(See previous reviews of American Sniper, Birdman, and The Grand Budapest Hotel.)
Boyhood. A boy grows up in suburban Texas. And that’s pretty much the movie.
There are crises — the boy’s mother marries a crazy, mean drunk; the boy gets picked on a bit at school; the boy’s first real girlfriend breaks up with him, etc. But what most other filmmakers would naturally parlay into drama, Richard Linklater just makes into scenes. Linklater’s not into drama, or even plot: In his own words, “our lives don’t have plot so much as they have character and a time structure.”
This is the sort of thing we expect from Frenchmen and normally I’m wary of it, but the movie held my interest. When an artist has something on his mind, character and time structure may be enough.
So what does Linklater have on his mind? He seems to want us to identify with some experience that means a lot to him, like the stoned 70s high-school valedictory of Dazed and Confused. In the case of Boyhood this is not a hard ask, because the milieu covers a broad American ground: the family is suburban but not financially secure, and their status wobbles between comfort and struggle; their habits and habitats (high school, malls, cars, parks) are familiar; the setting has some flavor of Texas but could be anywhere in the Big Middle. It’s no more than a short reach up or down for most of us who would wind up seeing the movie.
If that sounds a little bland and characterless and pitched-down-the-middle, you’re not wrong. For a slice-of-life, Boyhood doesn’t have a lot of the details that, in the best examples of the genre, would stick like burrs — no Scorsese espresso cups nor Ozu teacups, no rituals that gain resonance over time. There’s some feeling for cluttered children’s bedrooms and Austin tyro crash pads, but not a lot; the movie moves quickly through its 12-year span and doesn’t let us steep in anything very long.
This is, I think, by design; the movie is more about change than about permanence. But there can be something about change that sticks to the soul, too. And here’s where Childhood’s famous stunt — having one kid, Ellar Coltrane, play the lead, Mason, from age six to 16, and pausing the film to age along with him — is actually a bigger stroke of genius that it at first looks.
Note that with all the praise the movie is getting, no one is saying much about Coltrane’s performance. The fact is, he’s not that much of an actor. He could be one — he’s perfectly natural, even attractive. But he doesn’t have the same ego-push you find in child actors (and indeed in adult actors), because he hasn't learned or been trained to assert himself. As Mason, he’s rather passive, in just the way that you might expect a kid with the upbringing posited in the film to be, even in scenes where he’s at the center of the action. And that suits the picture's purposes fine: He’s just a boy, not yet grown — and not one of those miraculous boys of legend who rise to meet challenges, with daddy's rifle or Horatio Alger gumption, but a real boy of the modern American system — insulated from challenge and looking for the next thing.
One of my very favorite scenes in the movie involves teenage Mason coming home later than he promised from a date and confronting his mother’s live-in, Jim, who’s been drinking and doesn’t appreciate the kid’s disrespect toward his mother. This could be a “dramatic” scene, and we’ve seen versions of it a million times in movies. Only in this case, the kid isn’t going for it. He knows the man doesn’t have any authority over him — and if he tried to act as if he did (and he doesn’t — Jim also knows that much), that would be something to ride out rather than engage. Just like the drama with the mean-drunk husband, and the bad kids at school; whatever anguish it might mean for others, for the boy it’s just another growing pain. The choice he makes -- to blow the guy off and walk into the house -- is absolutely right, and probably not what any Hollywood screenwriter would have cooked up for him.
Other scenes have this same dynamic. The kid’s girlfriend betrays him, and he’s pissy with her about it — and he looks like an ineffectual jerk, as of course he would. When Mason is packing for college and disdains to take one particular nostalgic tchotchke, his mother (Patricia Arquette, ascending to a whole new level of magnificence) breaks down, and the kid isn’t particularly good about it — not mean, not weird, just self-involved and unable to engage his mother except on an adolescent level that has nothing to do with her grown-up pain.
I think this is why I stuck with the movie even without a plot to be pulled by, and even without liking the kid very much (how could I? He’s too much like I was at his age). I can’t even imagine our great poets of adolescence — Wedekind, Rimbaud, Paul Westerberg, the guy who wrote River’s Edge — catching this aspect of boyhood without gilding the lily. For all Boyhood's faults, Linklater's trick caught lightning in a bottle.
(I will add that it occurred to me at the end, when the kid is sitting at the park with his new college friends, that the whole movie might be a vision produced by the drugs he took -- and that the psilocybin candy he ate is Linklater's equivalent of Proust's madeleine.)
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query oscar. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query oscar. Sort by date Show all posts
Sunday, February 08, 2015
Friday, February 22, 2019
ON TO OSCAR, PART 5.
(Other Best Picture Nominees considered so far: Black Panther, A Star is Born, Roma, BlackKkKlansman, and The Favourite.)
Bohemian Rhapsody. I've often said that the biopic is an intrinsically minor artform, and that only extremely rare exceptions bend the curve. Bohemian Rhapsody looks good and moves with some of the strut and glide of Queen's music, but it has all the traditional biopic problems -- for example, outside the star, there are no real characters. Credit Tom Hollander for sneaking a hint of dry humor into his lawyer/manager Jim "Miami" Beach (and Mike Myers -- had me fooled!), but everyone else is a cipher. Maybe it's because they're all still alive and could make trouble but the movie bandmates don't give us anything besides the most pro-forma behind-the-music moments: The lightbulb that's-a-great-riff! moments, the Freddie-you've-gone-too-far moments, etc. Even Mercury's female "love of my life" Mary never shows any feelings but Freddy-related feelings, and out of a regrettable soap opera at that. What if they'd been a little playful about it? When Freddie says "I think I'm bisexual" and Mary says, "you're gay," didn't anyone on the set realize how funny that is? I was laughing, anyway.
In fact all the stuff about Freddie's sexuality is weirdly fraught -- I haven't seen a leather scene like that since Cruising. (Wait'll they make the Rob Halford biopic!) Well, the closet can do strange things to a man and, given his background, Mercury was particularly [cue the music!] under pressure from both directions -- pushed not to go too far for obvious social reasons, but compelled to reveal what was going on inside himself for artistic reasons. That's a lot to take on and I can hardly blame Bryan Singer, the superhero-movie director of a big-budget can't-miss biopic (who has some issues himself), for deciding that the answer is the true love of a decent bloke you can bring home to your stereotypically uptight immigrant dad. But sweet as that is, judging by his music I bet that wasn't all Freddie Mercury was going for.
But if the script doesn't show us, at least Rami Malek's performance is able to suggest it. There have been a lot of jokes about Rami Malek's dental prosthesis doing the acting for him, but like any good actor Malek makes the thing work for the character -- sometimes the teeth are a totems of his fears and sorrows, something to hide and brood over, and sometimes they're the prow of a proud ego-ship steaming late into rehearsal. And despite being 90% of the movie, Malek's Freddie is still able to remain a little mysterious -- even in the cliche good-love and bad-love scenes, you can feel that he's protecting something inside himself -- his heart, maybe, or his ego, or his talent; something, in any case, that can't stand too much handling. Whether at the top of his game or the height of his madness, that makes Mercury vulnerable and lovable and fascinating, and not just someone we're staring at because he's famous. For a biopic that's an achievement.
Bohemian Rhapsody. I've often said that the biopic is an intrinsically minor artform, and that only extremely rare exceptions bend the curve. Bohemian Rhapsody looks good and moves with some of the strut and glide of Queen's music, but it has all the traditional biopic problems -- for example, outside the star, there are no real characters. Credit Tom Hollander for sneaking a hint of dry humor into his lawyer/manager Jim "Miami" Beach (and Mike Myers -- had me fooled!), but everyone else is a cipher. Maybe it's because they're all still alive and could make trouble but the movie bandmates don't give us anything besides the most pro-forma behind-the-music moments: The lightbulb that's-a-great-riff! moments, the Freddie-you've-gone-too-far moments, etc. Even Mercury's female "love of my life" Mary never shows any feelings but Freddy-related feelings, and out of a regrettable soap opera at that. What if they'd been a little playful about it? When Freddie says "I think I'm bisexual" and Mary says, "you're gay," didn't anyone on the set realize how funny that is? I was laughing, anyway.
In fact all the stuff about Freddie's sexuality is weirdly fraught -- I haven't seen a leather scene like that since Cruising. (Wait'll they make the Rob Halford biopic!) Well, the closet can do strange things to a man and, given his background, Mercury was particularly [cue the music!] under pressure from both directions -- pushed not to go too far for obvious social reasons, but compelled to reveal what was going on inside himself for artistic reasons. That's a lot to take on and I can hardly blame Bryan Singer, the superhero-movie director of a big-budget can't-miss biopic (who has some issues himself), for deciding that the answer is the true love of a decent bloke you can bring home to your stereotypically uptight immigrant dad. But sweet as that is, judging by his music I bet that wasn't all Freddie Mercury was going for.
But if the script doesn't show us, at least Rami Malek's performance is able to suggest it. There have been a lot of jokes about Rami Malek's dental prosthesis doing the acting for him, but like any good actor Malek makes the thing work for the character -- sometimes the teeth are a totems of his fears and sorrows, something to hide and brood over, and sometimes they're the prow of a proud ego-ship steaming late into rehearsal. And despite being 90% of the movie, Malek's Freddie is still able to remain a little mysterious -- even in the cliche good-love and bad-love scenes, you can feel that he's protecting something inside himself -- his heart, maybe, or his ego, or his talent; something, in any case, that can't stand too much handling. Whether at the top of his game or the height of his madness, that makes Mercury vulnerable and lovable and fascinating, and not just someone we're staring at because he's famous. For a biopic that's an achievement.
Sunday, December 05, 2010
I Love You Phillip Morris. Along with the pleasure of seeing Jim Carrey have sex with men, this is best seen as a big gay parody of Catch Me If You Can. The gag, at least initially, is that Carrey -- who has an authenticity fetish that manifests in compulsive fraud -- gives everyone what they want and expect, and they go for it, and for a while it's every bit as compelling as Spielberg's version while being totally, self-evidently bogus. The reduction of prison brutality to cheap yuks, and of Carrey's courtship of Ewan McGregor to something like Carry On Prison Queers, made me hope they'd go all the way with this subversive strategy into uncharted territory.
Alas, no: Big-movie sentimentality comes in hard. Once he's got a good, relatively straight gig and life with McGregor, Carrey gets offended by how "boring" his colleagues are (that one of them restates his joke as one about "a nigger and a jew" is the cheesy underliner that's meant to help us buy it) and goes balls-out with his shenanigans, leading to new incarceration. This gives him a new reason to want to get out -- love for his partner -- and for un-good measure the filmmakers give us an even cheesier underliner in a flashback involving Carrey's AIDS-afflicted ex-partner.
Then we get the strings and star-affliction and it all goes to shit. The final scam is supposed to be impressive, and gives Carrey some Oscar-worthy acting hacks. I feel sorry for the real person Carrey plays, Steven Russell (to whose fate we are alerted in supers), and it would be nice if this movie gave some attention to his sad case. But either the ending is a failure of nerve, or the movie should have been much, much sadder.
Alas, no: Big-movie sentimentality comes in hard. Once he's got a good, relatively straight gig and life with McGregor, Carrey gets offended by how "boring" his colleagues are (that one of them restates his joke as one about "a nigger and a jew" is the cheesy underliner that's meant to help us buy it) and goes balls-out with his shenanigans, leading to new incarceration. This gives him a new reason to want to get out -- love for his partner -- and for un-good measure the filmmakers give us an even cheesier underliner in a flashback involving Carrey's AIDS-afflicted ex-partner.
Then we get the strings and star-affliction and it all goes to shit. The final scam is supposed to be impressive, and gives Carrey some Oscar-worthy acting hacks. I feel sorry for the real person Carrey plays, Steven Russell (to whose fate we are alerted in supers), and it would be nice if this movie gave some attention to his sad case. But either the ending is a failure of nerve, or the movie should have been much, much sadder.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
MY OSCAR SLOG CONTINUES. The biopic is of necessity a limited genre. To succeed, it must stay tightly focused on the pains and triumphs of a subject sufficiently famous to command our attention. In most cases, this keeps the filmmaker from connecting the story to a broader vision, which is why so few of them are works of art. The rare exceptions usually involve a historical figure who has obtained the status of myth, which leaves the filmmaker free to project his own story onto the audience's received impressions of the hero. (See Rossellini's The Rise of Louis XIV or Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln or Stone's JFK. Among the rare exceptions to the formula I would include Preston Sturges' The Great Moment.)
Still, lower-order biopics, from The Story of Louis Pasteur on forward, can be entertaining, and La Vie En Rose is a fine example. Edith Piaf's art and suffering are legendary, and the film mainly amplifies them, from her pathetic beginnings as a whore's child shunted through brothels, to her apotheosis as a great singer whose songs fulsomely reflect her pain, to her wretched, broken end.
The second-best feature of La Vie En Rose is a time-jumping narrative that links all the stages of Piaf's suffering, so that her spirit and attainments are never viewed far from their context. History is always closely linked to destiny, which is not a brilliant philosophical idea but which provides a lifeline that is easy to follow.
Its best feature is Marion Cotillard as Piaf. She picks up seamlessly from the equally fine child actors who play her younger self, brilliantly imagining what their terrors and enforced self-possesion would become in adulthood: a sad monster you'd want to protect if you could get close enough to do it. Her mood swings visibly recall her earlier dramas, which are glowingly evident in her spindly, uncomfortable body and her open, ever-sorrowing face. Her childishness is by turns ugly or appealing, and never leaves her, even in decay and at the threshold of death. If Piaf had not already been a legend, Cotillard's performance would have created one for her, which is to say she achieves the rare gift of great mimicry that is also great acting.
UPDATE. Much astute criticism in comments, and some proposed higher-grade biopics. I don't think The Madness of King George is about G3 so much as it's about what a great thing hereditary monarchy was, at least compared to what replaced it. The hallucinatory Ken Russell biographies are closer to the mark. I should mention Fellini's Casanova, which is about a lot of other things too, including hilarious summations of the French, Spanish, Italian, and German national characters. The central character, seen at one point expounding on one of his own books in front of a page from it stuck with excrement to a prison wall, certainly embodies something larger than himself. Western Civilization, maybe.
Still, lower-order biopics, from The Story of Louis Pasteur on forward, can be entertaining, and La Vie En Rose is a fine example. Edith Piaf's art and suffering are legendary, and the film mainly amplifies them, from her pathetic beginnings as a whore's child shunted through brothels, to her apotheosis as a great singer whose songs fulsomely reflect her pain, to her wretched, broken end.
The second-best feature of La Vie En Rose is a time-jumping narrative that links all the stages of Piaf's suffering, so that her spirit and attainments are never viewed far from their context. History is always closely linked to destiny, which is not a brilliant philosophical idea but which provides a lifeline that is easy to follow.
Its best feature is Marion Cotillard as Piaf. She picks up seamlessly from the equally fine child actors who play her younger self, brilliantly imagining what their terrors and enforced self-possesion would become in adulthood: a sad monster you'd want to protect if you could get close enough to do it. Her mood swings visibly recall her earlier dramas, which are glowingly evident in her spindly, uncomfortable body and her open, ever-sorrowing face. Her childishness is by turns ugly or appealing, and never leaves her, even in decay and at the threshold of death. If Piaf had not already been a legend, Cotillard's performance would have created one for her, which is to say she achieves the rare gift of great mimicry that is also great acting.
UPDATE. Much astute criticism in comments, and some proposed higher-grade biopics. I don't think The Madness of King George is about G3 so much as it's about what a great thing hereditary monarchy was, at least compared to what replaced it. The hallucinatory Ken Russell biographies are closer to the mark. I should mention Fellini's Casanova, which is about a lot of other things too, including hilarious summations of the French, Spanish, Italian, and German national characters. The central character, seen at one point expounding on one of his own books in front of a page from it stuck with excrement to a prison wall, certainly embodies something larger than himself. Western Civilization, maybe.
Sunday, February 24, 2019
ON TO OSCAR 2019, PART 7.
(Other Best Picture Nominees considered so far: Black Panther, A Star is Born, Roma, BlackKkKlansman, The Favourite, Bohemian Rhapsody, and Green Book.)
Vice. Lively, politically astute, but a bit of a mess. In The Big Short, reformed funny-movie maker Adam McKay dramatized the fucking-over of the American economy, and amplified it with explanatory montages. Vice, about the fucking-over of America, is similar but with even more weight on the montages -- in fact, most of the historical characters are introduced mainly as pieces of the Brechtian educational filmstrip; for example, Frank Luntz has lines but no character; his main usefulness is as a living demonstration of how Republican propagandists used focus groups to not just sell policies but also poison the public discourse. Long passages are just tableaux or archival footage, cutting political events with clips of The Rifleman, Survivor, and Jane Fonda's Workout, seasoning history with zeitgeist.
You can see why Cheney looked like a great focal point for the story: He not only has a fat hand in every Republican outrage from Nixon through W, he also exemplifies the Republican success story: Be a total fuckup, get religion either figuratively or literally, latch onto some scumbags who respect your scumbaggery and scam your way to the top. The film suggests a similarity between the trajectories of youthful drunkards Cheney and George W., but also acknowledges the big difference: Unlike Bush Cheney is not even passably good with voters; he only shines among his fellow power jocks; as one of the film's many joke sequences underlines, his gift is to look serious and knowledgeable even when pitching total nonsense. In other words, he can bullshit the bullshitters, and he's not above hauling in an expert or two -- trained legal analysts, for example, with no excess of scruples -- to back his bullshit up.
The main problem with this approach is, Dick Cheney is not a tragic or a comic or even an anti-heroic figure -- he's just a piece of shit. Christian Bale dives to the center of the character and comes up with a believably not-too-bright guy who loves his family and finds a way to raise their standard of living by joining Today's GOP. This is a sensible explanation of the real Cheney's career, and Bale does it well -- but it has very little to do with the political lesson McKay's giving, other than to unnecessarily explain that amoral men make amoral movements. What would it mean if Cheney were a different person? What's the functional difference between Cheney and, say, fellow country-wrecker Donald Trump? After a while the Dick Cheney story diverges from the political story and, despite a half-hearted attempt to link some family drama to Republican hypocrisy (which could be yet another movie!), loses focus.
As Lynn Cheney, Amy Adams manages to spell out the personal frustrations that she displaces by feeding Dick's ambition without turning into a Lady Macbeth bitch-caricature (with a script that does her no favors), and Sam Rockwell does a good job of catching both W's weakness and charm. And I enjoyed all the cameos and special guest appearances, including Madea as Colin Powell. But the real doubles act, to me, is Bale's Cheney and Steven Carell's Donald Rumsfeld. There's a lot of student-exceeds-the-master in the relationship, and while Carell never makes the old bastard genuinely likable, there's some poignance in his profession of admiration from an abandoned office to the old friend who's just cut his throat. If we could strip away the superfluities, that's the part I'd keep.
That's it! In an hour or two, my predictions; then, showtime!
Vice. Lively, politically astute, but a bit of a mess. In The Big Short, reformed funny-movie maker Adam McKay dramatized the fucking-over of the American economy, and amplified it with explanatory montages. Vice, about the fucking-over of America, is similar but with even more weight on the montages -- in fact, most of the historical characters are introduced mainly as pieces of the Brechtian educational filmstrip; for example, Frank Luntz has lines but no character; his main usefulness is as a living demonstration of how Republican propagandists used focus groups to not just sell policies but also poison the public discourse. Long passages are just tableaux or archival footage, cutting political events with clips of The Rifleman, Survivor, and Jane Fonda's Workout, seasoning history with zeitgeist.
You can see why Cheney looked like a great focal point for the story: He not only has a fat hand in every Republican outrage from Nixon through W, he also exemplifies the Republican success story: Be a total fuckup, get religion either figuratively or literally, latch onto some scumbags who respect your scumbaggery and scam your way to the top. The film suggests a similarity between the trajectories of youthful drunkards Cheney and George W., but also acknowledges the big difference: Unlike Bush Cheney is not even passably good with voters; he only shines among his fellow power jocks; as one of the film's many joke sequences underlines, his gift is to look serious and knowledgeable even when pitching total nonsense. In other words, he can bullshit the bullshitters, and he's not above hauling in an expert or two -- trained legal analysts, for example, with no excess of scruples -- to back his bullshit up.
The main problem with this approach is, Dick Cheney is not a tragic or a comic or even an anti-heroic figure -- he's just a piece of shit. Christian Bale dives to the center of the character and comes up with a believably not-too-bright guy who loves his family and finds a way to raise their standard of living by joining Today's GOP. This is a sensible explanation of the real Cheney's career, and Bale does it well -- but it has very little to do with the political lesson McKay's giving, other than to unnecessarily explain that amoral men make amoral movements. What would it mean if Cheney were a different person? What's the functional difference between Cheney and, say, fellow country-wrecker Donald Trump? After a while the Dick Cheney story diverges from the political story and, despite a half-hearted attempt to link some family drama to Republican hypocrisy (which could be yet another movie!), loses focus.
As Lynn Cheney, Amy Adams manages to spell out the personal frustrations that she displaces by feeding Dick's ambition without turning into a Lady Macbeth bitch-caricature (with a script that does her no favors), and Sam Rockwell does a good job of catching both W's weakness and charm. And I enjoyed all the cameos and special guest appearances, including Madea as Colin Powell. But the real doubles act, to me, is Bale's Cheney and Steven Carell's Donald Rumsfeld. There's a lot of student-exceeds-the-master in the relationship, and while Carell never makes the old bastard genuinely likable, there's some poignance in his profession of admiration from an abandoned office to the old friend who's just cut his throat. If we could strip away the superfluities, that's the part I'd keep.
That's it! In an hour or two, my predictions; then, showtime!
Sunday, February 18, 2018
HOLIDAY MONDAY 'ROUND THE HORN.
• The Village Voice column is delayed by the holiday til Tuesday. As part of my research I went to see Black Panther. I've told you good people before -- for example, back in 2009 when people were talking about The Dark Knight as a serious movie -- that I don't relate to the comic-book flicks that even some of my most intelligent friends enjoy. In fact, I find them idiotic. There may be a Citizen Kane of alcoholic clown movies, but as far as I'm concerned comic-book movies don't even have a Dances with Wolves. (Exceptions, or rather excuses: Ghost World, which I revere, is [clears throat] based on a graphic novel -- I know, that's like Lisa Loopner calling The Way We Were "a film not a movie" -- and Tim Burton's brutal Batman Returns is a Batman movie like Godard's Weekend is a road picture.) I can't even relate to those Lord of the Rings pictures. Magic kingdoms don't send me. My nerdness does not that way tend.
Black Panther is no exception. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it; in fact once I got used to the unfamiliar sensation of having my eyes and ears pummeled while prone in a multiplex barcalounger, it was a treat. The Afrocentric threads and sets are supercool, I am definitely down with the Praetorian Guard of tough bald chicks (the baddest-assed of whom is a general), and I'm happy for anyone who gets an ethnocentric or any other kind of thrill from it.
But I couldn't take it any more more seriously than I did Kokumo and Pazuzu in Exorcist II: The Heretic. I've never seen a made-up ancient tradition that wasn't at least slightly ridiculous (including the "real" ones we all grew up with). When the Wakandans were shown cheering T'Challa at his coronation in mountain niches going up hundreds of feet, all I could think of were Hummel figurines in a specialty display, or It's a Small World at Disneyland.
Also, I have to say that while I see why T'Challa had to defeat Killmonger, the latter had a good enough argument; why shouldn't Wakanda help liberate black folk around the world? History certainly supports W'Kabi's prediction that, once Whiteyworld got a whiff of their secret Vibranium stash, they'd do as they have always done with Africans. The Wakandan isolationist ethos is about protecting Wakandans; I see nothing in it about the brotherhood of man. It's nice T'Challa and Shuri are sufficiently guilt-tripped by it all to go to Oakland and start starship midnight basketball, but if they'd decided to go the Black Planet route instead I think it would have been more interesting.
But like I said, it's a comic book movie, and it was enough that it moved and looked good. And if I'm sympathetic toward Killmonger it may be in part because Michael B. Jordan, in a cast full of winners, steals the plum. Admittedly he has the advantage of being able to speak modern argot in a movie full of pseudo-Royal-African, and everyone else's jokes are corny enough that lines like "'Hey, Auntie" bring the house down. But modern, too, is the monster of reaction to injustice that Jordan makes of Killmonger, and though his viciousness made me want him defeated, as it was meant to, when he said at the point of dying that he wished to be buried in the ocean like his ancestors who "knew death was better than bondage," I wept. That, I took seriously.
• Also, returning to the Oscar derby I started with The Post, Get Out, and Dunkirk, I saw Lady Bird. Story: Christine, who prefers to be called by the fanciful eponym because I guess it will make a good title someday, is a driven though perhaps not exceptionally bright girl attending a Catholic school her parents can barely afford who wants to get out of her third-tier city (the same one auteur Greta Gerwig grew up in, what a coincidence) and make it big in New York — come back, reader! I swear it’s not bad! Along the way she does a lot of growing up — Reader? Hello?
Ha okay, leave if you want, but first let me tell you why it’s worth a look: Lady Bird and the other characters reveal themselves quickly (wanting-more daughter, angry-loving mother, becalmed-depressed dad, et alia) and, I'm forced to say, none of them shows much in the way of hidden depths. Nor are they full of surprises -- in fact the characters usually do things you should have seen coming a mile away. But I stayed interested and rooted for them throughout. I think that's because Gerwig and her actors understood that, first, when characters are closely observed, the audience will notice that, and think them worth watching. (Gerwig even has one of Lady Bird's teachers mention the similarity between love and attention. If that doesn't do it for you, the really-real performances of Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, and Tracy Letts should.) Also, they knew that the characters don't have to surprise us to be worthy of our attention; they just have to really try to be — what’s that phrase Mom uses? — the best version of themselves they can be. Sometimes just that struggle alone is worth watching.
I especially felt it in every scene involving Lady Bird and her best friend (Beanie Feldstein -- remember the name), a more obviously talented but also more ungainly girl whom she betrays, in a slightly ridiculous high-school way, before deciding to ditch her new cool friends and take her to the prom with her. I know, ick, after-school special, right? But when they went from crying in each other's arms to laughing with their mouths full of cheese and crackers because they couldn't believe they finished it all, I loved them. Later on, when they were mooning over what they would be doing next summer, they bored me. But I'll remember the cheese and crackers for a long time.
Black Panther is no exception. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it; in fact once I got used to the unfamiliar sensation of having my eyes and ears pummeled while prone in a multiplex barcalounger, it was a treat. The Afrocentric threads and sets are supercool, I am definitely down with the Praetorian Guard of tough bald chicks (the baddest-assed of whom is a general), and I'm happy for anyone who gets an ethnocentric or any other kind of thrill from it.
But I couldn't take it any more more seriously than I did Kokumo and Pazuzu in Exorcist II: The Heretic. I've never seen a made-up ancient tradition that wasn't at least slightly ridiculous (including the "real" ones we all grew up with). When the Wakandans were shown cheering T'Challa at his coronation in mountain niches going up hundreds of feet, all I could think of were Hummel figurines in a specialty display, or It's a Small World at Disneyland.
Also, I have to say that while I see why T'Challa had to defeat Killmonger, the latter had a good enough argument; why shouldn't Wakanda help liberate black folk around the world? History certainly supports W'Kabi's prediction that, once Whiteyworld got a whiff of their secret Vibranium stash, they'd do as they have always done with Africans. The Wakandan isolationist ethos is about protecting Wakandans; I see nothing in it about the brotherhood of man. It's nice T'Challa and Shuri are sufficiently guilt-tripped by it all to go to Oakland and start starship midnight basketball, but if they'd decided to go the Black Planet route instead I think it would have been more interesting.
But like I said, it's a comic book movie, and it was enough that it moved and looked good. And if I'm sympathetic toward Killmonger it may be in part because Michael B. Jordan, in a cast full of winners, steals the plum. Admittedly he has the advantage of being able to speak modern argot in a movie full of pseudo-Royal-African, and everyone else's jokes are corny enough that lines like "'Hey, Auntie" bring the house down. But modern, too, is the monster of reaction to injustice that Jordan makes of Killmonger, and though his viciousness made me want him defeated, as it was meant to, when he said at the point of dying that he wished to be buried in the ocean like his ancestors who "knew death was better than bondage," I wept. That, I took seriously.
• Also, returning to the Oscar derby I started with The Post, Get Out, and Dunkirk, I saw Lady Bird. Story: Christine, who prefers to be called by the fanciful eponym because I guess it will make a good title someday, is a driven though perhaps not exceptionally bright girl attending a Catholic school her parents can barely afford who wants to get out of her third-tier city (the same one auteur Greta Gerwig grew up in, what a coincidence) and make it big in New York — come back, reader! I swear it’s not bad! Along the way she does a lot of growing up — Reader? Hello?
Ha okay, leave if you want, but first let me tell you why it’s worth a look: Lady Bird and the other characters reveal themselves quickly (wanting-more daughter, angry-loving mother, becalmed-depressed dad, et alia) and, I'm forced to say, none of them shows much in the way of hidden depths. Nor are they full of surprises -- in fact the characters usually do things you should have seen coming a mile away. But I stayed interested and rooted for them throughout. I think that's because Gerwig and her actors understood that, first, when characters are closely observed, the audience will notice that, and think them worth watching. (Gerwig even has one of Lady Bird's teachers mention the similarity between love and attention. If that doesn't do it for you, the really-real performances of Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, and Tracy Letts should.) Also, they knew that the characters don't have to surprise us to be worthy of our attention; they just have to really try to be — what’s that phrase Mom uses? — the best version of themselves they can be. Sometimes just that struggle alone is worth watching.
I especially felt it in every scene involving Lady Bird and her best friend (Beanie Feldstein -- remember the name), a more obviously talented but also more ungainly girl whom she betrays, in a slightly ridiculous high-school way, before deciding to ditch her new cool friends and take her to the prom with her. I know, ick, after-school special, right? But when they went from crying in each other's arms to laughing with their mouths full of cheese and crackers because they couldn't believe they finished it all, I loved them. Later on, when they were mooning over what they would be doing next summer, they bored me. But I'll remember the cheese and crackers for a long time.
Friday, February 20, 2015
FRIDAY ROUND-THE-HORN.
At first I thought, "O God no Joanna Newsom is trying to sneak back
• Jonah Goldberg's column today could have been titled, "I'm not lazy and stupid, you're lazy and stupid!" He says Obama is dumb because he won't admit Islam itself is responsible for the nuts who kill in its name. The President's anodyne ecumenical statement is, in Goldberg's view, the same thing as saying "Michael Jordan didn’t play basketball" or "We didn’t win World War II" in that, durr, that's stoopid too, right? The analogy invites deeper analysis, so step well back as Goldberg executes his logic-fart:
“No religion is responsible for terrorism,” the president proclaimed, “people are responsible for violence and terrorism.”See -- Jews have wacky eating habits, Christians are nice, and Muslims are savage rapist-murders; Q.E.Doritos Cool Ranch! While I attribute the lack of retribution I've suffered for my anti-Mohammed cartoons to global respect for my artistry, I think Goldberg is safe because most non-conservatives can't make out what he's trying to say.
Now obviously, there’s some truth to this. We judge people more by their actions than by their beliefs. But reasonable people also recognize that our actions often have a causal relationship with our beliefs. This is hardly a controversial — or even debatable — insight. Orthodox Jews don’t avoid bacon because it tastes bad; they do so because they’re keeping kosher. One cannot intelligently discuss why Mother Teresa helped the poor without referring to her faith. And one cannot discuss why the Islamic State burns, rapes, and enslaves people without taking their religious beliefs into account.
• Speaking of legacy pledges and the next GOP President, Bill Kristol worries that Hillary Clinton is getting better numbers in the reps-the-future-not-the-past category in a CNN/ORC poll than any Republican Presidential candidate. (Scott Walker's numbers are least bad, perhaps because voters relate his social-net-shredding record to the dystopian future of The Handmaid's Tale or Idiocracy.) Kristol thinks he sees a way out:
Perhaps some new set of concerns in 2016 will overwhelm all the past/future talk. Given the state of the world, that’s quite possible. We could easily have a foreign policy election in 2016. And then people might not mind a steady hand, even if one from the past (think Richard Nixon in 1968).One thing Americans seem to have learned from the last clusterfuck in which Bill Kristol had a hand is, let's not do that again. In fact Kristol himself was complaining about "American war-weariness" only last year. Yet now he thinks beating the drum for Gulf War III might get one of his ringers elected. I suppose that's because he has more than average faith in the power of yellow journalism and jingo. After all, he is the editor of the Weekly Standard, which is very influential among people who never read anything they can't get for free on the New York-DC shuttle; that's got to count for something.
• Whether or not I get to see any of the other big films (see my "On to Oscar" posts), at some point this weekend I'm going to stick my fool neck out, as I have in years past, and predict Sunday's winners. So watch this space! (And the easy way to do this is to get on my Twitter feed, where I announce posts sometime and dish out apothegms.)
• Yeah it's late and who cares, but there are a few wonderful things about this Noah Rothman Hot Air column defending noted asshole Rudolph Giuliani and the asshole thing he said this week. I mean, it's mostly terrible on the level of Twitchy (look at the sickburn takedown of the media by "Florida-based political operative Rick Wilson"!), but in his flailing Rothman does bang into an interesting defense:
What are we to make of this frenzied attack on Giuliani, in which the whole of the political press reacted as though a man who left office 14 years ago had insulted their mothers?...
Oh, but he was a leading presidential candidate in 2007, don’t you know? And he delivered the keynote address at the GOP’s nominating convention in 2008. And he’s a frequent guest on cable news, so he must be influential (a claim that could only be made by someone who rarely appears on cable news). But observing Giuliani’s diminished stature today when compared to the last decade renders the media’s reaction even less explicable.I hope someone in Rudy's retinue told him, "It's okay, chief -- Noah Rothman says it doesn't matter 'cause you're a has-been!" Oh but the very, very, very best is the correction at the end:
An earlier version of this post incorrectly identified the chairman of the RNC as Ron FournierMay your weekend be as serendipitous.
Friday, March 01, 2024
FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: ICE CREAM HEADACHE EDITION.
It's still funny to me that this kind of music can qualify
as "a tune that's been running through my head"
as if it were some pretty Tin Pan Alley number.
Happy March! The deeper we get into political campaign season (what, you didn’t know? It started after the consultants got back from their post-election vacations in 2023) the more fucked up things look.
For example, you would think, nine months out from the general, that Republicans would try harder to tamp down the crazy. Didn’t at least the more politically exposed Republicans try to look normal about IVF after their lunacy was revealed by the Alabama Supreme Court decision – which, after all, merely followed their stated belief that life begins with the fertilized egg, even if it’s in a freezer? Sure, they also blocked a Senate vote to protect IVF, but one could read that as a tribute to the Grand Old Party’s grand old tradition of being obviously full of shit.
But their shock troops are still going before the public with snakes flying out of their mouths:
Sorry, kid, our base demands child broodslaves! Either the smart Republicans can’t control these nuts or smart Republicans don’t exist. Or they think binding the small core of nutcakes who can be counted on to vote/insurrect on their behalf is so important that they have to back up whatever lunacies they demand, and count on voter suppression to carry the day for their candidates in elections.
Anyway I understand some of you are here for Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebies! OK, here’s the most recent edition of Received Opinion with Bolt Upright, on the scandal of Joe Biden eating ice cream. I would have thought this a two-day story at best but the clown corps is still ON IT (“Joe Biden's awkward ice cream moment has only put the US president under more pressure,” etc). I guess it will never end and the Republican National Convention will include a ritual detonation of a big tub of Häagen-Dazs.
I will also remind you aesthetic types that I’m doing my annual Oscar movie reviews – with my latest that’s all ten Best Picture nominees sorted, with all of those essays free to non-subscribers, so if you want to prep for the big show March 10 now’s your chance. I also intend to watch and report back on some of the other nominated films. Watch that space!
Thursday, February 14, 2019
ON TO OSCAR 2019, PART 2.
Roma. [Mild spoilers.] When I was a young man I went with this girlfriend to visit her parents in Miami. As she, like most of my girlfriends, came from considerably more money than I did, the parents had a swell place, and a maid greeted the girlfriend at the door -- very effusively and even emotionally, I thought, considering she was after all a maid, though also with some reserve (like the hugs, though there were a lot of them and they were obviously heartfelt, never lasted very long) that made it seem even weirder. After the woman went back to her work, the girlfriend said, "That's [name of maid] -- she sort of raised me."
That played on my mind when I saw Roma, which as you may know is about a live-in servant to a middle-class family in the eponymous district in Mexico City in the early 70s. The servant, Cleo, young and modest and indÃgena, seems to be more or less the housekeeper; there's another girl who seems to be the cook, but they help each other in their jobs. In addition to housework, Cleo spends a lot of time with the children, one of whom, fair-haired and sensitive and given to tales of his past lives, I at first took to be her son, she seemed to understand him and love him so well, though she seemed too young to have had him. When I realized he was instead one of the family, and that he was probably the avatar of the filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón, I cried, and not for the last time. In fact I haven't cried for a movie as much since Moonlight, so there's a lachrymal vote in the Oscar sweepstakes.
Even before I made that connection, I could see it was a memory movie even if I hadn't heard in advance that it was -- so often details are jacked up in the way a child would perceive and then remember them in adulthood: The overdriven sound of 60s cars, the multilayered din of city streets, the chaos and clatter of hawkers flashing and bouncing their wares outside the movie palace, the paneling and fluorescent lights of the mueblerÃa. Even in scenes the child Cuarón could not have witnessed, the look and feel asserts itself, as if to insist on its importance, even over the story -- which I confess sometimes made me impatient, because it reminded me more of the sort of film installations one sees in museums than a movie.
But things do happen. Cleo takes up with Fermin, a friend of a cousin who turns out to be no good, a hitter in the Los Halcones paramilitary, who gets her pregnant and abandons her. (His abandonment and later renunciation of her are among the more protracted scenes, and thinking about it now I guess maybe I felt impatient with them because they're so painful.) The family meanwhile is disrupted; the father fucks off with a mistress, and his wife and her mother can at first think of nothing better than to deceive the kids and pretend he's just away on business. The twin sorrows of Cleo and her employer run on tracks that are sometimes parallel and even come very close, but there's always, as there was with my girlfriend's parents' maid, a line that no one is going to cross. But the maid and the family get through -- one would say together, but not quite, except in the blessed memory of a boy who grew up to make a movie where she was, at last, the center of attention, and at the close ascends into the endless memory of art.
There is so much that's virtuosic in this movie, and it's mostly Cuarón, who directed, wrote, shot and edited it (and I bet he had a lot to say about the sets); I especially love the long dolly shots, from the servants' giddy race down a Mexico City street to the genuinely how-the-hell amazing ocean rescue, but every scene is a jewel of rhythm, blocking, and dramatic emphasis, including the revelation scene at the seaside restaurant where the mother is the focus but there's a little boy who can't stop crying. All the acting is choice but Yalitza Aparicio's Cleo is the sort of thing that might have made Bresson think, maybe it's okay if the actors try a little. Her performance is more perfectly on the cusp of acting and not-acting than any other I've seen, and I've seen Joseph Chaikin. If you don't like the movie, you'll at least like a lot of the things that you see and hear in it.
(Kind of hate to disturb the reverie, but if you want to know everything that's wrong with "conservative" "arts criticism," you might check out Ross Douthat's studiously inept review of the film. The crux of it is, liberals r hypocrites because they like a movie where the maid is exploited, what if it was Berkeley huh libs. And wait till you hear his more specific criticisms; get this -- "The choice to film in black and white feels a wee bit pretentious, depriving the viewer of the rich colors that many of the street scenes imply" -- similarly, why were In Cold Blood, Psycho, and Dr. Strangelove in black and white, they had color then, I don't get it -- aaaargh fuck this guy; how perfect that this alleged follower of Christ should be such a perfect philistine.)
That played on my mind when I saw Roma, which as you may know is about a live-in servant to a middle-class family in the eponymous district in Mexico City in the early 70s. The servant, Cleo, young and modest and indÃgena, seems to be more or less the housekeeper; there's another girl who seems to be the cook, but they help each other in their jobs. In addition to housework, Cleo spends a lot of time with the children, one of whom, fair-haired and sensitive and given to tales of his past lives, I at first took to be her son, she seemed to understand him and love him so well, though she seemed too young to have had him. When I realized he was instead one of the family, and that he was probably the avatar of the filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón, I cried, and not for the last time. In fact I haven't cried for a movie as much since Moonlight, so there's a lachrymal vote in the Oscar sweepstakes.
Even before I made that connection, I could see it was a memory movie even if I hadn't heard in advance that it was -- so often details are jacked up in the way a child would perceive and then remember them in adulthood: The overdriven sound of 60s cars, the multilayered din of city streets, the chaos and clatter of hawkers flashing and bouncing their wares outside the movie palace, the paneling and fluorescent lights of the mueblerÃa. Even in scenes the child Cuarón could not have witnessed, the look and feel asserts itself, as if to insist on its importance, even over the story -- which I confess sometimes made me impatient, because it reminded me more of the sort of film installations one sees in museums than a movie.
But things do happen. Cleo takes up with Fermin, a friend of a cousin who turns out to be no good, a hitter in the Los Halcones paramilitary, who gets her pregnant and abandons her. (His abandonment and later renunciation of her are among the more protracted scenes, and thinking about it now I guess maybe I felt impatient with them because they're so painful.) The family meanwhile is disrupted; the father fucks off with a mistress, and his wife and her mother can at first think of nothing better than to deceive the kids and pretend he's just away on business. The twin sorrows of Cleo and her employer run on tracks that are sometimes parallel and even come very close, but there's always, as there was with my girlfriend's parents' maid, a line that no one is going to cross. But the maid and the family get through -- one would say together, but not quite, except in the blessed memory of a boy who grew up to make a movie where she was, at last, the center of attention, and at the close ascends into the endless memory of art.
There is so much that's virtuosic in this movie, and it's mostly Cuarón, who directed, wrote, shot and edited it (and I bet he had a lot to say about the sets); I especially love the long dolly shots, from the servants' giddy race down a Mexico City street to the genuinely how-the-hell amazing ocean rescue, but every scene is a jewel of rhythm, blocking, and dramatic emphasis, including the revelation scene at the seaside restaurant where the mother is the focus but there's a little boy who can't stop crying. All the acting is choice but Yalitza Aparicio's Cleo is the sort of thing that might have made Bresson think, maybe it's okay if the actors try a little. Her performance is more perfectly on the cusp of acting and not-acting than any other I've seen, and I've seen Joseph Chaikin. If you don't like the movie, you'll at least like a lot of the things that you see and hear in it.
(Kind of hate to disturb the reverie, but if you want to know everything that's wrong with "conservative" "arts criticism," you might check out Ross Douthat's studiously inept review of the film. The crux of it is, liberals r hypocrites because they like a movie where the maid is exploited, what if it was Berkeley huh libs. And wait till you hear his more specific criticisms; get this -- "The choice to film in black and white feels a wee bit pretentious, depriving the viewer of the rich colors that many of the street scenes imply" -- similarly, why were In Cold Blood, Psycho, and Dr. Strangelove in black and white, they had color then, I don't get it -- aaaargh fuck this guy; how perfect that this alleged follower of Christ should be such a perfect philistine.)
Monday, January 30, 2012
CHILDS' PLAY. At first I wasn't sure about Kermit's and Miss Piggy's press conference, in which they gave Fox Business' Eric Bolling a hard time for accusing them of communism:
On the other hand, it's hard to resist the rare and pleasurable spectacle of celebrities refusing to take Fox seriously. They act like it's no big thing to hit back at the people who had attacked them. Admittedly, as Muppets, they have a considerable power base; on the other hand, they are made out of felt and plastic. Also they presumably plan to keep making movies, and you can imagine how Murdoch will treat their product when next it emerges.
They show more guts, in other words, than most people in media.
But the thing I like most about it is John Nolte's sulky reaction at Big Hollywood:
Now I'm psyched for Yo Gabba Gabba! to do something about global warming.
While publicizing the upcoming U.K. release of the movie, Kermit responded, “If we had a problem with oil companies, why would we have spend the entire film driving around in a gas-guzzling Rolls-Royce?”In general, I prefer that my pop culture crap be left out of the dismal swamp of politics. In years to come, I don't want to see a noble biopic about Kermit's brave stand against McCarthyism, which took its toll and left him dead of an overdose on the toilet. (Wait, actually that would be awesome.)
“It’s almost as laughable as accusing Fox News of being news,” Miss Piggy added.
On the other hand, it's hard to resist the rare and pleasurable spectacle of celebrities refusing to take Fox seriously. They act like it's no big thing to hit back at the people who had attacked them. Admittedly, as Muppets, they have a considerable power base; on the other hand, they are made out of felt and plastic. Also they presumably plan to keep making movies, and you can imagine how Murdoch will treat their product when next it emerges.
They show more guts, in other words, than most people in media.
But the thing I like most about it is John Nolte's sulky reaction at Big Hollywood:
As a response, and nearly a week after the segment aired, the Fox-hating entertainment media (which is all of them) viralized the clip, blew the controversy up into something it really wasn’t, and did so because they find it impossible to turn down an opportunity to prove they’re one of the minions in the club.Week-old, huh? Let's take a trip down memory lane to Big Hollywood's 2009 attack on Oscar the Grouch, written by Larry O'Connor:
What effectively happened, though, is a week-old Fox Business segment was consequently amplified into the news narrative...
Last week, in a re-broadcast of an episode that originally aired two years ago...Nolte reminds us that the Muppet movie "didn’t do anywhere near as well at the box office as some had expected and hoped," and predicts that the press conference clip "probably will go viral, and as a result this once universally-beloved brand will no longer be loved quite so universally." But, perhaps sensing that he looks like an ass trying even feebly to fight back against Muppets, Nolte adds that the contretemps "wasn’t the fault of the Muppets. That was the immature, clubby entertainment media." Nothing personal, Kermy baby, call me!
Now I'm psyched for Yo Gabba Gabba! to do something about global warming.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
LEGACY PLEDGE WEEK AT NATIONAL REVIEW. National Review's having their annual (or is it monthly?) pledge drive. Let's see how it's going. First. a show of gratitude from Peter Robinson:
Those of you puzzled that Robinson would respond so obsequiously to Goldberg for correcting a date should know that Goldberg is a rightwing legacy pledge and therefore his every fart is worthy of great respect. Also, Goldberg took the opportunity to rehearse one of the speeches he gives at junior colleges ("The point here is that we shouldn't concede that the New Deal was the continuation of a venerable American tradition. Rather, it was the continuation of a radical" etc), for which he has to be applauded if you don't want to find itching powder on your office chair.
The mistake was made not by Robinson, but by one of his interview subjects, pimped by Robinson thus:
I expect they'll get it, as they scratch an important itch among the moneyed and mad -- or, as one sucker is quoted, "Some take Prozac; I read NRO." I have a sneaking suspicion most of them use both, and wash them down with gin. But it's an ill wind that blows no one some good, and somewhere Roger L. Simon is sobbing into his Oscar nomination certificate.
You make an extremely valuable point about the Progressive Movement and the New Deal, Jonah, and you make it splendidly.So shocked was I to find an admission of error at The Corner, let alone one so covered in slobber, I had to go see what had prompted it. Turned out Jonah Goldberg had informed him that the Franklin Roosevelt Administration started "a scant 12 years," rather than "a couple of decades," after Woodrow Wilson left office.
If every time I miscalibrate an event in American history I prompt such a lovely, knowledgeable little essay from Brother Jonah, I'll plant half a dozen errors in every episode of Uncommon Knowledge from now on.
Those of you puzzled that Robinson would respond so obsequiously to Goldberg for correcting a date should know that Goldberg is a rightwing legacy pledge and therefore his every fart is worthy of great respect. Also, Goldberg took the opportunity to rehearse one of the speeches he gives at junior colleges ("The point here is that we shouldn't concede that the New Deal was the continuation of a venerable American tradition. Rather, it was the continuation of a radical" etc), for which he has to be applauded if you don't want to find itching powder on your office chair.
The mistake was made not by Robinson, but by one of his interview subjects, pimped by Robinson thus:
To learn how Woodrow Wilson and FDR begot Woodstock and free love, click here.How could one resist? Throughout the day Goldberg rattles his cup for donations, emphasizing that National Review, like other rightwing magazines, doesn't make enough money in the free market (and never has) to continue raging at welfare bums without spare change from rich crackpots.
I expect they'll get it, as they scratch an important itch among the moneyed and mad -- or, as one sucker is quoted, "Some take Prozac; I read NRO." I have a sneaking suspicion most of them use both, and wash them down with gin. But it's an ill wind that blows no one some good, and somewhere Roger L. Simon is sobbing into his Oscar nomination certificate.
Friday, March 08, 2024
FRIDAY ‘ROUND-THE-HORN: BIDEN GETS THE FORMULA EDITION
Absence of Malice!
I was too busy with work to watch the State of the Union, but from the clips I’ve seen Biden was far from the doddering dotard Republicans and the prestige press (but I repeat myself) have spent years painting him as. Apparently their “pivot” is that Biden was on drugs!
Given that the Trump White House pharmacy under the leadership of Dr. Ronny “Feelgood” Jackson was throwing around uppers and downers like beads at Mardi Gras, and that Tubby himself is an obvious user, you might say it’s projection, but I begin to think it’s the only explanation they can fathom. For why, in their view, would anyone get so excited about traditional Democratic policies that help less fortunate Americans get ahead? It’s got to be drugs!
UPDATE. All the rightwing talking heads are getting into the act. Erick Erickson claims Biden's speech was "supplement fuelled." And get this, from the Washington Times:
A psychiatrist who has worked with elderly dementia patients said President Biden exhibited signs of stimulant use to mask cognitive decline in his amped-up, aggressive State of the Union speech on Thursday.
Mr. Biden, 81, often raced through his remarks with the speed of an auctioneer, loudly shouting his words despite having a microphone in front of him.
Speed and volume of speech can be a sign of using Adderall or another amphetamine, said Dr. Carole Lieberman, a forensic psychiatrist based in Beverly Hills, California.
You can find Lieberman elsewhere on the internet calling herself "America's Psychiatrist" and posting gibberish like this:
As Lorenzo Semple DuBois said in The Producers: They try... ok, how they try!
Readers of Roy Edroso Breaks It Down know that for years I’ve been doing sketches in which “The Formula” – a mix of cocaine, Adderall, ketamine, and Lord knows what – is used by Trump’s handlers to keep him upright. (I’ve even got a few with Biden in them; here’s one I think you might enjoy under the circumstances.)
The cherry on the SOTU Sunday was Senator Tradwife’s rebuttal. As has been pointed out, her delivery is only bizarre if you’re unacquainted with the “fundie baby” voice with which evangelicals project winsomeness to cloak their theocratic intentions. But maybe now that ordinary Americans have gotten a load of it on national TV they’re starting to realize how fucking weird that whole crew is.
I mentioned Roy Edroso Breaks It Down, which is a subscriber service – but as usual on Fridays I have a few free issues for you joy-poppers. Feast your eyes!
First, another of my recurring features – political talk show Received Opinion with your host Bolt Upright – in which Bolt asks whether Kyrsten Sinema’s departure from public life (the less-remunerative non-lobbyist part of it, anyway!) is yet another example of the sad death of comity and compromise in Washington, which in Bolt’s view and the view of all network chuckleheads are values to be treasured above democracy, equity, and everything else.
Also: My annual Oscar predictions! Yes, once again I’m indulging my sick interest in this festival of glamour and hubris! I’m already getting cold feet about my Adapted Screenplay pick, but by and large I think I’ve got something worth risking $5 in a pool. (That statement implies no responsibility if you lose the house! Wager responsibly!)
Saturday, February 21, 2009
THE NIGHT BEFORE OSCAR. I never did get around to seeing more of the Academy Award nominated films, but I made some predictions anyway at Runnin' Scared, on the principle that ignorance is no more a disqualification than it is an excuse.
I did see Milk, and I thought it was good, though it's further evidence for my observation that, when it comes to biopics, the best ones either are mediocre or transcend the genre. But Harvey Milk's story is so fascinating that I was content to see it played straight, as it were, by Gus Van Sant in his Hollywood mode.
Some of the acting is very fine. Despite ample screen time James Franco, alas, barely registers as the boyfriend, and Victor Garber is eternally Victor Garber, an important man in a suit. But Josh Brolin's Dan White is frighteningly plausible as a successful small-time family-values politician wrapped tight enough to snap, Diego Luna gives some neurotic spin to the other boyfriend, and Emile Hirsch has the heedless, new-in-town gay-hooker vibe down cold, and shows enough intelligence to explain his transformation into a political lieutenant.
Penn is of course terrific, not only in his inspired mimicry of Milk, who was wrapped pretty tight himself, but also in showing the grace notes -- I suppose we should call them graceless notes -- of Milk as a politician. It's to his credit and the film's that we sometimes see Milk being a smiling shit in pursuit of his agenda. (This also helps motivate White's explosion.) Politics ain't beanbag, and if the movie has a message beyond Wasn't He Great, it's that idealists don't win without doing hard and occasionally nasty work. By noting this without making much of it, Milk suggests something bracing about the morality of doing bad things for a greater good, which many other films worry over: of course it's right, now go change the world. Milk isn't in the same class as Army of Shadows, but it shares some of the Melville film's clarity on that score, which pleasantly surprised me.
At its worst the film tediously fills in the historical record, in the classic manner of biographies like Gandhi ("You know what Churchill says about Gandhi? He calls him a half-naked fakir!") and indulges in bathetic gestures, like the rendering of Milk's death, both in the story (I really don't get the opera theme, except as a gay signifier out of Philadelphia) and in documentary footage at the intro -- which I immediately took for an awful, cheap shot that makes you cry if you remember that horrible event without the film having done a lick of work to justify such a response. Later this is revealed as a framing device -- you see the candles moving down the street again at the end, when presumably the audience will have a new perspective on the scene. But I didn't feel its significance. Maybe that's because the intro repelled me, or maybe it's because Van Sant really isn't much of a director and can't make such large formal gestures work. So Milk isn't great, but on its limited terms it does just fine.
I did see Milk, and I thought it was good, though it's further evidence for my observation that, when it comes to biopics, the best ones either are mediocre or transcend the genre. But Harvey Milk's story is so fascinating that I was content to see it played straight, as it were, by Gus Van Sant in his Hollywood mode.
Some of the acting is very fine. Despite ample screen time James Franco, alas, barely registers as the boyfriend, and Victor Garber is eternally Victor Garber, an important man in a suit. But Josh Brolin's Dan White is frighteningly plausible as a successful small-time family-values politician wrapped tight enough to snap, Diego Luna gives some neurotic spin to the other boyfriend, and Emile Hirsch has the heedless, new-in-town gay-hooker vibe down cold, and shows enough intelligence to explain his transformation into a political lieutenant.
Penn is of course terrific, not only in his inspired mimicry of Milk, who was wrapped pretty tight himself, but also in showing the grace notes -- I suppose we should call them graceless notes -- of Milk as a politician. It's to his credit and the film's that we sometimes see Milk being a smiling shit in pursuit of his agenda. (This also helps motivate White's explosion.) Politics ain't beanbag, and if the movie has a message beyond Wasn't He Great, it's that idealists don't win without doing hard and occasionally nasty work. By noting this without making much of it, Milk suggests something bracing about the morality of doing bad things for a greater good, which many other films worry over: of course it's right, now go change the world. Milk isn't in the same class as Army of Shadows, but it shares some of the Melville film's clarity on that score, which pleasantly surprised me.
At its worst the film tediously fills in the historical record, in the classic manner of biographies like Gandhi ("You know what Churchill says about Gandhi? He calls him a half-naked fakir!") and indulges in bathetic gestures, like the rendering of Milk's death, both in the story (I really don't get the opera theme, except as a gay signifier out of Philadelphia) and in documentary footage at the intro -- which I immediately took for an awful, cheap shot that makes you cry if you remember that horrible event without the film having done a lick of work to justify such a response. Later this is revealed as a framing device -- you see the candles moving down the street again at the end, when presumably the audience will have a new perspective on the scene. But I didn't feel its significance. Maybe that's because the intro repelled me, or maybe it's because Van Sant really isn't much of a director and can't make such large formal gestures work. So Milk isn't great, but on its limited terms it does just fine.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
RIGHTWING SPARKLE WILL TELL YOU WHAT'S FUNNY! "I used to think Jon Stewart was funny," says RightWingSparkle -- which already has me dubious, as dailyobamajokes seems more up her alley, but let's roll with it. What makes Stewart unfunny now, she says, is that only "once in a blue moon he might take a light jab at Pres. Obama. Which is absurd considering the wealth of comedy to be had at President Obama's enormous ego, his addiction to his teleprompter, and his constant need to bow to other world leaders."
Busting a gut yet? Wait, the real payoff's on the way. Stewart was mean to a picture of Bernard Goldberg becase Goldberg said liberals hate Sarah Palin because "she has five children, liberals don't have a lot of children. She has a down syndrome child, liberals don't allow that in their lives." Stewart then noted that Eunice Shriver had nine kids and founded the Special Olympics.
"Does anyone else find it amusing that he had to pick a Democrat who was 88 yrs old (she died earlier this year, so he couldn't even find a live Democrat) who had a lot of kids?" asks RWS, and adds, " I guess he couldn't find a Democrat who had a Down Syndrome child at all, so he just used the example of her starting Special Olympics." Presumably what Stewart should have done was gotten Ordinary American Democrats with multiple Down Syndrome kids, put then in the audience, and introduced them from the stage to thunderous applause like Presidents do at the State of the Union. But then, what do people like him know about comedy?
For the capper, RWS tells us that Shriver was anti-abortion, "just like Sarah Palin. So Jon Stewart ended the segment with a joke he didn't intend to make." And if you're properly informed, you can detect the humor in it. If only RWS could have handed out fact sheets to the audience before the show; then we'd see who's laughing.
I see a new conservative best-seller in this: a book of spoilt liberal punchlines. Take the 2006 Oscar show montage Stewart introduced showing the gayest moments from classic Westerns. A well-researched list of all the featured actors' heterosexual unions will prove its unfunniness. Add a section of jokes such people should have been making instead, and you'll have a gold mine. Because there's nothing people like better than someone telling them when to laugh.
Busting a gut yet? Wait, the real payoff's on the way. Stewart was mean to a picture of Bernard Goldberg becase Goldberg said liberals hate Sarah Palin because "she has five children, liberals don't have a lot of children. She has a down syndrome child, liberals don't allow that in their lives." Stewart then noted that Eunice Shriver had nine kids and founded the Special Olympics.
"Does anyone else find it amusing that he had to pick a Democrat who was 88 yrs old (she died earlier this year, so he couldn't even find a live Democrat) who had a lot of kids?" asks RWS, and adds, " I guess he couldn't find a Democrat who had a Down Syndrome child at all, so he just used the example of her starting Special Olympics." Presumably what Stewart should have done was gotten Ordinary American Democrats with multiple Down Syndrome kids, put then in the audience, and introduced them from the stage to thunderous applause like Presidents do at the State of the Union. But then, what do people like him know about comedy?
For the capper, RWS tells us that Shriver was anti-abortion, "just like Sarah Palin. So Jon Stewart ended the segment with a joke he didn't intend to make." And if you're properly informed, you can detect the humor in it. If only RWS could have handed out fact sheets to the audience before the show; then we'd see who's laughing.
I see a new conservative best-seller in this: a book of spoilt liberal punchlines. Take the 2006 Oscar show montage Stewart introduced showing the gayest moments from classic Westerns. A well-researched list of all the featured actors' heterosexual unions will prove its unfunniness. Add a section of jokes such people should have been making instead, and you'll have a gold mine. Because there's nothing people like better than someone telling them when to laugh.
Friday, March 02, 2018
MOVIE NIGHT.
(I only have three more movies to see for my Oscar push since I saw these two and, my friends, I am going for the cycle!)
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. This may be the modern version of old-fashioned character-driven Nice Movies like Driving Miss Daisy; small-bore, humane, poignant -- only with more swears and a lot more violence. Though its wide dark streak will turn a lot of people off, Billboards still reflects, in its funhouse-mirror way, the values of the Nice Movie: the main characters progress toward understanding, notwithstanding that the Missourians' understanding is incomplete, and based more on existential despair than Christianity. Mildred Hayes, seeking vengeance for a daughter who met a particularly grisly fate, is the hardest of hard cases — calling her a bereaved mother and a domestic abuse survivor would be accurate but absurdly inadequate; she is nearly fearless and not only capable of violence but as comfortable with it as a carpenter is with a hammer. She’s also brilliant — her snappy comebacks are downright aphoristic and, as her nemesis Chief Willoughby of the local PD notes, the billboards she puts up constitute a “chess move” to get action on her daughter’s case. But though intelligent and directed, she is also unmoored — by grief or, we get the impression from many clues, life itself. She’s smart enough to know that, but damaged enough to go on anyway, and her comic-tragic implacability sets off a series of funny-horrible incidents — the greatest example being a man absorbing the message that love may be the answer while a molotov-cocktail fire rages behind him. (Billboards’ other great coup de cinema is a reflex that innocently coats Mildred’s face with blood, which should be a hint as to the movie’s tone.) In the end, we get the best we can hope for: for the madness to wear itself down if not out, and the makings of one hell of a buddy-comedy sequel. As Mildred, Frances McDormand is shrine-worthy; when, struggling with her son for a fire extinguisher, she screams his name, it's like Mildred's whole biography has flashed like lightning across the screen. Woody Harrelson’s Willoughby is now in my Top Ten Good Guys With a Badge. Big ups also to Peter Dinklage as the rare spurned swain whose angry comeback actually has a point, and especially Sam Rockwell as a white trash dumbass in whose foggy mind may be sown a seed of grace.
Darkest Hour. I guess everyone watches this for Oldman’s Churchill, since the movie treats a turning point in World War II as the PM’s personal trial at least as much as Britain’s. Oldman is very good; his great insight is to play Churchill as a brilliant but undisciplined diva; childish, messy (did Churchill really eat like that in front of his King?), so devoted to his genius that any contradiction of it feels to him like betrayal -- and when he's forced to hear what the philistines call reason, he goes practically catatonic; Blimey, 'e's lost 'is mojo! Lest we feel that civilization was only saved by Winnie’s pique, he is given a shy and doting secretary (Lily James, who is obviously great at dialects) who appears to inspire him, and a bull session with The British People in the Tube that bucks him up for the Never Surrender speech and turns the tide. Even this absurdity Oldham carries off by his devotion to the character, which banishes at least some of our reasonable doubts. The film looks great, indeed has an impressive unified design, from the giant newsreel-font credits to the now-moody, now-brutal photography to the slightly florid clothes and etching-specific sets; only now and again does it seem to be a bit pushy, as if Joe Wright thought we could only be made to buy the In Which We Serve uplift with music video tricks. (I wonder if the near-extinction of World War II vets from movie audiences might have something to do with these liberties.) But, look, I liked The King’s Speech and it was no less pushy; sometimes it's just nice to see the good guys win.
(Previously covered here: Get Out, Dunkirk, Lady Bird, and The Post.)
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. This may be the modern version of old-fashioned character-driven Nice Movies like Driving Miss Daisy; small-bore, humane, poignant -- only with more swears and a lot more violence. Though its wide dark streak will turn a lot of people off, Billboards still reflects, in its funhouse-mirror way, the values of the Nice Movie: the main characters progress toward understanding, notwithstanding that the Missourians' understanding is incomplete, and based more on existential despair than Christianity. Mildred Hayes, seeking vengeance for a daughter who met a particularly grisly fate, is the hardest of hard cases — calling her a bereaved mother and a domestic abuse survivor would be accurate but absurdly inadequate; she is nearly fearless and not only capable of violence but as comfortable with it as a carpenter is with a hammer. She’s also brilliant — her snappy comebacks are downright aphoristic and, as her nemesis Chief Willoughby of the local PD notes, the billboards she puts up constitute a “chess move” to get action on her daughter’s case. But though intelligent and directed, she is also unmoored — by grief or, we get the impression from many clues, life itself. She’s smart enough to know that, but damaged enough to go on anyway, and her comic-tragic implacability sets off a series of funny-horrible incidents — the greatest example being a man absorbing the message that love may be the answer while a molotov-cocktail fire rages behind him. (Billboards’ other great coup de cinema is a reflex that innocently coats Mildred’s face with blood, which should be a hint as to the movie’s tone.) In the end, we get the best we can hope for: for the madness to wear itself down if not out, and the makings of one hell of a buddy-comedy sequel. As Mildred, Frances McDormand is shrine-worthy; when, struggling with her son for a fire extinguisher, she screams his name, it's like Mildred's whole biography has flashed like lightning across the screen. Woody Harrelson’s Willoughby is now in my Top Ten Good Guys With a Badge. Big ups also to Peter Dinklage as the rare spurned swain whose angry comeback actually has a point, and especially Sam Rockwell as a white trash dumbass in whose foggy mind may be sown a seed of grace.
Darkest Hour. I guess everyone watches this for Oldman’s Churchill, since the movie treats a turning point in World War II as the PM’s personal trial at least as much as Britain’s. Oldman is very good; his great insight is to play Churchill as a brilliant but undisciplined diva; childish, messy (did Churchill really eat like that in front of his King?), so devoted to his genius that any contradiction of it feels to him like betrayal -- and when he's forced to hear what the philistines call reason, he goes practically catatonic; Blimey, 'e's lost 'is mojo! Lest we feel that civilization was only saved by Winnie’s pique, he is given a shy and doting secretary (Lily James, who is obviously great at dialects) who appears to inspire him, and a bull session with The British People in the Tube that bucks him up for the Never Surrender speech and turns the tide. Even this absurdity Oldham carries off by his devotion to the character, which banishes at least some of our reasonable doubts. The film looks great, indeed has an impressive unified design, from the giant newsreel-font credits to the now-moody, now-brutal photography to the slightly florid clothes and etching-specific sets; only now and again does it seem to be a bit pushy, as if Joe Wright thought we could only be made to buy the In Which We Serve uplift with music video tricks. (I wonder if the near-extinction of World War II vets from movie audiences might have something to do with these liberties.) But, look, I liked The King’s Speech and it was no less pushy; sometimes it's just nice to see the good guys win.
(Previously covered here: Get Out, Dunkirk, Lady Bird, and The Post.)
Friday, February 17, 2023
FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: 2/17/23.
While I produce five days a week of high-quality content at Roy Edroso Breaks It Down (go over and have a look, subscribe if you like, it’s mighty good eating for the pennies it costs), productivity at the old alicublog plant has been down a while. I regret it, but between REBID and my other editorial work there’s not much room left for bodily functions, let alone the kind of funsies for which this site became known back in 1953, when “blogs” rolled off Henry Ford’s assembly line and, due to their tendency to roll rather than locomote, wound up in the dustbin of history, a short distance down the road to oblivion and turn left.
But sometimes a red flag can get this old bull to charge. Erick Erickson, a longtime figure of fun in the alicublog rep company, has an even more ridiculous than usual item up today. The headline is:
We Cannot Reject Sabotage On Rail Lines Just Yet
Let us tiptoe past Erickson’s long preliminary yammerings about how Joe Biden is trying to blame everything on Donald Trump (though given Trump’s rollback of rail freight safety features he’s certainly blameworthy) and Biden LIED about the CHINESE BALLOONS (“The Administration that lied repeatedly about the Chinese spy balloon wants us to trust them on it not being sabotage, just Trump”), and cut to the 19th graf:
The reality is these incidents are probably not sabotage. Buttigieg, for all his whining, has a point. There are many train derailments every year. We’re more sensitive to them now because of media exposure.
This is the next best thing to “it was all a dream.”
So why was Erickson going on about sabotage?
But the point is that this Administration regularly tries to blame Donald Trump for everything, has lied repeatedly in the past few weeks about the Chinese spy balloon, has done such a bad job dealing with these issues too many Americans now know the Transportation Secretary’s name, and we simply cannot believe them.
And if “we” (Erickson and his tapeworm, who I gotta say has his work cut out for him) can’t trust Joe Biden, maybe we’ll trust Erick Erickson’s self-refuting innuendos. Oh, and if you took the side-bet on “Hunter Biden’s laptop” being in the story? Collect your winnings.
But the real prize this week is Peggy Noonan, who has been on fire (regrettably not literally) with her rambling silver-alert takes. This week’s starts with snipage at Nikki Haley, who recently launched her Vice-Presidential (whoops, I mean air-quotes Presidential) campaign:
On Wednesday Nikki Haley announced her presidential campaign in Charleston, S.C. I found myself thinking not about her candidacy but about the launch itself, which was creepily stuck in the past. A horrible, blaring song from a Sylvester Stallone sequel pumped her in as she strode out in the white suit and there were adoring fans on the rafters behind her, with whom she briefly interacted before turning toward the audience and doing the point—standing there and pointing to individual members of the cheering audience as if she knew them and was being natural. An introducer said she will “lead us into the future”; she added, “America is falling behind.” It was all so tired, clichéd, and phony. It was national politics as it has been done circa 1990-2023.
1990? How about the 80s, Peggy, when as Ronald Reagan’s handler you filled his mouth with uplifting bullshit and helped engineer spectacles like Nancy waving at Ronnie on the telescreen at the 1984 Republican Convention? That's when propaganda was propaganda, you young punks!
Speaking of bullshit, this seems to be about the only thing Noonan likes about Haley:
In her speech she said some nice things: “Take it from me, the first female minority governor in history: America is not a racist country.” Everyone who scrambles over our border knows that; it is good when elites say it.
…until said scramblers-over-the-border get driven back over by Greg Abbott’s vigilantes or dragged up north to use as pawns in a cruel culture-war stunt. Honestly, I can’t imagine even her Republican readers don’t immediately think this.
Then there’s a long grumble about those horrible ads on the teevee during the Super Bowl – they made America look like “a nation of morons” (don’t bother waiting for the penny to drop, guys), whereas back in the day they had Mean Joe Greene being all nice and cuddly for Coke and that was the real America, real Ronnie-and-Nancy koochie-koo kitsch, not this nutty, noisy stuff:
I’m here to say I’ve met America and that’s not what they want. What they want is “Help me live, help my kids live, help me feel something true.”
Sorry, lady, but would you like a new car, soft drink, or diabetes management app? These are the damn ads. I’m convinced Noonan was just turned off by all the rock and rap (“the music shifted, screamed, and the mood became discordance”). It's a miracle the Journal kept her from fulminating on Rihanna. Look, Grandma, they aren’t pitching this shit to me, either, but I know better than to Blame Society.
Oh, but her closing… man; she gets on Will Smith and starts pitching to write his Oscar 2023 speech:
Here is how to turn that moment into something helpful. It doesn’t involve “image rehab.” It involves constructive honesty. Will Smith should walk in and say this:
“It is painful in life when you embarrass yourself. It is horrifying when you do it in front of tens of millions of people. Last year I did something bad to a guy who was just doing his job, and I am here to acknowledge it from the same stage—to admit that in attempting to humiliate him, I humiliated myself. I showed a number of things, including sheer bad judgment…
Two more grafs of this! I give it five barf bags! I doubt Noonan is even expecting the call (though I love imagining her on the phone, pinching her nose, and droning “This is Miss Noonan’s answering service”); I expect the play is to wait for Smith to deliver what promises to be a perfectly anodyne and expected (though less white!) apology-like spew, and then sigh contentedly: “Ahhh, he took my advice!”
Monday, January 26, 2009
OSCAR COUNTDOWN BEGINS. As I unaccountably do every year, I've been catching up on the big award-nominated movies, and will start here to give my impressions.
The Wrestler. It's a neat trick to criticize the American experience, or facets thereof, without being snotty about it. I'm not sure how affectionate Darren Aronofsky really is toward the New Jersey working-class world of crappy jobs, hard rock, and fleeting glories depicted in The Wrestler, but what he knows and shows about it proves he understands it, and understanding is tribute enough. He also knows what's absurd about it: broken-down wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson keeps on the small-time sham-fight circuit because it's the only thing that gives him joy, and it gives him joy because it's a form of self-punishment that exalts rather than debases him, unlike love and less spectacular forms of employment -- which he nonetheless gives another shot. If you get this, and also feel the thrill of the Ram's "comeback" in a slightly less seedy than usual arena when everything else has failed, you get the whole, very sad joke.
Some of Robinson's adventures outside the ring are mismanaged -- the attempted reconciliation of Ram with his daughter plays like a series of botched improvisations. But most of the scenes -- playing with the kids in the trailer park, shopping for a present for his daughter with his stripper almost-girlfriend Cassidy (Marisa Tomei, very fine aside from some moments when she seems to get self-conscious), waking up alone in a county hospital, trying not to say the wrong thing to an asshole boss -- are nothing but the cold truth, as is Mickey Rourke's performance.
I never liked his acting before; I thought he tried too hard to be charming. And as I'm even less a fan of sentimental promo than of Rourke, the oft-noted similarity between his character's "broken-down piece of meat" status and his own wins no extra points from me. But Rourke just nails it: even the maudlin moments aren't about special pleading from an actor, but a simple man trying to say what's in his heart. It's also a smart performance; I'm especially impressed by his restraint when he tells Cassidy about his heart attack. (And by Tomei's, in her reaction.) And yes, he's charming, too. For real.
Frost/Nixon. The trailer had me worried: did they really think these interviews were "the trial Nixon never had"? Regrettably, yes. This results in talking-heads bullshit and Sam Rockwell freaking out about Cambodia and such. It also begs us to take the struggle to make money off a celebrity TV appearance more seriously than we otherwise might, which is unforgivable dramatic fraud.
There are two real stories. One is Frost's alleged growth, in the process of doing the interviews, from glad-handing presenter to serious journalist. But it's a shabby journey. Frost is motivated mainly by fear of blowing his chance, and is stiffened to action by a late-night call from Nixon that merely focuses Frost on the possibility of winning the battle, not on any larger stakes, personal or political. He's no more interesting or likable, nor indeed changed in any important way, at the end than at the beginning. He's just more successful.
The other story is, yet again, the fall of Nixon, which is always going to be interesting, if not illuminating. Apart from Oliver Platt's blessedly funny performance, the canny Nixon dialogue and Frank Langella's performance provide the only real pleasures in the film, and Nixon's late-night drunk-dial to Frost and the final interview have real juice in them, mostly because Langella has a clearer conception of Nixon than Ron Howard has of Frost/Nixon. His Tricky Dick is large and physically awkward, capable of wit and charm (though only in his own defense), and genuinely sad -- Frost's girlfriend, an otherwise useless appurtenance, tells Frost at one point that he has sad eyes, but Michael Sheen's eyes only betray fatigue and panic; Langella's, at the appropriate times, have the shallow, frozen glaze of old pain.
The Nixon theme has a more pointed dramatic payoff, but not a larger one. Unless you buy that Nixon's qualified admissions had a wider effect than on the fortunes of the main characters, what was won and lost? A TV star made a disgraced president look bad, and thereby promoted his own career as... a celebrity interviewer. If Nixon were Satan himself, and I admit there are some similarities, this wouldn't be enough to justify the film.
The Wrestler. It's a neat trick to criticize the American experience, or facets thereof, without being snotty about it. I'm not sure how affectionate Darren Aronofsky really is toward the New Jersey working-class world of crappy jobs, hard rock, and fleeting glories depicted in The Wrestler, but what he knows and shows about it proves he understands it, and understanding is tribute enough. He also knows what's absurd about it: broken-down wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson keeps on the small-time sham-fight circuit because it's the only thing that gives him joy, and it gives him joy because it's a form of self-punishment that exalts rather than debases him, unlike love and less spectacular forms of employment -- which he nonetheless gives another shot. If you get this, and also feel the thrill of the Ram's "comeback" in a slightly less seedy than usual arena when everything else has failed, you get the whole, very sad joke.
Some of Robinson's adventures outside the ring are mismanaged -- the attempted reconciliation of Ram with his daughter plays like a series of botched improvisations. But most of the scenes -- playing with the kids in the trailer park, shopping for a present for his daughter with his stripper almost-girlfriend Cassidy (Marisa Tomei, very fine aside from some moments when she seems to get self-conscious), waking up alone in a county hospital, trying not to say the wrong thing to an asshole boss -- are nothing but the cold truth, as is Mickey Rourke's performance.
I never liked his acting before; I thought he tried too hard to be charming. And as I'm even less a fan of sentimental promo than of Rourke, the oft-noted similarity between his character's "broken-down piece of meat" status and his own wins no extra points from me. But Rourke just nails it: even the maudlin moments aren't about special pleading from an actor, but a simple man trying to say what's in his heart. It's also a smart performance; I'm especially impressed by his restraint when he tells Cassidy about his heart attack. (And by Tomei's, in her reaction.) And yes, he's charming, too. For real.
Frost/Nixon. The trailer had me worried: did they really think these interviews were "the trial Nixon never had"? Regrettably, yes. This results in talking-heads bullshit and Sam Rockwell freaking out about Cambodia and such. It also begs us to take the struggle to make money off a celebrity TV appearance more seriously than we otherwise might, which is unforgivable dramatic fraud.
There are two real stories. One is Frost's alleged growth, in the process of doing the interviews, from glad-handing presenter to serious journalist. But it's a shabby journey. Frost is motivated mainly by fear of blowing his chance, and is stiffened to action by a late-night call from Nixon that merely focuses Frost on the possibility of winning the battle, not on any larger stakes, personal or political. He's no more interesting or likable, nor indeed changed in any important way, at the end than at the beginning. He's just more successful.
The other story is, yet again, the fall of Nixon, which is always going to be interesting, if not illuminating. Apart from Oliver Platt's blessedly funny performance, the canny Nixon dialogue and Frank Langella's performance provide the only real pleasures in the film, and Nixon's late-night drunk-dial to Frost and the final interview have real juice in them, mostly because Langella has a clearer conception of Nixon than Ron Howard has of Frost/Nixon. His Tricky Dick is large and physically awkward, capable of wit and charm (though only in his own defense), and genuinely sad -- Frost's girlfriend, an otherwise useless appurtenance, tells Frost at one point that he has sad eyes, but Michael Sheen's eyes only betray fatigue and panic; Langella's, at the appropriate times, have the shallow, frozen glaze of old pain.
The Nixon theme has a more pointed dramatic payoff, but not a larger one. Unless you buy that Nixon's qualified admissions had a wider effect than on the fortunes of the main characters, what was won and lost? A TV star made a disgraced president look bad, and thereby promoted his own career as... a celebrity interviewer. If Nixon were Satan himself, and I admit there are some similarities, this wouldn't be enough to justify the film.
Monday, February 18, 2019
ON TO OSCAR 2019, PART 3.
BlacKkKlansman. From the title to coda, this is just way too much -- which is what Spike Lee does and it's alright with me. There are times when his Sesame-Street schematic style just made me laugh out loud; like when he was setting up the black-cop-plus-white-cop-make-one-klansman plot, I thought, come on -- this is even a true story and I don't quite believe it. (The chief might buy the idea from black rookie cop Ron Stallworth if it were allowed to grow on him -- but a snap decision on a sit-down and "with the right white man we can do anything"?)
I got over it, though. I'm a sucker for this stuff. To me Lee and Oliver Stone are the heirs to Sam Fuller -- vulgarians who muscle and hustle you along. And though the KKKreeps in the movie are cartoons, how far from cartoon characters can the actual fuckers be, with their racist monomania and basement-den boys' Valhalla? But though they're cartoon characters, they're still characters, and Lee gives them enough operating room so you can see how they might be a real danger, especially under the guidance of "national director" David Duke -- whom Topher Grace plays sort of like Eric from That 70's Show grown up racist, which makes him more horrifying than any po-faced Evil Dwells Among Us portrait. (I think Grace's comic understatement has a lot in common with my favorite Marlon Brando performance: George Lincoln Rockwell in Roots II.) And if the white cops in the station are just variations on Officer Hoppy from Sanford and Son, at least they learn to roll with Ron's jam and get a kinder laugh in the end.
But the good-n-evil games are the least of it -- though Lee builds numerous tense scenes with an expertise that comes with constant work (TV shows, documentaries, movies -- he doesn't just hustle audiences). It's Ron's identity crisis that's the most interesting feature. He's mysterious coming in, dressed and coiffed out of an Afro-American fashion catalogue but seeming to play the line-walking good father's son -- which we take for a dodge until we realize it's only partly a dodge, he is that good son taught from birth to walk the line, and his "that's heavy" and "my sister" at the Kwame Ture event seem stiff because he's stiff. (Much is made at the station of his alternating "straight" and "jive" manners, but there's really not much functional difference.) Ture's long speech is there not only to give Lee a chance to raise our consciousness, but to raise Ron's.
As Ron's running his undercover act with the Klan, he's also running one on his Black Power girlfriend -- and in both cases he can't keep the double game up forever. (John David Washington is excellent at walking that line.) It's a dramatically pleasing solution that Ron sorts out his identity crisis by partnering on the Klan scam with the white Jewish cop Flip (a moody Adam Driver). It's weird to consider that for all Lee's alleged radicalism, and for his and the black characters' contempt for white savior shtick, this plot device isn't too far from 60s Sidney Poitier territory; the two men keep needling and proving themselves to each other, and when Flip acknowledges that, by putting the white face on Ron's fake Klansman, as a Jew he's "passing" too, the comraderie finally seems to break the lifelong tension that's made it hard for Ron to relax into himself -- and also seems to help solve (spoiler here, folks) the conflict with his girlfriend. Though she can't accept a brother working from the inside, she comes to accept Ron, and I think it's because he's come to accept himself.
That's heavy, my brother! Lee also gives us a lot of cinema sweets and sours -- Ron standing face to face with the human target that is, basically, him; the cross-cutting from Harry Belafonte in the student union to the Klan meeting; Ivan the drunken Klansman just making that weird sound of incomprehension into the camera. And I've been singing "It's Too Late To Turn Back Now," not just because the song is irresistible but also because Lee's delirious black love & soul dance scene is too.
As for that coda: I disapprove on Farberesque principle with this sort of gimp-string manipulation. I didn't like it, for example, when Gus Van Sant did it at the top of Milk to make a veil of sorrow that the film hadn't earned. I did think , though, it was fair play for Lee to use Rodney King at the beginning of Malcolm X to rack-focus us between the past and the present. And as for the flash-forward to Charlottesville and the tiki-torch boys at the end of this Klan story, what I have to say is this: fuck the Klan, fuck David Duke, and fuck Donald Trump.
I got over it, though. I'm a sucker for this stuff. To me Lee and Oliver Stone are the heirs to Sam Fuller -- vulgarians who muscle and hustle you along. And though the KKKreeps in the movie are cartoons, how far from cartoon characters can the actual fuckers be, with their racist monomania and basement-den boys' Valhalla? But though they're cartoon characters, they're still characters, and Lee gives them enough operating room so you can see how they might be a real danger, especially under the guidance of "national director" David Duke -- whom Topher Grace plays sort of like Eric from That 70's Show grown up racist, which makes him more horrifying than any po-faced Evil Dwells Among Us portrait. (I think Grace's comic understatement has a lot in common with my favorite Marlon Brando performance: George Lincoln Rockwell in Roots II.) And if the white cops in the station are just variations on Officer Hoppy from Sanford and Son, at least they learn to roll with Ron's jam and get a kinder laugh in the end.
But the good-n-evil games are the least of it -- though Lee builds numerous tense scenes with an expertise that comes with constant work (TV shows, documentaries, movies -- he doesn't just hustle audiences). It's Ron's identity crisis that's the most interesting feature. He's mysterious coming in, dressed and coiffed out of an Afro-American fashion catalogue but seeming to play the line-walking good father's son -- which we take for a dodge until we realize it's only partly a dodge, he is that good son taught from birth to walk the line, and his "that's heavy" and "my sister" at the Kwame Ture event seem stiff because he's stiff. (Much is made at the station of his alternating "straight" and "jive" manners, but there's really not much functional difference.) Ture's long speech is there not only to give Lee a chance to raise our consciousness, but to raise Ron's.
As Ron's running his undercover act with the Klan, he's also running one on his Black Power girlfriend -- and in both cases he can't keep the double game up forever. (John David Washington is excellent at walking that line.) It's a dramatically pleasing solution that Ron sorts out his identity crisis by partnering on the Klan scam with the white Jewish cop Flip (a moody Adam Driver). It's weird to consider that for all Lee's alleged radicalism, and for his and the black characters' contempt for white savior shtick, this plot device isn't too far from 60s Sidney Poitier territory; the two men keep needling and proving themselves to each other, and when Flip acknowledges that, by putting the white face on Ron's fake Klansman, as a Jew he's "passing" too, the comraderie finally seems to break the lifelong tension that's made it hard for Ron to relax into himself -- and also seems to help solve (spoiler here, folks) the conflict with his girlfriend. Though she can't accept a brother working from the inside, she comes to accept Ron, and I think it's because he's come to accept himself.
That's heavy, my brother! Lee also gives us a lot of cinema sweets and sours -- Ron standing face to face with the human target that is, basically, him; the cross-cutting from Harry Belafonte in the student union to the Klan meeting; Ivan the drunken Klansman just making that weird sound of incomprehension into the camera. And I've been singing "It's Too Late To Turn Back Now," not just because the song is irresistible but also because Lee's delirious black love & soul dance scene is too.
As for that coda: I disapprove on Farberesque principle with this sort of gimp-string manipulation. I didn't like it, for example, when Gus Van Sant did it at the top of Milk to make a veil of sorrow that the film hadn't earned. I did think , though, it was fair play for Lee to use Rodney King at the beginning of Malcolm X to rack-focus us between the past and the present. And as for the flash-forward to Charlottesville and the tiki-torch boys at the end of this Klan story, what I have to say is this: fuck the Klan, fuck David Duke, and fuck Donald Trump.
Friday, March 25, 2022
FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.
Mike Watt on bass so you already know, right?
• I’ve done it, I cry with a hearty mad-scientist laugh -- I’ve seen all the 2022 Best Picture Oscar nominees! This makes me feel swell and, along with the other category nominees I’ve seen, it makes me feel qualified to make predictions, as I do every year, usually without great success (though sometimes with!). If you return here Sunday afternoon I will have those predictions for you, for entertainment purposes only.
Meantime I have unlocked all the reviews of the 10 nominated films I did at Roy Edroso Breaks It Down -- here are links: Don’t Look Up, Drive My Car, Licorice Pizza, West Side Story, Nightmare Alley, CODA, King Richard, Belfast, The Power of the Dog, and Dune.
• This is a good week for REBID releases -- the SCOTUS hearings one and the convoy update are also open. Don’t expect much of this for a while, though -- I need more paid subscriptions and here I am giving it away like a good-hearted farm girl in the big city.
If things don’t pick up I may have to become a cancelculture crybaby -- that’s how you make the really big money on Substack! Speaking of which, I notice that racket has gone international big-time:
This really sums up something about our current shit discourse -- not only that cancelculture is such bullshit that anyone, no matter how obviously evil, depraved, and criminal, can pick it up and go boo hoo hoo look how unfair my enemies are! In fact, Putin has the two key characteristics of a cancelculture crybaby: He’s an aggressor against a weaker enemy whom he seeks to portray as the Real Bully, and Rod Dreher loves him.
• I will add that, like everyone else in America, I know no one will do anything about Clarence Thomas’ wife being a total QAnon lunatic who colluded with insurrectionists to overturn the 2020 election and Thomas refusing to recuse himself in a case that would reveal that. And that’s why these bastards keep doing it, and won’t stop until they’ve fucked this country up beyond redemption.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
OSCAR CATCH-UP, PART 1. Black Swan. The Exorcist in tights. Instead of the struggle of God and the Devil, we have the struggle of the White and Black Swans driving our poor little girl unto her indignities. (The Swan fable is even spoken aloud for us at the beginning by the hilariously elevated ballet master with a vestigial sweater around his neck.) The film puts our ballerina Nina through much grisly (though hallucinated) physical trauma that compares nicely with Linda Blair's spinning head and crucificial hate-fuck. And since it's just about artsy people rather than a major religion, the dark forces get to win.
Darren Aronofsky, who likes to show the ugly-real's losing struggle with the seductive-unreal (Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler), goes heavy on the fantasy here. The showmanship is dazzling, but I think he lost his grounding. Fantasies are powerful when they heighten a real-life feeling shared by lots of people. But Nina's need to be perfect is neurotic rather than transcendent; while performers may project enough of their own experiences onto Black Swan to buy it (and that may be why it's so acclaimed), ordinary people will wonder why she didn't go to a doctor when she saw feathers growing out of her skin. I don't think they'd question, say, Lust for Life the same way, because corny as it is, there they can see and feel where the drive comes from.
The acting's fine. Natalie Portman's persistently childlike affect is perfect for Nina; Barbara Hershey's game for Monster Mommy; Mila Kunis and Vincent Cassel are appropriately ludicrous as the life-force and the cock-of-the-walk, respectively. And thanks so much, Winona Ryder, for the unexpected laughs.
The Fighter. The last half-hour threw me (mild spoiler), as I didn't see the turn-around coming. I mean, what suddenly made family love real to all these people, who had previously expressed it only with insults and jealous rages, and motivated them to come together? Christian Bale's so good that I almost believed his pitch to his brother's girlfriend Charlene to come back and make things right, but with everyone else it was like, "Wuh-okay, guess here's what we're doing now." It's really just something you have to buy to get to the feel-good ending.
Maybe David O. Russell thought this hey-ho-let's-go approach had worked so well in the beginning that it should work at the end. And in the rest of the film, it does work. We get thrown into the story so fast that momentum carries us. The brothers' relationship we at first have to take for granted and on faith, but over time we get little glimpses of how growing up together might have been for them: Dicky the crazy cut-up, Micky the quiet, industrious plodder -- and Mom the breeder/empire-builder who decided long ago that Dicky was going to be the ticket out for them all. We get enough information that by the time the relationships break, it doesn't have to be explosive -- it's just right, and thereby dramatic.
In this context the more conventionally-developed romance between Micky and Charlene takes on added weight: You get the feeling that family was just something that happened to Micky, while Charlene is part of his underdeveloped adult life of choices and forward movement. No wonder his family hates her -- and that Micky clings to her like a life-raft.
All the acting is terrific (though at one point I wanted to yell STOP IT, YOU'RE MAKING ME GRIND MY TEETH at Bale), but I give special props to Marky Mark, who also produced the picture. I saw an interview recently in the Hollywood Reporter with filmdom's biggest producers, and Wahlberg was in there. He was very, very focused on the job of making the picture the best and most successful it can be, no matter what. His performance in The Fighter is unshowy, even slightly withdrawn. Wahlberg's a pretty good actor, and he knows what a star needs to get over in a big picture; I get the feeling he took one for the team here. For some reason that really impresses me.
UPDATE. In comments, Jay B. demurs: "I thought Bale was overrated, actually. The clip of Dick and Mickey at the end shows what kind of juice the real guy had -- he was more charming in thirty seconds than Bale can ever be, and funnier too. Bale can act, but, for me, he can't connect. His eyes are empty." Hmm. I thought Bale was going full crackhead, which would make anyone a little opaque, but come to think of it I've never seen him do a lot of relating onscreen -- whenever I see him, all I can think is, "You like Huey Lewis and the News? Their early work was a little too new wave for my taste..." Anyone else?
Darren Aronofsky, who likes to show the ugly-real's losing struggle with the seductive-unreal (Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler), goes heavy on the fantasy here. The showmanship is dazzling, but I think he lost his grounding. Fantasies are powerful when they heighten a real-life feeling shared by lots of people. But Nina's need to be perfect is neurotic rather than transcendent; while performers may project enough of their own experiences onto Black Swan to buy it (and that may be why it's so acclaimed), ordinary people will wonder why she didn't go to a doctor when she saw feathers growing out of her skin. I don't think they'd question, say, Lust for Life the same way, because corny as it is, there they can see and feel where the drive comes from.
The acting's fine. Natalie Portman's persistently childlike affect is perfect for Nina; Barbara Hershey's game for Monster Mommy; Mila Kunis and Vincent Cassel are appropriately ludicrous as the life-force and the cock-of-the-walk, respectively. And thanks so much, Winona Ryder, for the unexpected laughs.
The Fighter. The last half-hour threw me (mild spoiler), as I didn't see the turn-around coming. I mean, what suddenly made family love real to all these people, who had previously expressed it only with insults and jealous rages, and motivated them to come together? Christian Bale's so good that I almost believed his pitch to his brother's girlfriend Charlene to come back and make things right, but with everyone else it was like, "Wuh-okay, guess here's what we're doing now." It's really just something you have to buy to get to the feel-good ending.
Maybe David O. Russell thought this hey-ho-let's-go approach had worked so well in the beginning that it should work at the end. And in the rest of the film, it does work. We get thrown into the story so fast that momentum carries us. The brothers' relationship we at first have to take for granted and on faith, but over time we get little glimpses of how growing up together might have been for them: Dicky the crazy cut-up, Micky the quiet, industrious plodder -- and Mom the breeder/empire-builder who decided long ago that Dicky was going to be the ticket out for them all. We get enough information that by the time the relationships break, it doesn't have to be explosive -- it's just right, and thereby dramatic.
In this context the more conventionally-developed romance between Micky and Charlene takes on added weight: You get the feeling that family was just something that happened to Micky, while Charlene is part of his underdeveloped adult life of choices and forward movement. No wonder his family hates her -- and that Micky clings to her like a life-raft.
All the acting is terrific (though at one point I wanted to yell STOP IT, YOU'RE MAKING ME GRIND MY TEETH at Bale), but I give special props to Marky Mark, who also produced the picture. I saw an interview recently in the Hollywood Reporter with filmdom's biggest producers, and Wahlberg was in there. He was very, very focused on the job of making the picture the best and most successful it can be, no matter what. His performance in The Fighter is unshowy, even slightly withdrawn. Wahlberg's a pretty good actor, and he knows what a star needs to get over in a big picture; I get the feeling he took one for the team here. For some reason that really impresses me.
UPDATE. In comments, Jay B. demurs: "I thought Bale was overrated, actually. The clip of Dick and Mickey at the end shows what kind of juice the real guy had -- he was more charming in thirty seconds than Bale can ever be, and funnier too. Bale can act, but, for me, he can't connect. His eyes are empty." Hmm. I thought Bale was going full crackhead, which would make anyone a little opaque, but come to think of it I've never seen him do a lot of relating onscreen -- whenever I see him, all I can think is, "You like Huey Lewis and the News? Their early work was a little too new wave for my taste..." Anyone else?
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