yes, it sucks to lose a game of pool (particularly if you've made a wager beforehand), but when you lose at ythat game, typically, no one maliciously chucks the 8 ball at your face.

(Note the throwaway reference to political correctness. What do concerned teachers and parents trying to prevent children from associating negative feelings with competitive sports have to do with being politically correct? Um...oh yeah, nothing...)

Unbelievably, Dave keeps bloviating for several more paragraphs about the evils of dodge ball bans before finally getting down to the real point:

These ideas are ludicrous on their face, but there is obviously something else at work here. While the secularists are paranoid lest any vestige of Western values remain in the classroom, they are eager to impose their own values at school.

Wow...so much stupidity...Where to begin...

Okay, first off, this name. "The secularists." Meaningless. Wanting to ban dodge ball in elementary schools has absolutely nothing to do with a person's spirituality or belief system. Identifying a lack of enthusiasm for pegging children with fast-moving airborne projectiles as a lack of enthusiasm for organized religion makes absoutely not sense at all. None. Not any. Less, even, than Dave's brother's excuses for fraudulently obtaining all that pain medication.

Next, if these teachers who want to ban dodge ball are from America, aren't their values as "Western" as Dave's? Dave's ego-centered view of Americanism, that his own personal worldview perfectly replicates a standard for traditional "Western" values is...wait for it..."ludicrous on [its] face."

Because there obviously isn't one set of "Western values," particularly when talking about minutae like the game of dodge ball. What are we, 12 years old?

They tell us they want to promote harmony, community and inclusiveness when what they really want is to push the notion of pacifism and discourage our traditions of competition and rugged individualism.

There you have it, in black and white. What this column is all about. Dave is a cruel man who likes the idea of children nursing emotional scars from years of forced participation in dodge ball games. He sees compassion for a child in any situation that's less than fatal to be a sign of personal weakness. I mean, the guy is so bitter, he's upset that teachers want to push the notion of pacifism on their students.

My professional diagnosis: Dave got his ass kicked a lot as a kid and he didn't have anyone to stand up for him or make him feel better. So he grew up associating PE class, and probably the schoolyard in general, with pain and abuse and victimhood. Now that he's older, he resents any attempts to make this situation easier for modern children. Hey, he had to put up with all the bullying and cruelty as a child...Why should the kids of today have it any better?

(Is PE really about teaching "rugged individualism" in the first place? Don't you mainly play team sports in PE class, thus learning about the exact opposite of rugged individualism? I had always assumed it was about instilling healthy exercize habits in people from a young age. If you teach them to love sport and to stay fit at 15, maybe those lessons will stick with them into adulthood. The best way to teach kids to love sports and exercize all the time? Make it fun and don't focus on intense, obsessive competition and cruelty.)

Of course, maybe that's just me. Perhaps I'm simply nostalgic for the days of my youth, a special time when Cliff Huxtable taught us all how to love, Alex Keaton demonstrated the joys of youthful conservatism and Danny Tanner proved to the world that the healthiest environment in which to raise young girls is a suburban home under the watchful eye of a nerd, a failed rock star and a doofus who does "Popeye" impressions.

A Bold Piece of Political Strategery

This is exactly the sort of innovative, outside-the-box thinking the Democratic Party needs.

An Air Force officer pleaded guilty Friday to defacing cars with bumper stickers supporting
President Bush's name and was given a two-year deferred sentence.

Lt. Col. Alexis Fecteau, a decorated officer who flew 500 combat hours in the Gulf War, Kosovo and Bosnia, pleaded guilty to felony mischief and must pay restitution to the owners of the damaged cars to clear his record.

Of course! Now it all makes sense! If you disagree with the President's policies, the only natural response is to vandalize the personal property of his nominal supporters! I think if John Kerry had spent more time on the campaign trail knocking over mailboxes and leaving bags of doody on Bush voters' front porches, he'd be our President today.

Fecteau, 43, of Colorado Springs, did not speak during the hearing nor comment after it.

Too bad. Here's a guy I'd really like to hear from. Get his thoughts on life, some perspective on who Alexis Fecteau really is and what he's all about. Maybe make a little gift book out of it, something you could sell at the front bargain table at the local Hallmark store.

I'm making fun of him, and of course it's intensely stupid to just damage random automobiles because of a sticker...but it's not like I don't know where he's coming from. I get kind of pissed off when I see idiots who still have that white oval "W" decal on their car.

"Hey, asswipe. That was already a stupid call back in '04. The only people who still love George W. are, in order:

(1) Dr. James Dobson
(2) Joe Lieberman
(3) Little Baby Jesus
(4) George Bush Sr. (but not Bar, who has never been fond of the boy)
(5) Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaida's Recruiting Department
(6) Jim Beam

That's it. Get with the program!"

But, of course, you can't really destroy something they love just because they're ignorant and they admire insecure authoritarians. It might be kind of fun, but it's just not responsible behavior. Better to follow them wherever they're going, hide out while they go about their business and then brutally attack them with whatever blunt implement happens to be available nearby once they return to their vehicle.

Mulligan said the plea agreement "affords Lt. Col. Fecteau the opportunity to get back on track," noting his record will be cleared in two years if he stays out of trouble.

How humiliating must it be for a court to offer you this kind of deal.

"Okay, Alexis...If you promise, really promise, not to deface the cars of Bush supporters for two years, we'll let you go. Does that sound like something you can do?"

Yikes.

You know what kind of cars I'd like to deface, if I were in that particular line? PT Cruisers. Not to make any kind of political statement or anything. I just think they look fucking stupid.

The Vader Sessions

Genius.

There's no other way to describe The Vader Sessions. What we have here is, in my opinion, the first viral Internet movie mash-up video to transcend the genre and earn respect as a quality short film in its own right.

This visionary has started with scenes from the original Star Wars, removing the Darth Vader dialogue and replaced it with James Earl Jones dialogue from different films. Manipulate the soundtrack a little bit, mess with the editing to suggest a Vader/Leia make-out session and you're good to go. The result is fall-down, side-splitting, wee-wee spot in the front of your khakhis khakis pants hilarious.



Watch it all the way until the end or miss the Billy Joel closing montage. I'm just saying...

[Link courtesy of my favorite celebrity gossip blog, Egotastic!]

Next They're Gonna Take My Thumbs

I've been away for a few days because they shut off our television and Internet. Those cruel Comcast bastards. You fall two months behind on your bills and what do they do? They shut you down. That's life on the lowest rung for you. One moment, you're enjoying access to a vast array of pornographic videos and online shopping options via high-speed broadband while simultaneously watching National Lampoon's Vacation in crisp High-Definition for the 8th time, the next you're e-mailing your parents with your hands out because paying off your Comcast bill will otherwise require the donation of a significant quantity of your body's vital fluids and plasmas.

The TV, I've got to say, I don't mind so much. I think I could probably go several weeks before I msised TV at all. (Okay, I'd miss "Hell's Kitchen" and "Making the Band," but not so much that I'd sacrifice occasional luxuries like ordering out for Chinese food or gassing up my car). It was lack of Internet that was seriously cramping my style. I had no idea how much time I spent on this thing until it was suddenly taken away from me.

Approximately once every four minutes, I would think of something I wanted to look up on the Internet, only to have a sudden realization that the Internet had been disconnected by my corporate betters. It would be, seriously, within the same thought. "Man, it sucks there's no more Internet connection. I guess I'll just throw on a movie. I wonder how long Excalibur runs. Oh, I know, I'll just look it up on IMDB. Oh, wait, shit!"

A vicious cycle. It's depressing, to realize that you no longer actually attempt to store pieces of information within your brain, but just rely on computers to tell you whatever you want to know at any given time. One day, if the Internet for whatever reason ceases to exist (maybe some kind of electromagnetic blast?), we're all going to be left totally fucking helpless.

The point is, I need my Internet access. As Senator Ted Stevens might say, "But this service is now going to go through the internet and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free. Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet? I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?"

I can't really sum it up better than that.

All of these pesky financial concerns have driven me into the arms of a second employer. Yes, that's right...I'm cheating on Laser Blazer. I've begun seeing someone else. I'll be tutoring high school juniors, hoping to bring up the all-important Verbal SAT scores so that privileged, wealthy children can get yet another leg up over everyone else in the collegiate admissions process. Because, Lord knows, "legacy" admissions, elitist social "networking," access to superior public resources and the option of private school doesn't give these kids enough of a head start. There must be something else we can do for them.

But I need the money, and these tutoring gigs pay pretty well, so I shall put my reservations aside and do what needs be done to pump these scores up a few hundred points. In all honesty, I dig the company I'll be working for (which shall here remain nameless, thank you very much), it seems like an alright outfit, and I'm looking forward to getting started.

In particular, I like how this place is still a small business, a relatively new venture run by people with a lot of experience. I like getting in on the ground floor with companies, when the owners are still optimistic and concerned with being well-liked by employees. When you come on board early, everyone still has kind of a bounce in their step. They haven't been broken down mentally by the dread monotony of the actual work that goes into running a company. Once you've been there a few years or, worse yet, the small business turns corporate...it's all over. Welcome to Time Clocks and Bi-Monthy Evaluation Meetings and Mandatory Overtime and Office Politics. It's pretty sweet, by which I mean it makes me want to take a stapler to my frontal lobe.

Basic Instinct 2

Mario Kassar totally missed an opportunity with this film. Rather than rehash the premise and main character from his hit 1992 erotic thriller Basic Instinct, he should have just started up a franchise of films in which Sharon Stone flies all over the world having exotic sex with mysterious strangers. Change a few names and references to Paul Verhoeven's original film, and this could easily have been an original thriller - Sharon Stone Goes to London.

Then more films follow.

Sharon Stone Goes to Egypt
Sharon Stone Goes Hawaiian
Stone in Africa
Sharon Stone in The Curse of the Emerald Moose
Sharon Stone Meets the Harlem Globetrotters

The possibilities are endless. Not to mention the added bonus of not having to make a film in which an opening credit reads "based on characters created by Joe Eszterhas."

Instead, Kassar and Andrew Vajna have given us a retread of the original film 14 years later, slathering on a bunch of unneccessary hairpin turns, psychobabble and last-second twists to make their cinematic leftovers taste more palatable. Imagine a John Waters production of Sleuth starring Divine and Frank Whaley doing a British accent.

I'm not going to complain that Sharon Stone is too old to be sexy in a Basic Instinct movie. She is, and the lighting and make-up tricks they try to pull off to de-age her are ludicrous and ineffective, but she's not the problem with this movie. She's the only one who seems to know the purpose of the entire enterprise. It's not a good performance. In fact, it may be the worst of her career, if by "worst" you mean "most self-aware and campy." (Okay, momentarily forgot about Catwoman. Second-worst.)

But this entire film is ridiculous, a joke from beginning to end. Better to be taking it as a joke, overacting and flailing about, than play it boring and straight like the rest of the cast, who all seem to think they're in a real movie. The only scenes that are interesting feature Stone slinking around the set like a stripper with rickets.

I'm just fascinated by her idea of sexiness. In the first film, her character was a bisexual adrenaline junkie and master of seduction who may or may not be a serial killer. In order to top that already overripe turn, she chooses to play the role as a porno actress might, unbuckling the pants of every featured male character with her eyes at all times. She doesn't actually take off her clothes too often, but the entire role has an exhibitionist feeling; she's either really getting off on being "sexy" for moviegoers, or she wants us to think she is.

Unfortunately, we're expected to actually follow an intricately plotted, rather drab whodunit in between the moments when Sharon Stone threatens to show us her beaver again. To say that the story never really comes together into something intense or interesting would be a massive understatement. This narrative is more lifeless than that guy who got an icepick stuck in his eyeball in the first film.


What are you gonna do? Arrest me for sucking?

Novelist Catherine Tramell (Stone) has moved to London since the events of the first film (where she was cleared of all murder charges despite probably being guilty), but still gets off on outlandish, depraved acts of sexuality. To wit, she opens the film by getting into a massive car accident while being serviced by a well-known footballer.

This brings her under some measure of police suspicion, with crooked cop Roy Washburn (terrific actor David Thewlis, in yet another stop on his Grand Tour of Piece of Shit movies) particularly interested in finding out more about this woman and her bizarre addiction to risk. (The original title of the film was Basic Instinct 2:Risk Addiction, which would have been the best part of the movie if they'd kept it).

He turns to Dr. Michael Glass (David Morrissey), who we're told is a brilliant psychotherapist but who's manipulated by Catherine with relative ease. When more murders begin happening, he becomes convinced that she's innocent even though she's probably not or is she and blah blah blah blah fuckidy blah.

A movie like this, which is constantly trying to pull the rug out from under you, can definitely work under the right circumstances. David Mamet has mastered the art of manipulating the audience without actually cheating them, providing real information in just such a way to keep you in the dark to the larger picture. In his earlier films, M. Night Shyamalan demonstrated an ability to build a complete and satisfying story in bite-sized chunks, waiting until the erfect moment to present the final piece of the puzzle.

Michael Caton-Jones here demonstrates none of that ability. After the third or fourth reinvention of the storyline, it's impossible to maintain any real interest in what's happening. Here's a hint: perhaps there's so many possibilities as to who's killing everyone because there isn't much of a story going on and the audience doesn't actually get to know anything about any of the characters that might provide motives or clues to the central mystery.

If there were lots of sex, perhaps, it would probably compensate for the idiotic mechanics of this plot. But there's really only a few brief scenes in between a lot of dreary exposition and sequences wasting the talent of actors like Thewlis and Charlotte Rampling, who shows up in a small role as Dr. Glass' colleague. Sharon shows off the unmentionables and they look well-maintained and everything, and she definitely gets marks for bravery. But it's not exactly reason enough to sit through all the mealy-mouthed, pseudo-clinical explanations of human sexuality.

By the time the final scene rolls around, it's so removed from any kind of reality, Sharon Stone could literally say anything to Dr. Glass and it would be blindly accepted by the audience.

"As I'm sure you realize by now, Doctor, I'm really a Somali warlord who has just been using you to funnel munitions to my countrymen in Mogadishu."

"So, you're saying that, this entire time, we've been inside the belly of a whale?"

"Those walnuts I gave you were poisoned, Dr. Glass, but it doesn't matter because I'm actually a telepath. Now let's go find the Holy Grail! But first, here's a 10-second shot from a weird angle of the underside of my right thigh!"

Hey, Snow, They Came Around Looking For You the Other Day...

It appears all night there has been something of an annoying 80's music video battle occupying the Greater Blogosphere. Here are some previous compelling entries. None of those guys read my site, so this can't really be considered a response, but I'm too lazy to otherwise complete a blog post tonight.

So below you may find my responses to the unspoken query: "What's the most horrifically annoying music video ever?" Most entries have been from the 80's, the era of the music video's birth, but this particular early 90's entry can not and will not be ignored.



Yes, it's the inscrutible white rapper Snow. Looking back on this song some 15 years later, it's actually even more ludicrous than I remembered. This guy was always a complete clown. How did he manage to get a record deal? (If you know the answer to this question, please don't actually feel compelled to let me know. It's a rhetorical question.)

I've discussed the best/worst hair metal band of all time, Grim Reaper, on the blog before, but here for the very first time is their Greatest Master Work, "See You in Hell." Note how much the singer resembles Jack Black. What I like most about this video is how enthusiastic the guy seems about seeing you in hell. I usually think of the phrase as having a negative connotation. It's like what you'd say before shivving a dude in prison in order to get in good with the skinheads.

"See you in hell, Martinez!" Then you plant him about 20 times in the kidney and walk back into the cafeteria line, all nonchalant-like.

But no, this guy's singing the lyric like he's making a dinner reservation with an old friend.

Okay, we'll meet in the Pit of Sulfur at 9!/
See you there, a-migo!

So excited is he about seeing you in Hell, it's pretty much the only words in the entire song. At about the 2 minute mark, he just starts chanting "See you...See you...See you..." like a mantra. Perhaps these guys were not just using implied devil worship as a hoary gimmick to attract fatalistic teenagers. Maybe they're genuinely trying to contact some kind of Dark Spirit by getting fans to chant "see you in hell." Or maybe they're just goofy old creatively bankrupt morons. Either way, their loss is your gain.



Our final entry tonight is definitely the most painful. I urge you not to actually watch the video for Phil Collins' "Sussudio." Surely there's something more positive and uplifting you could do with your time. Why not slit your wrists? Or hurt a small animal?

The Matador & The Libertine

Almost nothing came out this week on DVD, save these two entries from the newly-formed Weinstein Company. These films were both dumped into theaters with zero fanfare on off weekends, with Sundance pick-up The Matador barely making a peep alongside all the high-profile Christmas 2005 releases and The Libertine showing on a few screens earlier this year. What's interesting is that they're both pretty good, if offbeat and difficult to market. If anything, they're intelligent and unexpected to such a degree, I'm kind of surprised these concepts were made into films in the first place.

The Matador

I'm sure someone has already written a paper about filmdom's post-Pulp Fiction obsession with comedies about hitmen. It's probably the one underground, criminal enterprise that's constantly celebrated by the movies. You'll occasionally see a comedy about guys who sell weed or girls who embark on an ill-fated crime spree, but generally, anti-social or homicidal activities are frowned upon by mainstream filmmakers.

What is it about professional murderers that's so appealing? Perhaps it's because we are confronted by so much senseless killing each day - in foreign wars and on our own streets - that the idea of clean, efficient murder for hire seems almost comforting in comparison? Or is it just that, like lawyers who defend chronic polluters or telcom executives who turn over private information to the government and fight net neutrality, Americans have become blase about evils done as a required part of ones job? Sure, a guy might shoot people for a living, but only because he's got to earn a living! What should he do, starve to death?

A running joke in Grosse Point Blank finds John Cusack's hitman encountering nothing but nonchalant reactions to the news that he's become a hired assassin. "Do you have to go to school for that, or can you just jump right in?" asks a high school buddy played by Jeremy Piven.

Richard Shepard's The Matador is like that joke stretched out to feature length. That's not to say it's a one-note movie (although it is, in some ways), but it's made with this same kind of curious, bouncy enthusiasm, a wide-eyed fascination at the notion of a trained expert killer. A rare film that's content to take its time and tell a simple little story well, rather than try to pile on incidents and style into some kind of bloated extravananza, The Matador pauses occasionally to consider the general merits of a life spent on the road murdering strangers for money, but spends most of its time setting up some likable characters and letting them slowly impact one another's lives.



In the best performance he's given since taking over the Bond franchise, Pierce Brosnan plays Julian Noble, a crass, boorish hitman who realizes late in life that he's a loser who has no friends. Travelling all around the world working what he calls "corporate gigs," Julian's only real human contact is his shadowy handler (Philip Baker Hall) and the prostitutes on whom he spends much of his earnings.

In a hotel bar one night after working a job in Mexico, Julian meets Danny Wright (Greg Kinnear), an entrepeneur desperate to kickstart his latest venture. Their conversation is awkward and stilted, culminating with Danny stomping out of the bar in a huff. But Julian remains undaunted. Now that he's actually spoken with someone about something other than fucking or killing, he's become addicted. He invites his new "friend" to go and see a bullfight.

These Mexico sequences take up a little less than half of the film, and what's surprising is that they don't seem to rush headlong into some kind of conflict. Shepard just lets Brosnan and Kinnear stretch out a bit, getting comfortable in their characters and building up a repoire, while showing off the colorful tapestry of David Tattersall's bright, airy cinematography. This is how old movies used to develop - the first half was just about getting your bearings before the real conflict the story even emerged.

Conflict, we're told in screenwriting classes, defines moviedom. If there isn't some kind of conflict going on between the characters, you don't have a film. Shepard's plot will eventually develop some genuine clashes and rivalries - particularly after Julian shows up on Danny's door in Denver six months after their initial meeting - but he arrives there liesurely, only after we've become invested in Julian and Danny as people. This makes a lot more sense to my mind than the current Hollywood philosophy, in which the line that will appear in the trailer summarizing the plot must be spoken in the first 10 minutes of the movie.

"If we don't recover that unit within one hour, everyone on this ship is going to die!"

Shepard's approach is refreshing and unexpected, and it's one such element in the film. Without giving too much away, there's an interesting homosexual undercurrent gliding just underneath the film's central relationship. Julian intimates early on in the movie that's he's potentially bisexual (referencing the possiblitiy that he sucks cock upon first meeting Danny), and then later seems to make something of a pass at his new friend.

Later on, much of the plot will revolve around a secretive late-night encounter between Julian and Danny. Shepard saves the information about that night until late in the film, so I won't reveal anything here, but it remains something of an unspoken issue throughout the entire film.

Regardless of the exact nature of their relationship, it's clear that Danny and Julian are changed by getting to know one another, and it's in these small observances that the film takes on a genuinely sweet kind of tone that's, again, something different from a genre that typically produces shrill, nihilistic fare of the Whole Nine Yards variety.

What really sets the film apart, however, are the comic stylings of Pierce Brosnan, a guy whose James Bond was suave but a bit of a stiff. Here, he's not just more relaxed, but he's something of a public menace. Flirting with adolescents, insulting overweight strangers and slamming margaritas while aiming high-powered rifles, Julian's a guy who has lived so long without fear that he's utterly unprepared for the feeling when it finally arrives. The scenes where he's literally crippled by anxiety may be stretching believability just a touch, but the character himself is kind of a delight to be around and, like almost everyone in the film, intelligent.

We see his calculating side at play in the film's best sequence, in whcih Julian demonstrates for a disbelieving Danny how he would improvise an assassination in a Mexican arena.

Hope Davis enters the film about halfway through and does great work as Danny's earthy wife "Bean," whose anything-goes attitude towards Julian's line of work mirrors her husband's. When Julian shows up unannounced in the middle of the night, she gets one line off, about how she's unaccustomed to being up with guests at 2:30 in the morning, that's extremely natural and warm, the exact sort of thing you'd hear hanging out in someone's living room listening to old records in the middle of the night after a few bottles of wine.

Ultimately, the film isn't really as good as the sum of its parts. It's funny without ever being really hilarious, and likable without feeling essential. I'm sure it will find an audience on DVD that will appreciate its sharp attention to character and engaging performances, but it's not the sort of thing I'd expect to watch over and over again, noticing throwaway lines or missed but vital details. It's just nice to see that this kind of old-fashioned storytelling hasn't completely died out, that there are still films focused on transporting you to exotic locales to meet interesting people rather than just exploding pirate ships and reptilian airline passengers.

The Libertine

A few years ago, I wrote a surreal, Bunuel-inspired screenplay called "Evil Will Prevail," featuring the Earl of Rochester as one of the main characters. I first learned about 17th century poet and nobleman John Wilmot in English 10A back in my UCLA days, and found him a fascinating figure ripe with dramatic possiblities. It's not surprising to me, then, that playwright Stephen Jeffreys chose the Earl as a subject for his play "The Libertine," and not surprising that he and Laurence Dunsmore have translated the work into a film.

The result is a mainly-successful period drama about the final few years of Wilmot's (Johnny Depp) brief life, during which he falls in love with an up-and-coming actress (Samantha Morton) and dies painfully of syphillis. As you'd expect from a play, the dialogue is extremely heightened and theatrical, and struck my mainly-ignorant ears as authentic for the period. This may be off-putting for some, and it took me a few minutes to adjust, but after a slow beginning, the film does develop some rather interesting ideas about atheism, loyalty and what it means to be truly radical.



The central contradiction of Wilmot's life is his ability to write beautiful verse despite the fact that he's an evil bastard who only cares about his own pleasure. His wife Elizabeth (Rosamund Pike) agonizes over the poetry he writes about her beauty and their shared love - how can the same man who produces these writings continually spurn and humiliate her year after year?

Wilmot, of course, has no time to worry about his duties as a husband. As with all institutions of authority or responsibility, he has no time to worry about marital vows. Having freed himself early on in life from any kind of belief in God (he suggests late in the film that his atheism is an intrinsic part of his character), Wilmot believes that he can essentially behave in any manner he pleases. He argues early on with the actress, Elizabeth Barry, that regardless of what he does when faced with a particular decision, the universe as a whole will not be in any way affected. Therefore, he can do whatever he wants.

It's a philosophy that may not get him in trouble with any deity, but causes him considerable problems in his life as a landed aristocrat in the England of Charles II (John Malkovich). When asked to take his seat in the House of Lords and support the Catholic lineage of Charles, he immediately refuses to engage in government. His condescention towards commoners like his friend George Etheridge (Tom Hollander), who write out of neccessity rather than fancy, costs him friendships and respect. Of course, his freewheeling approach towards sexuality eventually costs him his good looks and his life, and his excessive drinking eventually turns him into something of an alcoholic wretch. Finally, when asked to write a grand production to celebrate the arrival of a new ambassador from France, Wilmot humiliates the king with a raunchily satirical production.

Depp's predictably terrific in these sequences, giving Wilmot an uncontrollable, manic streak that raises interesting questions about the nature of his rebelliousness. Is he still a radical if he's not in complete control of his outbursts? He admits at one point to being fundamentally unable to refrain from speaking his mind, even when he knows the consequences of such frank honesty may be dire. Could history be confusing a life philosophy with some form of low-grade mental illness, the same kind of madness that could have inspired his compositions?

If anything, I'd say the film kind of holds back on some of the Earl's more outrageous behavior. This was a man who stood for the ultimate in drunken, mysogynist debauchery. There are some references early on in the film to Wilmot actually kidnapping and ravishing his wife-to-be at the tender age of 18, but this is presented as a hazily-recalled erotic fantasy. In reality, we know that such behavior was rather commonplace for the Libertines, who as noblemen tended to consider themselves above the law.

Wilmot warns us in an early monologue that he will not be likable, but there has been some attempt to soften the Earl of Rochester for modern audiences who couldn't stomach the open celebration of a free-spirited rapist, no matter how wonderful his ensuing poetry. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but I do feel like the movie could have pushed the envelope a bit more in fulfilling this early promise to keep Wilmot despicable. For a movie entitled The Libertine, there's not a whole lot of actual on-screen hedonism. Sure, everybody's drunk, but the sex is tame and the violence is minimal. That's not how I would have done it in my Earl of Rochester movie. But alas, that train has sailed.