Right-Wing Facebook...Finally!
It's a pretty solid parody - one of the better jokey political sites I've seen. Each candidate has his own "profile" page. I particularly liked that Mike Huckabee's favorite quote is “I can has cheezburger?!1!”
OMFG DRAGONFORCE FTW!1!1!!!1!
Actual Mahalo staff reactions:
- "if dragons were real they would be pissed their name is being used for this"
- "looks like they kinda bit off soundgarden's black hole sun video. like rockin' till the earth is destroyed"
- "operation ground and pound 4Eva"
- "this is the longest 5 minutes of my life"
- "it's like if sonic the hedgehog was in a metal band"
- "it's like Asia + Zebra + Motorhead...Aszebrahead"
I try not to pre-judge movies before I watch them, like a responsible reviewer. But I have to admit, I wasn't expecting to like Wes Anderson's new film, The Darjeeling Limited. I disliked Anderson's last film, The Life Aquatic, which felt entirely too broad and forced, like some hack trying to imitate the director's signature style rather than his own work. The trailers for Darjeeling so heavily emphasized the "Wes Anderson-ness" of the new film, with the director's trademark tracking shots, stock company of actors, classic rock montages and close-ups of background minutae taking center stage. I just assumed this would be another retread, one more trip back to the well for a guy that was growing more and more predictable by the day.
So it gives me great pleasure to report that Darjeeling is a major step up from Aquatic, a film that's infused with a lot of the elements that make Wes Anderson movies great but not overwhelmed by his presence. This is a very sad story about some pretty unpleasant people - it's really a meditation on selfishness - that's very funny, charming and frequently beautiful. It may be Anderson's best film since his breakthrough hit, Rushmore.
The Whitman Brothers, like a lot of Wes Anderson heroes, cannot live in the moment because they are fixated on the past. Francis Whitman (Owen Wilson), the eldest brother, has been recently mangled in a motorcycle accident. When asked about it, he responds that he "ran into a cliff on purpose" before catching himself. Jack Whitman (Jason Schwartzman, who co-wrote the film with his cousin Roman Coppola and Anderson) still pines for the woman (played by Natalie Portman in Hotel Chevalier, a short film/prologue to Darjeeling available free on iTunes) who left him months before. Peter Whitman (Adrian Brody, in one of the year's best performances) isn't ready to be a father, despite the fact that his wife's due to give birth in six weeks.
Though we sense that they've always been troubled and neurotic, the Whitman boys have been haunted for the past year by the death of their beloved father Jimmy, who was struck down in the street by a taxi. They have not spoken since the funeral, a silence eventually broken with Francis invites the other two to take a train ride with him across India.
The best thing Anderson did with Darjeeling is give these three parts to these guys. Brody's extremely awkward, almost alien, as Peter, who never seems to know how to respond to anything, or even where to stand. It's almost as if Anderson blocked out the entire film without Brody present, and then just threw him into the scenes last minute. Wilson, as everyone now realizes, was going through a very difficult time personally while portraying Francis, but it's easily among his most charming, most Owen Wilson-y characters. Hidden behind bandages for the majority of the movie, he still makes Francis the most human and fragile of the brothers. He's an extremely difficult guy to be around - bossy and demanding, then hurt when one of his instructions isn't followed to the letter.
All of Anderson's films address, in some way, this kind of wounded narcissism. His characters struggle to connect, but always seem to do so with an air of heightened expectation and arrogance. "Here I am," Royal Tenenbaum, Max Fischer and Francis Whitman all seem to say. "Now, it's your duty to love and accept me!" When others don't reciprocate in quite the way they expect, it sends these men into an uncontrollable downward spiral.
Darjeeling is Anderson's most clear-eyed, honest and therefore most depressing examination of this syndrome. Francis is controlling to an almost maniacal degree, constantly telling his brothers, directly, what they're all going to do, how they're all going to feel, and even what they should order for breakfast. Then he wonders why they avoid him and keep secrets. Peter has allowed his grief to overtake his entire life for a year and has become something of a kleptomaniac. Jack spends the bulk of the film obsessively following around two women, listening to the messages on his ex-girlfriend's answering machine and semi-stalking the comely, and attached, stewardess on the train. These characters have apparently taken this journey to connect with each other, but can't seem to actually spend any time together. And when they're forced into one another's company, they can't get past their feelings of perpetual victimhood and paranoia for long enough to even conduct some small talk.
Francis wants to take a spiritual journey, and has tasked his assistant, Brendan (Wallace Wolodarsky), with staying in another train compartment and planning trips to all sorts of shrines and temples. But of course, with their minds permanently elsewhere, scheming and planning out their next move and nursing private resentments, all the meditation and sacred Hindu rites are hollow and meaningless. (Personal squabbles prevent them from even kneeling before the same deity. Peter has to get up and pray somewhere else.)
Anderson mines similar comic territory as David O. Russell in I Heart Huckabee's (also with Schwartzman, interestingly enough...) Life is a constant struggle between the desire of higher consciousness and understanding, and the daily, material grind of actions and consequences. One minute, Jack, Peter and Francis are standing on a hillside holding aloft peacock feathers, recreating some ancient mystic rite, and then next they're debating whether or not their dead father would approve of Peter using his razor.
The Indian desert is actually an ideal venue for Anderson's deadpan comic style (and not only because all of his films have included humorously silent Indian men). Unlike the animated underwater wonderland of Life Aquatic or the absurd prep school caricature of Rushmore, Darjeeling takes place in a recognizable, real environment, which gives the film a bit of added impact. We're still definitely in Wes Andersonland. The use of Peter Sarstedt's ridiculous, lilting ballad "Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)" in both Darjeeling and Hotel Chevalier is a telling detail, an almost self-aware gesture.
Like Sarstedt's flowery language and pretentious references, Anderson films linger in a world of precious, twee details and spontaneous, adorable outpourings of emotion. (It's such an apt comparison, Sarstedt's narrator could easily be an Anderson protagonist.) But Darjeeling starts reigning it in at some point, pulling back from the fantasy, unafraid to stare a little more deeply into the darkness, creating something more recognizably human and heartfelt.
The protagonists eventually find themselves stuck in a small Indian village amidst a tragedy, and the film gets a bit more serious. Anderson starts to actually let go of the half-ironic smirk that generally holds sway over his movies. He, for once, gets real. He should do it more often.
MTV's "The State" was on television a decade ago. That makes me feel really old. In fact, most of the members of the comedy troupe that brought the world "Louie," "The Jew, the Italian and the Red-Haired Gay," "Doug" and "Monkey Torture" are better known for their subsequent projects. (Thomas Lennon probably gets way more attention for "Reno 911" than he ever did for "The State," even though it's one of the best sketch comedy shows in recent memory.)
Tonight, I saw two "State" veterans - Michael Showalter and Michael Ian Black - doing stand-up comedy at the Ivar Theater, a converted movie theater. It was, without a doubt, one of the most hilarious evenings of stand-up I have ever seen. Their delivery, Showalter's in particular, recalls the brilliance of Zach Galifianakis from the recent "Live at the Purple Onion" DVD. It's a halting, awkward sort of persona, as if the show might just run out of air and collapse in on itself at any time.
I'm not sure if this is done strategically, to put the audience in a somewhat uncomfortable, edgy state, to raise the tension in the room, so the punchlines hit harder, or if it's just the natural rhythm these guys fall into when they get on stage. Either way, it totally enhances the frequently non-sequiteur, just plain bizarre jokes these guys tell, by bringing you inside this fractured state of mind. This is why a Galifianakis joke can't really be explained to someone who wasn't there after the show. It only makes sense when you've been inside his head for a little while.
Much of Showalter's act involved a slideshow, so he had to, at one point, stop doing his comedy and fiddle with the projector to ensure that it was going to work. At that point, he'd been on the stage for less than 10 minutes, but had already won over the audience to the point that even this generally unfunny technological gaffe won him big laughs. Usually, I'd criticize this kind of a flaw - a comic having to fudge his timing in order to do something a stagehand or assistant should really have taken care of before the show - but instead I laughed, the way you'd laugh if someone you know was messing up a big presentation.
Showalter combines the kind of long-winded anecdotal style of someone like Jeff Garlin with, I shit you not, prop comedy, and it totally works. He walked the crowd through an entire game of Scrabble with visual aides, and it freaking killed. (Just so you know, the word "penissockser" is allowed in Scrabble and refers to someone who manufactures penissocks.) A bit where he plays random songs off his iTunes and then invents fake movie dialogue to go on top of them is like the stand-up comedy version of a YouTube meme. The less said about the X-rated Smurf drawings the better...
After the mad genius of Showalter, Michael Ian Black was much more traditional, observational stand-up. Funny, still very funny, but not really as exciting, I guess. Both he and Showalter seem to be inventing their acts as they go. All comedians try to master this sort of off-the-cuff delivery - you want to keep things fresh, even if you're reciting a joke you wrote a year ago - but Black really has it mastered. I'm certain plenty of this was canned material - I've never really seen his stand-up before tonight, so I have no way of knowing if he talks about Wisconsin's Taco Palace all the time - but it felt very conversational.
My friend Dave remarked afterwards that it felt very communal in the Ivar tonight. The audience and the comedians all seemed to relate to one another in a way. It was not very much like a typical comedy show, which is either in a big amphitheater filled with obnoxious assholes shouting out their favorite of the comedian's lines from TV or tiny, extremely hot, overpriced comedy clubs with obnoxious assholes who talk loudly throughout the set because they don't actually give a shit about comedy. Anyway, a good time was had by all.
Then, Dave and I went to the Cat and Fiddle and saw Joe Lo Truglio and Ken Marino from "The State" hanging out there. (Maybe meeting up with the Michaels after the 10:00 show?) It's cool to think that all those guys (and that one girl) still get along. Could a reunion be in the offing?
There's an old George Carlin routine about realizing, mid-conversation, that you're speaking with some clueless asshole that's not worth your time.
"You'll be talking with someone and suddenly you'll go, 'This guy...is fucking stupid!' Other times, they're not stupid. You're thinking, 'Well, he makes some interesting points, perhaps...OH, he's full of shit!' Then, occasionally, you're listening to someone, they're not stupid, they're not full of shit...they're fucking nuts!. Dan Quayle is all three, stupid, full of shit AND fucking nuts."
That's kind of how I feel after watching this Mitt Romney ad. He's been campaigning for a while now, and at first, I was just thinking "this guy is fucking stupid." I think this about pretty much all Republican politicians who aren't blatantly, openly evil - they must simply be stupid.
Then, it became clear Romney was the worst, most flagrant sort of political opportunist, latching himself on to any position based on his current reading of its acceptability, beholden only to polls and financiers. Also, he's quite obviously a liar, and not in the general way of most politicians. All politicians will tell you one thing and then vote another way. That's how the game is played. But Romney buys into all of the leading, most significant lies of our time. The ones about how we need to torture people and suspend habeas corpus and read everyone's e-mail and stare at their naked bodies under x-ray in exchange for the privilege of boarding a domestic flight in order to keep America safe.
Now, he debuts this TV ad, and I'm realizing that he's stupid, he's full of shit and he's fucking nuts.
Scary. This fringe whackjob wants to be president and he's ranting on national television about the impending Caliphate.
Seriously. He's afraid of radical Muslims declaring dominion over the entire world. Did I sleep through some sort of interruption of the space-time continuum? Are we holding this election in the Middle Ages? Because, last I checked, the Moors had left Spain and The Crusades were fodder for Ridley Scott action movies and the Ottoman Empire had collapsed.
I mean, this would be funny if this guy weren't dominating the news by running for the highest office in the land. His stature as a leading candidate, even though he has no chance of winning, allows him to interject these noxious, sub-moronic ideas into the debate. It's just horrifying that anyone might actually take Romney seriously about any of these issues. He's making absolutely no sense in this commercial whatsoever; it's so disconnected from reality, he may as well be discussing a trade dispute between Gondor, Hyrule and Narnia.
Here's how it starts. Mitt ambling towards the camera:
"It's this century's nightmare..."
Snakes on a plane?
"Jihadism!"
For some reason, I picture that word streaking across the screen in a 1980's movie poster, in one of those "bloody" fonts.
"Only Mitt Romney can save you from the spine-tingling terror of 'Jihadism!,' a film so horrifying it gave Dick Cheney a four-hour erection. A nurse and a member of the Heritage Foundation are on-call in the lobby in case anyone can't deal with the surreal, mind-bending horror of 'Jihadism.' Three bearded men, their minds twisted by a delusional and baseless hatred of goodness and decency, concoct a plan so vile, so far beyond the boundaries of civilized society, it could only be called 'Jihadism'! No mercy for the unbelievers. Now playing at the Marina Fourplex."
Back to Romney:
"Violent Radical Islamic Fundamentalism."
Oh, yes, VRIF. Gotcha.
"Their goal is to unite the world under a single jihadist caliphate. To do that, they must collapse freedom-loving nations. Like us."
Hang on...hang on...hang on...Who is "they"? All citizens of the Middle East? Arabs around the world? Al Qaeda? The Iraqi al Qaeda that has nothing to do with the Osama bin Laden group? Iran?
Cause, I mean, maybe that's al Qaeda's goal (a big maybe...), but if so, it's not gonna happen any time soon. This seems to be a major stumbling block for the Republican Party. You don't fight your enemy based on what he or she wants to do. You determine what they can do and then base your strategy on that.
When we fought WWII, we didn't start planning for an assault by flying atomic robot Nazi supermen. We figured out the Axis' strengths and weaknesses and then tried to exploit that information. Romney seems to suggest here that we begin with determining the group's highest, loftiest, most distant ambitions and then begin fighting those, ignoring what's actually happening now, at this moment. It's...insane.
And don't ever refer to me as "us," Mitt Romney. I don't want to be in any group that includes you.
Then he says he's going to increase our military by 100,000 without explaining how he's going to do this. America is not a game of "Civilization," motherfucker. You don't push a button and auto-conscript 100,000 citizens. Are we talking a draft here? Taxes to pay for more soldiers? I mean, shouldn't he have to give us something?
"...and monitor the calls al Qaeda makes into America."
Just...that the Republicans have made spying on Americans a central part of their platform...that makes me really depressed. It means their market research indicates a lot of Americans not only don't have a problem with the government tapping their phones. They think it's a good idea. They're that afraid of brown people. That just sucks.
Then, again, he says that we will stop Iran from getting nukes. Again, he doesn't say how we will do this. But we will. Trust me. Dude...seriously...we will. Even if we have to quadruple Guantanamo.
For whatever reason, I've never been all that into Kings of Leon. They're okay. I don't dislike the band. But I'd only heard a few songs, and they never made any sort of lasting impression. So I'd just never bothered to really give them a decent.
But this song, "Fans," from their latest, "Because of the Times," totally floored me today.
So, two questions from anyone reading who's in the know...Have Kings of Leon always been this good? And if so, what album should I check out?
Two days, two ridiculously great new CD's. 2007 has already been a terrific year for new music - Panda Bear, Bat for Lashes, Patrick Wolf, White Rabbits, and even a few bands that aren't named for animals.
Yesterday, I raved about the new Radiohead (despite the complaints of high-strung audiophiles everywhere). Today, I'm on the new Fiery Furnaces, Widow City. It rules. I'm a huge fan of this band - who put on one of the best live shows I've seen, maybe ever, a few years ago at the Echo - but their last two albums have been really frustrating.
2005's Rehearsing My Choir could have been great, but the frankly bizarre idea of having the brother-and-sister duo's grandmother speak-sing over all of the songs just ruined the experience. Honestly, this was kind of interesting the first time I listened to it, but the thing has absolutely zero re-listen value. I'm rarely in the kind of mood where I feel like listening to someone's grandmother blather over a 70 minute rock album. Listen for yourself:
I'm all for experimentation, but come on...that's just not going to work for the entire length of a CD. It's certainly not very musical...
2006's Bitter Tea was somewhat improved, but again, a single wacky decision prevented me from ever wanting to actually listen to the thing. Eleanor and Matt decided to loop much of the music and vocals backwards, and to fill up every spare inch of space in each of the songs with loud, overwhelming synths. It's just way way way too much, and only a few songs (like "Police Sweater Blood Vow" and "Benton Harbor Blues") come out unscathed.
Widow City sounds like a total return to form, like a slightly more reigned-in Blueberry Boat. It's the Furnaces' least cutesy CD to date, I think, ditching a lot of the playful ditties for more grungy, robust guitar rock. It still sounds definitely like the Fiery Furnaces, and is thus extremely weird, but more approachable and immediate than anything they've done since their debut, Gallowbird's Bark.
Here's a sample...
I'm loving this new Radiohead album. The music's great, of course. That's pretty much a given. Pablo Honey aside (hey, it was their debut!), every Radiohead album's been stellar (though I'm still don't feel enamored of Hail to the Thief the way I should).
But I just admire the band setting this kind of an example for their industry. Thom Yorke & Co. have mouthed off for years about the evils of massive international media conglomerates. (I have a bootleg concert in which each song is snidely introduced by Thom with corporate sponsorships. "This next song is brought to you by the good people of AT&T and the Walt Disney Corporation...")
But being such an epically-huge, massively popular band (Kid A debuted at #1 in the US! Think about that! Kid fucking A. Is that the strangest record to debut at #1 in America in my lifetime?), Radiohead's had no choice but to work in tandem with some of these very corporations they've spent years fearing and despising via rock music. Now, finally, technology has allowed them to side-step the entire system and bring the songs to the fans with maximum ease and convenience.
I have no idea if this project will work. After all, it's theoretically possible to pay about $1 in transaction fees (.45 pounds, to be exact) and download the album. I'm sure many, many individuals would make that choice. I paid 4 pounds, and happily, because I want to see Radiohead succeed and inspire more bands to release albums this way. (Nine Inch Nails and Madonna, of course, will both attempt similar feats for their next album.)
Also, I just really appreciate the level of respect for their audience this move demonstrates. Not only trusting people to pay them for their work when it could be obtained, legally, for free, but actually delivering a complete, kickass album. I can see other bands, even major labels, pulling this kind of stunt for an EP or a live album or some kind of B-side/oddities collection...but 10 songs of this caliber?
These are great songs. Every Radiohead album has that one brooding, mellow, creepy, near-perfect song that gets in my head and never leaves. The Bends: "Street Spirit (Fade Out)." On OK, it was "Exit Music (for a Film)." On Kid A, "How to Disappear Completely." On Amnesiac, "Like Spinning Plates." Hail to the Thief doesn't really have a song that fits ideally in this category ("I Will" is close, but I don't like it as much as those other ones.) In Rainbows' "Nude" alone, a variation on live Radiohead staple "Big Ideas (Don't Get Any)," is worth way more than 4 pounds (which hopefully comes to about $8.50, unless I got my conversion rates screwed up...)
Everything about Michael Clayton is as boring as that title. I guess all the really good, generic legal thriller names - Witness for the Prosecution, Class Action, The Firm, Wetness for the Prosecution - were already taken. (As was Good Time Slim, Uncle Doobie and the Great San Francisco Freakout.)
Jason Bourne Trilogy screenwriter Tony Gilroy's directorial debut would have to do a trailer full of meth just to be considered somnambulant - it's dirge-like from the first moment to the last. This is a standard-issue, by-the-numbers bit of Hollywood lawyerism masquerading as a radical Statement of Principles, like an early version of the Port Huron Statement drafted by John Grisham. It's just...odd. And did I mention, boring?
I'm reminded in many ways of Fernando Meirelles' overblown spy vehicle The Constant Gardener, though at least that film had a pulse. Obvious observations ("Corporations are greedy!") pass for probing insight, trite cliches pass by unquestioned, and even the basics of the narrative are eventually discarded in favor of overwrought platitudes. I mean, seriously, I know the film wants to make some kind of an actual, relevant point, but does this necessarily mean that the plotting must be so half-assed and haphazard? Some of the events in the final third of Michael Clayton just make no sense, which would hurt the film even if it actually had something to say.
The titular Clayton, played by George Clooney at his square-jawed blankest, is a "fixer" for a large, respected Manhattan law firm. The details are not spelled out, but he seems to largely deal in problems clients would prefer to keep entirely outside of the legal system - hit and run accidents, mistress troubles, that sort of thing.
One of Clayton's close friends, actual lawyer Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), suffers what looks like some kind of mental break in the midst of a deposition. While defending Agro-conglomerate U/North against an ongoing $3 billion class action suit, he interrupts sworn testimony, undresses and professes his undying devotion to the plaintiff, a young farm girl.
In the course of "cleaning up" Edens' collapse, by special request of partner Marty Bach (Sydney Pollack, reprising his charming Society sleazeball character from Eyes Wide Shut), Michael ends up with some information that could bring down a whole lot of trouble on U/North. So the company's head legal counsel, Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton), sends a couple of goons to keep and eye on him.
If Clayton were a brash Southern attorney rather than a Yankee legal burnout, Grisham could sue Gilroy and win. The film doesn't just echo, occasionally, J.G.'s trademark style, it seems to intentionally ape his sensibilities at every single goddamn turn. The very basics of the plot itself - the put-upon farm family suffering the consequences of corporate greed, the blasé seen-it-all corporate cog suddenly growing a conscience, the shrill harpy female executive with bigger balls than all the guys in the room...there's nothing new to see here, folks.
What's surprising is the ego on display, the sense that this movie is groundbreaking, goddammit, even if it's working directly out of Joel Schumacher's mid-'90s playbook. There's minimal-to-no flourish, even though it's theoretically a thriller about a lawyer on the run from all manner of suspicious, lethal characters. Gilroy's direction is stately throughout. Colors are washed out and cold. It's like he wants us to be bored, like he's testing our resolve. There's something deeply wrong, almost comically incorrect, about a movie this familiar with such a pretentious tone.
The film opens with its best-written scene - Wilkinson' s Arthur reciting a monologue in voice-over. He's leaving a message on Michael's answering machine. At first, it sounds like some kind of an insane rant punctuated by overly-obvious, somewhat theatrical symbolism - an anecdote in which he's crossing the street and is suddenly overcome with the feeling of being coated in amniotic fluid, then feces. As the story progresses, a theme emerges from the yammerings - Arthur feels as if he has wasted his life, selling his time to corporate villains, and now the stench of their misdeeds has tainted him forever.
Gilroy's film seems to sympathize with these sentiments (who wouldn't?) and, in many ways, Michael's journey throughout the rest of the film mirrors Arthur's in these opening moments. And yet, the portrayal of Arthur as either a man-child or a delusional crazy person, depending on the scene, makes it impossible to relate to the character on an intellectual level. (We're repeatedly told throughout the film that Arthur Edens is a brilliant man - a genius - and yet, every time he's on screen, he's babbling incoherently or grinning like an idiot.
Wilkinson seems to be drawing inspiration from Peter Finch's classic performance from Network as the lunatic newsman Howard Beale, but Beale was really a mad prophet who blurted out harsh truths. Edens is just a simpleton, enthralled by young adult fantasy novels, prone to gabbing on the phone while lying in the fetal position and passionately in love with a Midwestern adolescent whom he hardly knows. Gilroy thus robs this early, fevered monologue - as I said, the best part of the whole film - of any sort of genuine impact. These words become merely the rantings of a deranged mind.
It's a stumble, one of many. (An elongated and utterly pointless subplot about Michael's strained relationship with his alcoholic brother was another). I know it's Gilroy's first movie as a director, so perhaps I should cut him some slack, but honestly, the posturing of this movie really got on my nerves. There's nothing wrong with making a bold, strident first movie, of announcing one's arrival as a major filmmaker. But doing so when working with such warmed-over, drab and uninteresting material, giving a genre exercise such a drab and lifeless demeanor, isn't doing your audience or your reputation any favors.
I'll vote for him in November if that's what it comes down to, but I've got to tell you...I'm really getting annoyed with Barack Obama. At this point, I may dislike him more than I dislike Hillary.
White House hopeful Barack Obama stood in front of a pulpit Sunday and told worshippers that his faith "plays every role" in his life.
"It's what keeps me grounded. It's what keeps my eyes set on the greatest of heights," Obama told members of the Redemption World Outreach Center, whose 4,200-seat sanctuary was mostly full.
Oh, cut me a break. Even though I'm aware that this sort of thing is just phony pandering and Obama clearly feels like he must express these kinds of mock-pious homilies when visiting churches, it still gets on my nerves.
As a sentiment, it just doesn't make sense. Faith plays every role in his life? Every single one? Faith is his bathroom attendant? Faith provides him with the occasional orgasm? Faith bakes his morning bran muffins?
I mean, it isn't sufficiently sanctimonious to just say that faith plays a role in your life? You now have to claim that it dominates your every thought and action, that your single-minded obsession with all things godly rivals Ahab's devotion to catching the White Whale and far outdistances Jim Carrey's fixation on the number 23? Really?
Will they just keep one-upping one another in ecstatic religious fervor forever, beyond even this point of absurdity? Candidates self-flagellating on the pulpit? Holding political rallies wherever the Virgin Mary has most recently been sighted in a tortilla? Urgently phoning WaPo scribes at 2 a.m. reporting strange, otherworldly visions in which unicorn-riding seraphim proclaim the divinely-inspired correctness of the flat tax?
Faith, he said, is "what propels me to do what I do and when I am down it's what lifts me up."
This just strikes me as fundamentally incorrect, a blatant misstatement about the American political system. A president should absolutely not be moved into action by his religion. That's what priests and pastors do. If you're a rabbi or a minister, yes, you should be motivated by your faith. Presidents need to act based on the best interests of the nation, the faithful and heathen parts alike.
I honestly don't know why this is so difficult to understand. It doesn't threaten religion at all. Why does the guy in charge of taxes, starting wars, treaties and solving large-scale problems have to believe in the same origin story as you? We don't expect the President to have the same opinions about the big summer movies (though I'm sure Bush was all about Transformers) or the best place for sushi in Kennebunkport.
The Democratic presidential candidate said God "is with us and he wants us to do the right thing," including breaking down the divisions between Democrats and Republicans and among religions.
When people work together, he said, there is "nothing that can stop us because that's God's intention."
What a wild coincidence! God and Barack Obama have the same political agenda!
Seriously, though, does he have no shame at all? This is James Dobson's exact schtick.
First, assume for no good reason that God agrees with you about everything, then go out and spread the word that you must be right because God approves of your plan. Repeat as necessary.
(Maybe God's a Libertarian! Or an Objectivist! Or even a Lyndon LaRouche fan! Perhaps she's Wicca! How the fuck do you know?)
His campaign is in the midst of what it calls "40 Days of Faith & Family" — an effort to introduce early voting South Carolina to how Obama's family life and faith have shaped his values.
In an interview with The Associated Press last week, Obama was asked about walking the line where politics and the pulpit meet.
"There are no set guidelines or play book. When I go to church, I go there to worship. I am perfectly content to sit and listen to the music and pray and listen to the sermon," Obama said after last weekend's church services.
Other times — such as this Sunday — Obama takes to the pulpit.
In those instances, he said, "my job is to try to draw a connection between the values that I express to the church and the challenges and issues that we face in politics. ... I don't think there's anything wrong with expressing faith in the public square and I think there's nothing wrong public servants expressing religiously rooted values."
Shameless, that's the only word for this kind of phony bullshit pandering. Just to clarify, I don't have any objection to politicians discussing the nature of their faith in the public square (though I think it's an obfuscating cop-out to use such talk as the centerpiece of a political campaign). I don't object to Obama saying that he's religious and that it's part of his life and part of what guides him in decision-making. But to come out and say that your faith guides everything you do at all times, and then to further claim God's political agenda as your own, essentially claiming to have received God's endorsement and seal of approval, is not only ridiculous but outright un-American.
No matter how we feel about God, I think almost all of us can agree that he's not a member of either American political party, that he doesn't really have a solid opinion about petty partisan squabbling and rhetoric that dominates our newspapers and Sunday TV shows. I mean...please...
I'd love to embed the execrable new abstinence PSA that my tax dollars are sponsoring (during football games, no less!) here on the blog, so you all could see what I'm about to discuss conveniently. But, alas, the geniuses at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have yet to discover this newfangledy technology called the YouTube what might allow them to disseminate their message of ignorance and Victorian sexual panic to the masses more speedily. So you'll have to go over to their website to watch it and then come back.
The ad features children addressing the camera as if they were speaking bluntly to their parents. "Talk to me about sex," they plead. "Otherwise, I'll learn everything from the Internet, which will likely result in a life-long diaper fetish."
It's a little weird, but there's nothing so horrifying about most of this content. The kids in the commercial are uniformly to young to be having sex...only a real creep would object to parents instructing an 8-year-old to reconsider before trying out his first Hot Karl. As Bob Saget might say 100,000 per hour without getting a single laugh, "That's just wrong!"
But the last little section of the commercial really rubbed me the wrong way, no pun intended. A disembodied but stern voices pipes up and instructs you to "Tell your children to wait until marriage to have sex."
Um...what? Why should I do that? I mean, I don't even have any children, but if I did, I think I'd be okay with them having pre-marital sex. I'm 28 years old and I've never been married. If I had taken this advice to heart as a young man, I'd pretty much be a Judd Apatow movie at this point.
Did we have some kind of vote making this society's Accepted Carnal Standard that I missed out on? Cause the last time I checked, the only people who made a moral commitment to abstaining completely until marriage were religious weirdos. Granted, I'm getting an inaccurate sample because I've spent my entire adult life in Los Angeles, but I'm not certain I've ever known any single, celibate individuals my own age, at least since high school. (And back then, celibacy amongst my peers was not so much a personal choice as an unfortunate state of affairs.)
That's not to say it's a bad choice. If no sex until marriage works for you...hey, best of luck. Seems kind of irresponsible to me, like making a major purchase without shopping around for the best deal first, but I try not to judge. But why is our government buying up air time with my money to peddle this notion?
It's a rhetorical question, of course...I know why...Because these bureaus have all been stocked by lifelong conservative fundie whackjobs and Bush cronies, and thus they no longer represent the majority of Americans, but a small sliver of extremely vocal crazy people who want to enforce their own narrow, theocratic agenda on the rest of us.
Still, all the blog posts and books and newspaper articles laying out exactly how this cabal took hold of and exercised power over every level of our national leadership doesn't prepare you for actually witnessing their handiwork on television. What a disgrace...
[Hat tip: Yglesias]
I was going to write up a whole review of the new digital Blade Runner restoration, to which I rolled exceptionally deep last night with a contingent of Mahooligans. But it's a Saturday evening...no need to get all heady.
[[UPDATE: I eventually did write a full Blade Runner: Final Cut review. It's posted over at The Aspect Ratio.]
I'll make this as quick as possible:
The film remains visionary, provocative and fresh to this day. It's clearly one of the greatest American science-fiction films ever. Ridley Scott used to have a remarkable ability to combine conventional genre material - in this case, the trappings of detective noir and crime cinema - with thoughtful, even cerebral, contemplation. Somewhere along the line, he lost the ability, and now seems only intermittently capable of even providing moderate entertainment. (I mean, A Good Year? Matchstick Men? White fucking Squall? I mean, seriously, what the hell?
Also, this new digital restoration is unbelievably stellar. If you're not in one of the major American metropolises in which Blade Runner: Final Cut is playing...awful sorry...Check out the DVD when it hits in December. But if you are in one of those special, few, civilizated cities, you really owe it to yourself to check this out somewhere with digital projection. This is one of the best-looking film restorations I've ever seen. I've seen this movie on DVD on a plasma TV and it had nowhere near the clarity of this new version. You could make out details that have probably never before been visible - the architecture in Sebastian's '30s-era apartment building, the feathers on Tyrell's replicant owl, the gauzy reflection of neon signs in pools of rainwater. It rules.
I was just going to go on and on like that for a while...but who cares? Better to just throw together a Seeqpod playlist of the stuff I've been listening to lately and start drinking. It's the weekend.
I've really been getting into M.I.A.'s new album, Kala, which is interesting because I wasn't one of those people obsessing about her breakthrough record. But this one's a lot of fun. I'm listening to it right now, in fact. Even though it's loud and noisy and distracting, for some reason, I find it easy to write along to. Perhaps it's because I have no hope of actually understanding what she's saying half the time, even if I'm paying close attention, so I feel comfortable just leaving it on while focusing elsewhere.
Then, two songs by Black Kids, the mp3-net's obsession du jour. These two songs were on everyone else's blog about two weeks back, so I'm hardly blazing new ground when I say this, but both of them are really freaking awesome.
After that's another track plucked straight from today's hipster-geist, so I feel kind of like a poser just for including it, but I can't get it out of my head. (And why do I feel like there was already a band called Whalebones? I know there was a Preston School of Industry album with that name...maybe that's what I'm thinking of. Anyway, with that name, I thought they'd sound like The Decemberists, but they don't. They're probably more like Midlake, if Midlake can be said to have a "sound." It's really just Crosby Stills and Nash's sound. But now I'm rambling...
Then, there's a new Robert Pollard track that sounds exactly like a new Guided by Voices track would. So he really just retired the name Guided by Voices and is continuing to make the exact same kind of music. Which is fine by me. This is a great song.
Then, Calla's "Bronson," which I've been listening to for months now. I feel like I've posted this song before on here, but I checked the archives and didn't see it in there. So if you've already heard this one, feel free to skip it.
I have no idea how this particular David Bowie song made it into my iTunes, but I can't get enough of it lately. It's got that saxophone that David insisted on so frequently in the '80s and that I almost always dislike, but the effect almost sort of works here. [UPDATE: As I do so often when writing about rock history, I goofed here, implying that the song "Jump They Say" is from Bowie's '80s catalog, when in fact it appeared on 1993's Black Tie, White Noise. Oops.]
This is the only song by Misha I've heard, but it makes me want to check out more. Maybe I will some time this week. A great, laid-back kind of song that sneaks up on you; I really dig the oddly quavering vocals, like the singer's freaked out by the microphone or something.
The last three songs are female vocalists creatively reinventing old songs. M.I.A.'s "$20" isn't really a straight cover of The Pixies' "Where is My Mind," per se. It sort of slips in and out of The Pixies. My favorite song from Kala at the moment.
Frequent readers have already heard about my devotion to Bat for Lashes' debut, Fur and Gold. Here she is redoing Bruce Springsteen's classic "I'm on Fire," one of my favorites from The Boss. (I'm not really a huge Springsteen fan, but having grown up in Philadelphia, I'm required by law to like a few songs from his catalog. So I'll take this one, "Glory Days" and "Atlantic City.")
Years ago, my friend Nathan and I discussed The Beatles' overlooked masterpiece "Dig a Pony," and why it didn't seem to get the kind of recognition and respect as other Beatles tracks, even other "Let it Be" tracks. (Perhaps people don't care for the non sequitur lyrics?) That's why it was particularly gratifying to hear St. Vincent do an awesome cover of the song while opening for The National at the Wiltern last week. This medium-quality mp3 doesn't really do that performance justice, but I felt compelled to include it all the same.
George Bush gave an extemporaneous, 75 minute speech yesterday. I honestly can't imagine having to hear this man spew lies and butcher the English language for that long in any context...but doing so off-the-cuff? Brutal...
Bush gave an intriguing description about what happens when businesses expand, as was the case here at a company run by a woman.
"You know, when you give a man more money in his pocket - in this case, a woman - more money in her pocket to expand a business, they build new buildings. And when somebody builds a new building, somebody has got to come and build the building.
"And when the building expanded, it prevented (sic) additional opportunities for people to work. Tax cuts matter. I'm going to spend some time talking about it," the president said.
He's really trying to simply restate the standard supply-side line about giving tax cuts to rich people to stimulate the economy. I love how direct he's being about it here, though. You usually hear Republicans play this game using the example of small business owners, so it sounds like they give a shit about regular, everyday, non-millionaires. (They don't.) Bush just goes ahead and uses the example of an already-rich person.
"If you own eight buildings, and I give you some more money, then you could buy a ninth building. And hey, who among us doesn't love buildings?"
Of course, there's also the matter of the President of our goddamn country discussing fiscal policy as if he were addressing an elementary school class...but I'm sure this is how it was explained to him, so it's hard to fault the guy.
He offered a pointed description of his job.
"My job is a decision-making job. And as a result, I make a lot of decisions," the president said.
Oh, not this Decider crap again. The guy doesn't realize we're still making fun of him for the last time he boasted about decision-making? A LOT of people make decisions for a living. I MAKE DECISIONS FOR A LIVING! They're not as important as George W. Bush's of course. If I link to a website with inferior information, thousands of Iraqi children aren't violently killed. But still, the mere act of deciding stuff seems to get George W. Bush in a state of near-ecstatic euphoria. It's not really that exciting.
"I delegate to good people. I always tell Condi Rice, `I want to remind you, Madam Secretary, who has the Ph.D. and who was the C student. And I want to remind you who the adviser is and who the president is.'"
No matter how we want to, pal, no one can forget you're a President OR a C student.
"I got a lot of Ph.D.-types and smart people around me who come into the Oval Office and say, `Mr. President, here's what's on my mind.' And I listen carefully to their advice. But having gathered the device (sic), I decide, you know, I say, `This is what we're going to do.' And it's `Yes, sir, Mr. President.' And then we get after it, implement policy."
Who the fuck says "Ph.D.-types"? You either have a Ph.D. or you don't.
And let's take a look at some of those great minds with whom the President has associated lo these past six years...
I'm sorry, I don't have the paper in front of me, but I do not recall Albert Gonzales being very smart...You'll have to let me get back to you on that question.
She doesn't just look creepy and insane in this photo; Harriet actually kind of looks lobotomized. Or like her entire brain has been removed via the back of her skull and George is admiring the empty cavity. "Yeah, I bet I could store up all my loose change in there, then take 'er down to one o' them Ralph's machines and get me a 10 dollar bill. That'd be nice."
Snowjob may be the smartest guy on this list, just talking raw intelligence. Just look what he's wrote about President Bush!
"The English Language has become a minefield for the man, whose malaprops make him the political heir not of Ronald Reagan, but Norm Crosby.”
Face.
Heckuva job, Brownie
This is Douglas Feith, whom Tommy Franks once memorably called "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth."
I think you all see where I'm going with this...Let's move on.
"I'll be glad to answer some questions from you if you got any," he said. "If not, I can keep on blowing hot air until the time runs out."
Admitting that you're wasting time and peddling a lot of bullshit doesn't really make it any better. It just means that you're aware you have nothing to say and are wasting everyone's valuable time, but you're too arrogant to just shut the hell up and let them go home.
Asked about global warming, he gave a lengthy account of alternative fuels.
"I'm not quite through," he said near the end. "And it's a long answer, I'm sorry. It's called filibustering."
I think he thought that this was kind of a funny, affable thing to say. A little self-deprecating humor. That's because Bush is too stupid to realize, EVEN IN 2007, the importance of global warming as an issue to Americans. They don't want to be filibustered. They actually want him to do something about it.
It's kind of like Jon Stewart was trying to tell Chris Matthews the other day. Guys like Bush and Matthews think that, when you get right down to it, all Americans want is a nice speech and a good story, and if you give them that, they'll stay with you forever. (I had a grad school class at USC, and the professor clearly believed the same thing. He talked for hours about piddling little crap like presidential haircuts and make-up and stump speeches and rhetoric as if it mattered.)
Bush keeps doing the down-home compassionate cowboy schtick that almost won the 2000 Election for him, but pathetically doesn't realize it hasn't worked for years, that the only reason he's even still in office is that most individual citizens lack the time or resources to force their elected officials to begin impeachment proceedings.
He had some fun with a woman who seemed slow on the draw when Bush called on her.
"You want a little chance to collect the thoughts, you know? I mean we're talking national TV here, you know?" he said.
"I actually wrote it down so I wouldn't get flustered," the woman said.
"It didn't work," Bush said.
You just know that was said with that crooked smirk/snarl, to denote maximum bullying aggression. What a dick.
As an action-adventure movie, director Peter Berg's The Kingdom is competent but not spectacular. Much of the time, it reminded me of a television show, something like "CSI: Riyadh." Flashy editing, glossy cinematography, attractive stars with a reasonable amount of charisma reciting rapid-fire, clever-enough dialogue, solving a rather straight-forward mystery with a twist. It's the same thing you'd get every Monday-Friday on the major TV networks with a few big action scenes and some more cussing.
If this were all the film had it mind, I wouldn't knock it too badly. Sure, it's maybe a bit inappropriate, considering America's role in a horrific Middle-Eastern war, to make a film in which a bunch of super-terrific American FBI agents kick some Saudi Arabian ass. But an action film is an action film, and Berg manages to direct with enough confidence and style to make the film reasonably entertaining.
Unfortunately, the film strains for credibility on the major foreign policy issues facing our nation today. I don't really care what Aspen Extreme star Peter Berg and first-time screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan (brother of Smoking Aces and Narc director Joe Carnahan) think about the oil industry or American intervention into Middle Eastern conflicts, and nothing in The Kingdom gives me any reason to think they might have some insight into these matters.
Berg opens with one of those quick montages giving you the complete history of the film's subject in five minutes using helpful animated diagrams.. In this case, it's the history of Saudi Arabia. When we come to the 9/11 attacks, we see a big black cartoon plane collide with a cartoon building...classy...
What is the purpose of this sequence? You don't need to know any of this information to understand the film, because its politics are utterly without depth, complexity or nuance. There are Arabs, and all of them are shady (except the one Good Arab), and then on the other side, there are the Americans who are good and pure of heart and noble and brave and awesome at fighting and only want to do the right thing and go home to their proud families. They clash, the forces of good prevail, roll credits. This is the illusion of information. All the physical manifestations of being taught something - names, dates, stock footage - but nothing actually informative, and nothing that will inform the actual action of the film. Weird...
After cramming 70 years of "history" in the time it takes to list a few executive assistants and gaffers, the action begins inside a Riyadh compound for Western oil company executives. It's a beautiful day in which some beautiful white families and enjoying wholesome, extremely good-natured and decidedly pasty pastimes. (They're even listening to Dave Matthews Band!)
Then, some swarthly types in Saudi National Guard uniforms start shooting up the place, machine gunning random civilians, and all hell breaks loose. This is not some random attack, but a coordinated jihad, apparently the work of a local radical (and "Bin Laden wannabe") named Abu Hamza. A series of timed explosions combine, over the course of the day, to take the life of a few dozen oil company employees and two FBI agents.
FBI agent Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx) and his team, well, shucks, they were all really good friends with one of the agents who died in Riyadh, so they insist on heading over there to do a proper investigation. Berg and Carnahan start with some pretty wacky assumptions in this opening sequence with the FBI, and these assumptions cloud everything else that happens in the movie.
Basically, this is the story of good-natured Americans who want to go to Saudi Arabia to do a good thing and all the obstacles they face along the way. Because we in the audience know that Jamie Foxx and his team (Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper and Jason Bateman, ably giving their flat, cardboard "agent" characters flashes of personality) are do-gooders trying to do good, we never doubt their motives, and this turns everyone who second-guesses them into antagonists.
But most of the people who collide with Foxx & Co. during the course of the film (terrorists aside) make a lot of sense. Attorney General Gideon Young (Danny Huston, slimy as usual) hesitates to authorize an FBI trip into the heart of Saudi Arabia because it might threaten the position of the Saudi Royal Family, which needs to maintain the appearance of opposition to American hegemony in the region. Ambassador Damon Schmidt (Jeremy Piven) is concerned for the agents' personal safety and the fallout should one of them come to harm in The Kingdom. (Just think of how strange this portrayal is, an American administration that doesn't want to go impress our will on Middle Eastern nations while the intelligence community insists that we go ahead and intervene. It's the exact opposite from how this story played out in 2003.)
These guys are presented as scumbags, cowards who want to keep Our Heroes from doing Their Job. But they may very well be right, particularly in view of how the story plays out. Why should Americans go to foreign countries and solve their crimes for them? I'm not saying that there's no case to be made that, if Americans died in a terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia, we should go over there and investigate, but it's at least a conversation worth having. Berg's film just operates from the position that American can do no wrong - that wrongdoing is antithetical to what America's all about - so of course we should always be allowed to go traipsing through other countries, solving mysteries and helping out strangers. We're America...it's what we do...
In one scene, a very kind, patient Saudi general (Ashraf Barhom) explains to Fleury that his team will not be allowed to actually handle evidence, but will simply be there to observe the work of the Saudi police. Foxx plays the scene with maximum macho aggression. He gets in the Saudi's face and announces that he will not follow orders, that this is not how his team works. Again, I'm not justifying the Saudis behavior, but no wonder the rest of the world views Americans as testosterone-soaked, insecure bullies. That's how we're now proudly depicting ourselves.
I just find this position, lauding American Exceptionalism, objectionable, and Berg's film only compounds the problem as it goes along. It has no choice, really - once the decision has been made to present America as a beacon for light and justice in the dark, shadowy world of Saudi Arabia, there's no way to proceed but to make the Saudis themselves shifty and untrustworthy, to paint all those who oppose American intervention into foreign affairs as either terrorists or cowards. (The Republican Party has been operating from essentially this position for years.)
It's a very slippering slope that eventually leads to Berg filming Muslims at prayer while suspense music plays in the background. We're good, they're antagonizing us, and in movie-ese, this means they're bad. Very unfortunate; this is the sort of thing that will play in the Middle East and convince people who rightfully should be our allies that we hate them intensely.
Of course, I'm thinking about these issues more than the film seems to. Like I said, it tries its best to have something to say about Saudi Arabia and the oil industry and Middle-Eastern wars, but it's just too vapid. It can't get there. Honestly, save the opening Four Minute History Class, the thing could have been made in the 1990's and been no different. All you have to know is that Muslims are really angry and they have all kinds of weird rules for their wimminfolk and they don't take kindly to our freedoms (again, except for the one nice Arab who loves Americans and speaks perfect English and wants to help however he can.)
The film fares better as straight-up action, although the good stuff only appears in the sproadically-intense final half-hour. The case solved in an unsatisfying manner, the American team is on their way to the airport and back home when they are ambushed by Abu Hamza's extremists. There's a thoroughly ludicrous but expertly-shot alley shootout that reminded me of the similarly-silly minivan attack in Clear and Present Danger. And Jennifer Garner does an awesome job with her lone fight scene (really, the film's only scene of hand-to-hand combat). She's not much as an actress, but extremely convincing at kicking ass.
But that makes sense...She is, after all, an American. That's what we do.
Radiohead will release their latest full-length album, "In Rainbows," in 10 days. And as if that wasn't cool enough, they're going to let you pay whatever you want to download it from their website. Which basically means they're just going to give it away for free, because most people would probably prefer to just pay nothing.
So cool. You've gotta love the Greenwood-York Experience. And not just because of their unique online marketing experiments that let me obtain their newest stuff with maximum inexpensive convenience. Also because they're the best band on Earth right now.
I've seen a lot of amazing live shows recently - Dinosaur Jr. and The National, both at the Wiltern (though not on the same night) both pop immediately to mind - but I've still never quite seen anything to match the intensity of a Radiohead show.
They played several of the new songs from "In Rainbows" at the Greek Theater in Berkeley when I saw them last here. Here are two of them - "Bodysnatchers" and "Bangers and Mash." Enjoy.
I can't even believe this story. Seriously. John McCain, as far as I'm concerned, has officially taken himself out of the presidential race. He has absolutely no idea about what it means to be an American and demonstrates an atrocious lack of comprehension concerning our Constitution and the principles upon which our government is based. Particularly for a, you know, United States goddamn Senator.
Sen. John McCain said in an interview published Saturday that he would prefer a Christian president over someone of a different faith, calling it "an important part of our qualifications to lead."
No, that is precisely wrong. Your religion does not make you any more or less qualified to run the country. They teach you stuff like this in junior high school.
In an interview with Beliefnet, a multi-denominational Web site that covers religion and spirituality, the Republican presidential hopeful was asked if a Muslim candidate could be a good president.
"I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles ... personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith," McCain said. "But that doesn't mean that I'm sure that someone who is Muslim would not make a good president."
Later, McCain said, "I would vote for a Muslim if he or she was the candidate best able to lead the country and defend our political values."
Even worse than his ignorance is his pandering. After making a bold and, quite frankly, disgusting statement about his desire for a Christian president, he hems and haws and backtracks in an attempt to keep people like me from pointing out his bullshit. It didn't work. Now he's both full of shit and afraid to stand up for what he really believes.This is one of the most incredible, trippy, impressive pieces of animation I've ever seen. It makes Jan Švankmajer look like The Cheat. Forget the Human Flipbook. Watch this clip immediately, particularly if you have just ingested an eighth of an ounce or more of psilocybin-packed mushrooms.
[Hat Tip, Sullivan]
she's smart. You've got to give her that. Maybe she's not quite as fast a talker as Bill, but who are we kidding here? No one is. That guy's the white male Scheherazade.
After 7 years of listening to the tortured syntactical nightmares of Preznit Stumblefuck, hearing a politician actually speak in a manner that's lucid and sensible now has the ability to shock and delight. She actually sounds kind of convincing here. I'm not fooled, mind you. Being old enough to remember the Clinton years means knowing that, behind the nice speeches, pop culture knowledge and comforting hand gestures, they're basically just sane Republicans. (A rare commodity in the actual Republican Party, but still plentiful in the Democratic.)
I didn't watch the whole debate...I've been catching up with it on YouTube. Here's about a seven minute segment of Clinton kicking everyone else on the dais' ass.
They're all going after her, directly, yet it's Biden who comes off looking like the pasty, hopeless chump. Dodd seems to think people are voting for College Comic of the Year, Southwest Region, not President. I'm all for lightening the mood a bit, but it's important to actually make some kind of point between the Bush zingers.
Seriously, she's gonna win, people. She's not my personal choice out of this crop, but she's going to smoke all these other fools. I'll take bets right now on Clinton v. Giuliani down the stretch.
We don't often think of murderers and criminals as being assassinated. Usually, they are killed, or taken out, or even executed. In fact, aside from Jesse James, the only other criminal I can recall being "assassinated" is Lee Harvey Oswald. It's a weighted term reserved for the legendary or notorious, and James was both.
James' killer, Robert Ford, sought exactly this kind of noteriety all his life, only to find it constantly unattainable. Andrew Dominik's masterful, anti-epic The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford opens with the future assassin presenting himself to Jesse (Brad Pitt) and his similarly famous brother Frank (Sam Shepard) as an eager young apprentice, hoping to learn about the outlaw life at the feet of two masters. He's stung when rejected, probably because it brings to mind all the taunts and torments passed down to him by his older brother Charley (Sam Rockwell), a member of the James Gang. Ford claimed to have killed James out of fear for his life, and in the hopes of receiving a $10,000 reward from the Governor, but Dominik's film seems to suggest that it all comes back to this initial meeting. Ford had idolized James, had seen himself following in the James legacy, and no devastation could be more complete than to be mocked and humiliated by his idol.
Of course, this is just one theory. Dominik's film wisely remains ambiguous to the end, quiet and reserved, observing these men as they navigate increasingly complex and uncertain relationships from a distance. Apart from some occasional voice-over narration (most of it likely taken from Ron Hansen's novel on which the film is based), events unfold with a keenly natural grace.
As in David Fincher's similarly-impressive Zodiac from earlier this year, there's a precision and exactness to Dominik's film; he recreates these events with an acute sense of mounting dread, allowing incidents to collect into a narrative at their own lifelike pace. We don't so much hurry from once event to the next as we connect inevitable dots. These individuals - the increasingly-paranoid James, the emotionally brittle Ford, the flippant womanizer Dick Liddel (Paul Schneider), and the remainder of James' crew - are on a collision course. We know they will find their way to one another eventually, and Dominik gives us the space to really wonder how, and what the aftermath of these encounters will be like. This is clearly one of the smartest and most satisfying films of 2007, an ingenious exploration of the weight of infamy and the despair that naturally follows overzealous ambition. It's not to be missed.
Brad Pitt's performance as James melds two of his most disparate characters. We have the unpredictable frenzy of Tyler Durden married to the enigmatic, occasionally baffling Joe Black in a single persona. By virtue of his fierce intelligence and the legends that have sprouted up around him, Pitt's James has clearly grown used to being the center of attention and the smartest man in the room. So accustomed is he to manipulating and controlling all those around him, these ploys have become a kind of second nature, until, by his own admission, he can hardly recognize himself or know his true feelings.
We encounter James as he and his brother Frank are pulling their last job together, robbing a train with the aid of a newly-assembled gang. (Their initial band of outlaws are all deceased or in prison). The robbery is unsatisfying; they don't collect all that they hoped for, and Jesse kills a man in anger and frustration. The brothers part ways, and Jesse returns to his family, entering a long, tortured descent into paranoid madness.
It's this Jesse to whom Robert Ford (Casey Affleck) attaches himself. Awed by the man's celebrity and impressed by his devil-may-care attitude, Ford at first wants only to ingratiate himself into James' circle, to impress his idol like a boy performing for his father. But as the film progresses, Ford makes some disappointing discoveries - mainly that James is just a man, and a cruel one at that. Dominik, unlike almost any of his directorial peers, demonstrates a great deal of interest in actual performances. He gives his actors space, stretching scenes on for far longer than a typical film, even a period drama, would typically allow. We don't hear about Ford losing his faith in the legendary Jesse James; we see it play out in real time, watching the events of 1881 wear down James' resolve and disabuse Ford of his childhood gunslinging fantasies.
The temptation to overplay James' mounting dread must have been significant, but Pitt shrewdly keeps it all bottled up inside, masking his outbursts and temper tantrums as playful humor or theatrics. Hence the Tyler Durden comparisons. Just as Durden knows he's really the same guy as the Narrator, but allows his alter-ego the time to figure this out, James constantly knows more than he lets on and turns each conversation into a challenge. Right up until the moment of his death (hey, it's not a spoiler if it's in the title!), James is trying to play those around him, to show them one thing while secretly plotting another outcome entirely.
The result is one of the most intense, white-knuckle 3 hour movies imaginable. Assassination of Jesse James takes its time developing, but once it has established the key relationships, the film enters a kind of desperate end game. Dominik (who also wrote the screenplay) composes this verbal gamesmanship expertly. The dialogue is reminiscent of some of Patrice Leconte's films (particularly Ridicule), with each statement secretly betraying a hidden reality behind (or, more accurately, above) the surface.
Even the slower, more elegiac sequences are riveting due to Roger Deakins' gorgeous cinematography. Still photography is a frequent motif in the film; much of the denouement concerns the still photos of James' corpse peddled in dime stores in the years after the film's events. Deakins works this into the visual structure of the film brilliantly, sometimes patterning the style to resemble images shot with an old-fashioned pinhole camera and other times allowing an eerie, photo-like stillness to settle into real life.
At one point, James lays a barricade for an oncoming train and rather dubiously stands atop the structure, willing the train to stop with his bare hands. Shot from behind by Deakins, with the train's lights catching the locomotive steam and surrounding the silhouette of Pitt in the center, we see James as Ford must have: serene, regal, larger than life, almost superpowered. No real man could live up to this kind of glamorized imagery and mythmaking, and James was a very real man.
There's an odd nostalgia in Dominik's film, but it's always unclear for what he's actually nostalgic. His film seems to argue that reality is always subordinate to a well-told yarn, that the tragedy of Robert Ford's life was finally doing something noteworthy and attaining fame only to be haunted by the path that brought him there. Yet the film seems to yearn for a time when mysterious, shadowy, highly fictionalized legends could still walk among us. (Having Nick Cave write the music for the film, and perform a song himself near the conclusion, highlights this theme beautifully. He writes old-fashioned songs about folk tales and grim fantasies, stories about a lost time in America's past that never really existed but which tells us about ourselves all the same).
In the era of YouTube, it takes very little to become well-known, and celebrity can last a few weeks before dissipating. Thousands of people today are as famous as Jesse James once was, so in a way, no one could possibly be that famous ever again. Perhaps this is the real lament at the core of The Assassination of Jesse James - real or not, this sort of shared cultural moment can't be replicated in the era of television and cyberspace. The world's too small and everything's watched too closely. This may be the singular film of 2007. See it in a theater.
