Mr. Lucas has just returned from running errands, where he does most of his intentional music listening.
Mr. L: Seriously, that new Beck album has actually made my life better.
Mrs. L: I KNOW. I was just thinking that that album is the soundtrack to my entire summer.
As usual in these matters, I was somewhat fashionably late to get here. Still, though, the last time I remember there being an album that was a summer's soundtrack it was a Screaming Trees album in 1996.
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Monday, July 11, 2005
MUCK THE FETS
Walking into the ballpark yesterday afternoon I saw a guy around my age with a T-shirt bearing the above message. It was suddenly 1990 again, or the last time I saw that shirt. In '90 the Pirates were still in the East and what stood between them and their first division title since the '79 World Series team were Daryl Strawberry's Mets. Hence the shirt and the sentiment it expressed. It was ages ago that anybody'd take the Pirates seriously as a threat. That the guy had not only kept the shirt fot the last decade and a half, but also dusted it off for the occasion seemed somewhat pathetic. And with Pedro Martinez making an appearance, it seemed thoroughly delusional.
There might have been a hotter place in Pittsburgh than our seats in right field, but you'd have a tough time convincing my brood of that. They lasted five innings, which is coincidentally as long as Kip Wells lasted. Seconds after Jason Bay, Consolation All-Star, hit a Pedropitch about 393 feet to dead center field and fell five feet short of closing the gap to 5-4, I gave in to the various voices begging me to take them home. Someday they will better enjoy sitting out in ridiculously hot weather to watch baseball.
There might have been a hotter place in Pittsburgh than our seats in right field, but you'd have a tough time convincing my brood of that. They lasted five innings, which is coincidentally as long as Kip Wells lasted. Seconds after Jason Bay, Consolation All-Star, hit a Pedropitch about 393 feet to dead center field and fell five feet short of closing the gap to 5-4, I gave in to the various voices begging me to take them home. Someday they will better enjoy sitting out in ridiculously hot weather to watch baseball.
Friday, July 8, 2005
TAKING THE KIDS TO THE WARHOL
That sounds like it should be a euphemistic catchphrase, and so it will be. Now I need only to figure out (1) what it should euphemize (suggestions welcome) and (2) how to inject it into popular discourse. I'm already working on overusing another such phrase ("plays rugby for Vassar") into ubiquity.
So, yeah, we took the kids to the Warhol tonight. Ali's been teaching the older girls about art styles, and Warhol's silkscreens came up. It seemed fitting to go to where you can see a wallfull of Marilyns. It was mildly enjoyable, but it was less that what I'd hoped, and I think it's because Warhol's vision won and won big. Advertising is art now, and a degree of elevation of the common (as opposed to the uncommon or the transcendent) is part and parcel of our cultural language. It's lost its potency.
So, yeah, we took the kids to the Warhol tonight. Ali's been teaching the older girls about art styles, and Warhol's silkscreens came up. It seemed fitting to go to where you can see a wallfull of Marilyns. It was mildly enjoyable, but it was less that what I'd hoped, and I think it's because Warhol's vision won and won big. Advertising is art now, and a degree of elevation of the common (as opposed to the uncommon or the transcendent) is part and parcel of our cultural language. It's lost its potency.
Friday, July 1, 2005
HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE
I've gone through Wednesday's local movie listings and tallied the numbers. On 6/29/05, you could see Herbie: Fully Loaded on 18 screens in the greater Pittsburgh area. You could see Madagascar on any of 11 screens, and The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl on 6 screens.
You could see Howl's Moving Castle on one screen. That's the same number of screens devoted to something called Paper Clip.
Now, I'm of the mind that Academy Awards are one of the least reliable indicators of cinematic quality, but I'm also having trouble imagining another context where a director or actor whose last film brought home Oscar gold would be buried like this in a metropolitan market.
I don't even know who, exactly, to blame. Did Disney send out only a limited number of prints to hedge its bets in case the film flopped, or to keep the deck as clear as possible for the newest wacky Lohan vehicle? Are theater owners declining to book it because it runs two hours and can't be overscheduled like the typical eighty-five minute kidflick? Or are parents and kids simply not responding to it, the former disliking it because it may require answering some questions, the latter disliking it because of its complexity or uniqueness? No, let me take that back. I doubt quite seriously that kids aren't responding to the film or that they are put off by its complexity. The ultimate root causes are irrelevant, and the effect is simply dispiriting. A movie which is demonstrably vastly superior to the other three current movies aimed at children is being seen by a tiny fraction of the audience lining up for the others. The screen imbalance here is 35:1. Something's wrong with the market, or something's wrong with us.
Since our youngest was born in September of 2003, my wife and I have generally played tag team when it came to taking the older two kids out to movies. I took them to see The Incredibles, while my wife has taken either or both of the girls to see A Series of Unfortunate Events, Millions and Robots. Neither of us, however, was about to miss out on Miyazaki, so we took the 22-month old along, a risky proposition given that Miyazaki crowds include a larger number of adults without kids in tow, which makes it a bit less likely that there will be the sort of heightened expectation of ambient noise. Our babysitter doesn't arrive for a few weeks, though, so Virginia got to see her first theatrical film.
When we got into the car afterward and pulled away, Ali said something to the effect that if all children's entertainment was that good (or imaginative, or thoughtful), the entire cultural landscape of growing up would be vastly different, for the better. I completely agree. It's so easy to get wrapped up in what we saw in Howl's that you can forget what you don't see in Miyazaki's films, this one included. We didn't see a simple, mechanical plot which moved from A to B to C, stressing narrative efficiency and clarity over the ambiguity of wonder and the messy, diffuse enchantment of discovering a new world full of divergent possibilities. We didn't see characters who could be summarily identified as "good" or "bad," described in three words or less and assigned plot-roles on that basis. We didn't have to sit through potty humor or, worse, oh-so-clever humor couched in middlebrow referents or double-entendre aimed at the adults who are buying the popcorn.
But this isn't the cinema of reaction; it's an altogether different vision of what sort of things are worthy of captivating an imagination. The film continues some of Miyazaki's earlier tropes: the girl seeking to undo a spell that's both literally and figuratively holding sway over her and in the process rescue a young man caught in his development and serving an unjust master. Howl's is a remarkable example of fairy tale filmmaking, combining images of pure wonder with characters capable of inspiring trust and situations where the actual obstacle to be overcome is much larger and deeper than that show on the screen.
In Sophie, there is a poignant treatment of the way in which we grow old and confront the facets of ourselves from all our yesterdays. Her maturation is set against the backdrop of a civil war that is always in the periphery, threatening to destroy the characters but never advancing on them literally. There's something here about the way in which children-- and adults-- create realms of respite in times of strife. For a movie about war, though, the film contains very little violence.
I reread Jonathan Rosenbaum's review of the film. He quotes a Hollywood Reporter piece in which the writer wonders whether the film will work for American audiences: "Plotting is so multifaceted that it will confuse children, and it lacks the clear-cut heroes and villains tpical of animation." To his first clause, that wasn't my experience. My kids weren't confused in the slightest, and even the toddler was enraptured by the film's visual beauty. As to his second clause, his perception of the needs of children is askew. Many children (or at last mine) appreciate seeing clear-cut good guys and bad guys on occasion, but they're also capable of understanding and appreciating stores with ambiguity and complexity mirroring their developing real-life experience. Those are, not coincidentally, the same attributes that characterize adults who are appreciative of great art, so we shouldn't be surprised that Miyazaki is able to draw adults voluntarily to his animated films.
Other misc. trailer notes:
Chicken Little: I will never see this film. This film will never cross the threshhold of my house in any video format.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Well, it's a story that relies on grotesque, overdrawn characters and locales, so Burton's a natural. And assuming the script simply takes random swaths from the novel, some narrative form should adhere. Still, from the trailer alone I wonder if Depp's gone about this the wrong way by playing Wonka as modern-day Mike Jackson. Subversive, yes, but potentially very grating. I'm thinking I'll need to smuggle in a flask of Jesus Juice just to sit through it.
You could see Howl's Moving Castle on one screen. That's the same number of screens devoted to something called Paper Clip.
Now, I'm of the mind that Academy Awards are one of the least reliable indicators of cinematic quality, but I'm also having trouble imagining another context where a director or actor whose last film brought home Oscar gold would be buried like this in a metropolitan market.
I don't even know who, exactly, to blame. Did Disney send out only a limited number of prints to hedge its bets in case the film flopped, or to keep the deck as clear as possible for the newest wacky Lohan vehicle? Are theater owners declining to book it because it runs two hours and can't be overscheduled like the typical eighty-five minute kidflick? Or are parents and kids simply not responding to it, the former disliking it because it may require answering some questions, the latter disliking it because of its complexity or uniqueness? No, let me take that back. I doubt quite seriously that kids aren't responding to the film or that they are put off by its complexity. The ultimate root causes are irrelevant, and the effect is simply dispiriting. A movie which is demonstrably vastly superior to the other three current movies aimed at children is being seen by a tiny fraction of the audience lining up for the others. The screen imbalance here is 35:1. Something's wrong with the market, or something's wrong with us.
Since our youngest was born in September of 2003, my wife and I have generally played tag team when it came to taking the older two kids out to movies. I took them to see The Incredibles, while my wife has taken either or both of the girls to see A Series of Unfortunate Events, Millions and Robots. Neither of us, however, was about to miss out on Miyazaki, so we took the 22-month old along, a risky proposition given that Miyazaki crowds include a larger number of adults without kids in tow, which makes it a bit less likely that there will be the sort of heightened expectation of ambient noise. Our babysitter doesn't arrive for a few weeks, though, so Virginia got to see her first theatrical film.
When we got into the car afterward and pulled away, Ali said something to the effect that if all children's entertainment was that good (or imaginative, or thoughtful), the entire cultural landscape of growing up would be vastly different, for the better. I completely agree. It's so easy to get wrapped up in what we saw in Howl's that you can forget what you don't see in Miyazaki's films, this one included. We didn't see a simple, mechanical plot which moved from A to B to C, stressing narrative efficiency and clarity over the ambiguity of wonder and the messy, diffuse enchantment of discovering a new world full of divergent possibilities. We didn't see characters who could be summarily identified as "good" or "bad," described in three words or less and assigned plot-roles on that basis. We didn't have to sit through potty humor or, worse, oh-so-clever humor couched in middlebrow referents or double-entendre aimed at the adults who are buying the popcorn.
But this isn't the cinema of reaction; it's an altogether different vision of what sort of things are worthy of captivating an imagination. The film continues some of Miyazaki's earlier tropes: the girl seeking to undo a spell that's both literally and figuratively holding sway over her and in the process rescue a young man caught in his development and serving an unjust master. Howl's is a remarkable example of fairy tale filmmaking, combining images of pure wonder with characters capable of inspiring trust and situations where the actual obstacle to be overcome is much larger and deeper than that show on the screen.
In Sophie, there is a poignant treatment of the way in which we grow old and confront the facets of ourselves from all our yesterdays. Her maturation is set against the backdrop of a civil war that is always in the periphery, threatening to destroy the characters but never advancing on them literally. There's something here about the way in which children-- and adults-- create realms of respite in times of strife. For a movie about war, though, the film contains very little violence.
I reread Jonathan Rosenbaum's review of the film. He quotes a Hollywood Reporter piece in which the writer wonders whether the film will work for American audiences: "Plotting is so multifaceted that it will confuse children, and it lacks the clear-cut heroes and villains tpical of animation." To his first clause, that wasn't my experience. My kids weren't confused in the slightest, and even the toddler was enraptured by the film's visual beauty. As to his second clause, his perception of the needs of children is askew. Many children (or at last mine) appreciate seeing clear-cut good guys and bad guys on occasion, but they're also capable of understanding and appreciating stores with ambiguity and complexity mirroring their developing real-life experience. Those are, not coincidentally, the same attributes that characterize adults who are appreciative of great art, so we shouldn't be surprised that Miyazaki is able to draw adults voluntarily to his animated films.
Other misc. trailer notes:
Chicken Little: I will never see this film. This film will never cross the threshhold of my house in any video format.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Well, it's a story that relies on grotesque, overdrawn characters and locales, so Burton's a natural. And assuming the script simply takes random swaths from the novel, some narrative form should adhere. Still, from the trailer alone I wonder if Depp's gone about this the wrong way by playing Wonka as modern-day Mike Jackson. Subversive, yes, but potentially very grating. I'm thinking I'll need to smuggle in a flask of Jesus Juice just to sit through it.
2005 movies at the halfway point
(a) I don't see much theatrically, and (b) the best is yet to come, but here's what I've seen of 2005 films, how I'd rank them and how I'd grade them to date.
1. Howl's Moving Castle (A-)
2. George A. Romero's Land of the Dead (A-)
3. Star Wars ROTS (B-)
4. Batman Begins (C+)
5. Sin City (C)
1. Howl's Moving Castle (A-)
2. George A. Romero's Land of the Dead (A-)
3. Star Wars ROTS (B-)
4. Batman Begins (C+)
5. Sin City (C)
June, 2005 viewing
6/1 Gilmore Girls 3.13
6/2 Gilmore Girls 3.14, 3.15, 3.16
6/5 Gilmore Girls 3.17, 3.18, 3.19, 3.20
6/6 Team America: World Police
6/7 Gilmore Girls 3.21, 3.22
6/8 Rosetta
6/14 Kill Bill, Volume 1
6/16 Batman Begins
6/17 Kill Bill, Volume 2
6/20 Napoleon Dynamite
6/21 Day of the Dead
6/22 Land of the Dead
6/24 The Grudge
6/27 Bonhoeffer
6/29 Howl's Moving Castle
6/30 L'Argent
6/2 Gilmore Girls 3.14, 3.15, 3.16
6/5 Gilmore Girls 3.17, 3.18, 3.19, 3.20
6/6 Team America: World Police
6/7 Gilmore Girls 3.21, 3.22
6/8 Rosetta
6/14 Kill Bill, Volume 1
6/16 Batman Begins
6/17 Kill Bill, Volume 2
6/20 Napoleon Dynamite
6/21 Day of the Dead
6/22 Land of the Dead
6/24 The Grudge
6/27 Bonhoeffer
6/29 Howl's Moving Castle
6/30 L'Argent
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
All zombie, all the time
Relevant to recent preoccupations, my pal Shane Rooney pointed me to this relevant science news. I'm so glad to see these experiments are going on in Pittsburgh; it just wouldn't be the same if it were happening in, say, Des Moines.
And this development may force me to rethink my stance on contributing to my law school alma mater, provided I can designate where the money goes. My check will be the one with the memo line: FOR CANINE NECROMANCY ONLY.
And this development may force me to rethink my stance on contributing to my law school alma mater, provided I can designate where the money goes. My check will be the one with the memo line: FOR CANINE NECROMANCY ONLY.
Suddenly, falling down the steps while carrying fresh game or slamming your hand in a car door doesn't seem so bad
Alternate title: Suddenly, cutting your pitching hand while opening a DVD with a steak knife or being repeatedly punched by Tawny Kitaen doesn't seem so bad.
*shakes head*
*shakes head*
Monday, June 27, 2005
More DEAD
A couple of weeks ago I worried this was becoming too sports-heavy. Now, I'm thinking too horror-heavy.
On Saturday I took the girls to Monster Bash, a movie monster convention. Ben Chapman, Forrest Ackerman and a bunch of others made appearances. We stayed for three hours, or about as long as our youngest would permit, and had a good time. Bill Hinzman, who Romero devotees know as the cemetary zombie and the very first zombie to appear, was there in costume, looked scarcely a day older and signed a glossy photo for me of him emerging from Johnny's body to chase Barbara. "I'm coming to get you next, Russ." I need to set this up with image-hosting capabilities so I can post it and the photo Ali took of him posing with Leah. The two older girls have been teasing their younger sister with "They're coming to get you, Barbara" long enough that it felt like coming full circle.
I also had a chance to meet and talk with Kyra Schon, the girl in the cellar. She was a pleasure to talk with, and if the trowels with the painted-on image of her going after her mom had been $10 cheaper, I'd own one.
On Saturday I took the girls to Monster Bash, a movie monster convention. Ben Chapman, Forrest Ackerman and a bunch of others made appearances. We stayed for three hours, or about as long as our youngest would permit, and had a good time. Bill Hinzman, who Romero devotees know as the cemetary zombie and the very first zombie to appear, was there in costume, looked scarcely a day older and signed a glossy photo for me of him emerging from Johnny's body to chase Barbara. "I'm coming to get you next, Russ." I need to set this up with image-hosting capabilities so I can post it and the photo Ali took of him posing with Leah. The two older girls have been teasing their younger sister with "They're coming to get you, Barbara" long enough that it felt like coming full circle.
I also had a chance to meet and talk with Kyra Schon, the girl in the cellar. She was a pleasure to talk with, and if the trowels with the painted-on image of her going after her mom had been $10 cheaper, I'd own one.
More LAND
The internet vortex Beaks has written his erudite response to Land of the Dead. Hey, thanks for the shout-out. He takes the analysis of Romero's themes to another level, and I really love what he has to say about how the zombies appear changes. I'm really glad of his mention of the human underclass ("while the undesirables (mostly minorities) are, in a sort of feudalistic set-up, relegated to the outlying areas. It ain't a hospitable existence, but it is relatively zombie-proof (of course, the humans are still free and willing to do harm unto each other).") It jogs something that I forgot to write about last week.
I haven't said anything yet about the scene in the club where Riley rescues Slack. From a summary or a review, it's tempting to jump to the conclusion that Romero paints the human underclass as the noble proletariat. It's not that simple (it never is). We only see bits and pieces of them apart from the main ensemble cast. En masse, we see the underclass on the streets briefly, milling around and ignoring the religious and political organizers. We also see them en masse in the club scene.
The club's an ugly place. As before, zombies are used for entertainment-- zombie photos and the paintball gallery-- and debasement. But you've also got a human woman topless in a cage-- and not randomly. And, of course, you've got the sport of watching two zombies tear apart a woman. We hear that Kaufman funds this vice, and that's not surprising, but he funds it because he knows they want to buy it and it will keep them from more heightened concerns. How is the underclass going to pull itself out of Kaufman's hegemony when it can't tear itself away from these base distractions? It's telling that the police show up and arrest Riley et al after the rescue and the shooting of the little man. Keeping the peace (read: the status quo) means keeping those vices in business and arresting anyone who threatens their existence.
Of course, the distractions of the club are a great complement to the distractions posed by the fireworks.
I haven't said anything yet about the scene in the club where Riley rescues Slack. From a summary or a review, it's tempting to jump to the conclusion that Romero paints the human underclass as the noble proletariat. It's not that simple (it never is). We only see bits and pieces of them apart from the main ensemble cast. En masse, we see the underclass on the streets briefly, milling around and ignoring the religious and political organizers. We also see them en masse in the club scene.
The club's an ugly place. As before, zombies are used for entertainment-- zombie photos and the paintball gallery-- and debasement. But you've also got a human woman topless in a cage-- and not randomly. And, of course, you've got the sport of watching two zombies tear apart a woman. We hear that Kaufman funds this vice, and that's not surprising, but he funds it because he knows they want to buy it and it will keep them from more heightened concerns. How is the underclass going to pull itself out of Kaufman's hegemony when it can't tear itself away from these base distractions? It's telling that the police show up and arrest Riley et al after the rescue and the shooting of the little man. Keeping the peace (read: the status quo) means keeping those vices in business and arresting anyone who threatens their existence.
Of course, the distractions of the club are a great complement to the distractions posed by the fireworks.
Thursday, June 23, 2005
LAND OF THE DEAD
I. The Festivities
What a blast. I walked into Cafe Euro two weeks ago to meet a friend before a concert. It was filled with happy hour professionals, which is pretty much its clientele all the time, or at least until it changes ownership and theme in six months. Last night I walked into Cafe Euro and directly to my right stood George Romero, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino and Greg Nicotero. Tom Savini showed up right after I did. Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright came in later. Seemingly half of the cast of Day of the Dead was there, and several of the actors from Land of the Dead arrived and mingled with the guests and the people made up like zombies. The bartender who got us a drink appeared to have some sort of skin condition. I was relieved to realize that it was just faint, veiny zombie makeup.
Near the end of the pre-party I made my way over to Romero. He's unmistakable in his choice of eyewear and omnipresent vest, but much taller than I would have guessed. He's being talked at by a guy in his mid-twenties whose body language just reeks of determination and extreme self-unawareness. Standing in the on-deck circle, I see and hear the guy just drilling some monologue about his arcane film knowledge into Romero's personal space. The guy never moves his head, doesn't blink, doesn't stop for air. And then it comes: the business card, the sales pitch, the opportunity to advance his career on Romero's big night. Romero's as polite as possible, takes the guy's card but tells the guy not to expect anything out of it. The guy's undaunted and has backup plans to thwart Romero's polite demurrer. Really, has anyone ever made it big by pestering somebody at a movie premiere? I've always been too introverted for my own good and not sufficiently socially outgoing, but I think I'd still rather be a wallflower than that guy. That's all just to say that by the time Romero was able to break the guy's hypnotic trance, I was happy just to get a handshake and a chance to mumble some thanks. Later, I had a chance to shake Tarantino's hand and exchange a greeting with him inside the theater.
After the film the party continued at another locale. A great time, in all. Still, it has to be the most unique crowd I've been part of in my twelve years in Pittsburgh. Sporting event crowds are pretty homogenous, as are most movie theater crowds. Last night's premiere featured the stars and folks still in the business, of course, but there were also a sizable number of people (they were asked to stand) who had worked on or appeared in former Romero films. It was like a big family reunion. Add to that the standard Patrons of the Arts who show up to all of the big events, decked out in fancy clothes (and maybe, heh heh, in store for their first Romero experience) They're sitting side-by-side with the other contingency, the true believing fans, who range from the "average" movie fan to the more goth-heavy model. And thus you end up with the stepsister of the producer sitting next to me and my companion, both of us sitting one row behind a guy who couldn't be more pierced or tattoed. What a great crowd, and I have to think Romero loved being able to get a crowd that varied together. All they've got in common is admiration for him and his work.
Before the film, a couple of people in the industry stood up and talked about how their passion for film was born through the region's cultural assets-- through WPXI's Chiller Theater and, for the younger professionals, through Romero himself. The night became not only a love letter to Romero, but also a paean to regional filmmaking generally. It's so fitting that Robert Rodriguez flew himself here, since he's managed to modify the Romero model better than anybody else. Sure, Romero's had a much tougher time prying loose studio money than a guy with a distribution deal like Rodriguez, and Romero's usual adherence to shooting on location in Pittsburgh is an interesting contrast to Rodriguez's seeming goal of eliminating locations, but there's a symmetry there that's quite fitting. Both men's careers stand, at least partly, for the proposition that good movies (defined either by artistic or commercial success) can be made outside of the Hollywood protective shell. Of course, Land of the Dead also shows that Romero can make a fantastic film inside the system, too.
II. The film
Yeah, so this is great. Like-- really, really good.
Romero picks up right where he should have picked up after taking twenty years off. The opening credits use bits of sound and image to bring the uninitiated up to speed concerning how things have fallen apart. Then we're back in Romero's world, which is always nightmarish but never static. Things have changed. Societies-- plural-- have reformed along clear lines, some predictable and some unpredictable. The zombie plague is a way of life now, and the survivors have adjusted to it in the same way that societies adjust to irritations like hurricane season or longlasting civil wars. They build a wall.
I'm not going to go into thematic or plot spoilers here for people who haven't seen it (those follow), but Romero had a great concept in mind to continue his series, and the added studio support makes the film clearer and bigger in a positive way while retaining the distinctive voice, humor and vision of his earlier zombie films. If aligning himself with Universal's banner (most touchingly and fittingly, under the retro logo that ran before all of those classic Karloff and Lugosi films) was something of a gamble, he won it. In the process, Romero's dark and comic point of view suddenly has grafted onto it somewhat accomplished actors, much larger sets and locations and a breadth of physical scope that is initially incongruous with the earlier films. As a result, the film is not as intrinsically claustrophobic or confined as the first three, but it works very well because now we're exploring not just the fate of a few, but many. Sure, you put two men in a small room and there's a good chance they'll eventually start some kind of fight, but it happens in a big room, too. And that just means there's more room for the fighting.
The film does so well the things that genre films seem to be getting so wrong these days. The characters are sufficiently complex to be interesting without becoming larger than the film itself. The one-liners are actually funny. The sidekick character is endearing and not at all annoying. A romantic subplot isn't unnecessarily shoehorned in. Really, subtexts and signifiers aside, it's a well-done action picture. Add in the contexts and concerns that are part of any Romero zombie movie and it's something else entirely. Something pretty great.
Curiously, despite the regrets expressed by the filmmakers and the press over the film not shooting in Pittsburgh, Land of the Dead is grounded in the city to a degree far exceeding the prior films. Town names, neighborhood names and street names are incorporated heavily into the script. More significantly, the city's bridges, natural boundaries and distinct topography figure prominently and meaningfully into the plot. Romero's even got a hilarious and recurring in-joke for those of us who have never ceased to wonder why western Pennsylvanians are so innately and fervently mesmerized by fireworks displays (seriously, when the Pirates hold a fireworks night, not only will the stadium be unusually sold out regardless of the quality of the opponent, but people driving by will pull off the highways and ramps, safety be damned, just to watch). The consolation prize to losing the economic and pride infusions of shooting the film in Pittsburgh is that the resulting film is about the city in a significant way that, say, Striking Distance or Desperate Measures isn't.
Of course, it's about everywhere else, too.
But while the film will send home happy the people who want blood and guts (there's a bit with a head-challenged clergyman zombie that will bring down the house) and the small but rabid fanbase, the film retains the larger subtexts of the earlier films and dials them to 2005.
(Spoilers follow)
Things fall apart, but then we put them back together again. The survivors hunker down and build their wall (keeping the undead out and them in). Of course, the next thing they do is create a class society with the chosen few living in their high-rise Paradise. Did the survivors urge a guy like Dennis Hopper's Kaufman to become the new city's Czar, bank and CEO, or did he just usurp the power? It doesn't matter. We always look for leaders, and we always get corrupt or corruptible ones. John Leguizamo's Cholo learns that not even doing Kaufman's dirty work is enough to get him approved for membership by the Homeowners' Association. And so the new society looks a lot like the old one.
Of course, in keeping with the gradually evolving model started by Bub in Day, the undead are learning as things go along, and they create their own form of society. Romero's always been so skilled at taking an image and infusing it with both absurdity and significance, and thus we get a zombie band in a gazebo. It's a great moment. It's easy to see where this is headed, though, as any society, even a loosely organized zombie one, has a voice to air grievances and a body to wield a jackhammer.
The zombie horde, as always, ends up intruding on an ongoing fight between the supposedly better people. Here, Romero dips into the stuff of regional civil wars and the War on Terror to play with our sensibilities. Kaufman labels Cholo a terrorist shortly after shooting down his dreams of homeownership and refusing to pay him what he's owed. In response, Cholo steals Dead Reckoning, which can best be described as Hummer's next concept car and which the new not-dead society relies on to pillage the old country (now-overrun) for food, medicine and liquor. Cholo won't return the vehicle until he gets what he's owed. He threatens to destroy the high-rise unless he's made whole. So which is he-- a terrorist or a freedom fighter? A bit of both, I guess. Unmistakably, we get the sense that these societies-- human and zombie-- are just self-defeating crutches wherein we exchange solitude and self-determinism for the illusory promise of safety and a bigger mob to chase out the undesirables. It's enough to make a guy want to head for the prairie. Or Canada.
And so we get the first zombie western (props to Dre for making this parallel). Is it better to live alone or with others? Is it safer-- even under these conditions-- to live alone or with others? These have always been complex questions with assumed answers based on largely-unassailed premises. Find me another film released between Memorial Day and Labor Day that even acknowledges the questions.
Local coverage: Here, here, here, here, and here.
What a blast. I walked into Cafe Euro two weeks ago to meet a friend before a concert. It was filled with happy hour professionals, which is pretty much its clientele all the time, or at least until it changes ownership and theme in six months. Last night I walked into Cafe Euro and directly to my right stood George Romero, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino and Greg Nicotero. Tom Savini showed up right after I did. Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright came in later. Seemingly half of the cast of Day of the Dead was there, and several of the actors from Land of the Dead arrived and mingled with the guests and the people made up like zombies. The bartender who got us a drink appeared to have some sort of skin condition. I was relieved to realize that it was just faint, veiny zombie makeup.
Near the end of the pre-party I made my way over to Romero. He's unmistakable in his choice of eyewear and omnipresent vest, but much taller than I would have guessed. He's being talked at by a guy in his mid-twenties whose body language just reeks of determination and extreme self-unawareness. Standing in the on-deck circle, I see and hear the guy just drilling some monologue about his arcane film knowledge into Romero's personal space. The guy never moves his head, doesn't blink, doesn't stop for air. And then it comes: the business card, the sales pitch, the opportunity to advance his career on Romero's big night. Romero's as polite as possible, takes the guy's card but tells the guy not to expect anything out of it. The guy's undaunted and has backup plans to thwart Romero's polite demurrer. Really, has anyone ever made it big by pestering somebody at a movie premiere? I've always been too introverted for my own good and not sufficiently socially outgoing, but I think I'd still rather be a wallflower than that guy. That's all just to say that by the time Romero was able to break the guy's hypnotic trance, I was happy just to get a handshake and a chance to mumble some thanks. Later, I had a chance to shake Tarantino's hand and exchange a greeting with him inside the theater.
After the film the party continued at another locale. A great time, in all. Still, it has to be the most unique crowd I've been part of in my twelve years in Pittsburgh. Sporting event crowds are pretty homogenous, as are most movie theater crowds. Last night's premiere featured the stars and folks still in the business, of course, but there were also a sizable number of people (they were asked to stand) who had worked on or appeared in former Romero films. It was like a big family reunion. Add to that the standard Patrons of the Arts who show up to all of the big events, decked out in fancy clothes (and maybe, heh heh, in store for their first Romero experience) They're sitting side-by-side with the other contingency, the true believing fans, who range from the "average" movie fan to the more goth-heavy model. And thus you end up with the stepsister of the producer sitting next to me and my companion, both of us sitting one row behind a guy who couldn't be more pierced or tattoed. What a great crowd, and I have to think Romero loved being able to get a crowd that varied together. All they've got in common is admiration for him and his work.
Before the film, a couple of people in the industry stood up and talked about how their passion for film was born through the region's cultural assets-- through WPXI's Chiller Theater and, for the younger professionals, through Romero himself. The night became not only a love letter to Romero, but also a paean to regional filmmaking generally. It's so fitting that Robert Rodriguez flew himself here, since he's managed to modify the Romero model better than anybody else. Sure, Romero's had a much tougher time prying loose studio money than a guy with a distribution deal like Rodriguez, and Romero's usual adherence to shooting on location in Pittsburgh is an interesting contrast to Rodriguez's seeming goal of eliminating locations, but there's a symmetry there that's quite fitting. Both men's careers stand, at least partly, for the proposition that good movies (defined either by artistic or commercial success) can be made outside of the Hollywood protective shell. Of course, Land of the Dead also shows that Romero can make a fantastic film inside the system, too.
II. The film
Yeah, so this is great. Like-- really, really good.
Romero picks up right where he should have picked up after taking twenty years off. The opening credits use bits of sound and image to bring the uninitiated up to speed concerning how things have fallen apart. Then we're back in Romero's world, which is always nightmarish but never static. Things have changed. Societies-- plural-- have reformed along clear lines, some predictable and some unpredictable. The zombie plague is a way of life now, and the survivors have adjusted to it in the same way that societies adjust to irritations like hurricane season or longlasting civil wars. They build a wall.
I'm not going to go into thematic or plot spoilers here for people who haven't seen it (those follow), but Romero had a great concept in mind to continue his series, and the added studio support makes the film clearer and bigger in a positive way while retaining the distinctive voice, humor and vision of his earlier zombie films. If aligning himself with Universal's banner (most touchingly and fittingly, under the retro logo that ran before all of those classic Karloff and Lugosi films) was something of a gamble, he won it. In the process, Romero's dark and comic point of view suddenly has grafted onto it somewhat accomplished actors, much larger sets and locations and a breadth of physical scope that is initially incongruous with the earlier films. As a result, the film is not as intrinsically claustrophobic or confined as the first three, but it works very well because now we're exploring not just the fate of a few, but many. Sure, you put two men in a small room and there's a good chance they'll eventually start some kind of fight, but it happens in a big room, too. And that just means there's more room for the fighting.
The film does so well the things that genre films seem to be getting so wrong these days. The characters are sufficiently complex to be interesting without becoming larger than the film itself. The one-liners are actually funny. The sidekick character is endearing and not at all annoying. A romantic subplot isn't unnecessarily shoehorned in. Really, subtexts and signifiers aside, it's a well-done action picture. Add in the contexts and concerns that are part of any Romero zombie movie and it's something else entirely. Something pretty great.
Curiously, despite the regrets expressed by the filmmakers and the press over the film not shooting in Pittsburgh, Land of the Dead is grounded in the city to a degree far exceeding the prior films. Town names, neighborhood names and street names are incorporated heavily into the script. More significantly, the city's bridges, natural boundaries and distinct topography figure prominently and meaningfully into the plot. Romero's even got a hilarious and recurring in-joke for those of us who have never ceased to wonder why western Pennsylvanians are so innately and fervently mesmerized by fireworks displays (seriously, when the Pirates hold a fireworks night, not only will the stadium be unusually sold out regardless of the quality of the opponent, but people driving by will pull off the highways and ramps, safety be damned, just to watch). The consolation prize to losing the economic and pride infusions of shooting the film in Pittsburgh is that the resulting film is about the city in a significant way that, say, Striking Distance or Desperate Measures isn't.
Of course, it's about everywhere else, too.
But while the film will send home happy the people who want blood and guts (there's a bit with a head-challenged clergyman zombie that will bring down the house) and the small but rabid fanbase, the film retains the larger subtexts of the earlier films and dials them to 2005.
(Spoilers follow)
Things fall apart, but then we put them back together again. The survivors hunker down and build their wall (keeping the undead out and them in). Of course, the next thing they do is create a class society with the chosen few living in their high-rise Paradise. Did the survivors urge a guy like Dennis Hopper's Kaufman to become the new city's Czar, bank and CEO, or did he just usurp the power? It doesn't matter. We always look for leaders, and we always get corrupt or corruptible ones. John Leguizamo's Cholo learns that not even doing Kaufman's dirty work is enough to get him approved for membership by the Homeowners' Association. And so the new society looks a lot like the old one.
Of course, in keeping with the gradually evolving model started by Bub in Day, the undead are learning as things go along, and they create their own form of society. Romero's always been so skilled at taking an image and infusing it with both absurdity and significance, and thus we get a zombie band in a gazebo. It's a great moment. It's easy to see where this is headed, though, as any society, even a loosely organized zombie one, has a voice to air grievances and a body to wield a jackhammer.
The zombie horde, as always, ends up intruding on an ongoing fight between the supposedly better people. Here, Romero dips into the stuff of regional civil wars and the War on Terror to play with our sensibilities. Kaufman labels Cholo a terrorist shortly after shooting down his dreams of homeownership and refusing to pay him what he's owed. In response, Cholo steals Dead Reckoning, which can best be described as Hummer's next concept car and which the new not-dead society relies on to pillage the old country (now-overrun) for food, medicine and liquor. Cholo won't return the vehicle until he gets what he's owed. He threatens to destroy the high-rise unless he's made whole. So which is he-- a terrorist or a freedom fighter? A bit of both, I guess. Unmistakably, we get the sense that these societies-- human and zombie-- are just self-defeating crutches wherein we exchange solitude and self-determinism for the illusory promise of safety and a bigger mob to chase out the undesirables. It's enough to make a guy want to head for the prairie. Or Canada.
And so we get the first zombie western (props to Dre for making this parallel). Is it better to live alone or with others? Is it safer-- even under these conditions-- to live alone or with others? These have always been complex questions with assumed answers based on largely-unassailed premises. Find me another film released between Memorial Day and Labor Day that even acknowledges the questions.
Local coverage: Here, here, here, here, and here.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
My Wednesday Plans
Tomorrow night I'll be here, catching the show and the pre- and post-festivities. I can't tell you how juiced I am.
I just rewatched Day of the Dead and, while I think it has some obvious charms, it's still clearly the lesser of the three films for me. More complete remarks are in a draft post I hope to finish tonight. The other draft post concerns Rosetta, but that probably won't come tonight. I wrote a couple of pages after seeing the Batman movie to try to work through why it left me so unmoved, and I'd like to put them up later tonight as well.
It's funny, though, and I've spent a little time over the past week wondering about why I've given up on comic book movies generally while clinging to Romero's oevre. One of my first thoughts after emerging from the theater last week was that the odds are heavily stacked against me liking War of the Worlds. Based on where I felt my mind drifting during Batman, I think that I'm getting to the point where When the Fate...of the World...Hangs in the Balance...I am just bored out of my skull. I couldn't have felt less invested in the saving of Gotham City. I seem to have liked Revenge of the Sith more than most of my correspondents, and perhaps that's because there's the plausible possibility of the hero's failure (which becomes, of course, reality). Katie Holmes deciding she can't be part of any relationship that involves a person wearing masks is not a credible stand-in for dramatic tension or heroic failure, no matter how bright the Irony-Signal shines in the moonlit night sky.
This is the summer where thirtysomething man-boys wax rhapsodically about how much wookiees meant to them during those formative years. All right, I'll play. My parents split up right around Easter of 1983. I was finishing sixth grade. Return of the Jedi came out that summer and I was all over it. I saw it three times in the theater. In contrast to that space fantasy holdover from my preteen years, my family life paradigm was shifted and reinvented every month or so. Plus, that fall I started seventh grade at the junior high, which threw the 75 or so of us from my elementary school in with unfamiliar kids from four or five other feeder elementary schools. Everything was possible. For a kid like me, it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to move away from the robots and spaceships dork that I'd cheerfully embodied. When I met a new friend with a worldly high school brother who perpetually wore those cheap concert t-shirts with the black body and white three-quarter sleeves, it was a chance to hear a lot of new music and to get a VHS dub of Romero's Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead.
Sure, to my thirteen year-old eyes, the attraction was largely the thrill of holding something generally-forbidden or antisocial. Gorewise, I'd never seen anything like it. The stories were compelling, maybe less so than that of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but substantially moreso than the other ripoff films that followed in the wake of Star Wars and Raiders. For my friends and I, the dystopia of Romero's films made us put ourselves in his characters' places in a way that few, if any, other films had managed to do. Sure, at the beginning, it was the same sort of quasi-Red Dawn survivalist hokum that kids would be spinning a year down the road. Where would you hide? Where would you get weapons? Who would you save? But it always went further than that with Romero's films for us because the films steadfastly refuse to rest on the us/them distinctions that let kids think they can be a Wolverine and rule the hills if they get some guns and cheerios. I couldn't have articulated it then, certainly, but Romero's zombie films have always been all about destroying the Other that fuels both horror movies and real-life genocides. We're all just a bite away from being the Other.
I'll now invoke that cliche about movies that grow with you. Imagine the montage: me watching the films at 13, mulleted and talking with my pals about the safest place to go. Then me watching the films at 18, getting the subtexts a little better. In my twenties I watch them more infrequently, preferring cleaner escapist fun for the first few years and misplacing that old VHS dub during a move. And then my late twenties/thirties, when DVD makes fantastic versions of these films cheap and widely-available and I'm impressed by how much is in there behind the blood.
Apart from the Romero movies, I never got into gore. I can't tell any of the Friday the 13th movies apart. Apart from his recut of Dawn, I've never seen an Argento film. Still, I count Romero's films as among the most meaningful to me because they're so clearly more than genre films, and I'd rank his first two Dead films in the top ten American horror films, in the same rarefied air as Bride of Frankenstein, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Freaks, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Rosemary's Baby.
Both Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead open with the female leads waking from nightmares. It's not just lazy repetition. What they're dreaming of is a doomsday that has come true, and the innocent desire to wake up and discover that it was all the mind's trickery is all the hope that remains. Can I tell you that I've never dreamed of flying in an X-Wing or fighting a lightsaber battle? Sure, that Joseph Campbell hero's journey bullshit might run rampant through our myth patterns, but it never ran freely through my subconscious. Nor have I ever literally dreamed that I was a superhero. But over the last twenty years, I've dreamed at least ten times that I was in Romero's broken world where there's no more room in hell. Man, waking up from that dream is something else. It runs deep. And tomorrow night I'll probably get the chance to shake his hand and tell him thanks.
I just rewatched Day of the Dead and, while I think it has some obvious charms, it's still clearly the lesser of the three films for me. More complete remarks are in a draft post I hope to finish tonight. The other draft post concerns Rosetta, but that probably won't come tonight. I wrote a couple of pages after seeing the Batman movie to try to work through why it left me so unmoved, and I'd like to put them up later tonight as well.
It's funny, though, and I've spent a little time over the past week wondering about why I've given up on comic book movies generally while clinging to Romero's oevre. One of my first thoughts after emerging from the theater last week was that the odds are heavily stacked against me liking War of the Worlds. Based on where I felt my mind drifting during Batman, I think that I'm getting to the point where When the Fate...of the World...Hangs in the Balance...I am just bored out of my skull. I couldn't have felt less invested in the saving of Gotham City. I seem to have liked Revenge of the Sith more than most of my correspondents, and perhaps that's because there's the plausible possibility of the hero's failure (which becomes, of course, reality). Katie Holmes deciding she can't be part of any relationship that involves a person wearing masks is not a credible stand-in for dramatic tension or heroic failure, no matter how bright the Irony-Signal shines in the moonlit night sky.
This is the summer where thirtysomething man-boys wax rhapsodically about how much wookiees meant to them during those formative years. All right, I'll play. My parents split up right around Easter of 1983. I was finishing sixth grade. Return of the Jedi came out that summer and I was all over it. I saw it three times in the theater. In contrast to that space fantasy holdover from my preteen years, my family life paradigm was shifted and reinvented every month or so. Plus, that fall I started seventh grade at the junior high, which threw the 75 or so of us from my elementary school in with unfamiliar kids from four or five other feeder elementary schools. Everything was possible. For a kid like me, it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to move away from the robots and spaceships dork that I'd cheerfully embodied. When I met a new friend with a worldly high school brother who perpetually wore those cheap concert t-shirts with the black body and white three-quarter sleeves, it was a chance to hear a lot of new music and to get a VHS dub of Romero's Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead.
Sure, to my thirteen year-old eyes, the attraction was largely the thrill of holding something generally-forbidden or antisocial. Gorewise, I'd never seen anything like it. The stories were compelling, maybe less so than that of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but substantially moreso than the other ripoff films that followed in the wake of Star Wars and Raiders. For my friends and I, the dystopia of Romero's films made us put ourselves in his characters' places in a way that few, if any, other films had managed to do. Sure, at the beginning, it was the same sort of quasi-Red Dawn survivalist hokum that kids would be spinning a year down the road. Where would you hide? Where would you get weapons? Who would you save? But it always went further than that with Romero's films for us because the films steadfastly refuse to rest on the us/them distinctions that let kids think they can be a Wolverine and rule the hills if they get some guns and cheerios. I couldn't have articulated it then, certainly, but Romero's zombie films have always been all about destroying the Other that fuels both horror movies and real-life genocides. We're all just a bite away from being the Other.
I'll now invoke that cliche about movies that grow with you. Imagine the montage: me watching the films at 13, mulleted and talking with my pals about the safest place to go. Then me watching the films at 18, getting the subtexts a little better. In my twenties I watch them more infrequently, preferring cleaner escapist fun for the first few years and misplacing that old VHS dub during a move. And then my late twenties/thirties, when DVD makes fantastic versions of these films cheap and widely-available and I'm impressed by how much is in there behind the blood.
Apart from the Romero movies, I never got into gore. I can't tell any of the Friday the 13th movies apart. Apart from his recut of Dawn, I've never seen an Argento film. Still, I count Romero's films as among the most meaningful to me because they're so clearly more than genre films, and I'd rank his first two Dead films in the top ten American horror films, in the same rarefied air as Bride of Frankenstein, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Freaks, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Rosemary's Baby.
Both Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead open with the female leads waking from nightmares. It's not just lazy repetition. What they're dreaming of is a doomsday that has come true, and the innocent desire to wake up and discover that it was all the mind's trickery is all the hope that remains. Can I tell you that I've never dreamed of flying in an X-Wing or fighting a lightsaber battle? Sure, that Joseph Campbell hero's journey bullshit might run rampant through our myth patterns, but it never ran freely through my subconscious. Nor have I ever literally dreamed that I was a superhero. But over the last twenty years, I've dreamed at least ten times that I was in Romero's broken world where there's no more room in hell. Man, waking up from that dream is something else. It runs deep. And tomorrow night I'll probably get the chance to shake his hand and tell him thanks.
Monday, June 20, 2005
Wow, fun
We got home last night from the beach after having a fantastic time. We spent the week at Emerald Isle, NC with the Ottermans and their three kids, whose ages mesh perfectly with our own daughters. The key to our success, I think, had a lot to do with our adherence to this demanding schedule:
Sunday: played on beach & swam in ocean
Monday: played on beach & swam in ocean
Tuesday: played on beach & swam in ocean
Wednesday: played on beach & swam in ocean
Thursday: played on beach & swam in ocean
Friday: played on beach & swam in ocean
Saturday: played on beach & swam in ocean
Some other summative and notable facts:
Collective hours spent waist-deep in the Atlantic Ocean: 7
Pages read: 100 (I would have liked this to be higher, clearly)
Hours spent writing: 2 (ditto)
Adults (out of 4) who suffered sunburn: 2
Kids (out of 6) who suffered sunburn: 0
Movies seen theatrically: 1 (Batman Begins {sigh, we once had such high hopes for Nolan})
Meals of alive-earlier-that-day fish and crustaceans: 2
Beverages consumed: approx. 86 units of beer, 2 bottles of wine, 15 pitchers of Margaritas
Husbands v. wives Pictionary standings: 0 W, 4 L (a source of continual humiliation)
Sunday: played on beach & swam in ocean
Monday: played on beach & swam in ocean
Tuesday: played on beach & swam in ocean
Wednesday: played on beach & swam in ocean
Thursday: played on beach & swam in ocean
Friday: played on beach & swam in ocean
Saturday: played on beach & swam in ocean
Some other summative and notable facts:
Collective hours spent waist-deep in the Atlantic Ocean: 7
Pages read: 100 (I would have liked this to be higher, clearly)
Hours spent writing: 2 (ditto)
Adults (out of 4) who suffered sunburn: 2
Kids (out of 6) who suffered sunburn: 0
Movies seen theatrically: 1 (Batman Begins {sigh, we once had such high hopes for Nolan})
Meals of alive-earlier-that-day fish and crustaceans: 2
Beverages consumed: approx. 86 units of beer, 2 bottles of wine, 15 pitchers of Margaritas
Husbands v. wives Pictionary standings: 0 W, 4 L (a source of continual humiliation)
Friday, June 10, 2005
Penguins to be owned by man named Boots
I didn't mean for this blog to become so sports-heavy, but I've got to nod at this news, which came out of nowhere a day or two after it was reported simply that the team had attracted some attention from west coast investors.
Observation #1: This is what I love about the Penguins. There's been no professional hockey in North America for nearly a full calendar year. Other than reports on the ongoing CBA negotiations, there's been no hockey news of substance for a year apart from some planned tweaks to goalie equipment and puck-playing. Despite that, the Penguins manage to make news regarding their ownership/financial situation. It just can't be beat. This is the team that's been twice-bankrupt, many-ownered and under constant financial stress. You'd think that removing all operating expenses from the team would allow them to stay out of the papers and away from speculation concerning their capital health. Uh, no.
Observation #2: Like the proverbial refrigerator-eskimo transaction, you kind of wonder how you go about selling a team that's pretty much unable to play. Maybe the time's right because things will soon be settled and costs will be fixed, and maybe the team's sufficiently undervalued now because (a) they just emerged from bankruptcy and (b) the greatest-hockey-player-ever-to-live/owner is getting too old for this shit.
Observation #3: When the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and Allegheny County were passing out new stadiums in the late nineties, the team's then-owner instead settled for some cheap upgrades to the current building in an effort to keep his debt leveraged just a little while longer. The team pins its survival in Pittsburgh on a new arena, and pins arena financing on the receipt of one of the forthcoming slots licenses for the Civic Arena. Shouldn't the team be a lock to get a slots license if they're owned by a guy whose name ends in "o"?
Observation #1: This is what I love about the Penguins. There's been no professional hockey in North America for nearly a full calendar year. Other than reports on the ongoing CBA negotiations, there's been no hockey news of substance for a year apart from some planned tweaks to goalie equipment and puck-playing. Despite that, the Penguins manage to make news regarding their ownership/financial situation. It just can't be beat. This is the team that's been twice-bankrupt, many-ownered and under constant financial stress. You'd think that removing all operating expenses from the team would allow them to stay out of the papers and away from speculation concerning their capital health. Uh, no.
Observation #2: Like the proverbial refrigerator-eskimo transaction, you kind of wonder how you go about selling a team that's pretty much unable to play. Maybe the time's right because things will soon be settled and costs will be fixed, and maybe the team's sufficiently undervalued now because (a) they just emerged from bankruptcy and (b) the greatest-hockey-player-ever-to-live/owner is getting too old for this shit.
Observation #3: When the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and Allegheny County were passing out new stadiums in the late nineties, the team's then-owner instead settled for some cheap upgrades to the current building in an effort to keep his debt leveraged just a little while longer. The team pins its survival in Pittsburgh on a new arena, and pins arena financing on the receipt of one of the forthcoming slots licenses for the Civic Arena. Shouldn't the team be a lock to get a slots license if they're owned by a guy whose name ends in "o"?
If all the year were playing holidays...
Went to see the Pixies last night with my friend Chris and his friends, Chris and Chris. Saw Tara also and had a great time catching up. A good time was had by all, though they should have played longer than one hour.
We're leaving tomorrow at lunchtime for the beach, and won't return until the 19th. I can't imagine (1) finding or (2) seeking too tenaciously internets access. It's too bad, really, because I watched Rosetta again two nights ago and have some comments sketched out, but haven't made the time to put them into something postable. In short, big thanks to Jeremy and Doug for encouraging me to quit putting off seeing it. I wouldn't have thought the bros. Dardenne would be able to blow me away again like I'd never seen one of their films before. Well, as Fonzie says, I was wruu-uuu. Wruuu-uuu.
We're leaving tomorrow at lunchtime for the beach, and won't return until the 19th. I can't imagine (1) finding or (2) seeking too tenaciously internets access. It's too bad, really, because I watched Rosetta again two nights ago and have some comments sketched out, but haven't made the time to put them into something postable. In short, big thanks to Jeremy and Doug for encouraging me to quit putting off seeing it. I wouldn't have thought the bros. Dardenne would be able to blow me away again like I'd never seen one of their films before. Well, as Fonzie says, I was wruu-uuu. Wruuu-uuu.
Tuesday, June 7, 2005
Bonhoeffer and the Rotting Undead
Extracurricularly speaking, I'm working on two things right now with a deadline around June 22 to finish them.
Chronologically first, in anticipation of the June 24 release of Land of the Dead, I'm revisiting Romero's three zombie films and will be posting about what I think they mean, or at least what they've meant to me. I'm really unsure whether the new film will be driven by the sort of thoughtful, pointed and, well, human touches that make the other films rise far above the splatter. Romero's maverick enough not to just give in to any studio dictates to make a bland shock flick , but it's been a while since he's has studio funding to this degree, and the tone of last year's Dawn remake gives us some insight into the sort of vision Universal might have for this film. And how many times can you go back to the Rio Bravo well and come back with something fresh? Still, I'm holding out cautious optimism.
Chronologically second, I'm still up in the air schedulewise as to whether I'll be able to attend Flickerings, the film portion of Cornerstone, which falls on the last day of June and the first few days of July. They've got a fantastic film and seminar lineup this year, and I'd hate to miss it. I caught Flickerings for the first time last year and had an unforgettable time. Flickerings is exactly the sort of thing I like to see pushed on me and the rest of the church. It's been on my mind for a while that one reason people aren't living examined lives and the church isn't as effective as it could and should be is because we're too lazy or afraid to use the highest and best art to inspire us and help us work through the messier problems of being human. Simplistic and artless entertainments don't do a lot, ultimately, to hold up a mirror to nature. Flickerings is a deliberate step toward taking the best film art available and fusing it with the enthusiasm and endless possibilities that come (should come) with a life battered by the three-personed God. It's an effort toward going back to the point a couple of hundred years ago when the American church decided art was a hinderance or, worse, a luxury, and throwing the blinders off.
I'm writing some intro material for the screening of Doblmeier's film on Dietrich Bonhoeffer and watching his film and two other Bonhoeffer films and reading some things to prepare. Bonhoeffer is such a fascinating and integral figure, and just when the act of meaningful sacrificial death seems to have become culturally worn out through overuse and empty repetition, a Bonhoeffer or a Balthazar comes along to strip off all the accumulated baggage and present the terrible and awesome thing as it is.
Chronologically first, in anticipation of the June 24 release of Land of the Dead, I'm revisiting Romero's three zombie films and will be posting about what I think they mean, or at least what they've meant to me. I'm really unsure whether the new film will be driven by the sort of thoughtful, pointed and, well, human touches that make the other films rise far above the splatter. Romero's maverick enough not to just give in to any studio dictates to make a bland shock flick , but it's been a while since he's has studio funding to this degree, and the tone of last year's Dawn remake gives us some insight into the sort of vision Universal might have for this film. And how many times can you go back to the Rio Bravo well and come back with something fresh? Still, I'm holding out cautious optimism.
Chronologically second, I'm still up in the air schedulewise as to whether I'll be able to attend Flickerings, the film portion of Cornerstone, which falls on the last day of June and the first few days of July. They've got a fantastic film and seminar lineup this year, and I'd hate to miss it. I caught Flickerings for the first time last year and had an unforgettable time. Flickerings is exactly the sort of thing I like to see pushed on me and the rest of the church. It's been on my mind for a while that one reason people aren't living examined lives and the church isn't as effective as it could and should be is because we're too lazy or afraid to use the highest and best art to inspire us and help us work through the messier problems of being human. Simplistic and artless entertainments don't do a lot, ultimately, to hold up a mirror to nature. Flickerings is a deliberate step toward taking the best film art available and fusing it with the enthusiasm and endless possibilities that come (should come) with a life battered by the three-personed God. It's an effort toward going back to the point a couple of hundred years ago when the American church decided art was a hinderance or, worse, a luxury, and throwing the blinders off.
I'm writing some intro material for the screening of Doblmeier's film on Dietrich Bonhoeffer and watching his film and two other Bonhoeffer films and reading some things to prepare. Bonhoeffer is such a fascinating and integral figure, and just when the act of meaningful sacrificial death seems to have become culturally worn out through overuse and empty repetition, a Bonhoeffer or a Balthazar comes along to strip off all the accumulated baggage and present the terrible and awesome thing as it is.
Monday, June 6, 2005
MAGNEAT-O!
ALTERNATE TITLE: RIBBON CANDY
There's no way to say it but to say it: while driving, every time I find myself following or passing a car with a magnetic ribbon or ribbons adorning its metal end, I'm struck by an odd combination of emotions-- a wave of mild derision directed at the other vehicle's driver coupled with a shot of loathing directed at myself. I'll explain.
For eight years I generally commuted to and from the office via the 68B, and on most days I'd spend a ride one or both ways talking with friends I'd met largely as a result of those bus rides. Tara and I met several years ago and discovered that we had a lot of the same interests-- film, pop culture and nostalgia for the things of our youth. She's hilarious, too. She works in marketing.
Talking on the bus one day, we realized that we had approximately the same amount of contempt for the magnetic ribbon fad. It's not primarily a politically-motivated matter (though there was some of that, in varying degrees, for each of us) as much as it was rhetorically-motivated. What sort of statement is made about something by attaching something to your car? Nothing coherent or useful. A bumper sticker, at least, has some semblance of a message through words and phrases. A bumper sticker's the Declaration of Independence in comparison to a magnetic ribbon. With its pretty color and refined script and its membership in the Signa Phi Nothing fraternity, ribbons are anathema to any semblance of discourse, and in an age when commentators across the ideological spectrum lament our national ability to say well-reasoned things about the world at large, the last thing we need is the reduction of something so complex to such trite terms.
I don't know exactly when the magnet ribbon craze blew up-- last fall, maybe, or the end of last summer-- but it couldn't possibly have followed a more absurd path to ubiquity. The original yellow magnetic ribbons, with their ties to the yellow ribbons of the '90-'91 Gulf War and hearkening back to the practice and song popularized during World War II, at least had some preceding reference point-- as ribbons. Over the course of the succeeding months to the present day, I've seen the yellow, camouflage and red, white and blue ones devoted to the military and war effort, black ones devoted to POW/MIA, pink ones for breast cancer, purple ones for Down's Syndrome, dalmation-spotted ones for spay/neuter. Uterine cancer. Child abuse. Cystic Fibrosis. Illiteracy. Several I've forgotten and should have written down.
Every malady's got a ribbon, and every ribbon's got a malady.
With so many deserving things to support and memorialize, how can any one person or any one car adequately address them all? Clearly, if you're going to show your sympathy for a significant number of these causes and diseases, you'll need a large automotive ass to display all that solidarity. It is likely that nothing less than a sport utility vehicle will suffice, 'cause Blazer got back.
Magnetic ribbons took a final surreal step locally when an entrepreneur figured out that the yellow of the ribbons was a rough match with the yellow that the Steelers and Pirates wear. A simple change to the artwork to make one of the ribbon ends black and the addition of generic "GO PITTSBURGH" script transformed what was a solemn, yet cheesy reminder of the war effort into a solemn, yet cheesy reminder that we'd like to win that fifth Super Bowl. You won't be surprised to hear that version sold like hotcakes. Maybe that was a clue that any effort to counterpunch the magnetic ribbon message would have fallen short. When we've reached a point where we openly use the same rhetorical devices and precise symbolic language for military support and sports team support, what chance is there of mockery actually getting through?
Still, and while I realize that I'm breaking no new ground in criticizing jingo kitsch (Aside: I have to say I really wasn't satisfied with the death given to Jingo Kitsch in that Star Wars movie. Or am I thinking of Kitsch Jingo?), back in midwinter Tara and I were pretty surprised there hadn't been a more widespread mocking response to ribbon fever. Particularly in light of the proliferation of responses to various bumper sticker and car ornament fads, and the ridiculous cheapness of producing these things, there really should have been an available option for magnetimockery. One doubtlessly cold January day, Tara and I were sitting on the bus, wondering aloud why this was the case. After a pause, one of us turned to the other. I don't remember which of us it was, and I don't know whether a comic book illustrator would have depicted the moment as *light bulb illuminates above head* or *dollar signs where eyes should be*. What I do recall is that over the course of a bus ride, a lunch and a couple of dozen e-mails exchanged, we mapped out a pretty great path toward starting an ironic magentic ribbon business.
Tara's the design and marketing whiz, of course, and she quickly gleaned what sort of startup costs we'd encounter to buy the art software and get them printed. She looked into the e-commerce angle and the website setup. We brainstormed some design concepts. We had two fantastic business names (see top of post). We were pretty fond of one ribbon that might be multi-colored and announce, comprehensively, "I REMEMBER EVERYTHING." Would that be read ironically, or would some ribbon people unwittingly see it as an opportunity to show broad sympathy? Another design would look suspiciously like the genuine article, but upon closer reading, it would say "BUY A CLUE, NOT A RIBBON." Other versions might read "THIS MAGNET SHOWS I CARE" or "UNITE EVERYTHING" or "HERE'S MY EXCUSE TO NOT DO ANYTHING." They practically write themselves.
My part of the startup labor was to come up with a business plan and to think about ways to market them. Then we'd refine our designs, tighten up the text and crank them out. But then I had this important arbitration that tied me up the latter half of January and early February. (Or so I told myself) And then right after that I had to start packing so that we'd be ready for our late-February move. (Or so I told myself) Days and weeks pass and then we moved, which meant no more incidental commuting with Tara, and it became that much easier to procrastinate. It takes several weeks to unpack and get remotely settled-in. (Or so I told myself) Then you realize that it's April and some things have a definite sell-by date, ironic magnetic ribbons being one of them. And maybe we never would have had the time to do it right with our day jobs, and maybe it's for the best that we didn't spend a couple of thousand dollars on this just to get stuck with boxes full of magnets. But, man, wouldn't I like to know whether it would have worked? Wouldn't I love to see the What-If Issue devoted to that fledgling business?
So when a month or so ago I pulled behind a hipster's car and saw a series of puke-colored magnetic ribbons proclaiming, e.g., that he "SUPPORT(S) ROCK AND ROLL" and he "SUPPORT(S) PARTYING," among other things, all I could do was seethe.
When I started this thing, my friend Seema asked whether I really considered myself to be a wastrel. No, not really. Maybe sometimes. Like now. Sorry, Tara.
There's no way to say it but to say it: while driving, every time I find myself following or passing a car with a magnetic ribbon or ribbons adorning its metal end, I'm struck by an odd combination of emotions-- a wave of mild derision directed at the other vehicle's driver coupled with a shot of loathing directed at myself. I'll explain.
For eight years I generally commuted to and from the office via the 68B, and on most days I'd spend a ride one or both ways talking with friends I'd met largely as a result of those bus rides. Tara and I met several years ago and discovered that we had a lot of the same interests-- film, pop culture and nostalgia for the things of our youth. She's hilarious, too. She works in marketing.
Talking on the bus one day, we realized that we had approximately the same amount of contempt for the magnetic ribbon fad. It's not primarily a politically-motivated matter (though there was some of that, in varying degrees, for each of us) as much as it was rhetorically-motivated. What sort of statement is made about something by attaching something to your car? Nothing coherent or useful. A bumper sticker, at least, has some semblance of a message through words and phrases. A bumper sticker's the Declaration of Independence in comparison to a magnetic ribbon. With its pretty color and refined script and its membership in the Signa Phi Nothing fraternity, ribbons are anathema to any semblance of discourse, and in an age when commentators across the ideological spectrum lament our national ability to say well-reasoned things about the world at large, the last thing we need is the reduction of something so complex to such trite terms.
I don't know exactly when the magnet ribbon craze blew up-- last fall, maybe, or the end of last summer-- but it couldn't possibly have followed a more absurd path to ubiquity. The original yellow magnetic ribbons, with their ties to the yellow ribbons of the '90-'91 Gulf War and hearkening back to the practice and song popularized during World War II, at least had some preceding reference point-- as ribbons. Over the course of the succeeding months to the present day, I've seen the yellow, camouflage and red, white and blue ones devoted to the military and war effort, black ones devoted to POW/MIA, pink ones for breast cancer, purple ones for Down's Syndrome, dalmation-spotted ones for spay/neuter. Uterine cancer. Child abuse. Cystic Fibrosis. Illiteracy. Several I've forgotten and should have written down.
Every malady's got a ribbon, and every ribbon's got a malady.
With so many deserving things to support and memorialize, how can any one person or any one car adequately address them all? Clearly, if you're going to show your sympathy for a significant number of these causes and diseases, you'll need a large automotive ass to display all that solidarity. It is likely that nothing less than a sport utility vehicle will suffice, 'cause Blazer got back.
Magnetic ribbons took a final surreal step locally when an entrepreneur figured out that the yellow of the ribbons was a rough match with the yellow that the Steelers and Pirates wear. A simple change to the artwork to make one of the ribbon ends black and the addition of generic "GO PITTSBURGH" script transformed what was a solemn, yet cheesy reminder of the war effort into a solemn, yet cheesy reminder that we'd like to win that fifth Super Bowl. You won't be surprised to hear that version sold like hotcakes. Maybe that was a clue that any effort to counterpunch the magnetic ribbon message would have fallen short. When we've reached a point where we openly use the same rhetorical devices and precise symbolic language for military support and sports team support, what chance is there of mockery actually getting through?
Still, and while I realize that I'm breaking no new ground in criticizing jingo kitsch (Aside: I have to say I really wasn't satisfied with the death given to Jingo Kitsch in that Star Wars movie. Or am I thinking of Kitsch Jingo?), back in midwinter Tara and I were pretty surprised there hadn't been a more widespread mocking response to ribbon fever. Particularly in light of the proliferation of responses to various bumper sticker and car ornament fads, and the ridiculous cheapness of producing these things, there really should have been an available option for magnetimockery. One doubtlessly cold January day, Tara and I were sitting on the bus, wondering aloud why this was the case. After a pause, one of us turned to the other. I don't remember which of us it was, and I don't know whether a comic book illustrator would have depicted the moment as *light bulb illuminates above head* or *dollar signs where eyes should be*. What I do recall is that over the course of a bus ride, a lunch and a couple of dozen e-mails exchanged, we mapped out a pretty great path toward starting an ironic magentic ribbon business.
Tara's the design and marketing whiz, of course, and she quickly gleaned what sort of startup costs we'd encounter to buy the art software and get them printed. She looked into the e-commerce angle and the website setup. We brainstormed some design concepts. We had two fantastic business names (see top of post). We were pretty fond of one ribbon that might be multi-colored and announce, comprehensively, "I REMEMBER EVERYTHING." Would that be read ironically, or would some ribbon people unwittingly see it as an opportunity to show broad sympathy? Another design would look suspiciously like the genuine article, but upon closer reading, it would say "BUY A CLUE, NOT A RIBBON." Other versions might read "THIS MAGNET SHOWS I CARE" or "UNITE EVERYTHING" or "HERE'S MY EXCUSE TO NOT DO ANYTHING." They practically write themselves.
My part of the startup labor was to come up with a business plan and to think about ways to market them. Then we'd refine our designs, tighten up the text and crank them out. But then I had this important arbitration that tied me up the latter half of January and early February. (Or so I told myself) And then right after that I had to start packing so that we'd be ready for our late-February move. (Or so I told myself) Days and weeks pass and then we moved, which meant no more incidental commuting with Tara, and it became that much easier to procrastinate. It takes several weeks to unpack and get remotely settled-in. (Or so I told myself) Then you realize that it's April and some things have a definite sell-by date, ironic magnetic ribbons being one of them. And maybe we never would have had the time to do it right with our day jobs, and maybe it's for the best that we didn't spend a couple of thousand dollars on this just to get stuck with boxes full of magnets. But, man, wouldn't I like to know whether it would have worked? Wouldn't I love to see the What-If Issue devoted to that fledgling business?
So when a month or so ago I pulled behind a hipster's car and saw a series of puke-colored magnetic ribbons proclaiming, e.g., that he "SUPPORT(S) ROCK AND ROLL" and he "SUPPORT(S) PARTYING," among other things, all I could do was seethe.
When I started this thing, my friend Seema asked whether I really considered myself to be a wastrel. No, not really. Maybe sometimes. Like now. Sorry, Tara.
The Inner Beavis Continues Unabated
My friend and I took our daughters to the Pirate game Saturday night and watched the home team waste eight shutout innings from Mark Redman by stranding an absurd number of baserunners. And why would there be so many Braves fans trekking to Pittsburgh for an early June game, unless Braves Nation is especially strong in West Virginia, which would. Explain. So. Much. Still, the sting of the 1-0 loss was ameliorated by the fits of involuntary giggles induced by learning who wore the number #17 for the Pirates back in 1938. Yeah, I'm a mature guy.
A mature guy who contemplates contacting Mitchell & Ness to see what it runs to personalize some 1938 flannel.
A mature guy who contemplates contacting Mitchell & Ness to see what it runs to personalize some 1938 flannel.
Wednesday, June 1, 2005
May, 2005 by the numbers
Not a terribly viewing-prolific month.
Movies seen and dates:
5/31 The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou
5/28 Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
5/26 Gilmore Girls 3.10, 3.11, 3.12
5/25 Gilmore Girls 3.9
5/24 Rosetta
5/22 Gilmore Girls 3.7, 3.8
5/21 Gilmore Girls 3.5, 3.6
5/19 Gilmore Girls 3.4
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
5/18 Wild at Heart
5/12 Gilmore Girls 3.3
5/11 Gilmore Girls 3.2
5/10 Gilmore Girls 3.1
5/9 Primer
5/7 Uzak (Distant)
5/6 The Birds
5/4 Fanny & Alexander (television version) Part 3 and 4
5/3 Fanny & Alexander (television version) Part 2
5/2 Fanny & Alexander (television version) Part 1
Movies seen and dates:
5/31 The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou
5/28 Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
5/26 Gilmore Girls 3.10, 3.11, 3.12
5/25 Gilmore Girls 3.9
5/24 Rosetta
5/22 Gilmore Girls 3.7, 3.8
5/21 Gilmore Girls 3.5, 3.6
5/19 Gilmore Girls 3.4
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
5/18 Wild at Heart
5/12 Gilmore Girls 3.3
5/11 Gilmore Girls 3.2
5/10 Gilmore Girls 3.1
5/9 Primer
5/7 Uzak (Distant)
5/6 The Birds
5/4 Fanny & Alexander (television version) Part 3 and 4
5/3 Fanny & Alexander (television version) Part 2
5/2 Fanny & Alexander (television version) Part 1
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
The Act 72 Countdown
WARNING: INSIPID WONKTACULAR PENNSYLVANIA POLICY DISCUSSION FOLLOWS
A great thing about my legal experience to date has been the opportunity to work with school districts and educators. Education is something I've been interested in for a while, and it's fascinating to see how the social ideal of an educated populace plays out as political turf at every level. I'd like to do some extended writing about ideas and issues with relevance to education generally and No Child Left Behind specifically. Timeliness, though, compels me to write now (or never) about the fate of Pennsylvania's Act 72. Obviously, anything I say here is mine alone, and not the opinion of my firm or any of our school district clients.
It's not often there's a political issue at the Commonwealth level that's this fascinating as a scrum between divided interests and actual ideas. This one's got it all.
In the early morning hours of an evening last summer a bill introduced on the state legislative floor having nothing to do with either slots casinos or school district funding morphed into one that deals with both. Act 72 has nuances that will be discussed later, but the short version is that it asks school districts to decide whether they want a piece of the slot machine pie to reduce property taxes. If they say no now, they say no forever. If they say yes, an average of $322 annually of property tax relief may fall to each homeowner. The catch, though, is that to opt in, a district has to agree to levy an additional .1% personal income tax/EIT, and the district must agree to submit any future budgetary tax increases exceeding the COLA increase to public referendum. What say ye, Dr. Faustus?
The current standings show that out of 501 total school districts, we've got 318 opting out of the slots money and 96 opting in to the slots money. (That's shorthand, of course. The opt-decision is about a good bit more than just slots money.) I've been projecting the numbers the last few days, and am consistently coming up with 380 to 384 eventual "no" votes. That might be an understatement, though, because I'm assuming a constant stream of no-to-yes, when reality is that some will take Geddy Lee's option and choose not to decide, thereby making a choice (read: no). What I'm wondering is: what's the magic number that makes it politically untenable to cram it down the districts' throats? Will 375 out of 501 declining do it? Would 400, or 80%, do it? Or is there no number that would dissuade a determined man and his army of (one-armed) bandits?
Thus far, 77% of Pennsylvania's school districts have decided to play Moe Green to Ed Rendell's Michael. Stay tuned to see whether by midsummer there's pinkish blood flowing freely from their eyes.
UPDATE: Final tally was 111 districts opting in, 387 opting out. Just shy of 80%.
A great thing about my legal experience to date has been the opportunity to work with school districts and educators. Education is something I've been interested in for a while, and it's fascinating to see how the social ideal of an educated populace plays out as political turf at every level. I'd like to do some extended writing about ideas and issues with relevance to education generally and No Child Left Behind specifically. Timeliness, though, compels me to write now (or never) about the fate of Pennsylvania's Act 72. Obviously, anything I say here is mine alone, and not the opinion of my firm or any of our school district clients.
It's not often there's a political issue at the Commonwealth level that's this fascinating as a scrum between divided interests and actual ideas. This one's got it all.
In the early morning hours of an evening last summer a bill introduced on the state legislative floor having nothing to do with either slots casinos or school district funding morphed into one that deals with both. Act 72 has nuances that will be discussed later, but the short version is that it asks school districts to decide whether they want a piece of the slot machine pie to reduce property taxes. If they say no now, they say no forever. If they say yes, an average of $322 annually of property tax relief may fall to each homeowner. The catch, though, is that to opt in, a district has to agree to levy an additional .1% personal income tax/EIT, and the district must agree to submit any future budgetary tax increases exceeding the COLA increase to public referendum. What say ye, Dr. Faustus?
The current standings show that out of 501 total school districts, we've got 318 opting out of the slots money and 96 opting in to the slots money. (That's shorthand, of course. The opt-decision is about a good bit more than just slots money.) I've been projecting the numbers the last few days, and am consistently coming up with 380 to 384 eventual "no" votes. That might be an understatement, though, because I'm assuming a constant stream of no-to-yes, when reality is that some will take Geddy Lee's option and choose not to decide, thereby making a choice (read: no). What I'm wondering is: what's the magic number that makes it politically untenable to cram it down the districts' throats? Will 375 out of 501 declining do it? Would 400, or 80%, do it? Or is there no number that would dissuade a determined man and his army of (one-armed) bandits?
Thus far, 77% of Pennsylvania's school districts have decided to play Moe Green to Ed Rendell's Michael. Stay tuned to see whether by midsummer there's pinkish blood flowing freely from their eyes.
UPDATE: Final tally was 111 districts opting in, 387 opting out. Just shy of 80%.
Sunday, May 22, 2005
L'ENFANT WINS AT CANNES
Oh, and in other news, the film I've been blabbing about, L'Enfant, won the top prize-- the Palme d'Or --at the Cannes Film Festival. That's awesome.
Derivation L. Intestine
I got an e-mail at work from long-time correspondent sylvia.hawkes@talk21.com. The subject is The Whore Lived Like a German. The message is just a link to some article in a German publication. I'm not clicking on it. Everybody in the office received it. It's the latest in a string of enticements coming from the Bavarian Spam Network.
On any given work day, I'll get three or four or ten messages from such innovative constructions as Spoiling H. Dorothy, Malt J. Silliness, Blindfolds K. Grandstander, the gentleman whose name heads this entry or the even more unfortunately-named Cialis Viagra. Just this past Friday, Rigoberto Velasquez asks me "Does your girl like surprises?" Oh, does she ever, Bert.
There might not be any more obvious target of jokes than e-mail spam, but there are also some interesting things worth noting. Lots of people in business and service providing love the way in which e-mail allows for instantaneous, round-the-clock carrying on of the day's work. It's cheap and efficient communication. Advertising firms love that, too. And so whereas telephone cold-calls were never efficient or cheap enough to seriously damage business efficiency, and mass mail solicitations were too expensive, with e-mail the perfect vehicle for the Ad That Never Sleeps has been born.
I love the way in which the spam has evolved into more and more realistic-looking messages. The info tech guys dodge with a program that filters out certain subject line words, the ad guys parry with misspelled words. We've got a guy whose job includes dividing the electronic wheat from the chaff, and still I get these invitations to surprise my girl. I love it. And that there are firms out there whose m.o. is simply devising new and better ways to trick people into opening their messages-- it's amazing and by far my favorite development of the New Economy.
On any given work day, I'll get three or four or ten messages from such innovative constructions as Spoiling H. Dorothy, Malt J. Silliness, Blindfolds K. Grandstander, the gentleman whose name heads this entry or the even more unfortunately-named Cialis Viagra. Just this past Friday, Rigoberto Velasquez asks me "Does your girl like surprises?" Oh, does she ever, Bert.
There might not be any more obvious target of jokes than e-mail spam, but there are also some interesting things worth noting. Lots of people in business and service providing love the way in which e-mail allows for instantaneous, round-the-clock carrying on of the day's work. It's cheap and efficient communication. Advertising firms love that, too. And so whereas telephone cold-calls were never efficient or cheap enough to seriously damage business efficiency, and mass mail solicitations were too expensive, with e-mail the perfect vehicle for the Ad That Never Sleeps has been born.
I love the way in which the spam has evolved into more and more realistic-looking messages. The info tech guys dodge with a program that filters out certain subject line words, the ad guys parry with misspelled words. We've got a guy whose job includes dividing the electronic wheat from the chaff, and still I get these invitations to surprise my girl. I love it. And that there are firms out there whose m.o. is simply devising new and better ways to trick people into opening their messages-- it's amazing and by far my favorite development of the New Economy.
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Inconsistent
Nine posts in four days, then nothing for a week is not how I should do this. The idea was to find a conduit for daily (or mostly-daily) writing, however unstructured. I've not gotten the beats down yet. For the eight or nine of you reading along, apologies for not offering more explosive and timely internet content.
In other news, I'm a repeat offender, and a sentimental one at that. I'll be catching a 12:10 a.m. show of Star Wars Rots. The Luke to my Anakin will be Leah, who just turned eight and has shown an iron subconscious thus far in resisting the stuff of image-induced bad dreams. To allay any justifiable child-welfare concerns one might have with regard to keeping a child of that age out on a skool nite between the hours of midnight and, probably, three o'dark, I want to make clear that I'm designating the hours of seven to eleven-thirty as quiet sleep hours. And I'm sure they'll be spent sleeping, if by "sleeping" you mean looking at her pet turtle and finding excuses to get up and ask me questions.
The approaches and processes of filmmaking are as endlessly fascinating to me as they are divergent. Some guys subject themselves to a torture chamber-style quiet room and endure long sessions of agony and hair-pulling before emerging with a story that requires ghostwriting and last-minute polishing to render it an inconsequential bore. Others...well, others see a girl pushing a stroller and the stuff of life screams out to them. From the Cannes press notes, via Doug Cummings, comes this quote from one of the Dardenne brothers on L'Enfant:
In other news, I'm a repeat offender, and a sentimental one at that. I'll be catching a 12:10 a.m. show of Star Wars Rots. The Luke to my Anakin will be Leah, who just turned eight and has shown an iron subconscious thus far in resisting the stuff of image-induced bad dreams. To allay any justifiable child-welfare concerns one might have with regard to keeping a child of that age out on a skool nite between the hours of midnight and, probably, three o'dark, I want to make clear that I'm designating the hours of seven to eleven-thirty as quiet sleep hours. And I'm sure they'll be spent sleeping, if by "sleeping" you mean looking at her pet turtle and finding excuses to get up and ask me questions.
The approaches and processes of filmmaking are as endlessly fascinating to me as they are divergent. Some guys subject themselves to a torture chamber-style quiet room and endure long sessions of agony and hair-pulling before emerging with a story that requires ghostwriting and last-minute polishing to render it an inconsequential bore. Others...well, others see a girl pushing a stroller and the stuff of life screams out to them. From the Cannes press notes, via Doug Cummings, comes this quote from one of the Dardenne brothers on L'Enfant:
This film probably dates from a day during the shooting of our previous film. We were in Seraing, on Rue du Molinay. In the morning, afternoon and evening, we saw a girl pushing a pram along, with a newborn baby asleep inside it. She didn’t seem to be going anywhere in particular – just around and around with the pram. We have often thought back to this girl, her pram, the sleeping child, and the missing character: the child’s father. This absent figure would become important in our story… A love story that is also the story of a father.
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
PRIMER
I watched Primer tonight and generally enjoyed it. I was pretty knocked-out by how great the film looked.
This is one of those occasions where the Big Internet Hype is a decidedly good thing. Pre-DVD and internet, this three-year, $7,000 labor of love would have languished on video store shelves and played in midnight double-features with Aronofsky's Pi.
It's not a perfect film, and maybe not even a great one (though it's one of the best science fiction films of recent years). I'm more in the mood these days to use second viewings of films to bring myself in line with a film's rhythm and language than to unwind ambiguous plot machinations, and what's packed into the last fifteen minutes probably demands repeat viewing. Still, an assured and stylistically fantastic debut.
This is one of those occasions where the Big Internet Hype is a decidedly good thing. Pre-DVD and internet, this three-year, $7,000 labor of love would have languished on video store shelves and played in midnight double-features with Aronofsky's Pi.
It's not a perfect film, and maybe not even a great one (though it's one of the best science fiction films of recent years). I'm more in the mood these days to use second viewings of films to bring myself in line with a film's rhythm and language than to unwind ambiguous plot machinations, and what's packed into the last fifteen minutes probably demands repeat viewing. Still, an assured and stylistically fantastic debut.
STRAW DOGS, for real
Straw Dogs ends with David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman, Sphere) driving a half-witted man home during a foggy night. They're riding in Sumner's convertible, a small car fit for flying along country roads, but still big enough to hold an iron man-trap or a couple of trapped men. Sumner doesn't know it, but the man he's riding, and for whom he risked his and his wife's lives to protect, strangled a girl just a few hours before. Yet, Sumner seems to understand that killing all of the hired men who have been bothering his wife (the full extent of their bothering is also unknown to him) isn't going to restore his marriage, and while he has survived a battle for his life, it's something of a pyrrhic victory.
The American Sumner and his English wife Amy have rented a farm cottage in the English countryside where Amy grew up, and he spends his days studying advanced math and prodding a crew of local laborers to finish the garage they're building for his home. Sumner's a symbol of bookish inactivity, the sort of politically-impotent armchair jockey who can easily administer a verbal punch to the chops of an ingratiating minister, but who couldn't swing a hammer to save his life. He marries a woman who isn't even remotely his intellectual equal. There are vague statements made concerning his decision to leave America (Amy accuses him of being unwilling to "take a stand") and when the hired help talk eagerly about America's race-rioting cities like they're an exotic battle front, Sumner responds like a conscientious objector. He wants to be left alone with his chalkboard, and he wants those idle hired men to finish the damn garage so they can leave him alone. When it becomes clear that they're having a laugh at his and Amy's expense (and really at their cat's expense), he eschews direct confrontation, instead engaging in an elaborate mindgame of playing along with their jovial idleness and their offer to take him hunting with the hope that he can lull them into confession. Ironically, he more than once scolds Amy for "playing games" and, more ironically, he and Amy are the butt of the joke when he goes hunting with the hired help. Puns sadly unintended.
There are references to folklore and types. One of the hired hands is a Ratcatcher, and he wears a clown's nose to play the Fool. The Ratcatcher, like the Honeydripper, is an essential but undesirable character in civilized life, and the film, like the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, plays with the idea that the catcher's skills make him uniquely valuable and dangerous. And despite being the outsider and "Yank," Sumner's got an identifiably British name that ties him to the summoners of the middle ages and the magistrates of later days. But apart from Sumner being led away from home like the children of Hamelin, it's unclear whether these references really ground the film in any fable or story tradition apart from that dark group of films made around 1970 which deal in somewhat broad social types and center around a clash between an outsider and a native culture, e.g., Deliverance, The Wicker Man, Walkabout, The Thing With Two Heads.
As a portrait of humanity, or even merely as an object to move along the plot, Amy's character is frustrating. She regards David's work dismissively. Like a spiteful child, she erases his calculations. She isn't forthright in telling him about her past relationship with one of the hired men. She claims to be repulsed by the way the men leer at her, but she doesn't seem to be telling the truth, and David wonders aloud whether she might not want to start wearing a bra if she doesn't appreciate their attention. Her ambivalence is carried to its absurd end on the day of the hunting trip when she is raped by the man she knew previously but seems to have a change of heart about the whole deal halfway through. As if to punish her for being talked into it, she's then given another rapist, at which point she decides she really does object to the whole business. To say that Amy's character is deeply problematic as a portrayal of then-prevailing female sexuality or autonomy understates the matter. I'm reluctant to give in to that jerking knee, but I don't see much way around it. Help me out, here.
But right after Amy is taken down a few pegs, there's a curious parallel development on the other side of the tracks. The village gathers for a traditional church banquet and variety show. The entire population joins in the reverie, so the shell-shocked and apparently chastened Amy sits in the same room with her rapists. The man who raped her is part of a drunken clan of men with their own daughter and sister. She's a picture of adolescent sexual self-awareness masquerading as innocence. She develops crushes on both the married intellectual Sumner and the town pariah, a half-witted giant dubiously acquitted on a sexual assault charge. Inasmuch as the men of her clan are fiercely violative of Amy's sexual dignity, they're equally rigid in protecting that of their daughter/sister, and when they get word that she has willingly left the church social hall with the sex offender, they become a lawless mob.
The ensuing siege, in which the violated Sumners hole up in their cottage and protect the mute, wounded giant from the mob outside, is an interesting contrast. Is it the struggle of the rule of law against lawlessness, or the struggle of Sumner's calculating passivity against their active bullying? Does Amy want to let the men in to save hers and David's life, or does she just want to let them in, well, herself? And isn't the whole struggle about whether there will be one sexual injustice allowed to stand or whether there will be two?
And so Straw Dogs is about debunking all those high falutin concepts about why men fight and kill and mistreat-- not for honor or pride or the sanctity of property, or at least not property in the real estate sense. The men here fight for the purpose of keeping or gaining exclusive possession over fickle female sexual attention. They may know it or they may not, but it drives them forward and compels them to risk life and limb.
The American Sumner and his English wife Amy have rented a farm cottage in the English countryside where Amy grew up, and he spends his days studying advanced math and prodding a crew of local laborers to finish the garage they're building for his home. Sumner's a symbol of bookish inactivity, the sort of politically-impotent armchair jockey who can easily administer a verbal punch to the chops of an ingratiating minister, but who couldn't swing a hammer to save his life. He marries a woman who isn't even remotely his intellectual equal. There are vague statements made concerning his decision to leave America (Amy accuses him of being unwilling to "take a stand") and when the hired help talk eagerly about America's race-rioting cities like they're an exotic battle front, Sumner responds like a conscientious objector. He wants to be left alone with his chalkboard, and he wants those idle hired men to finish the damn garage so they can leave him alone. When it becomes clear that they're having a laugh at his and Amy's expense (and really at their cat's expense), he eschews direct confrontation, instead engaging in an elaborate mindgame of playing along with their jovial idleness and their offer to take him hunting with the hope that he can lull them into confession. Ironically, he more than once scolds Amy for "playing games" and, more ironically, he and Amy are the butt of the joke when he goes hunting with the hired help. Puns sadly unintended.
There are references to folklore and types. One of the hired hands is a Ratcatcher, and he wears a clown's nose to play the Fool. The Ratcatcher, like the Honeydripper, is an essential but undesirable character in civilized life, and the film, like the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, plays with the idea that the catcher's skills make him uniquely valuable and dangerous. And despite being the outsider and "Yank," Sumner's got an identifiably British name that ties him to the summoners of the middle ages and the magistrates of later days. But apart from Sumner being led away from home like the children of Hamelin, it's unclear whether these references really ground the film in any fable or story tradition apart from that dark group of films made around 1970 which deal in somewhat broad social types and center around a clash between an outsider and a native culture, e.g., Deliverance, The Wicker Man, Walkabout, The Thing With Two Heads.
As a portrait of humanity, or even merely as an object to move along the plot, Amy's character is frustrating. She regards David's work dismissively. Like a spiteful child, she erases his calculations. She isn't forthright in telling him about her past relationship with one of the hired men. She claims to be repulsed by the way the men leer at her, but she doesn't seem to be telling the truth, and David wonders aloud whether she might not want to start wearing a bra if she doesn't appreciate their attention. Her ambivalence is carried to its absurd end on the day of the hunting trip when she is raped by the man she knew previously but seems to have a change of heart about the whole deal halfway through. As if to punish her for being talked into it, she's then given another rapist, at which point she decides she really does object to the whole business. To say that Amy's character is deeply problematic as a portrayal of then-prevailing female sexuality or autonomy understates the matter. I'm reluctant to give in to that jerking knee, but I don't see much way around it. Help me out, here.
But right after Amy is taken down a few pegs, there's a curious parallel development on the other side of the tracks. The village gathers for a traditional church banquet and variety show. The entire population joins in the reverie, so the shell-shocked and apparently chastened Amy sits in the same room with her rapists. The man who raped her is part of a drunken clan of men with their own daughter and sister. She's a picture of adolescent sexual self-awareness masquerading as innocence. She develops crushes on both the married intellectual Sumner and the town pariah, a half-witted giant dubiously acquitted on a sexual assault charge. Inasmuch as the men of her clan are fiercely violative of Amy's sexual dignity, they're equally rigid in protecting that of their daughter/sister, and when they get word that she has willingly left the church social hall with the sex offender, they become a lawless mob.
The ensuing siege, in which the violated Sumners hole up in their cottage and protect the mute, wounded giant from the mob outside, is an interesting contrast. Is it the struggle of the rule of law against lawlessness, or the struggle of Sumner's calculating passivity against their active bullying? Does Amy want to let the men in to save hers and David's life, or does she just want to let them in, well, herself? And isn't the whole struggle about whether there will be one sexual injustice allowed to stand or whether there will be two?
And so Straw Dogs is about debunking all those high falutin concepts about why men fight and kill and mistreat-- not for honor or pride or the sanctity of property, or at least not property in the real estate sense. The men here fight for the purpose of keeping or gaining exclusive possession over fickle female sexual attention. They may know it or they may not, but it drives them forward and compels them to risk life and limb.
Monday, May 9, 2005
Game tape: needed
So, Armenia's national hockey team didn't exactly make the best showing at the recent third tier int'l championships held in Mexico City. Don't take my word for it. Here's the Armenian press account:
The article actually understates the margin of defeat in the Mexico game. It was 48-0, as shown in this game summary. This result beats anything I was able to accomplish on Sega's NHL '95 with the uncontested wrap-around maneuver. You can see that the momentum conclusively turned Mexico's direction when Armenia's Tatul Jamalyan, no doubt frustrated by his team's 31-goal deficit, took his second 10 minute major penalty and received a mandatory game misconduct. It was all but over at that point.
But I suppose there's no shame in losing by thirty-five goals to the vaunted Luxemburg Flying X-Wing Offense. Still, I'm looking for confirmation that the Armenians were equipped with unbroken hockey sticks.
So anyway, before I start trolling ebay with search terms like "Armenia-Mexico hockey," does anyone have a game tape of this contest of wills?
Resounding defeats: Division 3 World Championships ended in Mexico City where Armenia’s national team played against Ireland, Mexico, Luxemburg and South Africa.
Armenia lost all their four matches conceding a total of 131 goals and scoring only 7. They lost 1-33 to South Africa, 3-20 to Ireland, 3-38 to Luxemburg and 0-40 to Mexico.
President of the Ice Hockey Federation of Armenia Karen Khachatryan told ArmeniaNow that the team had a disgraceful tournament in Mexico and added that serious changes are needed to develop this sport in Armenia.
The article actually understates the margin of defeat in the Mexico game. It was 48-0, as shown in this game summary. This result beats anything I was able to accomplish on Sega's NHL '95 with the uncontested wrap-around maneuver. You can see that the momentum conclusively turned Mexico's direction when Armenia's Tatul Jamalyan, no doubt frustrated by his team's 31-goal deficit, took his second 10 minute major penalty and received a mandatory game misconduct. It was all but over at that point.
But I suppose there's no shame in losing by thirty-five goals to the vaunted Luxemburg Flying X-Wing Offense. Still, I'm looking for confirmation that the Armenians were equipped with unbroken hockey sticks.
So anyway, before I start trolling ebay with search terms like "Armenia-Mexico hockey," does anyone have a game tape of this contest of wills?
Sunday, May 8, 2005
FANNY & ALEXANDER
I'm a sucker for well-told (in order) ghost stories, sprawling family dramas and coming-of-age stories, so there were three reasons going in for me to be predisposed to like F&A. I've seen a half-dozen or so Bergman films-- the most famous ones-- and knowing in advance of F&A's somewhat more conventional subject matter, I was curious to see how he would marry his unmistakable emotional intensity (there are no moments of respite in a Bergman film) with the stuff of relative narrative leisure. I think it's effective. Yes, it's clearly the work of an artist who is looking at the end of his career and life, and it bears some popular touches, but it still has Bergman's sensibilities and echoes of themes that run through his other work.
His portrayal of the Ekdahl family-- warm, caring, eccentric, wealthy and artistic-- is a composite of well-drawn characters, the adults moreso than the children (other than Alexander). The matriarch never sleeps. Her three sons are distinctly individual. Gustav Adolph is business-minded but warm-hearted enough that his wife and mother don't object to his using the maidstaff as his personal harem. Carl is an academic of mixed success who loathes himself and his German wife and has borrowed and spent himself near destitution. Oscar is the manager of the local theater, which he has run profitably with the help of his mother's patronage and his actor wife's performances. The characters (with the exception of Alexander and, perhaps, Emilie) don't change significantly over the course of the film. Rather, the dramatic emphasis is directed toward how the diverse members of the family complement each other in dealing with common tragedy.
As always, God and His vicars are not a source of comfort. Elsewhere in Bergman, God is cruelly silent, or a spider in a deluded vision, or an unpersuasive source of temporary comfort. Here, He's a "shit" and merely a prank with a puppet to scare a child. The search for God is never irrelevant, though, and by introducing ghosts and Ishmael's act of firestarting, there's a supernatural element undergirding the lives and events of the characters. We cannot know if God exists in this world, but the spirits of the characters loom larger than life and beyond the grave. As always, whether that brings consolation or terror depends on the spirit.
I've yet to see a clergyman in a Scandinavian film who made the faith look better, and I don't suppose, say, von Trier will be giving me one anytime soon. Edvard the Bishop is in many ways the culmination of Bergman's other pastors, beginning with his own father, but despite the fact that his first appearance telegraphs that he'll be the film's antagonist, there were a few moments when I thought his character displayed a complexity or sensitivity or self-awareness that went far beyond the stock Stern Clergyman character.
The film's extended reference to Hamlet is done effectively and poignantly. Emilie, of course, protests too much when she tells Alexander explicitly that she's not the Queen, nor the Bishop the false King. No, she's not inconstant like Gertrude, but her misjudgment regarding the Bishop's character imperils her and her family.
Still, despite his real pain and cruel mistreatment at the Bishop's hands, there's something about Alexander's predisposition to regard God as indifferent to him that's a bit untoward. There weren't many children in Alexander's day who were living as opulently as he. It's all he knows, though, and I appreciate his warm heart, his loyalty to his mother and sister and his quirky sense of humor, including that streak of Tourette's that brings the scatalogical to his mouth so readily and unexpectedly.
Of course, while the family has been restored in the end, there are still the rumblings of future conflicts, and I appreciate the way in which Bergman resists a singularly happy ending (which we might have got if the film had ended at the christening banquet). Gustav Adolph, while a benevolent and loving father, has some of the same tendencies to control those in his household that Edvard did. And the ghosts will always rattle around, for good and ill.
His portrayal of the Ekdahl family-- warm, caring, eccentric, wealthy and artistic-- is a composite of well-drawn characters, the adults moreso than the children (other than Alexander). The matriarch never sleeps. Her three sons are distinctly individual. Gustav Adolph is business-minded but warm-hearted enough that his wife and mother don't object to his using the maidstaff as his personal harem. Carl is an academic of mixed success who loathes himself and his German wife and has borrowed and spent himself near destitution. Oscar is the manager of the local theater, which he has run profitably with the help of his mother's patronage and his actor wife's performances. The characters (with the exception of Alexander and, perhaps, Emilie) don't change significantly over the course of the film. Rather, the dramatic emphasis is directed toward how the diverse members of the family complement each other in dealing with common tragedy.
As always, God and His vicars are not a source of comfort. Elsewhere in Bergman, God is cruelly silent, or a spider in a deluded vision, or an unpersuasive source of temporary comfort. Here, He's a "shit" and merely a prank with a puppet to scare a child. The search for God is never irrelevant, though, and by introducing ghosts and Ishmael's act of firestarting, there's a supernatural element undergirding the lives and events of the characters. We cannot know if God exists in this world, but the spirits of the characters loom larger than life and beyond the grave. As always, whether that brings consolation or terror depends on the spirit.
I've yet to see a clergyman in a Scandinavian film who made the faith look better, and I don't suppose, say, von Trier will be giving me one anytime soon. Edvard the Bishop is in many ways the culmination of Bergman's other pastors, beginning with his own father, but despite the fact that his first appearance telegraphs that he'll be the film's antagonist, there were a few moments when I thought his character displayed a complexity or sensitivity or self-awareness that went far beyond the stock Stern Clergyman character.
The film's extended reference to Hamlet is done effectively and poignantly. Emilie, of course, protests too much when she tells Alexander explicitly that she's not the Queen, nor the Bishop the false King. No, she's not inconstant like Gertrude, but her misjudgment regarding the Bishop's character imperils her and her family.
Still, despite his real pain and cruel mistreatment at the Bishop's hands, there's something about Alexander's predisposition to regard God as indifferent to him that's a bit untoward. There weren't many children in Alexander's day who were living as opulently as he. It's all he knows, though, and I appreciate his warm heart, his loyalty to his mother and sister and his quirky sense of humor, including that streak of Tourette's that brings the scatalogical to his mouth so readily and unexpectedly.
Of course, while the family has been restored in the end, there are still the rumblings of future conflicts, and I appreciate the way in which Bergman resists a singularly happy ending (which we might have got if the film had ended at the christening banquet). Gustav Adolph, while a benevolent and loving father, has some of the same tendencies to control those in his household that Edvard did. And the ghosts will always rattle around, for good and ill.
Weekend Viewing Notes
THE BIRDS
My (one week shy of) eight year-old really loves the Universal monster movies, but she's been asking for something scarier. She's pleading for The Ring or Night of the Living Dead. I debated between The Birds and Jaws until better judgment prevailed on me and I elected to save Bruce for another time.
Sometimes I wonder whether we overrate Hitchcock's thrillers a bit. It typically comes in the context of asking whether I'd regard his films so highly if they were made today. That's a faulty standard for a couple of reasons. First, they weren't made today, but forty or fifty years ago, when the cinematic language underlying these psychological thrill shows didn't exist. He invented it. I might as well ask whether a biplane would be appreciated in the jet age. What's more, though, they simply aren't making thrillers this rich today. Even a somewhat lesser work like The Birds has so much going on, and what my daughter doesn't get now (and what I didn't get until I was older), is how thoroughly we are putty in Hitchcock's hands. He's so good at misdirection that we scarcely realize how little a movie called The Birds is actually about birds (unless we're talking about lovebirds). How else to account for the ending being wholly satisfying despite the fact that the threat of the birds is neither explained nor dispatched with finality? The brief shot of Mitch's mother comforting Melanie, the former acting uncharacteristically nurturing and the latter uncharacteristically needing to be nurtured, is all the resolution we need. The birds are a MacGuffin.
Of course, the definitive proof that today's thrillers are generally playing in the shallow end comes when you pick up Hitchcock/Truffaut, read the ten or so pages they devote to the film, and see that every image and connection on the screen was deliberately purposeful on Hitchcock's part, and more even than you observed. And most of today's directors of thrillers, given myriads of junket opportunities to give their films subtext and meaning, have trouble filling more than a couple of paragraphs before lapsing into cliche.
If I knew a budding cinephile in his or her mid-teens, I'd buy a couple of months of Netflix and a copy of Hitchcock/Truffaut and just stand back.
UZAK (DISTANT)
What a fantastic meditation on habits. I've been thinking lately about the role habits play in our lives, how they are formed or destroyed and how we choose them or prefer them to meaningful human interaction. Ceylan's been thinking about these topics, too, and he's got this wonderful film to show for it.
Mahmet is a commercial photographer living in a well-kept and pleasantly-decorated apartment in Istanbul. His life is depicted as a routine consisting of ad photographs taken rather mechanically followed by hours spent alone in front of the television, interspersed with wordless sex with a woman and meals eaten alone. His cousin Yusuf has lost his factory job in the country and comes to stay with Mahmet while he looks for work. With some inconvenience and expressed annoyance, Mahmet adjusts his schedule to accomodate Yusuf's presence. He picks up after Yusuf and grumbles at his slovenliness. Both Mahmet and Yusuf smoke (the quintessential symbol of an unbreakable habit), but Mahmet comes to resent Yusuf's smoking and declares his own intention to quit. Ceylan's own apartment was used for Mahmet's place, and in an interview on the DVD, he explains that the character is based on his own person of a few years ago.
As the film progresses, we are dropped hints that Mahmet wasn't always this way. A conversation with his ex-wife tells us that he was once part of a family on the cusp of having children. A conversation with other photographers and samples of his work hanging on his apartment walls tell us that Mahmet once harbored photographic ambitions that exceeded advertisements for a tile factory. It becomes clear that Mahmet's insularity and fussiness are both the cause and effect of his aloneness.
Appropriate to an exploration of the distance between people and the way in which routine can kill the desire to live, the film moves quietly and slowly. It ends with the simple question posed to Mahmet: does he prefer his solitary life and his stand-ins for pleasure, or is there more satisfaction to be found in the company of his slob cousin who can't keep cigarette ashes off the rug? Of course, answering that question ham-fistedly is the stuff of artless movies.
Mahmet sits alone again on a bench, smoking Yusuf's cigarettes and staring at the seaport. The question is answered in the knowing and the asking.
My (one week shy of) eight year-old really loves the Universal monster movies, but she's been asking for something scarier. She's pleading for The Ring or Night of the Living Dead. I debated between The Birds and Jaws until better judgment prevailed on me and I elected to save Bruce for another time.
Sometimes I wonder whether we overrate Hitchcock's thrillers a bit. It typically comes in the context of asking whether I'd regard his films so highly if they were made today. That's a faulty standard for a couple of reasons. First, they weren't made today, but forty or fifty years ago, when the cinematic language underlying these psychological thrill shows didn't exist. He invented it. I might as well ask whether a biplane would be appreciated in the jet age. What's more, though, they simply aren't making thrillers this rich today. Even a somewhat lesser work like The Birds has so much going on, and what my daughter doesn't get now (and what I didn't get until I was older), is how thoroughly we are putty in Hitchcock's hands. He's so good at misdirection that we scarcely realize how little a movie called The Birds is actually about birds (unless we're talking about lovebirds). How else to account for the ending being wholly satisfying despite the fact that the threat of the birds is neither explained nor dispatched with finality? The brief shot of Mitch's mother comforting Melanie, the former acting uncharacteristically nurturing and the latter uncharacteristically needing to be nurtured, is all the resolution we need. The birds are a MacGuffin.
Of course, the definitive proof that today's thrillers are generally playing in the shallow end comes when you pick up Hitchcock/Truffaut, read the ten or so pages they devote to the film, and see that every image and connection on the screen was deliberately purposeful on Hitchcock's part, and more even than you observed. And most of today's directors of thrillers, given myriads of junket opportunities to give their films subtext and meaning, have trouble filling more than a couple of paragraphs before lapsing into cliche.
If I knew a budding cinephile in his or her mid-teens, I'd buy a couple of months of Netflix and a copy of Hitchcock/Truffaut and just stand back.
UZAK (DISTANT)
What a fantastic meditation on habits. I've been thinking lately about the role habits play in our lives, how they are formed or destroyed and how we choose them or prefer them to meaningful human interaction. Ceylan's been thinking about these topics, too, and he's got this wonderful film to show for it.
Mahmet is a commercial photographer living in a well-kept and pleasantly-decorated apartment in Istanbul. His life is depicted as a routine consisting of ad photographs taken rather mechanically followed by hours spent alone in front of the television, interspersed with wordless sex with a woman and meals eaten alone. His cousin Yusuf has lost his factory job in the country and comes to stay with Mahmet while he looks for work. With some inconvenience and expressed annoyance, Mahmet adjusts his schedule to accomodate Yusuf's presence. He picks up after Yusuf and grumbles at his slovenliness. Both Mahmet and Yusuf smoke (the quintessential symbol of an unbreakable habit), but Mahmet comes to resent Yusuf's smoking and declares his own intention to quit. Ceylan's own apartment was used for Mahmet's place, and in an interview on the DVD, he explains that the character is based on his own person of a few years ago.
As the film progresses, we are dropped hints that Mahmet wasn't always this way. A conversation with his ex-wife tells us that he was once part of a family on the cusp of having children. A conversation with other photographers and samples of his work hanging on his apartment walls tell us that Mahmet once harbored photographic ambitions that exceeded advertisements for a tile factory. It becomes clear that Mahmet's insularity and fussiness are both the cause and effect of his aloneness.
Appropriate to an exploration of the distance between people and the way in which routine can kill the desire to live, the film moves quietly and slowly. It ends with the simple question posed to Mahmet: does he prefer his solitary life and his stand-ins for pleasure, or is there more satisfaction to be found in the company of his slob cousin who can't keep cigarette ashes off the rug? Of course, answering that question ham-fistedly is the stuff of artless movies.
Mahmet sits alone again on a bench, smoking Yusuf's cigarettes and staring at the seaport. The question is answered in the knowing and the asking.
THIS SUMMER...the Terror ISN'T on the Field!
After Leah's piano lesson yesterday we drove north up the Fort Duquesne bridge, which curls around the perimeter of PNC Park. The stadium lots were roughly a quarter filled, in keeping with a typical sub-15,000 crowd of victims. But then I caught a split-second glance of the Jumbotron and saw some rock band entertaining the crowd. Sure, Springsteen played at PNC last year, but the glimpse I got told me this wasn't a superstar.
Turns out it was the Armagettin' Ready Tour.
Obvious jokes should be thrown out right away.
"Hey, don't they simulate disasters there 81 times a year?"
That's better.
So, anyway, here's your free script idea for the day, Roland Emmerich. Some bad guys figure the best time to stage their mayhem is during the disaster simulation. Who would expect it? They'd blend right in with the fake bombers. A montage of scenes in which the fake terrorists are amazed at how convincing and adept some of the others are. And then it becomes a game no longer. For One Elite Squad. And One Man.
Where's Powers Boothe these days? He knows his way to Pittsburgh.
And we are, after all, coming up on the tenth anniversary of a film that begs plaintively for a sequel. A film borne out of Karen Baldwin sitting bored in her husband's owner's box, looking out at his hundred million dollar toy skating around and wishing there was some way she could be released from the monotony. What if terrorists took over the hockey arena? And what if we could get Luc Robitaille to curse in French, and get Jean-Claude Van Damme to fight a ninja dressed in the Penguin mascot costume? Something approaching hilarity ensued.
But Darren McCord's training is not yet complete...
Turns out it was the Armagettin' Ready Tour.
Obvious jokes should be thrown out right away.
"Hey, don't they simulate disasters there 81 times a year?"
That's better.
So, anyway, here's your free script idea for the day, Roland Emmerich. Some bad guys figure the best time to stage their mayhem is during the disaster simulation. Who would expect it? They'd blend right in with the fake bombers. A montage of scenes in which the fake terrorists are amazed at how convincing and adept some of the others are. And then it becomes a game no longer. For One Elite Squad. And One Man.
Where's Powers Boothe these days? He knows his way to Pittsburgh.
And we are, after all, coming up on the tenth anniversary of a film that begs plaintively for a sequel. A film borne out of Karen Baldwin sitting bored in her husband's owner's box, looking out at his hundred million dollar toy skating around and wishing there was some way she could be released from the monotony. What if terrorists took over the hockey arena? And what if we could get Luc Robitaille to curse in French, and get Jean-Claude Van Damme to fight a ninja dressed in the Penguin mascot costume? Something approaching hilarity ensued.
But Darren McCord's training is not yet complete...
Some Estimated Times
1/1/2006: The day on which it will be OK to be a Johnny Cash fan again.
1/1/2009: The day on which it will again be poignant for a writer/intellectual to draw deeply from his childhood and/or adolescence spent with comic books.
1/1/2012: The day on which it will again be acceptable for people who are not New England residents, current or former, to be interested in/openly cheer for the Boston Red Sox.
More to follow
1/1/2009: The day on which it will again be poignant for a writer/intellectual to draw deeply from his childhood and/or adolescence spent with comic books.
1/1/2012: The day on which it will again be acceptable for people who are not New England residents, current or former, to be interested in/openly cheer for the Boston Red Sox.
More to follow
Sunday, May 1, 2005
April, 2005 by the numbers
Number of movies watched: 17
Number of Netflix rentals cycled: 13 ($19.07 divided by 13 = $1.46 per rental)
Titles and dates of movies watched:
4/29 Straw Dogs
4/28 Phone
4/25 The Woodsman
4/24 School of Rock
4/22 The Incredibles
4/21 Spanglish
4/17 Before Sunrise
Before Sunset
4/16 Meet Me in St. Louis
4/13 Contempt
Spongebob Squarepants
4/9 Twentynine Palms
4/8 La Strada
Sin City
4/6 The Circle
4/4 Slacker
4/2 Closer
Number of Netflix rentals cycled: 13 ($19.07 divided by 13 = $1.46 per rental)
Titles and dates of movies watched:
4/29 Straw Dogs
4/28 Phone
4/25 The Woodsman
4/24 School of Rock
4/22 The Incredibles
4/21 Spanglish
4/17 Before Sunrise
Before Sunset
4/16 Meet Me in St. Louis
4/13 Contempt
Spongebob Squarepants
4/9 Twentynine Palms
4/8 La Strada
Sin City
4/6 The Circle
4/4 Slacker
4/2 Closer
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