The Ellen Show

Ellen DeGeneres? Really? I just don't see the whole "get a TV host to host the Oscars" theory. All this talk about Hollywood's Big Night, all the Glamour and whatever of the Academy Awards, and then they turn the show over to someone who's constantly blathering on TV every other night. I thought Jon Stewart did an okay job, certainly an improvement over Billy Crystal and David Letterman, but he's just out of his element on the Oscars.

I think they should give it to an old timer. Have Martin Scorsese host the Oscars. Or Warren Beatty (or Beatty and Annette Benning together). Lauren Bacall. They don't have to be goddamn comedians, after all. Some opening comedy sketch that someone else (not Bruce Vilanch) writes, a brief introduction, BOOM, right into the show. Why not give it a try? It's got to be better than a desperate, grasping Chris Rock or Steve Martin or (ugh) Whoopi Goldberg bookending each and every commercial break with painful, "improvised" one liners.

Anyway, here are all the nominees:

BEST PICTURE

The Departed
The Queen
Little Miss Sunshine
Babel
Letters From Iwo Jima

It's a rare year when I don't see all the Oscar nominees for Best Picture, usually based on hype before they're even officially nominated. But I just couldn't bring myself to watch Letters From Iwo Jima. I just don't care. I'm not even saying it's not great. Maybe it's great? But Clint Eastwood's stately earnestness has just worn me out over the course of the past few years.

I'm sure I'll catch it on DVD.

Anyway, out of the other four, my choice would be The Departed, though I wouldn't mind seeing The Queen win (it won't). I liked Little Miss Sunshine, but the suggestion that it's one of the five best pictures of the past year is ludicrous on its face. Almost as ludicrous as, I don't know, suggesting that Steve Carell is the world's foremost Proust scholar.

I mean, where's Children of Men? Where's Borat? Both films are far more interesting and had more of an impact on the culture than Babel or Little Miss Sunshine. Nevertheless, I think Babel will win.

Letters from Iwo Jima is in Japanese, featuring an all Japanese cast, and Clint Eastwood already won big two years ago. (Of course, I'm biased. If Letters From Iwo Jima wins Best Picture, its producer, Paul Haggis, will accept that award a staggering three years in a row. He wrote and produced Million Dollar Baby, wrote and directed Crash, and produced Iwo Jima. Holy shit, this cannot happen.)

Little Miss Sunshine isn't really all that great, and it's pretty slight. I don't think Academy voters would feel right about themselves in the morning if they cemented its place in the American canon with an Oscar win.

The Queen is incredibly British and unseen by almost anyone not in Britain or coastal America.

The Departed could win. It was a huge box office success, Scorsese has been denied over and over again, and pretty much everyone loves it.

Then there's the whole "it's the best movie nominated" thing. As you faithful readers know, this means absolutely nothing. In fact, I'd say the biggest strike against Departed is that it's the best film nominated, and the best film nominated never wins. I also think its frequent, gory violence will give the aging Academy voters pause.

In many ways, the Best Picture is seen as representing the Hollywood "brand" to the rest of the world. Think Titanic. That was an easy choice. That's pure 100% Hollywood escapist filmmaking entertainment. That's the brand. The Departed makes us look like psychopaths.

I guess you could say that Gladiator is a violent movie that won Best Picture, ditto Braveheart, but they give heavy spoonfuls of uplift and pomp along with their bloodletting. Departed is just a brutal, nihilistic bloodbath. I mean, a great one. But still...you get what I'm saying.

What's left? Innaritu's non-controversial, not-particularly-exciting ensemble drama. Some social commentary, but tinged with hope. Some solid performances. Some big stars. Some critical praise. And it has a diverse cast, a Latin director. I think it's the safest, surest pick, and I think it's how the voters will go. But what do I know?

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

Leonardo DiCaprio, Blood Diamond
Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson
Peter O'Toole, Venus
Will Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness
Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland

I have not seen any of these movies. Wow. A first, definitely. Still, I think Whitaker will win.

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

Penelope Cruz, Volver
Judi Dench, Notes on a Scandal
Helen Mirren, The Queen
Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada
Kate Winslet, Little Children

Mirren will win. I would say hers was probably the best out of the four performances I have seen (still haven't caught Volver), but Winslet and Dench were both terrific as well. Ironically, Dench is nominated all the time and won previously for a movie in which she barely appeared. (Shades of Streep's nomination this year for Prada, a film defined by her absence.) This year, she has the leading role in a great film with several nominations, and has no shot at winning.

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine
Jackie Earle Haley, Little Children
Djimon Hounsou, Blood Diamond
Eddie Murphy, Dreamgirls
Mark Wahlberg, The Departed

I'd give it to Wahlberg, who was arguably the best part of The Departed. Which means he was showing up Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson, Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen and Ray Winstone. No easy task. I mean, granted, his character got all the best dialogue, but that's really Marky Mark dominating the focus whenever he's on screen. Totally unexpected and awesome.

I'm inclined to say it's going to Alan Arkin or Eddie Murphy though. This is probably the hardest category to call. Both guys have had huge careers, and Arkin was actually nomianted for his first film role ever in Norman Jewison's The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming. (It's not very good!) And though I haven't seen Dreamgirls, I understand Murphy's great. Arkin's easily the best part of Little Miss Sunshine, and they do tend to give the Supporting Actor award to the greatly loved, popular, audience favorite movie (like Jack Palance in City Slickers).

So I'm going to guess Arkin, with slight reservations.

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Adriana Barraza, Babel
Cate Blanchett, Notes on a Scandal
Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine
Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls
Rinko Kikuchi, Babel

My favorite performance, believe it or not, was Kikuchi's in Babel. If the Japanese segments had been removed from all that other stuff (particularly the wandering, ambiguous and ultimately inscrutible Mexican oddessy), it would have been a great film. A brief one, but still. It was subtle and strange and centered entirely on Kikuchi's wordless, manic turn as the deaf and defiant Chieko.

But I think it'll go to Jennifer Hudson. Which will mean that it only took "American Idol" six years to go from silly teen sensation to an Oscar and Grammy factory. How weird. Why not just eliminate the middle man and start giving Oscars to reality TV stars? Seriously, Trishelle deserves some recognition.

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

Cars
Happy Feet
Monster House

I'd go with Monster House, all the way. It was a really good scary movie for kids and the first time I have seen the motion capture technique used effectively as a storytelling device. These characters did not have the glassy-eyed, uncanny stiffness that plagued the evil Polar Express, which looks like a Christmas movie co-directed by Satan and Dr. Caligari. You'd better watch out, indeed.

But Happy Feet seems the obvious choice. A bonafide sleeper hit that continued the penguin's peculiar dominance of the American box office. Unfortunately, as in all his other entertainment projects, Bob Saget's Farce of the Penguins somehow failed to capitalize on this wave. He was on "Full House," though. Remember "Full House"?

ART DIRECTION

Dreamgirls
The Good Shepherd
Pan's Labyrinth
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
The Prestige

I've only seen three of these. And to be honest, Dreamgirls looks like it has awesome art direction from the trailers. I kind of wish I had gotten around to that one, but my theater-going has been off this past month.

Out of the ones I have seen, I'm inclined to go with The Prestige. I wasn't all that taken with the film, but it looked amazing, really capturing the detail of the period without romanticizing it. So many period films look upon their settings with awe; look at how wondrous and elegant everything looked back then! 2006 was a year in which many films, from The Proposition to Marie Antoinette to The Prestige kind of rejected this vision. Its late 19th-century London is a world of iron and grime. Only when the setting moves to the Rocky Mountains, and the strange experiments of Tesla, does Nolan's camera open up to find room for beauty and wonder.

Pirates looked great as well and had some truly remarkable sets. The Flying Dutchman, the fortune teller's hideout, the tropical kingdom. Great stuff.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

The Black Dahlia
Children of Men
The Illusionist
Pan's Labyrinth
The Prestige

Two period magician films in the same category? Odd.

The Illusionist is a pretty stupid film that nonetheless looks AMAZING. Time-worn and underlit and just gorgeous. I remarked when I reviewed the film that it resembled a Rembrandt come to life. I have since read that cinematographer Dick Pope used gaslights to light some scenes to get that perfect, amber effect. It works.

Black Dahlia as well was beautifully shot, and it's nice to see the movie get some recognition despite being universally reviled.

I think, however, this award should go to Children of Men. Some of these films are about magic, but Lubieski's camera in this film is legitimately magical. Alfonso Cuaron and Emanual Lubieski won't even talk about how they accomplished some of these extended shots (some appearing to last several minutes in length and filled with chaotic action and effects). This film should win in pretty much every category in which its nominated and some in which it isn't. And I think it will win, at least in this category.

COSTUME DESIGN

Curse of the Golden Flower
The Devil Wears Prada
Dreamgirls
Marie Antoinette
The Queen

Marie Antoinette probably should win (though, again, haven't seen Dreamgirls or Golden Flower), but it very well may go to Devil Wears Prada. The whole point of that movie was the clothes, anyway.

BEST DIRECTOR

Martin Scorsese, The Departed
Stephen Frears, The Queen
Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu, Babel
Paul Greengrass, United 93
Clint Eastwood, Letters from Iwo Jima

I think it's Marty's year. He deserves it, he directed the hell out of this movie. What more is there to say?

Outside chance Eastwood will get it again, because the Academy loves him, and I could even see Greengrass receiving the award as a dark horse. Man, I hope not. That would really piss me off. If only because his film seemed to scream "Give me an award! I am Paul Greengrass, the lens through which Americans view themselves and their world!" and we would be walking right into his trap. Just like George W. walked into Osama bin Laden's.

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

Deliver Us From Evil
An Inconvenient Truth
Iraq in Fragments
Jesus Camp
My Country, My Country

I think Gore's film will probably win. It was pretty well-made, I suppose, but hardly the BEST documentary film of the year. (That's The Devil and Daniel Johnston). Perhaps the fact that it's about the most important issue and had the biggest influence on American opinion is enough. Out of these, bearing in mind that I haven't seen My Country, My Country, I'd say Deliver Us From Evil is the best film. But it'll be nice to see Gore up there getting an Oscar. Maybe if he gets the Nobel as well, he'll run for President.

FILM EDITING

Babel
Blood Diamond
Children of Men
The Departed
United 93

Children of Men, all the way. Though I could see Babel or Departed or United 93 or even Blood Diamond winning this as well. Always a hard category to pick. I think they'll give this one to Children of Men because it won't win much else and it was easily among the year's most impressive technical achievements.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

After the Wedding
Days of Glory
The Lives of Others
Pan's Labyrinth
Water

Pan's Labyrinth is clearly the favorite and will almost assuredly win. I preferred Germany's entry, The Lives of Others, which I really ought to review on here in full one of these days. I know Days of Glory was also supposed to be spectacular, but I haven't had a chance to see it yet.

BEST MAKE UP

Apocalypto
Click
Pan's Labyrinth

Didn't see Apocalypto, but nothing about Click was award-worthy. I repeat, NOTHING. If they were giving an award for Best Film of 2006 About a Magic Remote Control Starring Adam Sandler, I would abstain from voting.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

Babel
The Good German
Notes on a Scandal
Pan's Labyrinth
The Queen

Notes on a Scandal had one of the year's worst scores, a Phillip Glass abomination that continually intruded on the main action with its droning repetition. (And, yes, I know it's supposed to be repetitive but that didn't make it less annoying). I have liked Glass scores in the past (Truman Show has a great one), but this one nearly ruins several scenes fo the film.

I thought the music in Pan's Labyrinth was effective. That's how I would probably vote. Can't say how it'll go, though, as I really have no idea which of these five is more or less likely to win.

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Poseidon
Superman Returns

Except for Pirates, which is filled with eye-popping effects work throughout, these other two films have been nominated for specific scenes. The only part of Poseidon that was in any way enjoyable was the brief scene in which the boat sinks. Everything after that is (pun intended) a wash. Superman Returns has that one tremendous sequence where he saves the shuttle-plane, although that's such a retarded idea, to attack a launching space shuttle to a plane in flight, that you almost feel like the Man of Steel should let them crash to teach humanity a thing or two about physics and aerodynamics.

So I think you have to go with Pirates. No movie this year was bigger or had more going on visually. The entire crew of the Flying Dutchman must have required painstaking months of work. Plus, the Kraken scenes were ridiculously cool.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Babel
Letters from Iwo Jima
Little Miss Sunshine
Pan's Labyrinth
The Queen

My choice would be The Queen, a very wry, unexpectedly funny take on the clash between tradition and progress in modern England. I thought the weakest aspect of Pan's Labyrinth was Del Toro's distracted, oddly conventional screenplay, and that the script for Babel is downright incoherent, saved by Innaritu's sharp direction and the skill of his actors. And I'm sorry, I know a lot of people felt strongly about it, but Little Miss Sunshine is slight. It's a good vehicle for some very talented actors and a lot of the gags work well, but this is hardly original or award-worthy work. In spots, it's downright hacky. (Who could believe Carell runs into his ex-boyfriend and colleague on a random highway turn-off in middle America at that exact moment? That's almost insulting.)

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Children of Men
The Departed
Little Children
Notes on a Scandal

These are all pretty strong contenders. Little Children DQ's itself for the totally unnecessary use of narration. In fact, one need only see the beautiful, perfectly-scripted narration in Notes on a Scandal to realize all that is wrong with the dry, flat narration of Little Children, in which a disembodied, kind of creepy voice, tells us what's happening, in the hopes that we don't forget this movie was based on a really excellent novel that the screenwriter also wrote.

Naturally, I'd like to see my Movie of 2006, Borat, take the prize. I will say, however, that its nomination in this category is nonsensical. The best moments in Borat were improvisational. Even though Baron Cohen created the character and obviously pre-scripted many of the character's trademark one-liners and witticisms (you don't just improvise the phrase "liquid sexytime explosion"...it takes hours of careful preparation), it's obvious that his genius lies in performance, not writing.

He should be nominated for Best Actor and he should win. I'm thinking Departed will, quite deservingly, take this category. Monahan's script was brilliant and hilarious and near-flawlessly executed. Like Batman Begins or Big Lebowski, it's one of those scripts that's, to me, kind of awe inspiring. How could any human being have the patience to concoct something so intricate and ceaselessly creative?

Post-Recreational Paranoia is the Sport of Now

I've almost seen LA rapper Busdriver (real name: Regan Farquhar) live on more than one occasion over the last few years. He used to open for The Unicorns, the short-lived French-Canadian psychedelic pop trio, and joined the group for their even-shorter-lived hip-hop offshoot Th' Corn Gangg. Unfortunately, it never worked out (the only time I did see the Unicorns perform, at the Knitting Factory if I'm not mistaken, the opening act was a different rapper named Subtitle).

His new record, RoadKillOvercoat, has been dominating my playlists for the better part of February. Without a doubt, this is my favorite album of the year thus far. It's pretty much hip-hop, I suppose, but songs like "Sun Showers" and "Go Slow" sound almost like really percussive indie rock songs. ("Go Slow," in fact, is much closer to something like Broadcast than, say, Ludacris). He's one of the few musicians I think could be legitimately compared to TV on the Radio.

Like Beck or Anthony Burgess, Busdriver creates his own version of English from scratch here. Words with absolutely no business together intermingle within his nonsense collages. The title of this post, part of the chorus to a song called "Kill Your Employer," typifies his lyrical style. Absolute gibberish that nonetheless sounds compelling, even deep, under closer consideration.

"Sun Showers" is perhaps the album's least successful track. It's cool, but it does kind of feel like something off of a B-grade Young Liars. On an album defined by genre-smashing and experimentation, t's the only time Busdriver sounds a bit out of his element. "Secret Skin," opener "Casting Agents and Cowgirls" and my personal favorite track, the head-bopping extravaganza of pop sugar "The Troglodyte Wins," which sounds like Fatlip guesting on a Soul Coughing record, are the highlights.

You can grab two mp3's from the album plus some promo videos shot by a friend of my brother's at Epitaph Records. Here's the first promo, featuring "Troglodyte Wins."



The Arcade Fire's awesome new record is called Neon Bible. Here's a link to the official website. It's exceptionally creepy and strange.

I only, um, obtained the disc last week, so I'm still finding my way around. My instinct is to say that it's not quite up to the ridiculously high standard set by Funeral, but that it's a great collection of songs. The band hasn't really altered its sound tremendously. These are more immediate, swelling pop songs about pain, anxiety and loss performed with a eye towards theatricality and lots of strings.

Nevertheless, Neon Bible does mute some of the previous album's spazzy energy, opting for classic rock throwbacks like "(Antichrist Television Blues)," which could have been written by Tom Petty, or piano ballads like "Ocean of Noise" over the first album's more propulsive, glam-rock powerhouses. Right off the bat, opening track "Black Mirror" and the title track find the band in a somewhat more emo, softer mode than the anthemic Funeral.

My one nitpick is the inclusion of "No Cars Go," a mediocre song from The Fire's first album (the pre-Funeral tiny label one) and a staple of their live shows (they've played it both times I have seen the band, at least). The lyrics are repetitive and silly, the music is predictable and not particularly catchy and it's easily the weakest track on Neon Bible. Why keep resurrecting this old song when the songwriting on both of their subsequent albums has improved considerably?

Anyway, I'm otherwise really digging the whole album. Here's a video of the band playing "Black Mirror" at a show in Montreal.



A guy in the comments over at YouTube implies that the song rips off David Bowie's "Changes." I don't hear it...Leave your comments below.

Finally, like everyone else around the Inter-Web, I'm disappointed in the new Bloc Party, A Weekend in the City. These songs just kind of suck. That one, "Prayer," is alright, I guess. But the whole album just kind of sits there. I had to go back and listen to the first record just to remind myself why I had even liked these guys. Not to worry..."Banquet" still rocks. I'm not quite sure what happened to this band, if it's just a sophomore slump or whatever. Maybe they were touring so much that they didn't get around to writing songs until the last minute.

Judge for yourself. Here's the video for "Prayer."

Little Chidren

The worldview espoused in Todd Field movies troubles me. It may not be fair to evaluate his filmmaking on these terms, I know. Should film reviewers shelve their personal erspective when writing about a movie? Is it appropriate to only praise or discuss or analyze the technical/practical aspect of the filmmaking and simply "agree to disagree" on the thematic content?

Field absolutely demonstrates some ability here with a camera and he's good with actors. By no means do I think he's a bad director. (In person, though, kind of a tool...)

He's made two films now - In the Bedroom and Little Children - and based solely on them, I believe we share profoundly opposed ideologies. As a result, I'm not sure I'll be able to fairly evaluate the movies as movies. So keep that in mind as you read. Oh, also, I'll refrain from "giving away" the ending of Little Children, but I fully reserve the right to give away the ending of In the Bedroom. If you cared, you'd have seen it already.

Both of Field's films take on the same basic question: Does it make any sense for human beings to deny ourselves?

In the Bedroom opens with an impetuous May-December romance which is brutally interrupted by a poorly-planned murder and it closes with an aging couple making a decision to violate the law in the name of justice. These characters are AWARE from the beginning that they are breaking the rules, but they do so anyway because they can not deny themselves pleasure or satisfaction.

The mismatched couple could listen to reason, but they don't want to. Likewise, the angry ex-husband could pick up the shattered pieces of his life and move on, but he never does. Finally, the mourning couple could accept their son's death and process their anger in a healthy fashion, but it proves too difficult. So instead of bottling up their dangerous, buried desires, they're forced to act.

My problems with the film were numerous. I didn't really find its conclusion realistic and I didn't care for its reliance on silly old patriarchial stereotypes.

Real quick...The patriarchy thing, cause I know that's a strong charge to just throw out there. Sissy Spacek's character is lame. She's got the sinister Lady MacBeth thing going on, taunting his husband to act out violently without being willing to do any dirty work herself. PLUS, if you think about her actual on-screen action, it's all this lame '50s housewife imagery. Smashing plates, slapping young women in the face...It's like an episode of "The Donna Reed Show" gone horribly, horribly wrong. Why couldn't her character actually ever DO anything strong or determined? Why must she be so shrill?

I'm reminded of Chan-Wook Park's Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. Here, the women are still encouraging their men to commit savage acts of revenge, but they at least they get to take part. It's not such a Victorian send-out-the-menfolk-to-exterminate-the-brutes kind of deal.

But I also objected to what Ricky Roma might call Field's "middle-class morality." Namely, it's okay for a well-off suburban white couple to kill a man, if they feel like he really really deserves it. Would the film play the same for audiences if it was a young Latin couple? Or a poor white trash couple? Or just a single father? And what if the guy didn't kill their son, but only paralyzed him? Or what if he hit his intended target and killed their son's girlfriend? I mean, once you agree that vigilante revenge killing is acceptable...

Anyway, on to Little Children, which in its own way is even more disagreeable than In the Bedroom. The film centers around two crumbling marriages and a mother-son relationship in a wealthy suburban enclave. (I won't go into this subject any more, but it's possibly the whitest movie of the modern American era.)

Sarah Pierce (Oscar-nominated Kate Winslet) has grown so bored and frustrated with the life of a doting mother and housewife, she walks around with a permanent look of weary disdain and can barely manage to speak to her daughter without contempt. At the playground one afternoon, she meets the hunky father whom the other catty moms have dubbed "The Prom King." He's Brad (Patrick Wilson), a law student who can't pass the bar exam who spends his days caring for his young son while his successful wife Kathy (Jennifer Connelly) makes documentary films.

Sparks fly immediately between Sarah and Brad, so as responsible married people, they try to avoid one another for a while. But it becomes clear soon enough that there's more here than a passing, shared attraction. As soon as the smallest speed bumps in their marriages arise, it's an excuse to begin a passionate love affair.

This story of forbidden love mirrors another, somewhat more perverse narrative about paroled sex offender Ronnie McGorvey (Oscar-nominated Jackie Earle Haley). It's mentioned in passing that McGorvey did time for "indecent exposure," but he's pretty much an all-around creepy weirdo. In the film's best sequence, he goes on a very sweet date with a mentally ill woman, played perfectly by Jane Adams, before degrading her and making a fool of himself. He could be a normal guy with a normal life, but because he can't control his taboo sexual urges, he's a freak living with his mother (Phyllis Somerville) and being harrassed by an unstable ex-cop (Toby Noah Emmerich).

Unless they yield to their compulsions, Brad and Sarah and Ronnie cannot find peace. But once they have actually indulged, slept with the stranger or masturbated in public, their initial feelings of desperation don't subside. Instead, these inescapable, negative obsessions are enhanced by newfound feelings of guilt and shame.

These are not easy dilemmas, and the actors do a terrific job at physically embodying anxious tension, sexual frustration and panic. Kate Winslet doesn't even look very much like her old self as Sarah. Little Children is one of those movies that would never get nominated for Costume Design, because its style is so contemporary and subtle, but the art department nails every aspect of Sarah's look exactly right. (On the subject of award season, I would have thought Somerville as Ronnie's mother was the obvious choice for a supporting performance. She only has a few big scenes, but she's stellar, and we all know how Oscar loves a rascally, charming old lady.)

Adapating Tom Perrotta's novel, Field's starting with some fertile, interesting material. (They wrote the script together). And he's working with a very strong cast all around, save Toby Noah Emmerich, whose bullying ex-cop feels gratuitous and motivated purely by the needs of the plot. He's like a refugee from a Paul Haggis movie, alternating over-the-top moustache-twirling histrionics with mawkish sentimentality. Cinematographer Antonio Calvache likewise gets off some interesting shots, including a virtuoso sequence at a public swimming pool where a month's worth of events are coalesced into what looks like one, unbroken take.

But regrettably, the film still falls kind of flat. It's not a bad film by any stretch. I rather enjoyed watching it, actually. But Field on some level seems to lack confidence in his own ability. For a guy whose movies can come off as pretentious, it's strange to likewise feel that he's holding back and selling himself short. But here we are.

Perhaps the worst decision anyone made with regards to Little Children was in Field's and Perrotta's inclusion of a voice-over narration, with actor Will Lyman intrusively reading to the audience key passages from the book. (I can understand why a novelist might want to keep some of his own voice in the story, as it's such a big part of any book. But that's just not how film works.) Not once, not one single time, does the narrator prove himself useful. Lyman has a smokey, almost ominous tone as he reads Perrotta's words, so it somewhat helps to set a tone early on, I guess, but all he's doing is telling us exactly what's happening in a scene while it's happening. Like we don't get it.

Todd, that's what actors are for. We can see them experience these situations in dazzling Technicolor. Why would we want Will Lyman putting it into his own words for our benefit? Perhaps no scene boasts less compelling narration than the awkward dinner party, when Brad and Kathy invite Sarah and her lame ad exec husband Richard (Gregg Edelman) over for dinner. (Kathy suggests the meal on the pretense of their children's friendship, but she's obviously trying to figure out if Brad and Sarah are having sex.)

Kathy makes a sudden revelation and Connelly does a beautiful job of selling the moment. She doesn't say a word, but her eyes well up and she tenses and we in the audience, because we are human beings with fully functioning eyes and brains, can tell that she has figured something out that's upsetting to her. But Lyman's got to tell us all about it anyway. "All of the sudden, Kathy knew, and she felt..."

Bogus. Totally bogus. Repetitive, silly, completely uncinematic. It just pulls you right out of the moment and reminds you that you're watching a movie that would probably work better as a novel.

Field needs to trust his actors and his camera to tell the story. Simple as that.

I likewise say his film lacks confidence because his last act is a complete cop-out. Characters experience sudden changes of heart that not only stretch the limits of believability, but directly violate the logical sense of the film's first half. And it's not only that I doubt the likelihood of the outcome to Brad and Sarah's infidelity. It's that I think it's an ugly, mean-spirited and almost inhuman way to end the movie.

Without blowing too much, Field wants us to accept what his entire movie seems to argue against. For 120 minutes, he shows us characters struggling with negative urges who eventually lose the fight. It is inevitable, Little Children posits, that we will slowly give in to our base desires. Such is the life of a human being. Then his ending expects us to believe that the deserving characters can turn their urges on and off like a switch, can one night simply decide to be nice people and have their appetites permanently quenched. I call bullshit.

It's not that the movie has to have a bleak ending necessarily, although an all-around bleak movie like Little Children kind of paints itself into that corner. But Field begins the movie with a problem he has no interest in solving, doesn't solve anything and then pretends he has made a film with a happy ending. Too bad he hasn't. At least, I wasn't happy.

Joe Rogan FTW

Hilarious, awesome video from iFilm, courtesy of What Would Tyler Durden Do, in which Joe Rogan humiliates faux-comic Ned Holness (a.k.a. Carlos Mencia) in front of large crowds. I can't recommend the following 10 minutes of pure joy enough. As if Rogan calling out Mencia for stealing jokes and otherwise being a complete fucking hack wasn't enough, it features a cameo by Don Barris, the genius responsible for Windy City Heat.

(Have I talked about Windy City Heat before to you people? Holy shit, if I haven't, I have done you all a great disservice. Go and Netflix it immediately. Or, if you lack Netflix, buy it. Buy several copies, because you'll want to give it to a few friends afterwards. I don't want to ruin any of the fun you're about to have watching the greatest reality/prank film ever made, so I shall say no more).



Mencia's supposed to be a comic. Think about it...does he get in one good line on Rogan the entire time? Rogan's annihilating him on video, in front of an audience, and all Mencia can do is repeat the same dumb two-word insults over and over again. "Why do you care about me so much? You're a bitch!"

What the hell kind of comedian is that? Start riffing, motherfucker! What do you think you're doing on stage, trying out for "American Idol"? Crack a few jokes on the fly and maybe people will stop saying you can't write material.

10 Movies About the Soul-Crushing Horror of Love

Sam Cooke's "Cupid" is a great song that has been ruined by overuse. Now, when I hear it, I think about all the stupid commercials and bad movies in which it has appeared, and not the heartfelt, simple sentiment at its core or Cooke's impeccably smooth vocals. Which sucks.

That's how I feel about the entire Valentine's holiday. Unlike most bullshit annual American festivities, there's a very sweet, straightforward sentiment at its core. You should take time out to recognize the unlikely, wholly remarkable gift of having love in your life. Because most people don't. We're all pretty much alone in this life, when all is said and done, so having one person out there who you truly care about and who reciprocates those feelings is damn special.

Unfortunately, marketing executives, overeager newspaper editors and other assorted assholes have morphed this extremely basic, natural idea into something deformed and hideous. A consumerist nightmare in which an individual is expected to somehow demonstrate his or her affection via fiduciary extravagance. In other words, you don't really love, Mr. and Mrs. Modern American, unless you buy all this useless crap. How will your spouse/partner/fuck buddy know that you really care unless you get them a plush bear in a necktie that was hand-sewn by Malaysian 8 year olds?

I rarely have girlfriends when Valentine's Day comes around. (I rarely have girlfriends, so it's just a matter of percentages.) So I don't really feel that pressure that some seem to feel when February 14th rolls around. I never have to worry about going all-out to impress someone, in the vain hope that they won't leave me for someone they haven't had mediocre sex with so many times. And I'm well past the point of feeling alienated or left out of holiday celebrations. I'm a childless unpatriotic atheist Jew with a small family composed entirely of other childless unpatriotic atheists. My year is defined by being left out of holiday celebrations.

Still, a holiday seems as good a time as any for a themed movie list. So here are 10 Films About the Delicious Agony of Love. Okay, or Lust.

The 4th Man

Jeroen Krabbé stars as a gay writer who seduces a mysterious but hot blonde (Renée Soutendijk) intending to mooch off of her, but slowly grows obsessed with her. Then he begins to suspect that she might have killed her past three husbands. Paul Verhoeven's cheesy erotic thriller Basic Instinct tells a similar story, but he nailed the mixture of swooning Hitchcockian suspense and gallows humor better the first time around with this 1983 Dutch-language film.

White

The frequently overlooked mid-section to Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy, this pitch-black comedy's bleak outlook perfectly suits its titular lack of pigment. Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski) marries Dominique (Julie Delpy) and moves with her to Paris. He's unable to perform in bed so she quickly grows tired of him. This break-up ruins Karol's entire life, forcing him to return to Poland with nothing but a twisted scheme for revenge. Kieslowski somehow manages to present a creepy, unrequited, vengeful love as both funny and tender.

Y Tu Mama Tambien


Alfonso Cuaron's films leave a lot unsaid. As in real-world human relationships, most of the truly crucial information in his screenplays exists outside of the dialogue. In Y Tu Mama Tambien, the thrill of the road trip undertaken by two impetuous adolescents (Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal) and their glamorous older lady friend (Maribel Verdú) is in the mystery. The trio is unsure of where they're going; not all of them even know why they are going or what's really going on. And we in the audience are fed information slowly, in wayward glances and knowing assents. (Though the title provides a bit hint as to the backstory).

Almost as a sly joke, the film's voice-over narration never once clarifies the on-screen action, but instead provides the Mexican landscape with historical and social context. Cuaron thus simulates the daze of our waking lives in his cinema, extending our ignorance about the motives and thoughts of those real people around us to his fictional characters, about whom we expect to be informed. You can never really know anyone, the film seems to suggest, and that may be a good thing. Because if you get to know someone too well, they stop being any fun.

(NOTE: I'm told that much of the Spanish-language dialogue consists of idiomatic language and puns, so it's very possible that a native speaker would have a completely different take on the style of the film's storytelling.)

Notorious

Of course we come around to Hitch on the anti-Valentine's Day film list. He's quite possibly the least romantic director of all time. Notorious focuses on one of his trademark fucked up, manipulative, creepy love affairs. British agent T.R. Devlin (Cary Grant) asks an old flame, Alicia (Ingrid Bergman), to ingratiate herself with a group of Nazi sympathizers living in South America. By, you know, fucking an oily Claude Raines. Of course, Devlin's still in love with Alicia, so even as she does precisely what he has asked her to do, he feels the need to torment her and make her feel cheap. Most of Hitchcock's films in some way deal with an obsessed man who wants to utterly possess another person (usually a woman, but not necessarily), but nowhere is the desperation to subjugate a woman as intense, needly or unsettling as in the last half hour of Notorious.

That Obscure Object of Desire

Luis Bunuel has two actresses trade off scenes as the romantic lead in this snide, sarcastic take on obsessive love. Mathieu (Fernando Rey) falls desperately in love with Conchita (Carole Bouquet and Angela Molina), who does not seem to feel the same way. Or maybe she does. Anyway, she decides to flirt with him and keep him around, but never lets him get too far. Naturally, the more Conchita taunts Mathieu, the more driven he becomes in his pursuit, oblivious to all save his lustful desires. (There are hints about the crumbling world around Mathieu, an encroaching anarchy aided by frequent terrorist bombings, but he's squarely focused on getting laid.)

Bunuel sees us all trapped in this ceaselessly repeating, hopeless pattern. Just about all of his films deal in the comic futility of the human experience. We all want to love, but we absolutely cannot stand to be loved. As soon as someone demonstrates his or her undying devotion to us, we lose interest. And should we meet a person who cannot stand our very presence, whom no amount of pleading or flattering or wooing can win over to our side, we become obsessed. Oops.

The Locket

This brilliant film noir isn't available on DVD for some reason. It's an intricately structured mystery in which groom Harry Blair (Brian Aherne) is approached the night before his wedding and warned off his future wife. A complicated series of flashbacks and flashbacks within flashbacks makes Nancy (Laraine Day) appear to be a kleptomaniac and a liar, but how can Blair find out the real truth before it's too late?


There's a lot to love about this film - John Brahm's stylish Otto Preminger-esque direction, a great droopy performance from Robert Mitchum, truly excellent black and white cinematography. But, as with a lot of other films of the WWII-era, what I'm really attracted to is the essential pessimism of the enterprise. Because it's extremely Freudian (the central motif is a locket, as in unlocking repressed memories), it's also a bit didactic, and very cynical about human nature. Given the right circumstnaces, we're all thieves and liars, The Locket suggests. So the secret to a successful courtship is sorting out the damaged goods from the rest of the pile.

All the Real Girls

Though it still has a downer second half, this is probably the most uplifting film on the list. Zooey Deschanel and Paul Schneider play a young Appalachian couple experiencing true love for the first time. At first, it's all sunshine and eskimo kisses and bucolic splendor, but as they always do, things grow complicated and the affair ends. Painfully. Director David Gordon Green and cinematographer Tim Orr turn this small town slice of life into a real visual feast, one of the most sensitively and subtly composed modern American films. This film makes Garden State look like "Bananas in Pyjamas."

In the Mood for Love

Chow Mo-Wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-zhen Chan (Maggie Cheung) are next-door neighbors and close friends. Then they discover their spouses are having an affair with one another. This presents a real Catch-22. They clearly have chemistry together, and now they have a perfect excuse to break their marriage vows. But to commit adultery would make them every bit as bad as their traitorous significant others. So self-satisfaction and martyrdom win the day, at least for a while.


That asshat Christopher Doyle's gorgeous cinematography and the vibrant, lived-in '60s period detail make the movie Kar-Wai's most aesthetically pleasing, but it's the modulated, withdrawn Leung and Cheung performances that give the film its woozy, breathless energy.

Closer

Mike Nichols started his directorial career with the most savage takedown of marriage ever made, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I was among the cynics who felt he'd never again make a film worthy of mention alongside the classics of his early career, but he got there with this adaptation of Patrick Marber's play. Two sets of unfaithful couples battle it out over the course of a year, and no one is left unscathed. All the actors (even Julia Roberts!) do solid work, but Clive Owen's got the most fascinating arc. Simultaneously the most perverse and romantic character, his Larry realizes that falling in love is exactly like dying, only it takes a lot longer.

Shampoo

Warren Beatty plays himself in every movie, but he really really plays himself in Hal Ashby's Shampoo. Hairdresser George Roundy, drifting in and out of the beds of Los Angeles' most eligible bachelorettes and trophy wives, is Warren Beatty with a less impressive resume. Let's faec it. Screenwriter Robert Towne does a simply amazing job of making George's quandry, not exactly one shared by the bulk of humanity, feel universal.

To give up womanizing and stick with one woman would be to grow up, which means getting older, which means getting closer to death, which is something George is not prepared to do. So he continues to screw up his life by chasing momentary pleasures and cheap thrills, getting less and less out of them each time. The final shot, with Beatty watching Julie Christie drive away and out of his life, gets me every single time, and I've seen the movie at least 5 or 6 times.

If It Bends, It's Funny. If It Breaks, It's Not Funny.

The other day, I posted a clip from Fox News' new "comedy" program "Red Eye," in which several unfunny conservatives talk over news footage. Since then, the blog of host Greg Gutfeld has disapprovingly linked here, insinuating that my criticism of the show derives from my political viewpoint rather than my honest appraisal of the humor.

Remember: If you don't agree with it, it's not funny!

See, blogger Jim Treacher is here implying that I don't like the show because I disagreed with its viewpoint. If he had read my blog post (and I believe he did because he left a comment there), he would know that I did not take issue with the content of the clip. Only the lack of any kind of humor. In fact, the clip was mocking something I have made fun of myself on this very blog! Namely, Joe Biden's dumb, possibly racist remark about Barack Obama.

So, Greg and Jim, I disliked your show because you didn't tell a single joke that worked. Really, the clip seemed to feature very few intentional jokes. One guy does a lame riff playing on Biden's choice of the word "clean," the chick makes a bizarre and out of place reference to affirmative action and that's pretty much it. Or did I miss a bunch of subtle witticisms and inside references that only your conservative fans would get?

How could Greg and Jim not realize that the show isn't funny? They can certainly appreciate humor, right? Greg's the former editor of Maxim UK, so you know he knows quality comic material, am I right? Their blog also links to Neil Hamburger, so at least they have some sense of what's funny.

I think possibly this may bring us to the real barrier for conservative comics, and honestly, for some left-wing comedians as well. Staunchly ideological, partisan kind of thinkers are rarely as funny as those who can see both sides of an issue. I don't always agree with moderates, but they're more funny. Great satire can be designed to convince an audience, but the best jokes are usually focused solely on being jokes as opposed to expressing a political viewpoint.

This isn't a hard and fast rule. Plenty of great comedians are strongly ideological. Richard Pryor and George Carlin come immediately to mind (though bear in mind that their politics are most often reflected in their personas, not so much their specific jokes).

"The Daily Show" is a perfect example. Yes, the show has a lefty ideological bent, more or less. But they frequently skewer Democrats and liberals. In fact, I'd say almost every episode features at least one joke at the expense of someone on the left wing. Considering that conservatives have run the government for pretty much the entirety of Stewart's tenure on the show as well determines the content to some extent.

Now compare that to "Red Eye." The show would never go after a conservative, and if it did, it would do so in an intentionally light, jovial manner, as compared to the sharp barbs reserved for Gutfeld's ideological opponents. When it's obvious that your jokes are designed to ridicule one specific group relentlessly as a way to propagandize, audiences will quickly lose interest in your phony shenanigans.

"Chappelle Show" is another great example. Certainly, the show was very political and outspoken. But it also was not specifically about one party over another or one brand of American politics. Dave Chappelle looks at political issues through a personal lens. He's not about mocking Republican Senators. He's about mocking white people. He's not trying to espouse on the benefits of affirmative action. He's just trying to show that racism still exists, no matter what Tony Snow has to say.

In short, he has interesting opinions worth expressing, and he does so in a unique and clever way. If Gutfeld could manage that, he'd have a funny show, and I PROMISE YOU, I would not be afraid to admit that. I disagree with almost everything Sam Kinison had to say, about everything, ever, ditto Howard Stern, but I think both of those guys are fucking hilarious.

(As I said before, I don't limit this phenomenon to the right-wing. There are lefties who strike me as overly partisan and ideological, such as Margaret Cho and Al Franken. I'm sorry, I liked him on "Saturday Night Live" and all that, but he's totally not at all funny. Because he's about convincing you of the rightness of his political position, which is not the right attitude for successful comedy. It's not irreverent enough. Fortunately, guys like Stephen Colbert and Lewis Black totally get it.)

It's not that hard to figure out, really, which is what makes this Doug Giles column from Townhall so fascinatingly wrong-headed. (Link via World-O-Crap.)

I know I’m not supposed to say this as a conservative and as a Christian, but Steve Colbert, John Stewart, David Letterman, Carlos Mencia, Dave Chappelle and Bill Maher are funny hombres. Even though I radically and fundamentally disagree with most of their content, funny is as funny does. They’re like farts. Most folks don’t really like farts, but farts are funny. Period. Especially, when it’s yours and it’s silent.

Well, I appreciate his honesty, but I can't believe he included Carlos Mencia on that list. Yuck. Ned Holness is not at all a "funny hombre." It's also kind of odd to praise these guys in one sentence and then turn around and compare them to farts. I mean, David Letterman never sold himself as a political leader. He's a professional comedian, and Doug clearly finds him amusing. Isn't that enough to not be deemed a "fart," just because he disagrees with you on some fundamental issues about running the country?

Look, as far as comedy goes, Mr. and Mrs. Conservative, you must bow and kiss the Left’s ring. They slay us. You can count on one hand how many conservatives are making a semi-distinct blip on the comedic scene. Who do we have? Dennis Miller, Brad Stine, Julie Gorin, and ________ . I had to google “conservative comics” just to add a third person to that list.

(1) Who the fuck is Brad Stine?

(2) Dennis Miller has sucked ever since he converted to conservatism. And even a bit before that. If he's the best your side has to offer, you guys are less funny than Ingmar Bergman reading The Bell Jar at a memorial service for the victims of United 93 on top of the Wailing Wall the day after the annual Dead Puppies and Onions Festival backed up by Itzhak Perlman playing his score from Schindler's List on the world's smallest violin. Babe.

Why can’t conservatives get their comedic act together? The liberals, on a 24/7 basis, are tossing us soft balls that we should be driving out of the park in a humorous, prime time, way.

Exactly. You'll never come up with something funny if you go in with that attitude. "I've got to find something some liberal has done to make fun of!" It's lame and predictable. First, find something FUNNY. If you need to do political comedy, then find something political that's FUNNY. Then talk about that, and your ideology should come through naturally. If you have any talent as a comic.

It’s so easy it’s stupid. All we have to do is just read the crap that the left does, out loud, and it’s hilarious. We don’t even have to be that imaginative and try to develop quips, as they provide an endless supply of ammunition. We couldn’t make up the stuff they do even if we wanted to—no one on the planet is that creative.

Am I crazy or does Doug contradict himself here? First, he says that conservatives aren't funny. Then he says that all conservatives need to do to be funny is say the things liberals do out loud. Obviously they already do that. So he DOES already think they're funny.

From Hollywood to the Hill, the Left and those who lean that way, do more psychotic stuff than my one-eyed uncle Joe does on a three day weekend binge when he’s all liquored up. They are a MadTV, SNL and HBO Special waiting to happen. There has to be some conservative capital lying around that can be earmarked to gather no holds barred comedians to paper shred these little darlings on TV and in film.

Care to give us a single example of something wacky a liberal has done that no one makes jokes about? I mean, when liberals do funny things, people make fun of them. How many Bill Clinton jokes were flying around during the late '90s. It was all Jay Leno talked about for, like, 5 years.

So why don’t conservatives crank out comedians? Here’s why I think our comedic contributions are weak.

Oooh, I can't wait. Because Doug knows comedy, folks. He's seen every episode of "Mind of Mencia"!

1. Conservatives, obviously, don’t think comedy is important. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report don’t have The Factor numbers. Thus, they don’t seem to be as important as O’Reilly, or Rush or Hannity in an immediate sense. And they’re not. However, Steve and John do have the ear of millions of 18-35 year olds, who will, uh . . . hello, be at the wheel driving this nation a few short years from now. That’s kinda significant.

Conservatives don't think comedy is important? Guh? Are they robots?

His point, I guess, is that conservatives don't bother to be funny because they don't think it's a good way to get votes. But liberals aren't doing comedy because they want people to vote for John Edwards. They're doing comedy because it's funny, and they want to be funny and make people laugh. You know, laughter? It's that think humans do?

2. We spit out lame comedians. When it comes to conservatives and Christians doing comedy, like soup in a bad restaurant, their brains are better left unstirred.

What the fuck does this mean?

The reason why? Well, I think they’re too nice. They don’t really set the hook. They don’t really deliver the dig. For some reason, the laughmeisters of the Right are PC addled.

Wait, what? I thought we of the Left were the ones who were too "PC"? Now the right-wingers aren't funny because they're too politically correct? You mean, like Michael Savage and Ann Coulter? Jonah Goldberg calling us fascists and Dinesh D'Souza blaming us for 9/11, they're holding back? They're too nice? Constrained by political correctness? (I'd pick on some right-wing comedians, but there aren't any. But these guys never say anything correct or sensible about world affairs, so I figure they count as entertainers).

3. We’re too serious. With our War with whacked out Islam and our ideological battle with the Secularists who whiz on traditional American values, the conservative can become a sober and somber person, which is understandable.

That doesn’t mean we can’t laugh, or more specifically, mock our enemies.

You know what Doug does better than pretty much any other rightard I've ever read? Answers his own questions. He doesn't realize he's doing it! He sets up rhetorical questions and then answers them unintentionally. It's actually kind of brilliant. See, here, he's saying "I guess maybe we're too serious to be funny." Then right away, he turns around and says "We should make jokes in order to mock our enemies."

But humor isn't about picking on one's enemies. That's what bullies do, and bullies are only funny to themselves. Humor is about recognition. It's inherently sympathetic. We laugh because we relate. So if you're all about pointing out the flaws of a group you have deemed "the enemy," your "comedy" is going to be mean-spirited and bilious, which is only funny to other mean-spirited, bilious people. Which pretty much explains "Red Eye" and the whole of contemporary conservative comedy today.

Even Stephen Colbert, the sharpest satirist of the right-wing working today, comes at the satire from a standpoint of AFFECTION. He calls Bill O'Reilly "Papa Bear." He frequently has right-wing guests on his show, and he goofs on them, but in a warm and engaging way, not as a jerk. This is a far more artful form of ridicule. He makes his targets look like blind partisans whereas he manages to remain above the fray. The South Park guys frequently employ the same technique. Stan and Kyle remain the straightlaced, sober ones, reacting to the madness all around them. Gutfeld doesn't come off like the standard-bearer of reasoned discourse in that clip from "Red Eye." More like the coked-up lunatic.

Nowadays, we won’t dare do cartoons about Osama and his ilk lest we tick them off. Are you kidding me? We’re trying to kill the terrorists, right? Let me see if I get this correct: we can kill them, but we can’t insult them with cartoons or sitcoms?

Oh, Doug Doug Doug Doug Dougie...

Let me set this straight for you. The cartoon controversy was about offending Muslims, not terrorists. I don't think anyone really cares if they offend terrorists (though I'm not sure who you actually mean when you say that vague, essentially defunct word.) I personally am with you on the cartoon thing. Though I didn't find the cartoons amusing, and probably wouldn't have wanted to run them if I owned a newspaper, I don't think a paper should allow angry fundamentalists to determine its content. As I would if it were an offensive cartoon of Christ or Buddha or whomever, I support the paper's right to publish anything they damn well please.

But conflating those who protested the cartoons with terrorists? Racist, my friend. Straight-up racist.

One of the reasons why some young people no likey conservatives is because no one is making them look at the Left and then laugh their butts off at them. It seems shallow, but that’s reality. I believe we need to change this by going Monty Python nuts. I’m willing to give it a try. My wife says I’m pretty funny, especially during sex. I’m not quite sure what she means, though.

Sad...Just sad...

Black by Popular Demand?

The Editors boldly suggest that, before Democrats nominate Barack Obama for President, they consider the fact that many, many Americans are still totally racist.

There has never been a black President, ever. No major political party has ever nominated a black person to be President. Or Vice-President. Over the past 130 or so years since Reconstruction, there have been a grand total of three (3) black Senators, and that includes Mr. Obama, the only black person currently serving in that august body. So if the American electorate is so obsessed with putting black people in important positions, they have a real funny way of showing it.

He/She/They has/have a point. Americans love to pretend that they're not racist. Movies like Crash come out and flatter audiences. "Yes, there's racist racism, but you and I know better because we've now shared this mind-expanding experience. Oh, if only every white person could have his or her life saved by a minority, we'd all be healed!" It's a rule that we can all try to follow if we're interested in feeling like a good person. "Don't treat people differently because of their race or say racial slurs." Boom. Done.

But of course, this doesn't really have anything to do with someone making a private, secret decision in a voting booth. Maybe an individual knows better than to ever say something inappropriate to a minority or behave in an offensive manner, but would rather not have someone like that running the country. I'd suspect there are more Americans like this than there are overt, angry racists. A lot more.

My point is not that I am actually absolutely sure that Barack Obama can’t be President - only Mike Allen knows what the future holds. My point is that being black makes you absolutely unacceptable to an unmeasureable but substantial part of the electorate, and that the fact that we’ve all agreed to pretend that the opposite is true does not make this fact go away.

The Editors are correct, as well, in explaining why people don't want to have this particular discussion. It's unpleasant for us to face up to the fact that, when we vote for President, we are voting in solidarity with racists. That in fact, it seems almost like a man or woman could not become President unless a significant number of racists backed them. Ugh.

My own thoughts on the subject have changed recently. I had always thought that, should a black person run for President, it would energize minority and youth voters in ways that we have not previously seen. I assumed a large number of people who had never voted before, because they had never felt adequately represented, would suddenly see a chance to vote for change. Even a superficial change is better than the endless stream of old white assholes we've had running the show for as long as anyone can remember.

Ditto Hillary. She doesn't resonate as much with the young people, but I sort of figured that the number of women who haven't voted but would show up for her would offset the haters. Any more, I'm not so sure, and I personally would rather she didn't win just because she's been so wrong on the war.

Unfortunately, there's no way to know. I'd still like to believe that Americans would surprise everyone and do the right thing and elect a black person to the Presidency, but I know that's optimistic. The only way to find out is to take the plunge and hope for the best. Hey, at least he's clean, right?

Is It Evolution Sunday Already?

PZ Myers at Pharyngula alerts me to the existance of "Evolution Sunday":

Today is Evolution Sunday. It's that day when participating ministers will say a few supportive words about evolution from their pulpits, or as I prefer to think of it, when a few people whose training and day-to-day practice are antithetical to science will attempt to legitimize their invalid beliefs and expand their pretense to intellectual authority by co-opting a few slogans.

As you might guess, I'm not exactly against the event, but I definitely do not support it.

Frankly, I can't understand why anyone who supports science education (as PZ definitely does) would oppose the idea of Evolution Sunday. I mean, I don't think that most of what churchgoers hear at from the pulpit is true. Perhaps we'd all be better off if people didn't embrace the supernatural (though there's no way to tell for certain). But frank discussions about scientific facts are bound to improve the accurate information-to-myth ratio, right?

I'm sure a few readers are going to complain that I should be praising these efforts to get people to take baby steps in the right direction, but I just can't do it.

I'm not sure if embracing the idea of "evolution" is necessarily a "baby step" for religious folks. More like an entirely sensible understanding of the observable reality of our world. Religious Christians and I would disagree about the exact nature, origin and purpose of human life on Earth, but there's no reason we should disagree about the factual informaiton available to us at the present time. It's not a small step towards abandoning religion, but a rational spirituality. Honesty about what can be seen, and faith in what cannot. It's a spirituality I don't share, but that is FAR FAR more palatable to me than this fundamentalist "literal translation of the Bible" nonsense. So what's PZ's problem?

I'm sorry, but when I see people in chains shuffle a few steps at the behest of their jailer, my heart isn't in to shouting, "Hooray! You're free!" You have a choice. You can go to church today, and among the hymns and prayers and magic rituals and chants to nonexistent beings, you can hear a few words in support of science; or you can refuse to support the whole rotten edifice of religion and stay home and read a good book. Which alternative do you think I would support?

Now, you all know I'm as atheist as they come. I do not in any way, shape or form believe in God, and I certainly don't believe in anything as silly and obviously invented by primitive human minds as Judaism or Catholicism. But I don't think any sort of religious faith is akin to being imprisoned. Some believers seem perfectly capable of combining their religion with a rational worldview.

I agree with Professor Myers almost all the time, but I can see this is a faultline in our approach to atheism. I come at it from a civil rights perspective, essentially. As an atheist, I shouldn't have to celebrate, or even be made aware of, your personal religious beliefs. As long as I don't know about it and it doesn't inconvenience me or my lifestyle choices, believe what you want.

That's why I think Evolution Sunday sounds like a terrific idea. It's a bunch of people getting together and saying, "We're Christians but we still think secular schools should teach children actual facts about the world and not the dumb shit we believe." Perfect score on the Lon-o-meter.

PZ, on the other hand, believes that the world would genuinely be a better place if there were no religion. He therefore dislikes Evolution Sunday because it conflates science and religion, only one of which merits any sort of authority.

I'm undecided on the question of whether we'd be entirely better off without religion. Consider the argument as a spectrum. On one side, you'd have Professor Myers, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. "The world would, without question, be significantly improved if there were no religion." (I find some of Harris' arguments, focused on fundamentalist Islam as a key example of religion run amok and ruining a society, particularly condescending and extreme.)

On the other, you'd have the "South Park" argument, taken from their brilliant 2-part "Buck Rogers" themed episode in which Cartman awoke in a distant religion-less future as part of a wrong-headed attempt to secure a Nintendo Wii 3 weeks early. In brief, "humankind is just a bunch of warmongering assholes and religion is just the excuse for violent behavior, not the cause."

(Obviously, I'm only taking part of the overall question into account with this dialectic. There is another entire spectrum of people who believe that religion actually improves the functioning of a society. But we're leaving them out of this discussion because they're obviously wrong.)

In this particular question, I'm actually closer to Matt Stone and Trey Parker than Dawkins and Myers, oddly enough. I don't think religion, in and of itself, is the cause for most of our problems today. It's all economics. Religion's just how these wars and conflicts are sold to the masses, and if everyone believed in something different, the propaganda would be designed to match that superstition or folklore.

Really, I think this entire subset of the atheism argument is a dead end. Who cares if society would be better off without religion, or if people should spend their Sundays reading good science books instead of going to church. It's not going to happen. Better to focus on maintaining the rights of believers and non-believers alike than to reject any kind of common ground with anyone who might feel differently than you.

Instead, I'm going to encourage you all to participate in my Enlightenment Sunday project. Skip church every week. Ignore the pleas of your priests. Donate money and time to charities of your choice directly, rather than through the intermediary of the church bureaucracy. Improve your brain with books and videos and conversations about science. Think skeptically. I'm sure the participants in Evolution Sunday mean well and are sincere in their wish to reconcile faith with science, but we'll do far more to promote reason in this country if we withdraw from all participation in the church and let religion wither away from disuse, than we will by encouraging these modern day witch-doctors to spread their delusions.

See, to me, this paragraph represents a delusion. That's never going to happen, what Myers describes here, so even if it would "do far more to promote reason in this country," it's an unrealizable fantasy. No matter how eloquently he could write about atheism (and he does a pretty solid job of it most of the time), PZ Myers will never be able to shake Americans out of their deeply-held religious convictions. No one could. We're stuck with it. So better to encourage to the religious people to at least make room for some complex, nuanced and realistic thinking about the natural world, rather than brushing them off completely as misguided saps and fools.

Articulate the Articuless

You'll recall my post from last week, in which I discussed Joe Biden's odd description of Barack Obama.

"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man."

And that storybook is...Song of the South.

Anyway, I don't think Joe Biden is virulently racist or anything. I just think he's kind of an out-of-touch idiot, and so we shouldn't elect him President. Democrats can not even consider nominating a guy for the leadership role in their party who might potentially say something this stupid again before January '09.

It would be bad enough just to put your foot in your mouth publicly in this way. People would think less of you, but a simple, well-written and sincere apology might allow you to move on. (Might!) But now it seems like Team Biden actually intends to defend his remarks. Here's a letter his Chief of Staff wrote to the New York Times:

In “The Racial Politics of Speaking Well” (Week in Review, Feb. 4), about Senator Joe Biden’s use of the word “articulate” to describe Senator Barack Obama, Lynette Clemetson suggests the following rule: “Do not use it as the primary attribute of note for a black person if you would not use it for a similarly talented, skilled or eloquent white person.”

During the recent hearings on Iraq that Senator Biden presided over as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, he referred to the following people as “articulate”:

Leslie H. Gelb
Edward N. Luttwak
Lawrence J. Korb
Robert Malley
Senator Lisa Murkowski
Peter W. Galbraith
Frederick W. Kagan
Ted Galen Carpenter
Gen. Jack Keane
Senator Edward M. Kennedy

While Senator Biden has expressed his regret that anyone was offended by his words, we wanted to make it clear that his reference to Senator Obama was sincerely intended as a compliment.

Alan L. Hoffman Washington, Feb. 9, 2007

Alan clearly thinks we're all stupid and will fall for this BS strawman. Joe Biden is not in trouble for referring to Barack Obama as "articulate." Obviously, there are articulate black people. Sensible individuals would not argue this point.

No, Biden is in trouble for saying that Barack Obama is the first mainstream African-American candidate who is articulate. Also, clean. Which is ludicrous, and more than a little racist, because it implies that you don't expect blacks to be clean and articulate, and therefore that Obama's candidacy is something genuinely special.

One would only single out Obama's status as the first articulate black candidate as a point of comparison. Unlike all these other non-articulate, dirty blacks, this guy can speak well and showers daily! It's like some wonderful fairy tale!

When Biden was referring to those other individuals, like the articulate Mr. Galbraith and the not-particularly-articulate Senator Murkowski (whose Daddy appointed her to finish out his Senate term when he became governor), he wasn't making a comparison. He was simply issuing a common, everyday compliment. Senator Murkowski, to my knowledge, was not referred to as "the first articulate Senator from Alaska" or "the cleanest lady Senator I've ever seen!"

Hoffman thus makes Biden's crack far worse, because by trying to weasel out of it, he implies that Biden doesn't feel it was inappropriate to say. The attitude is, "well, we're getting a lot of flack over this comment so I'd better set the record straight." But Biden's getting flack because he legitimately misspoke. Again, I'm not saying he's therefore a racist. Maybe he just misspoke. But he should then apologize, not make it seem like he was offering Obama a genuine compliment that's being misinterpreted.

The Dakota Fanning Show

Post-Will Ferrell, I've maybe watched 3 actual episodes of "Saturday Night Live." I liked Amy Poehler on "Upright Citizens Brigade" and, like the rest of America, I thought "Lazy Sunday" was hilarious. But I feel like every time I flip past the show in progress, they're in the middle of the most asinine one-joke sketch imaginable, and I get bored immediately. Or pissed off, even.

But this skit, with Poehler playing Dakota Fanning, actually made me laugh. The impression's actually pretty spot-on, considering that it's an adult impersoning a young child.



Thanks to Golden Fiddle for the link.

In Which We Discover That I Am Psychic...

This is seriously fucking weird and creepy. I'm unsettled.

From my sarcastic obit for Anna Nicole Smith yesterday:

The person who epitomized this phenomenon to me as a child was Zsa Zsa Gabor. I was too young to know that she and her sister had at one time actually performed in real, authentic vehicles of entertainment. I only knew there was this horrible old woman with a horror-movie accent that seemed to make a living being famous (and, on occasion, assaulting police officers).

Now, at the time, there had been no established connection made between Zsa Zsa and Anna Nicole. They are two totally separate public figures who simply shared a trait I wanted to note in passing - they were famous for no good reason.

Here's Yahoo! News from today...

The husband of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor said Friday that he had a decade-long affair with Anna Nicole Smith and may be her infant daughter's father.

Of all the celebrities in the world...MAN, that's an odd coincidence. But it gets even stranger.

The claim by Prince Frederic von Anhalt comes amid a paternity suit over Smith's 5-month-old daughter, Dannielynn. The birth certificate lists Dannielynn's father as attorney Howard K. Stern, but former Smith boyfriend Larry Birkhead is waging a legal challenge, saying he is the father.

"If you go back from September, she wasn't with one of those guys, she was with me," von Anhalt told The Associated Press in an interview Friday.

I can't imagine she'd turn to drug abuse, with such a secure, stable family life.

Gabor, a onetime sex symbol and star of such 1950s films as "Moulin Rouge" and "Queen of Outer Space," has been in declining health in recent years and suffered a stroke in 2005. She was partially paralyzed in a car crash in 2002.

Von Anhalt, who is Gabor's eighth husband, said he and Smith met in the 1990s when Smith was still married to elderly oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II. He said Smith approached him and Gabor at the Plaza Hotel in New York.

"She was a very big fan of Zsa Zsa and wanted to be like Zsa Zsa," he said. "She wanted to be a princess."

Well, I think as my no-bit made perfectly clear, Anna Nicole did a fine job of stepping into Zsa Zsa's overpriced shoes. Except for the whole dying young thing...

He said the two started an affair soon after, meeting over the years in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. For much of that time, he said, Smith urged him to make her a princess like his wife.

But short of divorcing the actress, he said the only solution would have been adopting Smith. Von Anhalt said he did consider that and even filled out adoption papers, but Gabor refused to sign them.

He said he never admitted the affair to his wife, but that he's sure she knows. She would sometimes answer the phone when Smith called him, von Anhalt said.

"She was a very sexy woman," von Anhalt said. "To have an affair with her is the top, you know."

I don't know who's more pathetic. The recently deceased junkie who couldn't correctly identify the father of her child or this asshole. He was cheating on Zsa Zsa Gabor with fucking Anna Nicole Smith. I mean, I guess that's a little bit better, but we're still talking baby steps here. Doesn't his neighborhood have any attractive stray animals.

"To have an affair with her is the top"? What the fuck are you talking about, you deluded old weirdo? You weren't having a romantic affair! She was fucking you, then directly instructing you to give her money. How could that, in any way, represent the top? Because she had big cans?

Publicist Edward Lozzi, who said he handled publicity for Gabor when she was convicted of slapping a Beverly Hills police officer during a 1989 traffic stop, said he doubted von Anhalt's claim, calling him a "chronic fabricator."

"There are some people who are married to famous people and take advantage of it," said Lozzi, who said he dated Smith three times and spoke with her within the last year.

Man, this story has everything! Paternity mysteries, dead Playmates, pathological liars. Am I the only one who's curious how Ms. Smith could have been carrying on all these exciting, shadowy romantic entanglements when all the available video indicates that she had trouble standing up or walking a straight line?

Ronald Jason Palmieri, an attorney who has represented Gabor and von Anhalt for 15 years, was also skeptical about the paternity claim.

"I have to believe my client, but it's still surreal," he told the Los Angeles Times. "I would find it completely implausible that he is the father of that child, to put it lightly."

Oh, man, I hope Mark Burnett reads this blog. Here's what you have to do. You get Von Anhalt this baby, see, and then you turn it into a reality show. I'm thinking "The Prince and the Pooper," but hire some quality writers. I'm sure they can throw something together.

Hey, it's what Anna Nicole would have wanted!

Von Anhalt's royal credentials have been the cause of speculation over the years. According to stories in the British press, he was born Robert Lichtenberg, the son of a German policeman, and bought his title after being adopted as an adult by a bankrupt daughter-in-law of the last kaiser.

You can't really follow up something like that with a joke. There's no way to top a fraudulent, bankrupt prince who's jealous of a corpse. If Sam Kinison rose from the dead and immediately slumped over to the Laugh Factory to do his best 15 minutes on rigor mortis, it would still be easier to follow than a story about the son of a German policeman buying a title after being adopted as an adult by a bankrupt daughter-in-law of the last Kaiser.

RIP Vicki Lynn Hogan

There are all kinds of theories on celebrity worship. Some people feel that it's because Western Europe and America are no longer dominated by monarchies. Without royalty, we must focus our rapt attention on randomly selected alpha-specimens, based on looks or charisma or a host of other inscrutible attributes. This is a compelling theory.

But I think certain individuals capture the public's attention because they uncannily remind us of ourselves in ways we're not normally allowed to consider. Now, I don't mean people who are famous for a good reason, like talented or beautiful actors or musicians or news anchors or whatever. I mean, it's not hard to discern why Scarlett Johansson's famous. We've all seen Ghost World.

I'm talking about your Paris Hiltons, your Cisco Adlers, your K-Feds. The person who epitomized this phenomenon to me as a child was Zsa Zsa Gabor. I was too young to know that she and her sister had at one time actually performed in real, authentic vehicles of entertainment. I only knew there was this horrible old woman with a horror-movie accent that seemed to make a living being famous (and, on occasion, assaulting police officers).

But the phenomenon of famous-for-fame's-sake celebrities has really exploded now, what with YouTube and "American Idol" and MTV's entire line-up and the whole concept of celebrity meta-devouring itself. And I think that certain people become elevated to iconic status, sometimes overnight, because there is something familiar about them. They're social synechdoches - their accidentally exposed private parts stand for our whole.

Lindsay Lohan's totally like this. In fact, she plays the part of the perpetual adolescent so well, pivoting constantly between genuine grief over her vices and outrageous bouts of Dionysian indulgence, I occasionally feel like it must be an act. Surely, Lindsay's just the Andy Kaufman of our time, always inhabiting her rebellious junkie "persona" and never letting us know that she's in on the joke. How could anyone be this out of control for so long? It would be funny if it weren't so...Okay, it's funny.

Which brings me to Anna Nicole Smith, whose death from heart explosion today is not at all funny. So just forget I made that "heart explosion" crack.

If La Lohan reflects Americans' twisted nostalgia for the Girls (and, yes, Guys) Gone Wild they once were and Paris Hilton provides a safe outlet for our disgust at our own excesses, what service did Anna Nicole Smith's legend provide?

A high school dropout who worked at a fried chicken restaurant, a 26 year old stripper who seduced and married an 89 year old billionaire, an alcoholic whose negligence almost assuredly led at least in part to the death of her 20 year old son only months ago, Anna Nicole Smith has kept America captivated since my early teens.

Now, I'm not trying to bash the woman on the day of her passing. She had a tough time of it, particularly in the last year, and I felt badly for her more often than not.

I've followed her career largely via appearances on "The Howard Stern Show," on which she often seemed drugged, imbalanced and frequently incomprehensible. (Full disclosure: I have also seen many episodes of her ludicrous reality show, which mainly consisted of her waddling around, apparently doped up, while an extremely feminine interior decorator arranged cushions and set the cause of gay rights back a few decades.)

Clearly, Vicki Lynn aka Anna Nicole was the embodiment of the Gold Digger archetype. In essence, her life could be seen as a morality tale: It seems like getting money from that old man will make you happy, but it will only cause you grief. This only works if you're exceptionally small-minded, but we're not talking about conscious, rational connections here. We're talking about why several million Americans would give a shit about a wholly unremarkable and unappealing Texan. (They had already elected one President, after all, and that hadn't worked out too well.)

Speaking of Anna Nicole's gold, it's kind of odd, isn't it, that both she and her son have died within the span of a few months, leaving the future of J. Howard Marshall's billions uncertain? Could her shadowy lawyer and possible baby-daddy Howard K. Stern (not to be confused with the King of All Media) have done her and her heir in hoping to get his hands on the money? (This would explain the recently paternity kerfuffle as well...If he can establish that he and Anna were married and had started a family, he'd have a more compelling case for being cut in on the eventual deal.)

Or have the billionaire's children, who have long sought to gain access to the family fortune via the judicial system, given up on ever winning the day legally? Did they hire someone to get the obstacles out of the way and "make it look like an accident?" Two mysterious, sudden deaths with all this money at stake...Something must be up, right?

Now, I'm not saying that Anna Nicole Smith was definitely murdered and that I have the secret surveillance tapes to prove it, but I am saying that if you happen to represent a sleazy and disreputable tabloid newspaper, you should Paypal me $500,000 to find out. No! I mean, I'm saying that...well, I don't know what I'm saying. I just know that this is a sad and peculiar situation that somehow speaks to the tragedy that is modern American life.

She briefly represented glamour, then decadence, then physical and mental collapse. Like Kate Moss, only with curves and a more appealing, if somewhat regrettably dead, husband.

Drewzac? Braffymore?

Zach Braff and Drew Barrymore? I guess it's a match made in Heaven, because I can't quite determine who's stooping lower.

While Fabrizio Moretti gets slimy with Kiki Dunst, Drew Barrymore is reportedly hitting it with Zach Braff. Zach recently split up with Mandy Mooore and got caught “canoodling” with Drew at the SNL after-party this past weekend.

Can I just say that I hate the word "canoodling"? Perhaps this is because I'm not certain that I have canoodled, even once, in my life. At least, I'm certain that I've never consciously had the thought, "I think I'm gonna canoodle this chick." Perhaps it has happened, and I just didn't realize it at the time, but if so, I'm fairly certain it would have been somewhere private. I'm certainly not one to publicly canoodle.

Oh, and might I just add...G-ross.

A source said that Drew spent the night in the corner with Zach and “they were really focused on each other.”

"Well, okay," the source then admitted, "Zach was focused on Drew. Drew was focused on determining what number comes after 6 in counting, then wondering whether she had TiVOed the previous night's episode of 'Magic Time Albino Unicorn Slumber Party,' before remembering that that show doesn't exist."

Drew’s rep denies they are dating, but friends say they are definitely dating.

I'm sorry, New York Post by way of an online celebrity gossip website, but that's a bit ambiguous for me. I need to know if this match is definitely happening, so I can begin making plans to leave the country prior to the arrival of their autistic demon spawn.

Seriously, though, can you imagine what conversations between these two must be like?

"Say, Drew, have you heard the new Busdriver CD? It's blowing my mind. I'm totally getting into hip hop this year."

"Yes, Busdriver is totally amazing and magical. You're, like, so deep and culturally diverse, Zach."

"Seriously, I know. Did you know that I'm completely depressed all the time? Sometimes I sit around in my sweatpants, even! Like a tortured artist!"

"You're probably the smartest guy I've been with since Luke Wilson or that hairy dude from The Strokes."