3:10 to Yuma

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our President, Ladies and Gentlemen...

I'd make this into a caption contest, but it's just too easy...Plus, you know...no one ever leaves comments.



Apparently, Will Ferrell's impression of our president is a lot more accurate than any of us ever imagined.

The article that goes with this picture is about a book coming out tomorrow that makes a shocking, brain-melting revelation. Get ready this...after months of careful, close research, journalist Robert Draper is ready to declare...George W. Bush may not know what he's doing!

I know, I know, I didn't believe it either, but Draper apparently has it on good authority.

Here's some excerpts from the New York Times:

Mr. Bush went on to share private thoughts that appeared to reflect a level of sorrow and presidential isolation that he strongly implied he took pains to hide, a state of being that he seemed to view as coming with the presidency and with which he professed to be at peace.

Telling Mr. Draper he likes to keep things “relatively light-hearted” around the White House, he added in May, “I can’t let my own worries — I try not to wear my worries on my sleeve; I don’t want to burden them with that.”

“Self-pity is the worst thing that can happen to a presidency,” Mr. Bush told Mr. Draper, by way of saying he sought to avoid it. “This is a job where you can have a lot of self-pity.”

Bush seems unaware that the entire conservative rhetorical strategy pivots around self-pity. "The media never reports our side of the story." "Liberals don't tolerate our views." "We're not free to practice our majority religion." "The terrorists hate our freedoms." "Gays are infringing on our right to marry."

Self-pity is the only thing that has happened to his presidency.

The Washington Post account focuses more on the squabbling within Bush's inner circle, and is thus more amusing.

In "Dead Certain: The Presidency of George Bush," journalist Robert Draper writes that Rove told Bush he should not tap Cheney for the Republican ticket: "Selecting Daddy's top foreign-policy guru ran counter to message. It was worse than a safe pick -- it was needy." But Bush did not care -- he was comfortable with Cheney and "saw no harm in giving his VP unprecedented run of the place."

When Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, expressed concerns about the Miers selection, he was "shouted down" and subsequently muted his objections, Draper writes, while other advisers did not realize the outcry the nomination would cause within the president's conservative political base.

Honestly, I know he's a venomous little troll, but this is the first time I've felt even a twinge of pity for Rove. He knew there was something about Cheney that was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Granted, he was deciding this for the wrong reasons - trying to protect George W. Bush rather than America - but the conclusion was sound. So, yeah, he's evil, but he wound up having to devise strategies to explain a lot of evil things he probably would not have chosen to do himself. Just sucks is all...

It was John G. Roberts Jr., now the chief justice of the United States, who suggested Miers to Bush as a possible Supreme Court justice, according to the book. Miers, the White House counsel and a Bush loyalist from Texas, did not want the job, but Bush and first lady Laura Bush prevailed on her to accept the nomination, Draper writes.

After Miers withdrew in the face of the conservative furor, Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. was selected and confirmed for the seat.

Roberts rejected Draper's report when asked about it last night.

"The account is not true," said Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg, after consulting with Roberts. "The chief justice did not suggest Harriet Miers to the president."

Now that things aren't going right, all of these once semi-dignified people have been reduced to petty, schoolyard squabbling.

"Inviting Harriet was all John's idea."

"Nuh-uh, it was George's!"

"Nuh-uh...You guys suck! I'm retiring to join lecture circuit!"
And that is what the Deciderer is planning to do, if you can believe it. Lecture. He wants to give speeches...professionally...

First, Mr. Bush said, “I’ll give some speeches, just to replenish the ol’ coffers.” With assets that have been estimated as high as nearly $21 million, Mr. Bush added, “I don’t know what my dad gets — it’s more than 50-75” thousand dollars a speech, and “Clinton’s making a lot of money.”

Yeah, this sounds promising. I think George ought to stick with motivational speaking. Maybe he could go to high schools and talk to the kids about why you shouldn't invade sovereign nations with centuries of complex, tribal rivalries simmering just under the service. Or drink and drive. (Laura could come too! I'm sure she has keen insights on the vagaries of vehicular manslaughter!)

Then he said, “We’ll have a nice place in Dallas,” where he will be running what he called “a fantastic Freedom Institute” promoting democracy around the world. But he added, “I can just envision getting in the car, getting bored, going down to the ranch.”

I'm not sure Bush realizes that when smart people say "institute," they mean a big, boring building full of offices where people write proposals and books and such. He's most likely picturing some Willy Wonka-esque enchanted factory distributing a gooey, sugary substance known as Freedonium to all the rich old white men of the world. I mean, the "Fantastic Freedom Institute"? Has he learned nothing in the last six and a half years? The least we could ask from the Bush Presidency is that George W. Bush, the man, grow a little bit from the experience. We ask that from John Hughes movies, it's the least we can expect from the leader of the free world.

(P.S. I'd just like to add, for the record, that Bush doesn't really do any ranching. Everyone knows by now that the whole Crawford, Texas ranch thing was part of his presidential run, a symbol for the gritty American cowboy branding of his political campaign. How pathetic that he intends to keep up this charade even after he's no longer president, when it no longer matters...It'd be like Jared Fogle touting Subway sandwiches to disinterested tourists on Manhattan street corners 20 years from now, long after the food service company had dissolved his contract and cut all ties to the perky nuisance.)

Some people out there in our nation don't have maps

By now, at least a third of my fellow U.S. Americans must have seen this amazing video from the "Miss Teen USA" Pageant, in which Miss South Carolina, Lauren Caitlin Upton, utters the following masterpiece of garbled incoherency. She's asked to explain a random statistic that indicates 1/5 of Americans can't find their own country on a map:



Miss S.C.'s response in full:

"I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don't have maps and I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and the Iraq everywhere like such as and I believe that theyshould...our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S...or should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for our...(inaudible)"

Awesome.

I kind of figured that would be the most stupid statement that I'd see, hear or read this month, and felt alright with that. I mean, I know George Bush has given a few speeches this month, but he's generally capable of completing at least 50% of his sentences.

Then, Brad from Sadly, No! found this little nugget of wrong-headedness over at Wizbang. I'm fairly certain I've never met anyone as stupid as the author of the following blog post.

BLAMING THE VICTIM IN THE MISS TEEN USA DEBACLE

In a way, she's a victim. Any fair look at her answer shows she got mired in liberal taking points.

Pageant questions for the last 30 years are just fluff designed to extract from the young girl her liberal qualifications. So young girls practice spouting liberal buzz phrases, no matter the question.-- Because looking good isn't enough to win a beauty parent, you must have the proper liberal credentials, or there's no sparkly tiara for you!

The core assumption of Paul's post is that beauty pageants tilt liberal. This strikes me as kind of counter-intuitive, if only because I stereotypically associate beauty pageants with Middle American (or, if you prefer, "Red State") culture, but this is just a lazy assumption. I don't know anything about beauty pageants, really, so perhaps Paul is right and they're totally biased against conservatives. You don't really need an opinion on this topic to grasp the inanity of Paul's post. Though you kind of have to wonder about someone who looks to turn anything, even the Internet's version of the "dumb blonde joke," into an opportunity for lame political hackery. This is roughly akin to writing a dense, angry screed applying identity politics to Homestar Runner cartoons or debating the impact of that fat guy singing about the Montgomery Flea Market to the Dow.

I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don't have maps

Everybody is a victim. The first rule of being a good liberal is to find a way to say these hapless morons who can't find the U.S. on a map aren't really morons, they are victims... Victims of the map deficit. The map deficit grew under Reagan, got better under Clinton but has exploded under George Bush. "We should have a program" so everyone can get a map.

Okay, so, this is when it starts to get really stupid. The whole point of this video is that the girl talks for a full minute without expressing a single clear idea. She just babbles incoherently. That's what makes it funny. So Paul, missing that part completely, delves right into making up stuff that she probably meant to say, because she's such a brainwashed LIEberal.

She just says they probably don't know where the United States is because they don't have a map. That's a pretty fair assumption, wouldn't you say? If you have a map, you know where to find shit. If you don't have a map, you don't know where shit is.

Lauren at no point says that she feels those without maps are "victims." That word doesn't appear in her entire, um, "speech." Paul throws that out there so he can go on a belligerent, misanthropic rant about how much he hates needy people who lack things, and how we shouldn't ever help others because it's un-American.

and, uh, I believe that our education like such as in South Africa

And this is where her coaching really kicked in. Mention the poor people of South Africa. No matter the question, South Africa MUST be in the stock pageant answer.

Huh? I thought South Africa was kind of a random country to throw out there, if only because she's too young to remember the apartheid era clearly, and thus wouldn't necessarily have that in the back of her mind as the "go-to" generic, desperate African nation. (I'd think "Rwanda" would hold that title now...)

Paul seems to feel that South Africa is the obvious reference that everyone makes at a beauty pageant, even though Lauren doesn't say anything about the people of South Africa. Paul says "the poor people of South Africa," not Lauren. She just says that our education like such as in South Africa, which doesn't make any fucking sense at all.

and, uh, the Iraq

and what good is a good liberal answer without the word Iraq in it?

Paul's seriously trying to break my brain. THIS IS NOT A GOOD LIBERAL ANSWER. This is the worst answer anyone has given to any question, ever. That's why we're watching it.

And by the by, is it the liberals that keep talking about helping out the Iraqis? Odd, cause I seem to recall some arrogant Texas fratboy prattling on endlessly for the past 6 years about helping the Iraqi people stand up, so that we might then stand down...Must be all this black tar heroin I've been smoking...

Also, please, Paul, "the Iraq." It's pronounced "the Iraq."

everywhere like, such as and I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S.

(pageantbot) Education, must speak about education.... OK in fairness, education really should be part of a reasonable answer but by this point, she can't even tell you the question, she's just trying to hit the liberal talking points.

Honestly, Paul's making less sense at this point than Lauren.

I think maybe Paul's upset because he senses that beauty pageant questions are the only ones he'd be able to satisfactorily answer and, dammit, no one ever asks them of him! He dreams of just once being in a debate with a liberal co-worker, and rather than systematically rebutting all of his awesome Glenn Beck talking points, they'd just ask him what he thinks makes America great (whiteness!) and the three people he'd like to have over for lunch, living or dead (Jesus, Billy Graham and Sean "Hannidate" Hannity!)

Fortunately, Paul, you have a blog, which could solve this problem. I recommend that, in place of your silly conservative bloviating, you start answering recent beauty pageant questions for the benefit of your readership. You could start with Lauren's.

"I think that U.S. Americans don't know where to find America on a map because our maps are too confusing. If every American map placed America directly in the center, where it rightfully belongs, all U.S. Americans would know exactly where to find it."

should help

EVERY pageant answer is required to have a call for someone being helped. Because we all know this "help" is a liberal codeword meaning tax increases and income redistribution.

Wait, did he just admit that conservatives dislike the idea of help? Like, in principle? I think he did. Does this mean they're finally ready to give up on that silly Christianity front and fucking get real about where they stand, at last? No? Okay, just checking.

the U.S., er, should help South Africa

Of course we should honey. You've been practicing that line for a year, it was going to come out no matter the question.

Watch the video. Does it sound like the girl is falling back on her reliable, A-material, or that she's trying to speak extemporaneously? What kind of fucking dipshit do you have to be to watch that video and think, "This is a person who is over-relying on canned material. Her answer should be more honest and off-the-cuff." I'll say it again. He's attempting to use a video of a blonde teenager from South Carolina babbling incoherently at a beauty pageant to make a grand point about the state of Liberalism in America. Wow...

and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries

Because being a good liberal means we care about all the dark people.

Actually, caring about people, light or dark, has little to do with making you a good liberal, Paul. It's what makes you a good person.

I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that, even now, at this late date, there are probably still some self-identified American conservatives who are good people. Paul seems to insist that a rejection of liberalism is at its core a complete rejection of altruism, that his movement is, in essence, an agreement among assholes to be assholes. Conservatives hate help, they don't care about all the dark people and they don't like talking about education even when asked about it directly. Did I miss anything, Paul, or is that the gist of it?

so we will be able to build up our future for our children.

Because it takes a village to raise a moron.

Ba-zing! Did you see what he did there? He made a play on that Hillary Clinton book from a fucking decade ago! What a master of wit! Hey, Paul, heard any kickass Ginnifer Flowers jokes lately? Don't hold out on me, man. I say, for your next column, you could do a funny riff on that latest Soul Asylum jam and then pepper in some quotes from Bio-Dome! And then we could chat about how great it was on ICQ!

Her coaching did her in. She was told no matter the question, mention victims, Iraq, South Africa and education. In her zeal to prove herself liberal enough to wear the Miss Teen USA sash and crown, she made a fool of herself. Not unlike other liberals just this time it was more obvious.

Paul's just making me sad. He draws the 180 opposite conclusion from, like, every rational person on Earth who watched this video. And not only did he not even get this most simple and straight-forward of jokes, he proceeded to write a long blog post, giving his take on the joke he didn't get, convinced he'd made valuable insights worth sharing. I now realize I didn't have to write a whole blog post mocking him - he'd already rendered himself a ridiculous caricature...

Gonzown3d!1!!!1

So long! Farewell! Auf Wiedersehen! Goodbye!

All Your Sunday Songs

Here's sort of a grab bag of songs I've been listening to a lot this week, thanks to the fine, upstanding individuals at The SeeqPod Corporation:




The first song is off of the new Okkervil River LP, "The Stage Names," and the second is off Blitzen Trapper's latest disc, both of which were passed on to me by my brother. The third is one of my favorite tracks off of The Boggs' disc, "Forts." They're from New York and I read somewhere that they're part of the same scene as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Walkmen, I guess, but it actually reminds me more of '80s British rock than anything else. Like Echo and the Bunnymen with less realistic British accents.

Then there's two really weird songs, the first one by Jesca Hoop and the second by a French collective called Malajube. The Hoop song's in English but I have no idea what it's actually about, and the second one's in French, so I really have no idea what it's about, but they're both good songs. Finally, a great bit of comedy from Patton Oswalt's latest CD, "Werewolves and Lollipops," which I actually went and purchased for myself in a real store! Hey, whatever will get the Bronfman's that extra island they've been itching for, that's my philosophy...

Two Unconventional Teen Comedies

Superbad

Judd Apatow is Todd Phillips 2.0. Phillips collaborates with comedians skilled enough to improv around his sub-retarded set-ups and plotlines. When in doubt, they throw something slapsticky together. (Naturally, once he shifted his cast from improvisational geniuses Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn to Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller, the work suffered.)

Apatow also works with really funny actors and devises stories that give them a chance to shine, and then kind of depends on that to just generate laughs for 2 hours. When it doubt, he has a guy crash a bike into a truck or get hit by a car.

I don't mean to make too much of this comparison. The difference between these two is clear. Apatow and his team of writer/director/actors, who have turned out hits like 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up thus far, are geniuses with character, far beyond the shallow types of Phillips' best film, Old School. The Apatow films (this one directed by "Undeclared" and "Arrested Development" vet Greg Mottola) are always stacked with funny and above all charismatic performances. Michael Cera, Jonah Hill and particularly 18 year old newcomer Christopher Mintz-Plasse have some great bits of dialogue here and there in Superbad, but this is not exactly Woody Allen-level material in terms of one-liners. The movie is funny because they are funny, not because of anything in particular that they say or do.

But still...potentially record-breaking dick joke quotient aside, there's not a whole lot going on in Superbad. It's generally amusing, sometimes hilarious, but otherwise unremarkable.



I think the largest single problem here is that the humor is so front-loaded. Superbad starts really strong, with the cool '70s vibe of the intro and the swift but memorable establishment the three central relationships. It has considerable trouble keeping up the tempo once the adventures begin in earnest, and a lot of the material in the second half just drags everything down. (A detour to a wild, coke-fueled party, for example, goes on way too long.)

Long-time best friends Evan (Cera) and Seth (Hill) are named for the script's co-writers Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, and it's not hard to imagine that the film is fairly autobiographical, but this also makes it kind of self-indulgent and navel-gazing.

Feeling like nerdy outcasts, befriended only by a fellow outcast Fogle (Mintz-Plasse), whom even they push around and bully, Evan and Seth have isolated themselves from the general high school population in a basement, talking about all the things they would do with a girl if only they could get date with one.

Unexpectedly, the guys land an invitation to a big graduation party being thrown by the attractive and popular Jules (Emma Stone), but it comes loaded with a considerable request - would they mind using Fogle's new fake ID to obtain $100 worth of booze for the party?

It's a great set-up for a horny teen comedy, kind of a Porky meets John Hughes thing, with these guys absolutely desperate for some action and so close to making it happen, but just barely missing the mark. Rogen, Goldberg and Mottola, no offense, seem to have a genuine understanding for these guys' dilemma. The intensity of the biological drive to procreate has nothing on the social pressure to "get some" before going away to college, and the more desperate horny teen guys become to make this happen, the less likely girls are to help them out. All of the best moments with Seth and Evan - from Seth's anecdote about obsessively drawing penises as a child to his run-in with a menstruating girl at a party - build off of this undercurrent of sexual frustration, exposing in the most humiliating fashion possible their shared, neurotic need to complete this challenge and fit in.

But though Cera and Hill make a solid comic duo and will probably work together again soon, it's Mintz-Plasse who steals the show. Fogle, called McLovin after the name on his fake ID, doesn't actually share much screen time with the two leads. Early in the film, he's essentially kidnapped by a pair of unruly, bro-ish cops (played by SNL cast member Bill Hader and co-writer Rogen), and what begins as their side-story tends to overshadow the main action of the film.

McLovin brings an innocence to the film that was sorely needed amidst the overwhelming tide of body part humor. Not that I don't enjoy body part humor, but Superbad is relentless and unsparing with it. (Doodles of penises dressed up as historical figures run behind the closing credits, just to ensure that there's not a moment of screen time someone involved in the production could proudly show their Mom.) McLovin's just as horny as the other two, if not more, but he's not so repressed about it, so tied up in his own thoughts. He's like a sexy cheeseburger...

Rocket Science

The guys from Superbad are like Casanova and James Bond rolled into one compared to Hal Hefner. Hefner (Reece Thompson) develops a crush on school debate champ Ginny Ryerson (Anna Kendrick) so intense, he's compelled to join the Debate Team. The only trouble is his stutter, one so severe it prevents him from ever getting his preferred cafeteria lunch or even saying a proper goodbye to his family-departing father.

Writer/director Jeffrey Blitz, whose previous effort was the spelling bee documentary Spellbound, turns out a rather brilliant character study featuring a nearly-silent protagonist, which can't be an easy thing to do. He and Thompson have just connected here, come together to craft a portrait of an intelligent young man cripped by a speech impediment, but determined not to hold himself back any longer. The film was a hit at Sundance, and I'm pretty sure it will be one of the best films I see all year.



I did a little debating in high school, and had largely assumed when starting out that it was an argument contest. Whoever could argue with the most forcefulness and rhetorical skill would win. Of course, actual debate competitions are nothing like that. The judging is actually quite mathematical. Both teams make arguments and refute the arguments of the other team. Whoever gets through the debate with the most unrefuted arguments wins, and the way to do this is to talk really fast and get out the most information in support of your case as possible in the time provided.

The metaphor to Hal's life is not too difficult to surmise. He's constantly aiming for an unattainable perfection, afraid to speak unless he knows the words will come out correctly. (We hear him rehearse the phrase "I'd like the pizza, please" on the school bus, and then see him freeze up that day at lunch when the lady asks him "pizza or fish?") What he must learn is that there is no perfection, and the secret is to try as hard as you can and hope that more things work out for you than don't. It's not...you know...rocket science.

Blitz builds these ideas into a story that's fairly conventional yet wildly unpredictable. This is an occasionally raw and always honest film, but it's not a painful portrait of tortured youth like Todd Solondz's Welcome to the Dollhouse or anything so much as it is a fairly straight-forward comedy about an awkward teenager coming to terms with himself. Having said that, I never knew where the story was actually going to go, and Blitz comes up with some real left-turn surprises that nevertheless feel true to his impetuous teenage characters.

Hal eventually gets together with Ben Wekselbaum (Nicholas D'Agosto), a former team debater who freaked out mid-match and left school to work as a dry cleaner in Trenton. They look alike and compliment one another well, and the sequences with the two of them preparing for the State Tournament are the best in the film.

Rocket Science is a quiet, subtle kind of movie. It's a comedy, but a dry and laconic one, not a big crowd-pleasing goof-off like Superbad. I enjoyed them both, and may have to revisit McLovin's antics at some point in the future, but it's Rocket Science that will be most likely popping up in my Best of the Year list.

ALERT THE MEDIA!

This is truly hilarious:

So...that happened...

Dwarf's penis gets stuck to vacuum cleaner

Do I need to keep going?

A dwarf performer at the Edinburgh fringe festival had to be rushed to hospital after his penis got stuck to a vacuum cleaner during an act that went horribly awry.

Awry is right. This is objectively the most awry thing I have ever heard of in my life, ever.

Daniel Blackner, or Captain Dan the Demon Dwarf, was due to perform at the Circus of Horrors at the festival known for its oddball, offbeat performances.

The main part of his act was for him to appear on stage with a vacuum cleaner attached to his member with a special apparatus.

Now this, on the other hand, is a massive understatement. Having a dwarf place his genitals in a vacuum cleaner is not an offbeat performance. It is a perverse display, an affront to all that is good and sacred. It also has the potential to be hilarious and awesome, sure, but I would scarcely describe it as "offbeat." A Jarmusch film is offbeat. A dwarf putting his cock in a powerful home appliance is "deranged."

The attachment broke before the performance and Blackner tried to fix it using extra-strong glue, but unfortunately let it dry for only 20 seconds instead of the 20 minutes required.

Wow. How much was he being paid for this performance again? It was Linda Evangelisa who famously said, of her and her fellow supermodels, "We don't wake up for less than $10,000 a day." Well, I think I can say, on behalf of most of my fellow men, that "We don't put our penises anywhere near a large, noisy, electrified sucking machine for less than $800 billion." Unless, you know, they have been designed expressly for said purpose (and you know that this invention's bound to be right around the corner...)

"It was the most embarrassing moment of my life when I got wheeled into a packed A & E with a vacuum attached to me," Blackner said.

"I just wished the ground could swallow me up. Luckily, they saw me quickly so the embarrassment was short-lived.

He said to the reporter writing a news story using his full name set for international publication and distribution.

Man, this guy is not bright.

[Hat tip, Perez]

"Laguna Beach," "The Hills," "Newport Harbor"...Fake, fake, fake

I've been saying this for years, that these shows are clearly pre-scripted. You couldn't make documentary-style reality TV into this kind of glossy, multi-camera show. It just doesn't work. But people would never believe me. Seriously, I've had at least 10 arguments in the past two years on this very subject.

"I'm telling you, 'The Hills' is fake. They just make up pseudo-realistic stories about these kids and then have them act it out like it's happening to them live."

"But they cry on cue and stuff! No way Lauren Conrad's that good an actress!"

Surprise, surprise...It's FAKE:

They call MTV's "The Hills" a "reality" show, but we've had our doubts for some time. Fueling our skepticism, on Tuesday night, the star, Lauren Conrad, showed up at Da Silvano for dinner with three friends and a camera crew. One irked diner told us, "It was clear that this show is not a reality show. They took five takes of Lauren ordering dinner. The film crew took over the outside eating area by setting up lights and cameras everywhere. They should go back to California."

Waiting for the Netflix Killer

Someone's got to come along and do Netflix better than Netflix. Seriously, Internet DVD rental is such awesome idea, but these guys are mucking it up.

I outlined some of my problems with Netflix in this post from May. Basically, if you rent from them too much, and your account ceases to make a satisfactory profit for them, they begin to tinker with your queue, sending movies that you want to other, less obsessive users first or even holding back on sending your new rentals for a day. The site's Terms of Service make note of these tactics (because of a lawsuit), but it's one of those fine-print jobs that no one really looks into.

So that's annoying, but it's still worth having Netflix because of the convenience and the depth of their library. (They always have something around that I want to watch.) In fact, I'm busy enough between Mahalo and writing that I've been watching fewer movies, and I've noticed lately that I tend get movies from the top of my queue rather than 1/3 of the way down. So at least they've made their Fuck Over Cineastes System (or FOCS) self-correcting.

But this week, the Red Envelope's really starting to try my patience. Kenneth Branagh's 4-hour full-text version of Hamlet just came out on DVD on Tuesday, and I haven't seen it in years. (Laser Blazer had a laserdisc version, but I never got around to watching it.) So I made sure to keep it at the very top of my queue, hoping to get it quickly. And I did...but only Disc 1, which is the first 2.5 hours of the movie.

Now, I know that Netflix sleeves usually hold just one disc, and that they divide up 2-disc special editions into two rentals. (Like, you'd get the film first, then the special features later if you wanted them...I usually don't bother...)

But I had no idea they would go so far as to do this with movies divided between two discs. That is completely asinine. When I rent a film, I feel it's safe to say that I'm renting that entire film, not the portion that fits on a standard single DVD. (You could make the case that mini-series, placed on 3 or 4 discs, would count as separate rentals. But one long movie?)

There's two problems here:

(1) Sending customers one half of a movie at a time is a ridiculously stingy, bullshit practice that's going to do nothing but engender mistrust and derision from the general public. Considering that Netflix turnover is about 4 days even if you watch the film as soon as it arrives in the mail, they're basically asking me to watch a single movie spread out over a week.

and

(2) Netflix felt no need to inform me in advance that they planned to split up my rental this way, giving me no opportunity to return two films in anticipation of watching Hamlet all at once.

Failing to correct #1, they should really do something about #2. I wrote them a very nice e-mail saying so, as a matter of fact...LAST WEEK, and they have thus far felt no need to respond.

So this is why I'm thinking that someone should figure out how to do Netflix better than Netflix. I don't know what that way is...but there has to be a way, right? Charge a bit more, but guarantee you'll get the movie you want? They just cut my rates by a dollar, which is nice and all, but I'd rather they keep that dollar and improve their service. I'd probably give them a few more dollars a month, actually, if it would guarantee that I'd have the three movies (COMPLETE movies, preferably) I want at any given time.

And also, hire a customer service department that can actually deal with customer service issues in a semi-timely fashion. Firing some of the developers and designers they've obviously hired to turn their site into yet another redundant social network no one wants to bother with would be a good place to start. Why can't the movie rental site just rent goddamn fucking movies? Why does it have to be Facebook Films?

You're a video rental service. I don't want complaints about the films you've sent me dealt with two weeks later. I clearly wanted to watch this movie now. That's why I have ordered it from you in advance. Grrr...

Headline Rubes

So, I'm here at Mahalo HQ, where the News Department has just added a nice, big widescreen HDTV which we keep tuned to CNN Headline News. Unless "Big Brother" is on.

They just did a story about the USC Trojan Football Team, and I shit you not, the anchor said this:

"Much like their namesake from Greek mythology, the USC Trojans..."

Um...excuse me? Greek mythology? I mean, yes, the Trojan War provides the backdrop for much of Homer's writing and all, but CNN Headline News is aware that the Trojans were an actual group of people who really did exist, right? I mean, this would be like saying "the mythical Ancient Greeks." The Ancient Greeks often interact with their own mythology (Zeus, in particular, was fond of disguising himself and bedding their nubile young persons), but that doesn't mean they were themselves mythological. A-duh.

Internet Famous!

Check this Fast Company video about Mahalo. That's my brother they interview about halfway through talking about bacon placemats!



I'm so proud...

Why did this randomly pop into my head today?

Just weird. Haven't heard this song in years...

I take back everything bad I ever said about Christians...

Okay, not everything. In fact...nothing. But this is still pretty hilarious, though I'm not certain it's hilarious in quite the way that was intended:

Brand Reps and Impacts

So, someone got to my blog today by doing this Google search:

http://www.google.com/search?q=any way to switch from impact to model at abercrombie%3F&hl=en&star

"Switch from impact"? What could this mean? Here was the CBI post, or rather, string of posts, that randomly came up in this Google search. In it, I insinuate that Conor Oberst tries intentionally to resemble an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog model. Later on in the page, I mention the Jean-Claude Van Damme film Double Impact. Such is Google...

This sort of this happens fairly often. But there was something about this Google search that just struck me as creepy and ridiculous in equal measure. What could it mean?

God Bless Wikipedia:

Abercrombie & Fitch brands offer three main part-time positions: Impact Team, Model (formerly "Brand Rep"), and Overnight. Impact are responsible for the back stock rooms, Models primarily interact with customers on the store floors, and Overnight associates are in charge of floor sets and store recovery (maintenance and presentation of merchandise for the following day).

This is not just another example of how retail environments become insane little pockets of delusion. Very different, sometimes very odd individuals thrown into a very small, social environment for 8 hours a day, five days a week will form little communities and then they will all slowly go absolutely mad together from dealing with the inanity and frustration of customer service, until they become like the two girls from Heavenly Creatures, dreaming of the days when they didn't have to act friendly and take extra special care of obnoxious, needy strangers and secretly plotting during every extra moment the delicious pleasure of savaging the establishment on their final days of work. This is standard.

But Abercrombie actually seems to nurture this kind of environment, to encourage its employees to turn on one another in fits of paranoid, uber-competitive self-aggrandizement.

This blog post is one of the first you see if you search for Abercrombie impact models. (NOTE: I'm assuming that the term "brand rep" in the post and the term "model" in the search are referring to the same position. This NYT article seems to confirm that assumption.)

here's such a tension between brand reps and impacts at my store! brand reps tend to be cliquey (it's a second high school) and act like they are superior than the impact people. i'm a brand rep myself, but other brand reps have this "we're brand reps because we're hot, and impact people just fold in the back" attitude. i feel so bad because brand reps generally stand around and talk while impact people do all the work. when there's an attractive impact person, i hear brand reps say, "why is HE an impact?" as a result, impact members hate their job and don't last long.. we're always short of impact people. does this happen in other stores too!?

Sometimes, reading a blog can be like watching someone in the shower. I could never write dialogue like this, hard as I might try. I don't have the kind of creative mind that could invent the phrase "Why is HE an impact?," though I plan on peppering it into my daily conversation from this point forward.

Anyway, you have to feel for whatever person performed this initial search. Clearly, they work in an Abercrombie child pornography studio store as an "impact" and has observed the same trend as this blogger: impacts have the shitty jobs and get disrespected, while brand reps get to lounge around and not do much.

The searcher performed this Google search, I'm sure, hoping for good news. Maybe a post on someone's personal blog who had made this transition. But, no, instead they found very little helpful information - including my blog, which had information about JCVD movies and overrated singer-songwriters - save a blog post about how their boss finds them physically unappealing. Weak...

I Hate the Bizarros

What must it be like to go through life as Blogs for Bush writer Mark Noonan?

I'm kind of a neurotic, self-aware kind of guy, so I can't really conceive of leading an unanalyzed life. Whether I want it to or not, my internal running monologue just keeps going, all day long, picking apart everything I do, breaking it down, considering it and then reconsidering. I wasn't always certain everyone's mind functioned in this way, in fact, but now I'm fairly certain they do. At least, the somewhat intelligent, functional minds.

Clearly, not everyone has this kind of running mental commentary track. Some people say or do the most ridiculous, appalling things and never give them a second thought. They're creature of pure impulse, like squirrels that have somehow grown to human height and mastered some basic English phrases. Many of them, if not most, become politicians, TV pundits or right-wing bloggers.

How else to explain this Noonan post, which I will now cite in its entirety:

Congratulations, Jenna Bush

Good news for the Bush family:

CRAWFORD, Texas - Is a White House wedding in the works?

Jenna Bush, one of President Bush's twin daughters, is engaged to be married to her longtime boyfriend, Henry Hager, the White House announced Thursday.

Asked if the two were getting married in the Rose Garden, Sally McDonough, press secretary for first lady Laura Bush, replied: "They have not set any details, date or place."

Jenna Bush, 25, and Hager, 29, were engaged in Maine on Wednesday, she said.

The two have been dating for several years, and Hager is often seen at Jenna Bush's side at family Bush functions and formal events, such as a White House dinner in November 2005 in honor of Britain's Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.

Hager will be returning to school this fall to complete his master's degree in business administration at the University of Virginia. He has an undergraduate degree from Wake Forest University.

Hager, who has been a White House aide and worked on Bush's re-election campaign, is the son of John and Maggie Hager of Richmond, Va. His father is chairman of the Republican Party in Virginia, former assistant secretary of the Education Department's office of special education, former lieutenant governor of Virginia and former director of Virginia's Office of Commonwealth Preparedness.

We here at Blogs for Bush want to extend our congratulations to this young couple as they start their life journey together. We ask the blessings of God be on this union and that love and happiness be their portion for all the days of their lives.

Note to liberals: This is your chance to just say something nice.

[Italics mine]

Can it be that Noonan doesn't realize the ludicrous, self-defeating hypocrisy of this statement? He's a guy who writes blog posts every day and it doesn't occur to him? He's mocking the way his political enemies turn even a happy event into an occasion for criticism and vitriol by turning a happy event into an occasion for criticism and vitriol.

"Hey, liberals, why are you always criticizing us, you lousy stupid jerks!"

I would say he should make swift use of the "stop hitting yourself" defense, but I'm pretty sure that was deemed unconstitutional in the landmark case of Rubber v. Glue. But I'll have to check my files to be 100% sure...

The only other option is that Noonan's aware of the stupidity of that statement but makes it anyway, because it sounds kind of pithy and condescending. And maybe, just maybe, the composition of 100,000 straight blog posts in that exact tone of voice, which would most likely qualify as a new Guinness World Record, is his only real aim in the blogosphere.

Either way, it doesn't reflect well on the man, nor his capacity for rational thought.

And while we're hanging at the B4B, here's a post of Noonan's from today that may very well represent the complete, polar, 180 opposite of a Crushed by Inertia post. Mark Noonan is Evil Lons. Or Bizarro Lons, depending on your preferred division of nerditry.

Your Prayers for Me, if You Please

Later today I shall undergo a colonoscopy - a general look at the innards to figure out a particular problem I have. I ask your prayers that it will all go smoothly and that nothing serious will be found.

I'm a firm believer in the philosophy that blog readers don't generally tend to care about the author's physical well-being unless it's extremely dramatic. As in, the blogger is dying. (Preferably dying of something trendy or sexy. I doubt tales of gout slowly leaking away a writer's will to live would drive a ton of readership to a blog, even though I'd probably subscribe to the RSS feed.)

Otherwise, I feel like people who don't know me personally but enjoy my occasional film/political commentary would just as soon I keep that kind of shit to myself. I wouldn't regale my mother with tales of my own colonoscopy, let alone anonymous readers of the Internet worldwide.

Other things Noonan does here that I would not do:

- Ask anyone to "pray for me," adding the caveat "please," as if these sorts of conversational niceties could convince someone who wouldn't do so otherwise to clasp his hands in prayer. "Well, normally I would never do this...but Jesus, can you save Mark's colon? He said please!"

- Refer to a colonoscopy as a look at "the innards"

- Use the terms "colon" and "go smoothly" in the same paragraph without the requisite quotation marks to render them non-disgusting.

Now, and I'm just thinking aloud here, but if you prayed to Satan for things to go really well for Mark, would he then die during this routine procedure? What if a Satanist prayed to Satan? What if a Christian, using reverse psychology, prayed to Satan for things to go horribly awry for Mark? Is Satan too clever for that sort of trick? Maybe...and bear with me here...but maybe Satan doesn't answer prayers at all, because he's completely evil, so praying to him would do nothing but make God angry. BUT if your prayers angered God, maybe he'd do the exact opposite of what you wanted, so praying to Satan that horrible things befall Mark during his colonoscopy would actually have the effect of saving his life!

I'm not suggesting you should really ask Satan to make something go really wrong with Mark's colonoscopy. Really, I'm not. But if you did, it just might save a life...Think about it.

DOWN GOES FRAZIER! DOWN GOES FRAZIER!

Oh, this one really chokes me up...

HALF HOUR NEWS HOUR SHELVED

In a memo to senior producers this afternoon, FNC's SVP of programming, Bill Shine announced the network "will not continue the Half Hour News Hour beyond its current 15 episode run." Shine did leave the door open, however: "we are considering ways to retool the show for future scheduling needs."

Naturally, I have some suggestions...

(1) You've got to open big. Put your best foot forward. This...



is no way to open a comedy show. It's a little grim. This is, however, a way to open a B. Dalton Red-Sticker Clearance Sale.

(2) Try to be a little less forceful and a little less predictable. Everybody already knows how your "comedy" is going to come down every time. Feminists are ugly, libruls are pansies, gays is queers, immigants should go back t'where they come from, etc. Throw us a curveball now and then.

(3) Write much better jokes.

I hope this has been helpful.

The TV news satire show which airs Sunday nights, stars faux anchors Kurt McNally, played by Kurt Long, and Jennifer Lange, played by Jennifer Robertson.

They were using fake names? That's weird...I didn't even realize that these anchors were fictional characters. Does that mean they don't necessarily believe all this crap? Can you imagine if Kurt Long were himself...a librul? Working undercover as a right-wing hack at GOP-TV? Did I just give away the best comedy pilot idea I'll ever have?

Much to my delight, Mediabistro has graciously published the Fox memo killing the show. It's the Crushed by Inertia Corporate Document of the Day!

August 14, 2007

TO: Senior Producers

FR: Bill Shine

RE: Half Hour News Hour/Weekend Programming

I'd like to share some news with you about weekend programming.

What a drama queen. News about weekend programming.

"Some news about our weekend programming. Some recent...unfortunate...unpleasantness concerning a show we all...thought we knew. It turns out, "The Half Hour News Hour"...is pregnant. But we'll get it taken care of quickly. Fortunately for us, our efforts to criminalize the required procedure have...thus far failed. I'll leave you now."

Joel Surnow and I have mutually decided that we will not continue the Half Hour News Hour beyond its current 15 episode run. The last show will be presented on September 16th.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Joel and his team. He is a visionary in this business and he created a contrarian program that fulfilled an untapped niche in the comedy genre.

Joel Surnow of course being the hi-larious producer of America's wackiest TV series, "24," a wonderful satire of contemporary America in which constant, shocking terrorist threats loom over major American cities while a loose cannon government agent with a penchant for "extreme" interrogation methods heroically races around saving the day. Surprising that one should could be such a ludicrously campy comedy hit while the other languishes in hiatus. Go figure...

You've Got to Admit, It's Getting Better

It's getting so much better all the time...

Been Listening to This a Lot Today

I have no idea where I stumbled across this Lily's song, "Black Carpet Magic," but it came up in my iTunes here at work today and it's really really good:



That is all...

Evil Dick

Hey, look, Dick Cheney's speaking sensibly about Iraq! Somehow, goodness has prevailed and...

oh, no, it's from 1994. We're still fucked...



Never mind. He's still crazy, everybody. We're still fucked. As you were.