Charlie Wilson's War

[SPOILER ALERT: I won't blow anything fictional that happens in this movie, but I may "spoil" some actual world history in the course of this review. If you don't know shit about Afghanistan in the '80s and plan to see this movie, better not read any further.]

It's easier, I suppose, to appreciate the simple pleasures of film-viewing if the films themselves are placed into a vacuum, one where nothing has any meaning in the real world. To pretend, in other words, that it's all just some crazy fictional shit some writer concocted that was then put to film, that none of these individuals involved in the process of putting this movie together had any agenda or bias aside from making the most entertaining crazy fictional shit possible and that films cease to have any influence on their viewers the moment the reel actually stops unspooling.

As you can probably guess, I don't see this as the case. To me, an individual film comes into being in the midst of a grand conversation - not only with other films, but with other arts, with politics, with culture. It's not just ignorant and superficial but ridiculous to view a collaborative artistic project that can take years to create purely on its own terms, removed from any and all context.

So how to write about the strange and idiosyncratic Charlie Wilson's War, a well-made but highly (to my mind) misleading political satire about important events in recent American history? I'm not sure I agree with its perspective. Like...AT ALL. It's hard to translate that kind of position into a traditional "thumbs up" or a star ranking...But I can say, as a piece of entertainment, it's pretty damn solid. As a history lesson/commentary, it could be a lot better.



Charlie Wilson's War tells the true story of the U.S. response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan during the 1980's. The real Charlie Wilson, a skirt-chasing, alcoholic Texas Congressman, used his position on the House's Defense Appropriations subcommittee to initiate the largest-ever covert CIA operation, funneling billions of dollars in weaponry to Afghan rebels (Mujahideen) fighting the Soviets.

This is a pretty incredible story and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin succeeds in not only making complicated political machinations relatively straight-forward and even sporadically funny. He's done this largely by writing clever dialogue, full of television-style set-ups, punchlines and quips, but not to an irritating, "Studio 60" degree.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman nearly steals the entire film (for what must be the fifteenth time this year) as Gust Avrakotos, the hot-tempered CIA know-it-all who helps Wilson arrange and understand his elaborate project. Hoffman's really the audience's way into the film - he looks at the cocksure and utterly corrupted Wilson with the mix of appreciation and bewilderment I sense we're meant to feel.

Wilson's not just sleazy but defiantly sleazy, openly referring to his beautiful assistants as "jailbait" and explaining away his relationships to drug dealers by noting that they were introduced by a Playboy covergirl. Tom Hanks gets some laughs in the part, though he's a bit mistcast. And not only because he has some accent trouble and whenever I see him play drunk, I'm reminded of his Dean Martin impression.

The one defining Wilson trait seems to be a preternatural ability to cozy up to all manner of people and feign sincerity in order to win them over. Hanks' charm is a bit too genial and open - we believe other people would like him, but I'm not sure we ever see him use this charisma to his advantage. In fact, the few times during the film that Wilson is actually left to his own devices, such as a tense meeting with the Prime Minister of Pakistan and his advisers, he falters and ends up embarrassing himself.

Director Mike Nichols brings a veteran's touch to the film - it's very tight and professional, but doesn't really show off or call attention to its own style. Nothing about the film feels all that ambitious, really, and the entire production is disarmingly slight considering the massive award campaign behind it and the uber-stars on its poster. It's reminiscent of Wag the Dog in some ways, another small, unassuming political comedy that arrived with a big cast and epic hype.

As political satire, however, Charlie Wilson's War falls short. Very short. As in, I can't even tell who or what is actually being satirized. I think it's supposed to be Wilson himself, who could be taken as a representation of American foreign policy. He's self-involved and reckless, acting emotionally without really considering the consequences. Wilson's convinced we need to help the Afghan people because he's hot for a woman lobbying on their behalf. After visiting a refugee camp and seeing the brutality of the Soviet Army, he starts sending them weapons without considering what will happen if the Afghans actually use them.

The end of the film finds Wilson successful, but it's a meaningless victory. (Hey, it's not a Spoiler if it actually happened decades ago.) The CIA helps the Afghans expel the Soviets and then leaves them totally to their own devices. The film ends with Avrakotos grimly warning Wilson about what's happening in the country they just "saved" from Communism. "The crazies," he intones, are amassing in Kandahar. (This foreshadows, of course, the rise of the Taliban, the group of crazies that we ended up removing from power in Afghanistan shortly after 9/11. Will most Americans make this connection? Does it even count as satire if it's too vague for a significant portion of the potential audience to catch?)

It almost feels as if Sorkin and Nichols want to confront the harsh reality that Wilson and the CIA, in not thinking about the consequences of their actions, maybe have indirectly led to the growth of Al Qaeda, the use of Afghanistan as a training base for terrorists, and thus, the 9/11 attacks. My point is, if they are trying to say that - and it seems to me that, in fact, they are - this needs to be much more direct.

This version of Charlie Wilson is not really an apt metaphor for America, if we're being 100% honest. Because Tom Hanks' Charlie Wilson is a genuinely good, well-intentioned, heroic guy. The film opens and closes with him being awarded a medal. Granted, the scene is kind of ironic and even snarky. (The movie opens with the line, "Greetings, members of the Clandestine Community.") But I'm not sure that's really an excuse to advance the myth of American exceptionalism as this film does so repeatedly and fervently. "Hey, mistakes were made, it didn't all work out as we'd hoped, but America is still the greatest country in the world! Am I right or am I right or am I right?"

It's just kind of wrong to celebrate covert CIA wars in a lightly comical fashion, and I'm not sure the film is clear enough about where it stands to avoid confusion on this matter. It's far too close to a celebration of American intervention overseas, a restatement of the Big Lie, the lie that's actually repeated by a Congressman (played by Ned Beatty) during the film: that America is always on the side of good in whatever it does, all over the world.

If we are to see Wilson as the embodiment of American faults, he needs to seem more reckless and dangerous. The real Charlie Wilson got into lots of trouble that the film glosses over, including some drunk driving accidents, that might have actually made the film work better as a satire. But I guess you can't make your Tom Hanks protagonist too unlikable, even if he is based on a real guy and representative of the decadent, self-aggrandizing American spirit.

The Julia Roberts character - wealthy and powerful Republican whackjob Joanne Herring - perfectly exemplifies my issues with the film. This woman is probably evil, and definitely misguided in her approach to foreign affairs, and yet the film depicts her like Queen fucking Elizabeth. Beautiful, brilliant, glamorous, passionate and adored. Maybe I'm just prejudiced against warmongering Republican Texas millionaires, but the way this character is fawned over and considered above reproach, acting solely out of compassion for Afghan refugees, struck me as entirely ludicrous. Melissa Roddy in AlterNet compares it to "tell[ing] the story of World War II and pretend[ing] that, because the United States might have given a box of guns to the French Underground, there was no Holocaust." I might not go that far, but I get what she's talking about...This feels like a whimsical fantasy at times, not a comedy based on real events.

I'm not going to settle these questions in a blog review, but this is what I was thinking about while exiting Charlie Wilson's War. Do filmmakers take on a responsibility when making films about recent history? Or is it appropriate to just take significant events from a relatively short time ago and render them unrecognizable for the sake of comedy?

What Do You Do That Makes You Famous?

In your face, John Cusack.

ChristmAss

Daryl Hill bought his 10-year-old daughter an mp3 player for Christmas (from Wal-Mart, naturally), and it came loaded up with a heaping holiday helping of pr0n. I know, I know, it's hard to believe that a friendly neighborhood company like Wal-Mart would do something duplicitous like charging people new merchandise prices for previously-used electronics. But it's Christmas; try to have a little faith.

Hill bought three of the players as Christmas presents for his children. He said one of the devices had apparently been returned to the store from a previous owner who loaded sex clips and songs with lyrics about using drugs.

"Within 10 minutes, my daughter was crying," Hill said Thursday. "I wish I could take the thoughts and images out of her head."

You gotta feel bad for the kids, but this should be easy enough to explain.

"Santa was bringing you an mp3 player filled with Hannah Montana songs and a different mp3 player filled with porn to some horny, perverted little kid who's been particularly good this year. And one of the elves must have made a mix-up! The point is, even Santa makes mistakes. Oh, yeah, and always look directly into the camera when giving head."

There, done and done. Maybe I should have a few kids...I'm good at this...

Anyway, if you really want to laugh...I mean, more than you just did at the little girl who got porn for Christmas...check out this MSNBC news report on the incident, sent by faithful reader and Mahooligan, Brian. I wish I could embed it on here, but MSNBC continues to not provide embeddable videos...Losers...

In the segment, there's a shot of the reporter watching the screen of the mp3 player as she says, "The porn on here is so graphic...there's not even a part of it we can show you." This has to be one of the most unintentionally hilarious bits of TV journalamism EVER. The direct implication is that this journalist is watching porn on camera and judging it too disturbing for a mass audience, like Herzog listening to the Timothy Treadwell death tapes. Awesome. I'm just imagining the meeting in the NBC Newsroom where they made the decision not to show any of the tapes.

"Can we show this?"

"It's just a Cincinnati Bowtie. They show 'em on Bloomberg all the time."

"I don't know...What's that?"

"I think it's just a nostril."

"We can show just nostrils, right?"

"It depends on what's around them."

"What about felching?"

"What's felching?"

"Mr. Brokaw, you're retired now. Why don't you go home and have a nice lie-down?"

Favorite Songs of 2007, Part 5

[Read Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4]

This concludes the Favorite Songs list for this year. In a few days, I'll post the Favorite Albums list.

Radiohead, "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi"

Yeah, that's right, I chose two songs from the Radiohead album.



Sea Wolf, "You're a Wolf"

Love the haunting cello line that runs throughout this song.



Spoon, "Finer Feelings"

It was hard not to pick multiple songs from this year's Spoon album as well. I like every track and I haven't gotten tired of any of them yet...Amazing.



St. Vincent, "Paris is Burning"

Seeing Annie Clark play this live at the Wiltern, followed by an awesome rendition of "Dig a Pony," not to mention a killer set from The National, was quite possibly 2007's concert highlight.



Vampire Weekend, "Oxford Comma"

These guys actually have kind of a Spoon thing going, now that I think about it. Very simple but intensely listenable and above all precise pop songwriting. This is just a really fun song.



Voxtrot, "Kid Gloves"

The background vocals on this song are absolutely brilliant. So '80s. Voxtrot is one of these great unknown bands that I'm almost 100% positive could be massively popular if only people had heard of them.



Ween, "Your Party"

The best ironic/not-ironic song since Beck's "Debra." As expected from musical chameleons Dean and Gene, this song pulls off yacht rock better than most yacht rock songs. The saxophone, the middle-aged-white-suburban-dork lyrics...Perfection.



White Rabbits, "The Plot"

This song was bouncing around in my head for probably 1/3 of 2007's total days.



Windmill, "Tokyo Moon"

Totally epic. This song is like Soft Bulletin-era "Flaming Lips."



Whalebones, "Don't You Know"

I love a nice low-key alt-country song. This song kind of reminds me of Songs:Ohia...

Brad Pitt of Despair

I'm a bit puzzled by this article from Variety about the failure of The Assassination of Jesse James at the box office. Specifically, how the writer appears surprised that the movie wasn't a big success.

It seemed entirely clear to me that Jesse James, despite being one of 2007's best films in terms of quality, was never going to rank among the year's most popular films. It's a difficult, deliberately-paced 3-hour Western with minimal action and one major star. Has a film like that scored with audiences since 1990's Dances With Wolves? Its backers were most likely gambling on the film garnering awards recognition or critical praise and parlaying that into a moderately-successful theatrical run and long shelf-life on DVD. That still might happen. Though it's hard to figure a $3.8 million domestic haul is anything less than a major disappointment, this is a film movie fans will discover over the course of a few years. (Here's my original review)

The interesting story here is how a foreign director with one notable American release to his credit (Andrew Dominik) was able to convince a studio to invest any money at all in this film. Instead, writer Pamela McClintock tries to use the failure of Jesse James to make some kind of point about the very concept of movie stardom:

One studio exec says people are in the mood to be entertained -- regardless of the name on the marquee, at least to some extent.

"I think it's the movie, not the movie star," one studio exec says. "Movies like 'Juno' have the accumulation of great contemporary resonance, and you have a dazzling breakthrough performance in Ellen Page."

Though it kind of unfortunately comes off as a knock on the film - implying that Jesse James isn't entertaining, when nothing could be further from the truth - the point she's making is actually quite obvious: famous names don't guarantee box office success, and attention from the tabloids doesn't mean attention from paying film audiences. (One need look no further than Lindsay Lohan and Jessica Simpson's dismal returns at this year's box office to confirm this fact).

I mean, dozens of films open each year featuring major stars that fail to connect with audiences. The idea is that it's very difficult to guarantee an audience for a movie that doesn't have celebrities, so a film like that will have a harder time finding investors. That doesn't necessarily mean that the inverse is true, that a film that does feature celebrities will have guaranteed success. It just makes this significantly more likely to occur. I mean, duh.

It just strikes me as incredibly superficial to view this disappointment as a mark on Brad Pitt's celebrity status. It's not like the guy's had a foolproof, stellar record of hits up until now. Babel did $34 million last year despite months of publicity and Oscar nominations. From 1997 to 2000, the guy made nothing but flops - The Devil's Own, Seven Years in Tibet, Meet Joe Black, Fight Club, Snatch. He's done alright with the Ocean's movies and Mr. and Mrs. Smith, but let's not forget those also starred George Clooney, Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie and half the celebrities in Hollywood.

Why are we suddenly expecting him to have Will Smith-style opening weekends?

The article also fails to mention anything about the marketing or advertising of the film, and any analysis of box office performance without bringing this into account can't possibly be complete or thorough. I mean, McClintock writes that Warners had essentially written off the film years before it was ever released:

The studio says "Jesse James" cost $30 million to produce. Shooting was actually completed in the latter part of 2005; the release was delayed by more than a year until September 2007 due to editing.

By the time "Jesse James" opened in five locations Sept. 21, Warners had tempered its expectations; usually, when a film underperforms at the box office, there's all sorts of hand-wringing back on the studio lot.

So, they didn't expect it to do well and therefore, it's likely they didn't put their full resources behind promoting it. (Also, if I'm not mistaken, Pitt distanced himself from the production over time and didn't participate in a lot of publicity when it finally opened.) You think this may have had something to do with its poor showing?

Christmas with Lee Majors

He's been a very good $6 million man this year...

Is It Too Late to Change My "Best Songs" List?

I picked this up from Stereogum after I noticed that the band has been mentioned a bunch in Pitchfork's roundup of musician Top 10 lists.

HOLY CRAP THIS SONG IS AWESOME:



The band is High Places, and they don't have a proper album out yet, but that Stereogum post has a four songs, all very good-to-excellent. This band will likely have an amazing 2008.

Christmastime for the Jews

Another classic SNL Christmas moment that I saw posted on Valleywag, of all places. Enjoy.

Favorite Songs of 2007, Part 4

[Read Parts 1, 2 and 3]

Neil Young, "Dirty Old Man"

I only liked about half of Neil's 2007 entry, Chrome Dreams II. This track sounds a lot like something he would have written 30 years ago. Lyrically, it's a lot like "Sedan Delivery" and "Welfare Mothers."

I could not find a single embeddable or direct link for this song. I guess Neil wants your 99 cents.

The New Pornographers, "Failsafe"

It was a toss-up between this track and "Myriad Harbor" from the New Pornos' "Challengers" record, but I went with this one because I love Neko Case's Kathryn Calder's vocals on it.



Of Montreal, "Gronlandic Edit"

I'll admit, some of the songs of this album were too far-out for me to get into. I admire what Kevin Barnes & Co. are going for...but it's not the sort of thing I'll listen to frequently. I listened to this song a shitload this year. It's like a Beck in full-on Prince mode, backed up by Hot Chip - weird, hypnotic and funky. Plus, you've got to love the line "physics makes us all its bitches."



Okkervil River, "Our Life Is Not a Movie Or Maybe"

This one kicks off The Stage Names with a bang. Not every band could pull off such a BIG, emotional gesture right up front and make it work, but as they did a few years back with Black Sheep Boy, Okkervil River has constructed a rock album that builds in dramatic intensity more like a rock opera. The Arcade Fire goes for the same kind of sweeping, epic scale in their music, and succeeded beautifully in Funeral a few years back, but Stage Names clearly outdid this year's A.F. entry, Neon Bible.



Panda Bear, "Good Girl/Carrots"

Holy shit. This song is a masterpiece. Almost 13 minutes long and every second is entrancing and vital. It may take a few listens to "get it," but once you're there...bliss.



Patrick Wolf, "Bluebells"

I love the use of fireworks sound effects in this song. Gives everything kind of a oddly nostalgic quality.



Photo Atlas, "Handshake Heart Attack"



The Ponys, "Poser Psychotic"

There's a lot less straight-up guitar rock on my Favorite Lists this year than in years past. Even an old fart like myself, who came of age when Grunge was King, has to admit that electronic music and hip-hop are changing the landscape of what's worth listening to. The Ponys, however, are keeping the old ways alive.



Professor Murder, "Flex-It Formula"

Radiohead, "Reckoner"

I love Radiohead. I love "In Rainbows." I love this song. That is all.



[The Favorite Song list concludes with Part 5 here!]

Do I Know It's Christmas?

Typically, this is about the time I would post some angry, curmudgeonly take on the Christmas season and piss off all the True Believers who stumble into my blog-space. In 2005, I wrote this post, "The 6 Types of Annoying Christmas Songs," a goofy little bit of business making fun of the severity or anachronism of most popular Christmas carols. I thought it was pretty lighthearted, but still received some strongly-worded rebukes in comments from Yuletide fans.

The best was from Webmastergo Dallas:

It's really too bad you're so sad. Calling you names (like a pit-dwelling grinch who's soul seems near dead) would serve no purpose and might almost surely fuel your WAY-MORE-than-cynical and hateful fire against things decent, peaceful and good, albeit agreed that in some cases antiquated (yet not irrelevant to many with joyful souls). Or you may actually enjoy such name-calling as vaildating a selected humanity-rebellion. The biggest wrong such name-calling will commit is to push you further away from the soul-saving subject-person of (and reason for) Christmas, the creator of the entire universe who unselfishly came to sacrifice himself for the likes of me and you.

Who knows if you're uncommonly financially wealthy and silver-spoon-life lived without compassion or any personal lack or struggle has utterly impoverished and jaded your spirit, with a "let em eat cake in hell" resultant attitude... or if you're just a raging semi-sociopath who from personal choice or lack of familial nurturing has grown into killjoy-jerkishness toward everyone else's happiness except your own. On top of it all you probably don't give a rat's tail WHAT anybody thinks. But just a parting tip as we ease into the joy of a season mostly celebrating Jesus Christ who LOVED YOU AND STILL LOVES YOU SO MUCH (and hopes you'll soon chill out and discover that truth ... before it's too late) -- GOD LOVES YOUUU DUDE!!! No matter who you are..what you've done.. who you've hurt..who's hurt you...GOD LOVES YOU.

I have no idea where he got the "uncommonly financially wealthy" "silver-spoon-life" thing...All I did was goof on some Christmas songs. I mean, my folks did alright, but I don't see what that has to do with anything.

Also, I object to being called a "pit-dwelling Grinch." I believe he lived on a high mountaintop overlooking Whoville, did he not? Insulting me is one thing, but I'll not have you misstate details from the beloved classics of Dr. Seuss.



Anyway, I'm not sure I really have it in my this year to do a caustic, anti-Christmas post. I feel like things have been more subdued this year (or maybe I've just been busier), and I've been less overwhelmed by holiday-themed nonsense than in years past. Is it because people are nervous about the economy and spending less on pointless crap they don't need? Or have I personally just been more preoccupied with my own shit and not paying attention to the usual full-on Shopping Orgy Experience?

So instead of ranting, enjoy Mark Jensen's Family Christmas:

The Not-Particularly-Great Debaters

Funny.

A Post About Watching Football? As a Couple?

Relax, it's just the setup for a new Mahalo Daily installment. I'm not going all Gridiron on you all of the sudden...Enjoy yours truly doing an excruciatingly poor Al Michaels voice AND SO MUCH MORE!

Favorite Songs of 2007, Part 3

[Read Part 1 and Part 2]

Interpol, "Heinrich Maneuver"

Interpol's second album, "Antics," was so boring and uninteresting to me, I thought maybe the mechanism in my brain that enjoyed Interpol had broken permanently. I listened to that album 3 or 4 times, and then pretty much never again. This year's "Our Love to Admire" fared far better, and this was my favorite track - it brings together everything the band does really well.



Iron and Wine, "Boy with a Coin"



Jay-Z, "Ignorant Shit"

The great thing about Jay-Z's soundtrack/album "American Gangster," which at this point I can safely say I prefer to the Ridley Scott film of the same name, was all the '70s samples. My favorite song from the album, "Ignorant Shit," borrows the same bit of the Isley Brothers' "Between the Sheets" as Biggie Smalls' "Big Poppa," invoking the memory of a patron saint of the genre and giving everything to come a feeling of significance. The opening, in which Hova wonders aloud why fans declare his party albums "genius" but can't be bothered with his more heady "Kingdom Come"-style endeavors, lays the foundation for a takedown of the culture of hip-hop and its politics that's both hilarious and insightful. I'm serious, there's a lot of interesting ideas packed into this 3 minutes and 44 seconds. I honestly can't BELIEVE Pitchfork chose a song from this album as it's Best of the Year and it WASN'T "Ignorant Shit." I like "Roc Boys" too, but...this one is clearly the highlight.



Kings of Leon, "Fans"

Hells yes.



Kanye West, "Can't Tell Me Nothing"

I swear, I'm not just picking this song so I can post this video. I really do like the song, even better than "Stronger":



Jesca Hoop, "Intelligentactile 101"

The first time I posted this song on here, I said I had no idea what it was about. But I've listened to it a lot more, and now I think I've got it. It's sung from the perspective of either (1) a fetus or (2) a soul floating around in space waiting to be placed inside a fetus, and it's about how the narrator is excited about being born. Maybe I've overthought it, but what can I say? This was one of those songs that wouldn't get out of my head this year.



The Light Footwork, "Rebellion Time"

I really like this band. This song is what Sufjan Stevens would sound like if he wrote songs instead of faux-symphonies. And had a girl with him. In other words, The Light Footwork would kick the White Stripes ass in team debate.



M.I.A., "Paper Planes"

This is an amazing song, both because I could listen to it 10,000 times without getting sick of it, and because it so boldly tells its audience what they don't want to hear. What could be a more direct response, in a year when so much of the world continues to recoil against the horror of IMMIGRANTS in their HOMELAND, than a woman flying the flag of "Third World Democracy" chanting "all I want to do is [bullet sounds] and take your money?" I'm going to go ahead and say, "nothing could be a more direct response than that."



Melody Function, "Anne Maria"

Just a great, loud, driving hard rock song. This is kind of a throwback to the early aughts when bands like The Strokes ruled the airwaves, and even though that "The Blanks" era has ended, this kind of simple pop song never really goes out of style. No embeddable copy, but you can download the song here at You Ain't No Picasso. That's where I found it, and a good deal of the other songs on these lists.

The National, "Mistaken for Strangers"

It was tough to pick just one National song for this list. There are at least 5 cuts from the album I could see putting on a Best 2007 Songs list.



[Continue with Part 4! Or skip to the end, Part 5!]

Crispin Glover Interview on Mahalo Daily!

Check this little slice of awesome out: Veronica Belmont's exclusive interview with auteur-author-musician-actor and all-around mack Crispin Glover:



I'm desperate to see the new film, It Is Fine, Everything Is Fine!. Missed it a few weeks ago at the Egyptian.

Atonement

I have heard that Ian McEwan is a terrific novelist, and I fully intend to one day get around to one of his books. But I can say, having seen two adaptations of McEwan novels, that they don't make the transition to the screen very well. Enduring Love was a navel-gazing mess of a movie. I wrote in my original review:

"I'd have preferred enduring just about any unpleasant activity over Enduring Love, an utterly joyless exercise that's as preposterous as it is dull. This is clearly a film that thinks it has something to say about the nature of love, but for the life of me I can't determine what that thing could possibly be."

And now we have Atonement, another film about the unbearable pain of an impossible love. It's fairly evident to me why Joe Wright's screen version (based on a script by Christopher Hampton, best known for writing Stephen Frears' Dangerous Liasons) doesn't work - everything revolves around an event that happens within the first 45 minutes or so of the movie. In a novel, characters can spent half a book reflecting upon something that has already happened. It's prose - the unfolding of events in some kind of synchronous order isn't required to maintain reader interest, so long as the writing itself is entertaining.

But in a narrative movie, you can't really have the crucial event go down at the end of the First Act and then whisk people away to other, less interesting action with zero stakes, populated by a bunch of strange new characters. Actually, "can't" is too strong a word here. I can think of several films that do, in fact, unfold in similar fashion to Atonement, in which an incident early on in the film inspires all the conversation and attention for the rest of the film. Even this year, No Country for Old Men spends its final half hour considering the action that has come before.

What I mean to say is that Atonement failed to keep my interest through its various time jumps and epilogues.



We open in an English manor in 1935. Young Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan) lives with her older sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley, who starred in Wright's previous film, Pride and Prejudice) and mother Emily (Harriet Walter), along with a large staff of servants and their families. Robbie Turner (James McAvoy) is one such employee, working on the estate as a gardener and planning and future career as a doctor.

Briony, an imaginative girl with a bit of a crush on Robbie, sees something she should not and makes an ill-considered accusation. She winds up causing both Cecilia and Robbie a great deal of trouble, and their woes only increase with the onset of World War II.

After Briony's accusation is made and the consequences meted out, Wright's film jumps ahead five years. Briony (now played by Romola Garai) and Cecilia are now nurses working at a veteran's hospital, but they are not on speaking terms. (Briony, we come to understand, is tormented by guilt over her actions and obsessed with trying to set things right). Robbie is serving as a private in the Army, doomed to the lowest rung on the military ladder because of Briony's misdeed years before.

I'm still not really feeling Keira Knightley, I must say. In the past, I've said she wavers constantly between two modes - pouty/petulant, and headstrong. Here, she spends the first act in Mode One, and the remainder of the film in Mode Two. You can always tell when she's evoking steely resolve...because it's pretty much all she ever freaking evokes.

This is the third film I have seen starring James McAvoy, and I only know that because I have looked him up on IMDb. (He was Mr. Tumnus in Narnia and the star of Last King of Scotland.) How boring do you have to be to star in three films in as many years and still be such a nobody? THIS boring.

The rest of the cast is fine. Both Brionys, the younger and older incarnations, are terrific, and the transition from one to the other is seamless. Brenda Blethyn plays Robbie's mother, a servant in the Tellis household, and steals a few scenes. The camera work by Seamus McGarvey is also really solid, with some really nice use of muted colors. (There's one beautiful shot of a soldier walking in a field of tulips.) There's an impressive tracking shot that has to last a few minutes at least, in which McGarvey's camera tours around a French beach where thousands of British soldiers are waiting to board ships and head home, but it's also distracting and serves no real dramatic purpose in the movie. The transition from the story of intrigue at a British manor to a war movie is abrupt enough without long, graceful establishing shots setting off the pace and calling attention to themselves.

Like everything after the time jump in Atonement, the tracking shot would have more impact if there were some importance to it, some reason we had to see what's going on at this beach. Robbie spends the entire remainder of the film waiting to go home. Just sitting around, waiting, thinking about how he came to be in France. Cecilia spends her time waiting for Robbie to get back. Briony spends her time thinking about what she did, waiting to hear back from Cecilia to see whether or not she'll be forgiven. That's a lot of sitting around and waiting.

Vanessa Redgrave shows up and plays Briony as an older woman, and she's fine, but these sequences are not at all cinematic. They play like Hampton just transcribed the screenplay from the novel. Seriously, Redgrave spends the end of the film staring into the camera and explaining to you what you have just seen, and then the title of the movie. (She's being interviewed by Anthony Minghella for TV cameras at the time).

It's kind of embarrassing, really. The film might as well have ended with Minghella in a smoking jacket with a pipe, in an easy chair, closing the book version of "Atonement" and wishing you a safe drive home. If you can't think of a way to show us what happens in the book visually in at least a semi-compelling fashion, don't adapt that book. Simple as that.

Dark Knight Trailer

I saw it in front of I Am Legend. Now it's on YouTube:



Most discussion centers of Heath Ledger's Joker make-up. Yes, it's a more realistic look than the Nicholson version. But it totally works for Christopher Nolan's vision of a more realistic Gotham City and the vibe of the first film. Plus, he has the voice TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY NAILED.

The years, to my mind, have not been to kind to the first Burton Batman film. (I maintain that Batman Returns was the superior episode). And one of the things that come off the worst to me looking back is the Jack Nicholson performance. It's way too much Jack and not enough Joker. In fact, I think he's much more enjoyable in the Charles Napier scenes, before he makes his transformation. Not a good sign.

He's just not evil enough. All Clown Prince and no Crime. (He wants to mutate the citizens of Gotham with toxic shampoo and spray graffiti in the Guggenheim? Really? That's the set-up for your blockbuster action film?) So I'm looking forward to seeing what Ledger does with the character and how he's changed.

Plus, it's hard to knock any film that releases this as a one-sheet.



Beautiful.

I Am Legend

[SPOILER WARNING: I will do my best not to reveal crucial information about the end of the new Will Smith film I Am Legend in this review, but I can't very well talk about my impressions without divulging some aspects of the Third Act. As well, I intend to spoil the ending of Richard Matheson's original novel upon which the film as based, which is also the ending of the two previous film adaptations, the Vincent Price film The Last Man on Earth and the Charlton Heston classic The Omega Man. Sorry.]

I Am Legend gets off to an amazing start. Robert Neville is the last man alive in a broken Manhattan reclaimed by Nature. We find him racing around the streets amidst empty rows of tanks and fading Quarantine signs in a sports car, chasing wild deer around Times Square. He moves in to kill a buck, but is thwarted by a pack of lions. All around him, the evidence of our consumer-crazed, advertising-obsessed civilization crumbles. In a few more decades, all traces of humankind will have dissolved.

Director Francis Lawrence and his design and art departments render the Manhattan of 2012 so credibly, it's almost distracting. It's hard to focus on the action of the story - you have to consciously stop marveling at the empty, despoiled New York City sets.

Plus, I think I prefer watching Will Smith without co-stars. He can't wisecrack as much with only mannequins and a dog around to hear him. There's still some rather tedious business in which he chats with the aforementioned department store props, attempting to maintain some semblance of a community and a daily routine, for it's fortunately short-lived. Lawrence has made a movie of intense silences, and Smith bravely caps his usual jocularity to get inside the head of a more troubled, brooding individual than he typically portrays.



Robert Neville has a lot to be depressed about. An Army Colonel and doctor who was working on a cure for the engineered virus that wiped out nearly all of humanity, he's now without his family, his faith or any significant hope for the future. Each night, he must hide from the roving Infected, humans who have caught the virus and turned into kill-crazy maniacs.

Neville maintains a rigid schedule - hunting and restocking his Washington Square apartment by day, continuing to work for a cure in his basement lab, and then hiding in a bathtub in the fetal position with his beloved dog Sam and a high-powered rifle all night. He sends out AM radio messages searching for other survivors, but evidently has no real hope of finding anyone else.

Lawrence previously made the above-average comic book adaptation Constantine, and there as here, he demonstrates a gift for CG-heavy action scenes. I typically find sequences in which live-action characters battle with computer-generated meanies either dull or ridiculous, and it's undeniable that Lawrence's vampire-zombies (and even some of the CG animals) look entirely fraudulent. But still, there's a certain kinetic sense to the way these monsters jump around, and I liked how the Main Vampire's ragged clothes flopped around in the air as he howled and shuffled about. Everything moves fast - the vampires typically look like little more than pale white blurs - but we get just well-chosen little details. (The suble death rattle of a freshly-killed vampire, say, or the creepy, hunched-over huddle formation in which the vampires sleep.)

So, yes, there's lots to like. But then the Third Act happens and ruins everything.

Seriously, this is a horrific case of screenplay sabotage. And who wrote this screenplay, that lurches into its final half-hour and lands somewhere between obtuse and offensive? That would be the all-star duo of Mark Protosevich (writer of Poseidon!) and Akiva Goldsman (writer of...get ready for this...Batman and Robin, Lost in Space, A Beautiful Mind, I Robot and The Da Vinci Code!) Who could have imagined these guys would deliver anything less than a superior conclusion?

Sarcasm aside, it's pretty much fait accompli that an Akiva Goldsman script will fail to deliver. But I'm still gobsmacked at just how poorly the conclusion to I Am Legend comes off.

[Warning: Spoilers Ahead!]

So here's how the original story goes, the original ending that, bear in mind, BOTH previous film adaptations maintained. Neville discovers that, contrary to his previous thinking, the vampires have started their own sort of society from within the old human world. (There aren't, after all, any humans left.) They have been hunting him not because they mean to feed on him, but because he's been hunting them. The title itself refers to the stories vampires tell one another about the last human, a ghoulish figure who tries to kill them while they sleep.

It's a message about fear of the unknown and, in the end, about tolerance and acceptance. Goldsman and the Poseidon guy ditch this in favor of a very American, very silly good-vs.-evil, rah-rah-Amuricah! ending in which God comes down from Heaven and shows Neville how to save the day and destroy the evildoers. It's pretty much a complete rip-off of Signs, which is a really stupid movie to rip off. (Though it's better than ripping off Lady in the Water.)

I don't know, maybe they were afraid the original ending would make Neville too unlikeable, so they had to come up with some more heroic, noble send-off for him. The only problem is, it makes the film pointless. Also, a lot of the previous scenes we've seen (like having the vampires cleverly turn one of Neville's traps against him) don't make sense in light of the conclusion. Oh, yeah, and the FUCKING TITLE doesn't make sense. But, you know, otherwise it's fine...

Favorite Songs of 2007, Part 2

[See Part 1 here]

You know what I can't stand? Lists by music critics of the Year's Best Songs that always include the year's most popular songs near the top, as if any list like this is going to be definitive and authoritative, rather than just based on personal tastes. Rolling Stone picks Rihanna's "Umbrella" as the #3 song this year...

Really? Cause the thing is...that's definitely the year's most ubiquitous song, but it's totally overrated. Boring, even. And I doubt that it's any Rolling Stone writers sincere choice for Song of the Year. Even if you're a big R&B fan, there are better songs out there. That's just the one that hit big this summer, and that boasts the largest Ringtone sales figures.

Anyway, let's continue with my list, that does not include Rihanna's "Umbrella."

Celebration, "Evergreen"



David Vandervelde, "Murder in Michigan"

Another that's definitely among my favorite songs of the year. This song is so evocative, both of another era in songwriting and of a certain kind of feeling, between adoration and pity. Brilliant.



Deerhunter, "Spring Hall Convert"

It starts out with what sounds like a waterless bong rip, totally appropriate for a song that eventually turns into a swirling psychedelic trip out session.



Dinosaur Jr., "Back To Your Heart"

Dino Jr. was BACK this year, and they still sound FANTASTIC. So many reunions just feel like an opportunity for nostalgia, but these guys clearly have more great albums in them. "Beyond," title included, felt like a new beginning.



Eagle*Seagull, "I Don't Know If People Have Hated Me, But I Have Hated People"

I heard a song from this band last year - the very Cure-ish "Photograph" - and liked it, but this track blew me away completely. It's the piano - does it every time.



Everything, Now!, "Take a Gawk at the Weird Side"



Feist, "My Moon My Man"

My favorite song from Feist's amazing "The Reminder"



Fiery Furnaces, "Ex-Guru"

This is The Fiery Furnaces at their fuzzy, infectious best. Their 2007 release, "Widow City," is a true return to form and a surefire bet for my Top Albums list.



Great Lake Swimmers, "Where In the World Are You"

I can only take these guys in small doses - their music gets a bit too precious after a while. So intimate, you almost need to ESCAPE. But this is just a beautiful song. It should totally be in a sad movie...



Immaculate Machine, "Dear Confessor"

Straight-forward, catchy, basic indie rock style right here. This song could totally be popular if it were on the radio. (I especially like the interaction between the male and female voices - like a better, more direct Rainer Maria.)

[Go on to Part 3]

Favorite Songs of 2007, Part 1

Usually, I come up with a list of my favorite 20 or so songs out of a given year. But now that I'm regularly using iTunes at both work and home, it's relatively easy to compile a somewhat more thorough, extensive list of the music I've listened to and enjoyed in 2007. So I'm going to just post a long collection of songs, all the ones I've really been into this year, over the course of several posts. (As many as it takes, really.) Then, when that's all done, I'll post my Top Albums of the Year list (which I promise to limit to 21.)

So, here we go...in alphabetical order...which means this wouldn't make a particularly good mixtape...

!!!, "Bend Over Beethoven"



The 1900s, "Everybody's Got a Collection"

I like this song because it sounds really pleasant and up-tempo, and then you listen to the lyrics and discover it's pretty mean-spirited. Even cruel.



Aesop Rock, "Catacomb Kids"

My favorite track on Aesop's considerable "None Shall Pass" record.



Apostle of Hustle, "My Sword Hand's Anger"

This sounds very much like a Broken Social Scene song, which is always a good thing. The hook is near-perfect. The whole album, "National Anthem of Nowhere," was really solid.



Bat for Lashes, "What's a Girl to Do"

Definitely one of my favorite songs this year. It's got the kind of lonely, desolate, even eerie sound that really appeals to me for some reason. Plus, one of the year's coolest videos.



Black Kids, "I'm Not Gonna Teach You"

Fantastic stuff. They've got a very catchy, '80s synth-pop kind of sound that takes me back to my childhood, really.



The Boggs, "Forts"

This sounds like music made by inebriated, dizzy people late at night in a forest somewhere. It kinds of reminds me of a slightly lower-key, less insane Man Man. Maybe what Man Man sounded like right before they ate the garbage bag full of magic mushrooms.



Broken Social Scene and Kevin Drew, "Lucky Ones"



Buck 65, "Benz"

I only listened to this because Cadence Weapon guests on it, but I liked the song enough to check out Buck 65's whole record. Canadian Rap FTW!



CALLA, "Bronson"

I was kind of obsessed with this song for a while. Really, just that first little part..."I know a thing or two abooooouuuuuutttt..." Not sure why.



[On to Part 2! Or skip ahead to Part 3!]

Greatest Achievement in Headline History?

I'm going to go ahead and say...yes.