Monday, July 10, 2006

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I don't get a lot of free time. I had a choice between this, Pirates of the Caribbean 2, The Devil Wear Prada, and I chose to spend a Saturday afternoon on this sorry, miserable feature. Woe is me. The best part of the whole thing was the trailer for Talladega Nights, 2 Minutes of which was funnier than all 9 hours of Click.

This piece of Happy Gilmore Productions shit was even more miserable and even more embarrasingly stupid than Sandler's re-make of The Longest Yard which had all the wit of a dinner-table fart.

Guy (Adam Sandler) gets a "universal remote-control" that enables him to control his life. Speed through the the boring parts, mute annoying people, and so on and so forth. It's a concept with exactly zero interesting possiblities beyond marginally interesting digital special-effects. You get the idea that this was written for little kids, but dirtied up by the "S-word" to get PG-13 and draw in the 10 year-olds; I have a prejudice against PG-13 movies for exactly this reason.

Is there anything good about his movie?
1. Special effects. Nothing new, really.

2. Fat-chick and fart jokes. Oh yeah, and there's this dog that humps a stuffed duck. Ha.

3. Christopher Walken. No, not really. He is seriously creepy in this one. I mean pedophile-creepy.

4. David Hasselhoff. No, also very creepy.

5. The Make-up. Ok, yes, this movie had some of the best aging make-up I have ever sen in a hollywood film. Still not a good enough reason to waste your time on it.

This is one of those few movies with absolutely no merit whatsoever. I mean NONE.

Thursday, June 08, 2006



The only other book by Dashiell Hammett I have ever read was the Maltese Falcon a few years ago. I was at a different point in my life and therefore my take on the book, my ability to assess it's quality (if literature can be assessed for quality) was somewhat less developed than I believe it is now. In any case, I was not particularly impressed by Mr Hammett, though I remember that for some time I listed him as a favorite author because it sounded good and his name is easy to remember. At least to me. He would be among those authors I read becasue they are easy, not because they are good. It took me a while to get through The Maltese Falcon, and I imagine what enjoyment I got came from my picturing Humphrey Bogart in the part of Sam Spade.

I started The Thin Man a few nights ago and while not impressed my Mr Hammett's talent, though I am sure it's there, I find the book easy to read, if not particularly original. I imagine that at the time Nick Charles, wealthy, connected American Private Eye might have been something of a novelty among your down-on-their-luck working-class pulp-fic gumshoes. I don't really care. I don't care about the people in the book either, but, like I said, it's all easy to read.

The Thin Man is cute, it's a chick-flick kid's story of a murder-mystery, and while mildly annoying, it's also vaguely pleasant. I can read knowing that I will not be disturbed in the least, which is a little bit of a relief.

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The only other book by Dashiell Hammett I have ever read was the Maltese Falcon a few years ago. I was at a different point in my life and therefore my take on the book, my ability to assess it's quality (if literature can be assessed for quality) was somewhat less developed than I believe it is now. In any case, I was not particularly impressed by Mr Hammett, though I remember that for some time I listed him as a favorite author because it sounded good and his name is easy to remember. At least to me. He would be among those authors I read becasue they are easy, not because they are good. It took me a while to get through The Maltese Falcon, and I imagine what enjoyment I got came from my picturing Humphrey Bogart in the part of Sam Spade.

I started The Thin Man a few nights ago and while not impressed my Mr Hammett's talent, though I am sure it's there, I find the book easy to read, if not particularly original. I imagine that at the time Nick Charles, wealthy, connected American Private Eye might have been something of a novelty among your down-on-their-luck working-class pulp-fic gumshoes. I don't really care. I don't care about the people in the book either, but, like I said, it's all easy to read.

The Thin Man is cute, it's a chick-flick kid's story of a murder-mystery, and while mildly annoying, it's also vaguely pleasant. I can read knowing that I will not be disturbed in the least, which is a little bit of a relief.

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The only other book by Dashiell Hammett I have ever read was the Maltese Falcon a few years ago. I was at a different point in my life and therefore my take on the book, my ability to assess it's quality (if literature can be assessed for quality) was somewhat less developed than I believe it is now. In any case, I was not particularly impressed by Mr Hammett, though I remember that for some time I listed him as a favorite author because it sounded good and his name is easy to remember. At least to me. He would be among those authors I read becasue they are easy, not because they are good. It took me a while to get through The Maltese Falcon, and I imagine what enjoyment I got came from my picturing Humphrey Bogart in the part of Sam Spade.

I started The Thin Man a few nights ago and while not impressed my Mr Hammett's talent, though I am sure it's there, I find the book easy to read, if not particularly original. I imagine that at the time Nick Charles, wealthy, connected American Private Eye might have been something of a novelty among your down-on-their-luck working-class pulp-fic gumshoes. I don't really care. I don't care about the people in the book either, but, like I said, it's all easy to read.

The Thin Man is cute, it's a chick-flick kid's story of a murder-mystery, and while mildly annoying, it's also vaguely pleasant. I can read knowing that I will not be disturbed in the least, which is a little bit of a relief.

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Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Jim Thompson's work has the feel of a writer trying to recreate the seaminess and ugliness of real life, and doing a fair job. That seems to be his motive: to let you in on the dark side. To some extent he succeeds, there is an ugliness in his fiction that approximates the more obvious (as opposed to the more subtle) ugly apsects of humanity, human life, human society. Most of it has no shelf-life, transcends the time in which it was written in and the generation to which he belonged, especially since Thompson's mission was never to create lovable characters who have hope and wind up happy.




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Saturday, May 13, 2006

BUYING TIME
I am somewhere between the two base camps of literature, the first being the idea of fiction as art, as personal expression, and to the reader, as a means of seeing another perspective, hopefully one deeper than your own, from someone who spends more time thinking. The idea is of the story as a means to say, to share. The other is of fiction as a product (by "product" I mean an item with a specific function). This latter involves manipulation, it involves a willingness of the reader to entrust their imaginations to you in return for an intellectual amusment park ride designed by you.


Fiction - The Art, The Beautiful Swing that Misses
One man's art is another man's boring schoolwork. Writing for the purpose of beautiful expression is as pointless and masturbatory an endeavor as you can have. The elegance that is there for the people who have the time to go looking for it. So you have something to say...what now? How profound is it? Somebody else has seen it, somebody else has said it, so what's your twist? How will knowing what you have to say change my life? In other words, are you worth
the time? Fiction in this sense is a form of higher communication, a reaching out of the soul. This involves my own personal ideas about life and people. This art is limited to my own personal opinions. This is me speaking to you, earnestly, honestly. Here the characters represent real people.

Fiction - The Product, Heroin of the Soul
The idea is of fiction as a simple product. An item to be purchased or sold. A diversion, not unlike a greeting card or a boardgame. Something with which to pass the time by firing the imagination or by doping it into submission. There is nothing moral about artificial human beings, they are words on a page, not concepts, not truth. They bare a similarity to real-life only insofar as is necessary to serve the purpose of the product. They die because people die and death inspires a reaction, they fuck and fear and yearn because it gets your attention. In other words, death, violence, sex are tools of diversion with no bearing on real life. Here the characters are props.





BUYING TIME



It feels like a scene from bad TV show, me waiting here in the kitchen like this. I can't think of a specific TV show, but think of something old, and American, and in black-and-white. You know the kind - Dad finds out that Timmy stole a bicycle so Dad tells him what a good boy he is, and how he knows that he would never steal a bicycle, even though he knows that little Timmy is a fucking thief the whole time. It guilts Timmy into a confession, because his dad believes in him, see? That's what it feels like, like they are trying to guilt me into saying something.

This is where I start to have that feeling, the pressure creeping up my chest till it's right level with my collarbone. I get this look on my face like I'm about to cry. It's completely involuntary. I go inward looking so hard at what's inside that forget to hide what I feel. I take the look off my face as soon as I realize it's there.

But what if I was wrong, what if they didn't know? What if they are telling the truth? You never know. People get desperate, they get greedy. All kinds of good reasons for bad judgment.

It was always a hopeless case, this laptop-for-rent shit. You don't rent in Jamaica, unless it's something so big that no one can run away with it easily. You rent marquis to people having fairs and concerts, you rent giant fridge-sized speakers for shows, you might even rent a truck or shipping containers, but you don't rent the small and expensive. They should have known better.

My aunt she's flitting about the kitchen making lunch. Happy in the belief that she is making money, that there are people right now using our laptops and paying money into our account. She's buying time till she won't look anxious, or over-eager when she asks. She's probably waiting till after dinner.
It's only a matter of time.

They cannot possibly have invested their life savings, their house in me. Me of all people. They have got to be bullshitting. You would have to be delusional, mentally ill, or so desperate that you can't blame anybody else. It can't be my fault, it has to be your fear, or your greed that drove you into it. I mean I was just what came along, it wasn't me you put your money in with, me the guy who has fucked up everything he ever touched. You bet your savings on the only available horse. It would have been the next guy if it hadn't been me. I mean seriously, how hard did I work to get them to do it. I just said what the idea was, they made their minds up.

My aunt she seems so happy. So secure. It's as if a burden has been taken off her shoulders. I want to tell her that all along I new it wouldn't work, I just needed to buy time. If I had that money then I wouldn't be broke, wouldn't go homeless. That all her money did was buy time.

The food-smell makes me sick.

"Back in a minute." I say to her.
Out in the backyard I put a cigarette in my mouth and the world feels like it's the end of days, where the hours are a second long and you are rushing to the edge of eternity like a jetliner into the side of a Latin American mountain. There is nothing but my impending destitution and the possibility that I fucked the only people I ever mattered to. If I'm going to be living on the street, why should it matter to me what they think of me or where they are?

I start thinking about suicide again. No way doI have the balls to face the other side of any kind of reality without being kicked into it, but sometimes it helps just to think about it. You feel better knowing that you are that far down. I put the lighter back into my pocket and feel the knife there. Now if I could just buy myself some more time...

They would know later, when the bank called, that I did it because I was full of remorse. They might not be so angry then, so disappointed in me.

"Jeff! Dinner's ready!" Yells Aunt Myra.

The cigarette falls from my lips in the hurry to grab and open the knife. I still think, seeing that I have no choice, that it won't be fatal. Will have to be a hell of a cut though. Get an ambulance and everything.



There is no thought here, just rapid spasms, jerky motions: the struggle to get the knife open, looking at my shirt and hesititating about destroying it.


I stick the knife into my left forearm. Just one quick plunge, once it's in and I feel the first sting and the feeling of violation, it's still not so hard to pull it down to my elbow. I can see the layer of fat under my skin before it wells up with blood. The blade moves through the rubbery gumminess that is my physical presence easier than I would have thought. I move quickly before my brain gets the message and starts screaming. Then I have to drop the knife. I start to run back to the house so they can see. but the blood it just pouring down off my arm, onto the leg of my jeans like warm thick piss. It would be so hard now, would it? I mean to just sit down and wait it out. Wait to see if this would end it. All the bullshit struggling, all the banging my head against the stonewall of this fucking country, this fucking life. The hard part's already done.

So I stop running, instead of going inside, I sit down on the grass in their backyard and I wait to see what will happen now.

THE END

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Sunday, April 30, 2006

Jim Thompson: The Grifters (Orion Crime Fiction-Paperback)

I remember seeing the movie as a wee lad in Jamaica, back when Anjelica Huston looked more human and less like a bad CGI animation from a Harry Potter movie. Annette Bening was hot too, which she still is, only in a different way, and John Cusack was perfectly cast as Roy Dillon, even if he was never, in my opinion, anyway, handsome. Roy Dillon, was supposed to be, among other things, abnormally good-looking.

So here I am thirty-one years old, pseudo-Jamaican, living in Charleston, SC, and I'm reading Thompson's ultra-simple prose and wondering why I like this book since it seems to have no literary merit. I'm also reading Robert Alain Grille's Repitition which I find tedious and trivial and pretentious. Maybe Thompson is ruining me the way Faulkner ruined me for a time. The edginess, the casual seaminess, the easy amorality, is so very easy to identify with. Maybe this is how I will start writing now. Maybe my characters will have only basic internal monologues, be completely without compassion or shame.

I've spent alot of time looking in real-world bookstores for Mr Thompson's books (I don't usually buy online unless it's something I can't find in a store where I can actually touch and open the book). They have been hard to find and I have no idea why.





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Thursday, April 27, 2006

Lucky Number Slevin

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The good things about this movie:
The dialogue with its would-be David Mamet coolness that only sometimes succeeds, Lucy Liu with her freckles, Josh Hartnett who has a sense of humor mature enough to make you like him in this role, Ben Kingsley's performance, Ben Kingsley's role, Morgan Freeman's performance in a sucky part, the title-credits, the name "Slevin Kellavra".

The bad things about this movie:
The dialogue with its would-be David Mamet coolness that so often falls short, Lucy Liu with her minor-league talent, Josh Hartnett with his smugness, the fact that everybody in this movie is an asshole. Yes, even Lindsay, who is too dumb to live.

The Plot:
Slevin (Josh Hartnett) gets "mistaken" for a guy who owes a lot of money to rival crime lords "the Rabbi" (Ben Kingsley)and "the Boss" (Morgan Freeman). In order to pay The Boss his $96,000, he is asked to take out The Rabbi's son in retaliation for The Boss's son having been assassinated by the aforementioned Rabbi earlier. It's both more and less complicated than it sounds. Nothing in this movie approaches, or is meant to approach, real life, but it manages to get away with it on actor charisma and tight editing. You won't be bored, and you probably won't want your money back.

"I liked the fact that the good guys are bad-asses, and that the bad guys really do get what they deserve (everything they love taken from them, then death)." That's not really a spoiler...

Rated R for some nudity, some explicit sex, a few curse-words, a little blood and brain-matter.

If you really liked this movie you should buy these:


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Sunday, April 09, 2006

It's interesting that movies and books with/about the Southern United States or Southerners so often have quirky sexual themes. The Grifters' Lily Dillon has a quasi-incestuous relationship with her son, Roy, for instance, then there is the "entrapment" of the soldier in The Beguiled, Faulkner's work is riddled with sexually precocious youngsters, rapes and "almost-rapes", sexual bargaining and compromise, and, of course, there is Deliverance. It all has to do with family and clannishness (especially if you consider a plantation a clan, which they kind of were). I am not familiar with enough of this side of the south to say why exactly, or to put my finger on how it all works, or even if it exists purely in fiction.





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Wednesday, April 05, 2006





I've spent years looking for a Jim Thompson book. I can't find them in the local library or at the local B&N, and it wasn't enough of a priority for me to spend too much time or money. Currently reading The Grifters. He has the most straightforward, possibly bland, prose-style I have ever seen outside of the work I did when I was 15 or 16 years old.


Thursday, March 30, 2006

Darkness Take My Hand




I've read four of Dennis Lehane's books, I was impressed with the first three: Shutter Island, Mystic River, and A Drink Before the War. They were smart and witty, with none of the filler of, say, a Robert Crais, who really doesn't have anything to say or a story to tell, but writes anyway. Darkness, Take my Hand is by far the least impressive of the Lehane novels I have read so far, though it does not sink the depths of your latter Elvis Cole novels (Crais showed promise with The Monkey's Raincoat, but fell off sharply after that). As a novel it's hardly original, one of the 90's serial killer genre, it has Kenzie and Gennaro trying to catch a dismembering, stalking, really smart psycho who taunts them at every turn. It doesn't have the dark feel of Lehane's better work, it lacks the fresh wit of A Drink Before War, and the original everything of Shutter Island. That's not to say that it's a stupid book, it's smarter and rawer and more original than most, but he can do better. This book is for completists, the ones who have to read every book by a particular author.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Inside Man

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If they had pitched this as a TV movie, without the Denzel Washington/Jodie Foster/Clive Owen star-power, they would have had a hard time selling it. This is one of those that make for excellent trailers, (or maybe it's that Spike Lee movies make for good trailers, not really sure which) but not much more. I wasn't bored, but that was largely due to Denzel Washington's electric performance, pulling an entertaining character out of a nothing script. Jodie Foster hams away, as does Christopher Plummer. Clive Owen gives a decent little performance, like an up-and-comer trying to make his name inspite of the script, which he is. There isn't anything worthwhile here (apart from a pair of buxom women), nothing original, very little that is even mildly entertaining.

Spike Lee's message has been reduced to criticizing video games and mild, buried messages about NYPD bigotry. No I didn't miss the (yawn) subtext about American financial power and Nazi-Germany, my response is, so? Pretty much every financial empire on earth has been in bed with unsavory characters at one point or another. The pursuit of wealth necessitates ugliness. Rich men are pretty much always amoral, particularly men who make the acquisition of wealth their life's work. Nothing new there, Mr Lee.

As with all Spike Lee films, there are a few of those WTF moments, when something completely gratuitous/inappropriate/downright bizarre shows up in the screenplay. The latter love-scene with Denzel Washington's character and his girlfriend, the video game animation, the signature floating-down-the-street, shot, the stripping-down sequence.

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Sunday, March 26, 2006

V for Vendetta 2
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The politics are wonky. I don't believe that the Bush Administration is conspiring to create a modern Fascist tyranny, not because I believe that they couldn't, but because it wouldn't be practical. It wouldn't serve a purpose. I believe that V, along with Michael Moore's products, is leftist Alarmism + sheer cynical capitalism. It's a convenient club that Democrats can use to beat their political opponents. That said, a lot of the legitimate, necessary steps to counter terrorism do look like fascism. Police-work, when it tries hard to neutralize law-breaking looks like fascism.

The problem is that for fascism truly to succeed, it can't look like it at first. The other problem is that the outside world really does hate and envy America. I say this as someone who has seen a lot of this hatred and envy first hand. So it's not like 9/11 was an anomaly, America faces real threats. That's what the loud lefties fail to address.

Law enforcement becomes more aggressive, more self-righteous, more power-hungry when it perceives a genuine danger, it also gets that way when it starts to have ambitions and delusions of grandeur. In other words, V for Vendetta could be a timely warning, but it's probably not.

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Saturday, March 25, 2006

V for Vendetta 1

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The first feeling I had when leaving the theater was that V had not been much of an action film. The trailers made it seem much more like an action-filled comicbook adventure than it had been, really. That doesn't mean that it wasn't good (Natalie Portman is definitely an asset), just that if you were expecting something light and shallowly exciting, you would be disappointed. The thing about V for Vendetta is that it's serious as a corrupt judge, or a egomaniacal dictator.

Setting it in the UK was a stroke of genius, rather than the concession to the Bush Administration that some of the films critics have made it out to be. If indeed it was motivated by cowardice, the Wachowskis' yellow streak is beautiful. John Hurt brings a panache to the role of the chancellor that only an Englishman could. Hugo Weaving steals the movie with simply the most brilliant piece of voice acting ever. He is so good, you never feel a need to see his face. Britain is the star of V, the gravitas, the absence of American naivete, it makes V that much more believable.

It's clear that this movie was not made with a Matrix-sized budget. It had the feel of Billy Zane's Phantom to it, a cheap movie pretending to be Batman. What saves it, is the message. However ridiculous might be it's basis, there is no question as to the earnestness of its exponents, the parallels of the film's UK to the present day USA are as obvious as a pile of shit on the dinner-table.

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Thursday, March 23, 2006

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Saw V for Vendetta finally. First things first: Natalie Portman is beautiful. Too young for my taste, would have been even when I was her age, but dammit she is so nice to look at! And she has hips! The lines in her face and that wider butt have made her more womanly, so that in 10 or so years he might have a place in my er, fantasy-life. Also, her head is nicely shaped, fortunately. [Note that at 14 I was attracted to the same age-group I am now at 31, namely the 35-50's. I wonder if when I'm fifty, should I survive that long (I shudder to think), I will be attracted to 70 year-old women. Hell, some of them look good to me now. ]

Her accent-work is more than fine, it's Streepishly good. Her emotional range is a little bit underdeveloped. She doesn't hit distress as well as I wanted her to (like in the scene where she finds out that V decieved her), but she gets close enough to make me respect her acting. She doesn't do nuance very well. Her conversations with Stephen Fry could have been done better if she wasn't concentrating on her accent. I have a feeling she will get better about all of this though.

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Saw V for Vendetta finally. First things first: Natalie Portman is beautiful. Too young for my taste, would have been even when I was her age, but dammit she is so nice to look at! And she has hips! The lines in her face and that wider butt have made her more womanly, so that in 10 or so years he might have a place in my er, fantasy-life. Also, her head is nicely shaped, fortunately. [Note that at 14 I was attracted to the same age-group I am now at 31, namely the 35-50's. I wonder if when I'm fifty, should I survive that long (I shudder to think), I will be attracted to 70 year-old women. Hell, some of them look good to me now. ]

Her accent-work is more than fine, it's Streepishly good. Her emotional range is a little bit underdeveloped. She doesn't hit distress as well as I wanted her to (like in the scene where she finds out that V decieved her), but she gets close enough to make me respect her acting. She doesn't do nuance very well. Her conversations with Stephen Fry could have been done better if she wasn't concentrating on her accent. I have a feeling she will get better about all of this though.

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Sunday, March 19, 2006

Charleston City Paper

The film critic in the Charleston City Paper writes that there are moments in The Hills Have Eyes where "new heights of imbecility must be scaled" by the characters in order to keep the plot going. Not really sure what he/she means exactly, and it's a capsule review so they don't have to explain what they mean.

On of the things that make the movie (or any movie, for that matter) entertaining is that there are no great leaps of imagination. It stays within the bounds of expected human behavior. The thing about movie critiquing is that when people (especially one's friends) start to talk in glowing terms about a movie, the instinct is to pan it. The solution is to not have any friends. Works for me.
First Nude

I remember the first nude woman I ever saw onscreen. It was in a movie called Sidney Sheldon's The Other Side of Midnight. It was also the first "realistic" depiction of sex I had ever seen. I was about 8 years old. I remember thinking that that could not have been a woman because her breasts were so small. It wasn't exactly a sexual experience for me, just sort of a milepost.

The first nude woman I had ever seen other than my mother was an English friend of my mom's who had red hair. I remember being surprised that pubic hair also came in "red". I was about 5 at the time. I know hat this has nothing to do with movies. Allow me to digress for a minute, dammit.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

Not usually a big fan of re-makes. In fact, I'm usually the snob who complains that the latest MTV-ized Hollywood teen version wasn't as good as the original. In the case of The Hills Have Eyes, I didn't see the original, in fact, the only thing I know about it is that it was the first movie to have the bad-guy's first-person POV. I have a hard time thinking it was as good or as intensely ugly as this one.

No, it's not an "enjoyable" movie, and if you aren't used to real onscreen violence, THHE will stick with you for days. It's considerably more ugly than Se7en or Saw. Take it from somebody who saw both of those. This however is as smart as each of those were. Alexander Aja did a fine job making a movie that was hard to watch without being flashy with it.

I'm not sure if the original had the same America-and-its-enemies subtext, don't see what the parallel would have been at that point. For those who have seen the remake: Note that the Republican is the one who gets them in trouble. Actually it's all the dogs's fault, but the Republican is the one who gets suckered in. The Democrat saves the day and the Christian gets eliminated early on.

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The Hills Have Eyes Is Really About Terrorism

There is a sequence in The Hills Have Eyes wherein somebody gets stabbed through the back with an American flag. One of the bad guys. One of the products of US government nuclear experiments in the New Mexico desert the early 60's. This happens in a model-home, at a table of mannequins representing the American Family. The theme of America vs the enemies it has created is constantly rammed down the throats of the audience. The fact that the family travelling through the NM desert being politically mixed is also not accidental. The savagery of the enemies, the totally different value-systems, the softness of the victims. It's all a commentary, but if you have seen the movie you probably don't need to be told that.

America gets attacked and brutalized, and it's needs to toughen up and become more ruthless than it's enemies. It needs to do what needs to be done to survive. And, it will never stop having enemies.

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The Hills Have Eyes
It's been a while since I saw a real horror movie at a theater. Am still somewhat traumatized. keep in mind that the last thing I saw like The Hills Have Eyes was Saw 2, and that wasn't even meant to be scary.

Summary:
Family on a road trip is terrorized by disfigured savages (mutated products of government nuclear tests) in the New Mexico desert.

In one graphic five-minute sequence, there is a likable man burned alive, a young girl raped, and the young mother of a baby shot. Oh, and I left a killing out so you don't think I want to spoil it entirely for you.

This is, for me, a real horror movie. It's brutal, and bloody, and merciless. It's also hopeless and dark if you take it literally. If you don't, it's a cautionary tale about America, it's past and it's future. It's still dark when you see the obvious (hammered-home) metaphor. I didn't like it, but then I'm pretty sure it wasn't meant to be liked. It's done too well.

Ok, there are always you perverted assholes (I know a few of you) who will go to see a movie once they hear "rape-sequence". Let me burst your bubble: it's not in itself particularly graphic and it's only violent, nothing titillating.

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Sunday, March 05, 2006

Guaranteed Oscar Picks (Call your Bookie)

My Oscar Picks:
Best Picture:
Munich

Best Actor:
Joaquin Phoenix, Walk the Line

Best Actress:
Felicity Huffman, Transamerica

Best Supporting Actor:
George Clooney, Syriana

Best Supporting Actress:
Rachel Weisz, The Constant Gardener

Best Achievement in Directing:
Steven Spielberg, Munich

Best Screenplay:
Crash, Paul Haggis, Robert Moresco

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Saturday, March 04, 2006

Fark, Trolls, and Snakes on a Plane

If you bother reading though this Fark thread on Snakes on a Plane you will see that there a couple of what seem to be racial trolls. Pretending to troll is the best way to get out of being called a particular kind of asshole. What you do is dress up your argument in mildly absurd hyperbole and then people will wonder if you actually meant it or are just trying to get attention. Pedophiles, misogynists, antisemites, jingoists, and cowards from a variety of objectionable schools of thought use this tactic.

If you have such little faith in your ability to persuade, then why say anything? if you don't have the balls to fight for what you believe then why advertise that fact?

It's passive-aggressive. It's how you get out of confrontation you don't have the stomach for it. You feel you have accomplished something by merely stating your argument, even if your timidity says everything about the argument itself.

Snakes on a Plane is a fad that will die the minute it gets popular enough. It's the latest fat-kid-with-a-light-saber, lacking the eternal inherent fascinatingness of a tubgirl or goatse.

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Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Swingers and Key Parties

Inspired by the most depressing scene in a most depressing film (The Ice Storm), nerve.com has a key-party. That sequence in the movie made my skin crawl. If there is any set of people better suited to define the depths of human depravity than swingers. I don't mean your brow-beaten spouses (usually wives), I mean the gleeful, grinning, coldly lustful ones.

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Oprah vs. Jonathan Franzen: Remembering The Ballsiest Act by a Contemporary American Novelist

"She's picked some good books," Franzen said in an interview posted on Powells.com, "but she's picked enough schmaltzy, one-dimensional ones that I cringe, myself ..."

Impossible to imagine the woman who endorsed Bridges of Madison County, and her audience, enjoying any of Jonathan Franzen. Pretentious book-club bimbos ought to stick with work offering a veneer of thoughtfulness, by trendy authors. Mind you, I like that he got a sales boost out of the publicity. I realize that not ALL of her recommendations are bad, and I recognize that not ALL of her audience is witless, but witless women tend to follow her instructions as they would the dictates of a prophet. Oprah-fandom itself gives them the appearance of some sort of intelligence.

I got a kick out of Franzen's "apologies":
"To find myself being in the position of giving offense to someone who's a hero -- not a hero of mine per se, but a hero in general -- I feel bad," he told USA Today. (From here)

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Monday, February 27, 2006

Spike Lee

Filmography

http://imdb.com/name/nm0000490/

(Spike Lee's latest movie stars this man.)

Interviews

http://www.well-rounded.com/movies/reviews/spike_intv.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2003/02/25/spike_lee_25th_hour_interview.shtml

 

Wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_Lee

 

Reviews of His Better Films

Clockers

Crooklyn

Do the Right Thing

Malcolm X

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The Davinci Code (Again)

Is the Roman Catholic Church up to it's old hijinks again? I smell a conspiracy!!!

Reading this makes me feel only contempt for the British Book Awards. If people read more they would know that A) all of the good ideas in this book were ripped off and definitely not new. B) Dan Brown can't write.

Over a $100 million for a piece of third-rate hackery that reads like a dentist's self-published hobby-novel. The world is doomed.

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Clive Owen

Sunday, February 26, 2006

Uncivil Seasons, A Great American Novel

Michael Malone, like so many smart, academically-gifted novelists, is good only for one shot. Caleb Carr comes to mind. If you have read any of the novels after that first blinding flash of talent, you will know what I mean. Uncivil Seasons is a fantastic American novel. In and of itself worthy of being given all of the kudos given to the all the works of the vastly over-rated Michael Chabon. Malone's subsequent work, however, like Carr's, is pathetic, with the general feel of something forced and fraudulent.

Uncivil Seasons is about a murder in a small North Carolina city. It's a Southern epic written in the format of a murder mystery. Malone constructs sentences like no other contemporary American writer, little tornadoes of wit and learning that demand to be read twice, they are that good. His characters are vivid and jump from the pages and speak their words to you, scenes are acted out before you. The whole novel is so precisely, lucidly written that reading it is like watching the movie adaptation of it.

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Saturday, February 25, 2006

White America's Buffoon is Dead

?

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Don Knotts what the white America's Amos and Andy, Chesterfield, and somebody from within the race to look down on, pretty much only because of how he looked . Jerry Lewis saw it and moved out of that kind of comedy, becoming an asshole in the process (even if he does help those kids).

What Don Knotts did all his career is capitalize on how the rest of the world sees him: weak and stupid. The dumb-jock part of us laughs at people who don't look as good as we do, aren't as tough, aren't as competent. It's how we feel better about our own cowardice. It's what made clowns funny to cruder people, and what makes slapstick funny.

It's the Roman-Arena part of us.

Of Jerry Lewis and Don Knotts, Knotts did the smarter thing. He stayed in the game, and rode what he had till he didn't look that much different from other old people and therefore wasn't as funny anymore. The thing is, we all kind of look the same in the end.

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Friday, February 24, 2006

Stallone, WTF?

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I was just about to enter puberty when the sequel to First Blood came out. Rambo 2. I cannot remember ever wanting to see a movie more. I would watch through television commercial breaks hopeful of the opportunity to see a trailer. I remember staring at the screen rapt and frozen as they played the clip from the movie.I read reviews in magazines, and newspapers, delighted in anything good said about the movie. Watched any behind the scenes specials that came on and anything to do with Sylvester Stallone or his life. Indeed, to be young is to be stupid.

Rambo II, when I finally did get to see it a couple of years after it came out, was the first unedited grown up movie I had ever seen. I had nothing to compare it to except the musicals my mother made me watch with her (I remember more of My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music than any grown heterosexual man should), therefore I enjoyed it greatly.

I saw Rambo III a few days ago, or parts of it, anyway. Now I wonder how Sylvester Stallone ever became a successful actor let alone male icon of the 1980s. The best I can say for him is that he is a slightly better actor than Jean-Claude Van Damme. He, also, is quite odd-looking, nothing like what I would consider leading-man material. He does act, unlike the Van Dammes and the Seagals and the Norrises, he doesn't act well, but he does try. I am not sure if this effort is a good or a bad thing. When honest effort results in failure it is pathetic and laughable.

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Book-to-Movie

The very best book-to-screen adaptation is, and I suspect, always will be Lonesome Dove.Perfect casting through and through, holding exactly to the book. I would put To Kill a Mockingbird a little way behind this.

It's virtually impossible to compress a novel into a 120 minute screenplay without losing a lot, even when the book's writer does it himself. If you do it the wrong way you end up with a Cliff's Notes version, an idiot's highlight reel that is of no value to anyone who actually read the story.

The very best way is to cut the interior monologue and stick to scenes at actually take place in present of the story. You ask your readers for casting choices, who do they see playing this character?

What authors don't realize is that once a story is published, the don't own it anymore, the people who have read it and love it do.

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Thursday, February 23, 2006

More movies that haven't been released yet...

More movies on their way down Hollywood's poop-chute (or should I say "poop-shoot", little filming pun for you there, thank me for the hearty chuckle later). See previous post for the first lot.

Drew Barrymore in Music and Lyrics. Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore play a song-lyricist and a performer who fall in love. Need I say that this is listed as a "romantic-comedy"? Probably directed by Nora Ephron or Meathead. So cute I could puke.

Nicholas Cage stars in Wicker Man, another Hollywood attempt to fuck up a classic. A sheriff investigates the disappearance of a young girl on a small island and finds dark pagan goings-on. It could be that this is to appease Catholics afraid of all the good press pagans will get as a result of the DaVinci Code.

Russell Crowe will star in A Good Year as an Englishman who inherits a property in France only to find that an American is also claiming it as hers. Ah, yes, those evil Americans can't keep their hands of other people's shit. There will likely be some political undertones, and lots of Yankee-bashing in this one.

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