What I've Seen October 2008

Once upon a time I used to blog about films all the time. But then I got fat and lazy and started having sex again and I pretty much threw my blog out the window so I could follow less noble pursuits. Well I’ve been feeling the itch lately and on top of everything else I’ve got AFI in a few weeks and I’d like to try and document the experience as I used to back in the good old days. So here I am, exercising my writing muscles.

These represent some of the more stream of conscious writing I’ve done but they certainly get the point across whether I fall on the “yay” or “nay” side of a film. This may be a rolling entry where I continue to add new titles or it may be the latest in a long-line of “one-off’s.” Either way, enjoy.

Changeling (2008 Clint Eastwood C) As has become Eastwood’s tradition with recent films, we get the studio logo at the head of the film in old fashion black and white, one would imagine harkening back to an earlier era of filmmaking where 70-something Clint might feel himself more at home. Who knew it would serve as a nifty metaphor for his distressingly limited world view? Essentially a Lars von Trier film without the irony or meta-context, here we get (a woefully miscast) Angelina Jolie in the Bjork-like role of the long-suffering woman crushed by a cruel, indifferent system while a host of TV actors including Jeffrey Donnovan using a distracting brogue, are trotted out as callous oppressors. Eastwood’s painting with a very wide brush here, never calling into question our heroine’s sanity, while simply presenting the LAPD as corrupt and lazy with no motivation beyond self-preservation. I mean was there nothing more to the entire scandal than a desire not to be publicly embarrassed? Actually the word “simple” seems the most apt adjective to employ here. Cheers for the wronged woman! Hisses for the evil institutions! Jolie murmurs and caterwauls her way to awards attention (she’s working from the Sean Penn playbook of parental suffering), Amy Ryan reprises a variation of the foul-mouthed hard-living working class character from Gone Baby Gone, John Malkovich is once again unable to disguise his Walken-like weirdness in a relatively normal character, and on it goes. To be honest, I’m not even sure what Eastwood is trying for here. Guess I’ll just have to look forward to Gran Torino.

Synecdoche, New York (2008 Charlie Kaufman B+) I understand the hatred towards this film but I think it’s misplaced. Complaints that it’s merely Kaufman chasing a rabbit up his own asshole are, frankly, several films too late. A couple days removed and I’ve already doodled out a handful of theories about the film: Is it a celebration of collaboration, with Hoffman’s ever-expanding merry troop following him blindly for decades, going to a place where their performances end up merging, superseding and defining their actual lives? Or is it an indictment of endless self-analysis from Hope Davis’ Lynchian in her omnipresence shrink to characters literally being able to stand back and look at how others would perform their lives (and in the most on the nose allusion, the film’s unending curiosity with human’s examining their own excrement)? Or for that matter is it anything more than a Buñuel -like head trip, creating small worlds within the confines of its own ellipses, never really pausing to explain itself or ground the film in an easy to place logic? I guess the point is that it doesn’t matter what reading you take (although I personally prefer the cautionary tale second one) because the journey is so surprising and lovingly melancholy. There’s elements of Southland Tales-type hubris on display but Kaufman admirably seems to have both hands on the wheel at all times even when the road we’re on is windy and opaque. This isn’t to say every gambit pays off; not by a long shot. Everything relating to Hoffman’s daughter is utterly baffling (and not helped by the curious casting of the nearly 40-year-old Robin Weigert), Kaufman’s patented preciousness (including a house that’s perennially on fire) can be a bit, um, suffocating. There’s also an inherent redundancy to the premise which can be patience trying (by my unofficial count there are four “real” funerals and an equal amount of staged ones). Still, I find myself returning to the film in my mind repeatedly, which I really could never say for Kaufman’s more widely accepted Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Bonus: Emily Watson as Samantha Morton is perhaps the single funniest joke of the year.

Slumdog Millionaire (2008 Danny Boyle B) I’m prefacing this by saying that I’m overrating this, but only as it applies to my own scale. Most people will (and already do) like this a whole lot more than I did, which considering my disproportionate admiration for late-period Boyle (I’m even a pretty big Sunshine apologist) surprises no one more than myself. Which is a long convoluted way of saying that if I wasn’t such a Boyle fanboy I’d really nail this for being the facile and morally sanitized City of God (by way of Dickens) rip-off that it is. The star here is the setting (as it was in City) and Boyle’s joyous direction. When the film is divorced from its own dopey, high-concept premise it’s energetic and vital, casting a light on what still remains an under-documented third world culture. The film’s characters never really transcend their roles as ciphers (which isn’t to say the performances are bad by any means) so they’re often only as transcendent as the story they’re intertwined in. So, in summation, stuff with kids working as urchins for Fagin-like figure (complete with involuntary maiming) is riveting. Stuff with now adult characters working under the thumb of hazily defined mob boss plays like a bad FX show. Plus, as alluded to earlier, I’m not overly impressed with Simon Beaufoy’s gimmicky screenplay which makes the adorable mistake of confusing contrivance with destiny (then again Shyamalan’s been doing the same thing for the past decade and he comes from the same part of the world as this film, so maybe it’s a cultural thing). I’m willing to forgive how every question our hero is asked dovetails into a vignette explaining how he knew the answer but does it always have to come together in such a quaint and tidy bow? Eminently worth seeing though for the naturalistic child performances, Boyle’s zippy direction (there’s a fantastic early chase sequence through the streets of Bombay that puts to shame incoherent gibberish like the Bourne sequels) and Anthony Dod Mantle’s gorgeous photography which explodes in Technicolor hues of yellow, brown, read and green. It’s unfortunate that Pineapple Express co-opted M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” this summer as the film features a heck of a sequence cut to it, the effect of which is mostly lost due to over-familiarity. Also, I hate to be “that guy,” but would it have killed them to just subtitle the whole thing?

Role Models (2008 David Wain B+) This is being compared to Judd Apatow, which really isn’t very fair. As far as I’m concerned Wain has been making me laugh for just as long (and with more regularity than) Apatow has and Rudd and Banks were in Wet Hot American Summer long before 40-Year-Old Virgin. As sell-out projects go, this might be without peer in melding formulaic high concept comedy (Wain and his co-writers came to the project late in development) with more scatological almost dada-inspired digression and grotesque characterizations. Sure, I could point out that once the plot kicks in you can anticipate every single dramatic beat about twenty minutes in advance and it all more or less ends up exactly where you would expect it to (complete with lessons learned and hugs). And yeah, the advertising for the film seems to highlight every dopey comedic set-piece and bit of broad physical comedy, but there’s a very good reason for that: everything else in the film is way too vulgar, angry or inside to ever put in a commercial. You’ve got Paul Rudd putting on a master class of passive annoyance and casual misanthropy. Snark has never been wielded with more laser specific precision which does wonders in cutting through much of the third act hokum that’s par for the course. And really, what more needs to be said about Jane Lynch who as a recovering coke addict turned community leader cheerfully over shares an increasingly horrifying back-story of degradation (there’s also a bit of business involving a hot dog bagel that’s so juvenile I feel like my driver’s license should be revoked for laughing at it). Plus, unlike Apatow, Wain can appreciate the comedic value of female nudity as well as male. I’m truly stunned something this acidic and angry even got greenlit. I suppose the best thing I can say for the film is I found myself annoyed at the density of jokes prevented me from hearing every third joke over my own laughter. Also, is Seann William Scott turning into a strong comedic actor or is he just blessed with exceptional taste in material (see also: The Promotion)? Who knew there was so much intentional comedic value in KISS?

The Minutes of Andrew's Evening

A cross-section of the evening:

I spent 5 minutes talking to her and she asked to get a drink with me.

I spent 10 minutes talking to her and she started grinding up against me while dancing.

I spent 15 minutes talking to her and she assured me how good she looks naked.

I spent 20 minutes talking to her and she flashed me the strap of her thong.

I spent 25 minutes talking to her before we exchanged phone numbers.

I spent 30 minutes talking to her before she told me I was 4 years younger than her boyfriend.

I spent 30 minutes and 21 seconds before my hard-on fell into my sock.

38 minutes after we started talking some dude with abs and a v-neck t-shirt shows up and starts groping her ass on cue.

I waited 2 minutes after I got home to delete her number from my phone.

FUCKING BITCHES.

AFI Schedule

Thanks to my good buddy Landon, I’ll be attending the AFI Film Fest this November for the sixth consecutive year, starting (for me anyway) on Halloween. I’m often critical of this particular festival as they seem to routinely squander both their standing as the most prestigious film festival in Los Angeles (FIND’s LA Film Fest has become a joke) as well as the scheduling coup of being the last major film festival of the calendar year. They’ve made a few changes over the years to be more in lock-step with the rest of the festival circuit, namely creating a Midnight Madness forum (this year rechristened “Alt Cinema”), lowered the price of their galas to an acceptable $25 a pop and scaling back on the number of American independent films which, in my experience, are often picked over after having failed to make a splash at Sundance, SxSW and Tribeca.

But this year I really have to take my hat off to the selection committee. In essence, they’ve created a year end Whitman’s Sampler, encapsulating the best titles from Sundance, Cannes, Toronto and NYFF giving those of us on the west coast a chance to catch up with many of the international titles journalists have been going nuts over for months. In fact, I’m so pleased about the job they’ve done cherry picking titles that I’m not going to bitch that they’ve split venues between the Arclight (which has served as the festival’s one-stop-shopping center for better part of the past decade) and the Mann’s Chinese complex at Hollywood and Highland.

I’m going to try and update this on my phone during my festival downtime (wifi signal permitting) so check back for regular updates. Also I’ve included all the leftover pieces that came in the box at the bottom of the page in case anyone sees a title that they think I absolutely should make a point of seeing.

And now in the highly imitable style of Mike D’Angelo, I present.

AFI Fest October 30 – November 9
_______________________________________________________________________________


Friday October 31

Deadgirl (Marcel Sarmiento & Gadi Harel, USA): C- The appeal here is largely built around how gapingly offensive the premise is, when in actuality this is less morally appalling than it is inept at every level. Essentially this is River’s Edge reconceived as a zombie movie, with our loner protagonists inviting all their male friends to come sexually violate a re-animated corpse strapped to a gurney inside an abandoned asylum. But Sarmiento & Harel never land on the right tone, creating a situation that’s toxic to begin with (the two leads seem to have modeled their performances after 1950’s greasers film with a little Dylan & Eric thrown in for flavor) and descending from there, never fully selling its own premise from a situational or character standpoint. As a treatise on sexual politics it lags behind even this past winter’s forgettable Teeth and while it tows the line of Cronenbergian body violation, it ultimately lacks the conviction (or perhaps the special effects budget) to really go where sick young men’s minds will take things.

Saturday Nov 1

Revanche (Götz Spielmann, Austria): B+ Boy is this a hard film to qualify. From a strictly plot standpoint (and this most assuredly is not a film whose strength is derived from its plot) it’s essentially a Coen Brother’ special, with a get-rich scheme that’s destined to go horrifically and the aftermath of which can only lead to more bloodshed (I don’t speak German but even I can deduce what the title means). And the thing is, at no point will you be really surprised where the film arrives as everything is telegraphed by the 50-minute mark. No, the real intangible here is how fully lived in and emotionally sound every choice in the film is and how the consequences of every action taken are explored. In a perverse way it almost reminds me of Crash where we have a bunch of people bumping against one another through sheer contrivance but instead of knee-jerk histrionics and manufactured drama we have desperate people slowly coming to terms with the world they’ve created and their helplessness at escaping it. I’m really failing to convey the film’s loveliness but I take comfort that Mike D’Angelo more or less flailed about as well, although his enthusiasm for the film was enough to get me in the theater. If I can accomplish that as well then mission accomplished.

Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt, USA): B Another bullocks to the plot film, great. I wasn’t a fan of Reichardt’s Old Joy which was a little too minimalist for me. This at least has the benefit of external conflict even if it moves to the same aimless rhythms of the earlier film. Having familiarized myself with the premise going in, I was relieved to discover it’s not the exercise in miserablism I’d feared would be, in large part due to Michelle Williams defiantly pragmatic performance and an understated gem of a turn by stunt coordinator turned “where the hell did *he* come from?” character actor Wally Dalton as a sympathetic security guard. It’s also worth noting that as a lifelong dog owner there’s probably no way I wasn’t going to tear up at that ending but that shouldn’t take anything away from the long slow build that earns the moment.

Che (Steven Soderbergh, France/Spain): B

Sunday Nov 2

The Class (Laurent Cantet, France): A

Hunger (Steve McQueen, UK): B


Monday Nov 3

Time Crimes (Nacho Vigalondo, Spain): C+


Tuesday Nov 4

I didn't end up seeing anything. Mid-fest break required as the night's would get much longer and booze-fueled from here on out.

Wednesday Nov 5

Before the Fall (F Javier Gutiérrez, Spain): C-


Thursday Nov 6

Idiots and Angels (Bill Plympton, USA): B-

Two Lovers (James Gray, USA): A

The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky, USA): B

Friday Nov 7

Sugar (Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck, USA): B+

Waltz With Bashir (Ari Folman, Israel/France/Germany): C-

Afterschool (Antonio Campos, USA): D+ This once announces itself early and often: a theme spending 2 hours in search of a film. Essentially, in case you didn’t know, a generation raised on internet porn and Al Quaeda beheading videos is likely to grow up disaffected and emotionally disconnected from genuine human experience becoming little glass-eyed monsters who regard the death of a couple classmates with the same level of muted interest as hallways slap fight or a viral video of a kitty playing the piano. Campos, who at 24 is bold enough to create a film around this idea, complete with Youtube-ready off-center compositions while at the same time is just immature enough to not realize he’s shot his load in the first 10 minutes and proceeds to beat the same drum with little variance. The film’s payoff is so poorly telegraphed I simply assumed it was accepted fact only to be confronted with shock-cut flashbacks in the closing moments. The film has its fans (or rather one very vocal one) but frankly I’d be amazed if it ever escapes the festival circuit.

Saturday Nov 8

Playing Columbine (Danny Ledonne, USA): C+ The missing element here is critical distance. The title of the film refers to the low-tech computer game Super Columbine Massacre RPG! that was released onto the net a few years ago, serving to comment upon (or exploit depending upon your politics) the 1999 school shooting and the ensuing controversy that predictably followed it. Ledonne chronicles the firestorm of victims rights advocates and media pundits that attacked the game for turning tragedy into entertainment (we see brief glimpses of the game where, for example, you receive certain point values for shooting “Preppy Girl” or lighting propane tanks on fire) as well as the weak-willed gaming establishment that buckled to pressure to bury the game and yank it from media arts conventions. Of even more interest, the film draws the corollary between the game and other “too soon” works such as United 93 and games about the Catholic Church scandals and Darfur, making the case that experiencing these events in a first-person, user-controlled medium is a perfectly acceptable form of processing grief. So what’s the problem? Ledonne also happens to be the creator of the game itself, meaning the film often undermines its own point in failing to truly hold its subject’s feet to the fire regarding his motives. The ratio of subjects who praise Ledonne versus those who indict him is about 5 to 1, meaning the film essentially serves as a self-generated pat on the back to its filmmaker. We’re constantly aware of the artist’s motives and as such everything about the film is rendered suspect.

Adam Resurrected (Paul Schrader, Germany/Israel/USA): C-


Sunday Nov 9

As predicted I hit a wall on the last day of the festival. Nothing left scheduled that day appealed to me and the tickets to the world premiere of Defiance that had been promised to me were withheld until the last possible moment, making it impossible for me to attend. I also flaked out on a screening of Milk that I'm now regretting. Such is life...


Not Getting to This Time Around

24 City
3 Women
Achilles and the Tortoise
Acne
Agile, Mobile, Hostile: A Year with Andre Williams
Alone in Four Walls
Better Things
Birdsong
Blood Appears
A Boyfriend for My Wife
The Chaser
Chouga
Defiance^
The Desert Within
Dim Sum Funeral
Divizionz
Everlasting Moments
Finally, Lillian and Dan
Food Fight
Gachi Boy Wrestling With a Memory
Gogol Bordello Non-Stop
A Good Day to be Black & Sexy
The Good, the Bad & the Weird
The Headless Woman
Hi My Name is Ryan
The Higher Force
I’m Gonna Explode
Imaginadores
Involuntary
The Juche Idea
Kassim the Dream
Kisses
Lake Tahoe
Last Chance Harvey^
The Last Days of Shishmaref
Lion’s Dean
Liverpool
Native Dancer
A Necessary Death
Niloofar
Nirvana
Not Quite Hollywood
Of All the Things
O’Horten
Paradise
Patrik, Age 1.5
Perfect Life
Pindorama – The True Story of the Seven Dwarves
Poundcake
Prodigal Sons
Proper Eyes
A Quiet Little Marriage
La Rabia
The Rest of the Night
Shakespeare and Victor Hugo’s Intimacies
Skin
Slumdog Millionaire^@
Summer Hours
Three Blind Mice
Tokyo Sonata
Truth in 24
Tulpan
Two-Legged Horse
Until the Light Takes Us
Visioneers
Waiting for Sancho
Wellness
Witch Hunt@
The World We Want
World’s Apart


^ Gala
@ Already Seen

Killing Time a Little After Midnight

It’s early fall in LA, typically my favorite time of the year and I’m restless. I’m waiting on an episode of “Entourage” to finish downloading, not that I have any particular desire to watch it, but I fear, like skipping an issue of Variety I’ll somehow be out of the loop if I don’t watch 25 minutes of Vince fucking toothy starlets while Ari confirms every belief middle America has about Jews while the show loft softballs at easy industry targets. I guess that’s why they equate TV with comfort food. Speaking of which I’m eating Doritos because I skipped dinner. I must remind myself that I’m an adult from time to time.

Feel like my life is in transition at the moment. Just extricated myself from a sticky personal situation (being vague because God knows who reads this thing) which suffered from diminished returns as the months went on. Just another lesson on the road of life. Work continues to disappoint me, both financially and spiritually. I fear I’ve been at the same place for so long and have picked up so many bad habits along the way that I’m ill equipped to go anywhere else. Or perhaps I’m just scared to venture outside of the nest (as precariously perched as it may be). I find that, like in relationships, I tend to stay at jobs way too long out of fear of prematurely ending it. Just not good at cutting the cord.

Speaking of relationships, I found out tonight (albeit unconfirmed) that the woman I was in love with in college, someone I seriously considered proposing to at one point is engaged to the guy she started seeing after me (I’m being charitable in this classification, as there was a little overlap at the end there). And I feel… strangely ambivalent. Not quite happy for her but in years past this might be enough to send me on a full-tilt anxiety spiral of panic attacks and pie-eyed nostalgia. I never really doubted that I’d long ago moved on and I suppose this confirms it. Still, always a bit stunning when she who once were “the one” is officially betrothed to another. All the same, I made myself a drink (killing off the last nip of Jack Daniels I kept tucked away in a drawer for just such an occasion).

Tomorrow is sure to be fraught with worry as it’s the first day of a terrifyingly short window of time where I can plead my case against a bogus tax levy the bankrupt (both morally and financially) city of LA has brought against me. It seems because of an iffy tax filing a few years back they believe I own and operate a business requiring some form of business license (not to mention years worth of interest and penalties). This is truly too absurd for words and an insult considering how little I pull in from work. I have my accountant working on the situation but right now I feel like an anvil is hanging over my head. My accountant and parents have told me to remain calm but why shouldn’t they? That’s like the surgeon who tells you not to panic about the dark spot on your lungs. After all, it’s not their body.

A few months back I alluded to some big announcement in this space. Still nothing to report officially. I can offer a little bit of info without getting into specifics. My company has been in talks to produce a couple of low-budget films this fall with yours truly ear-marked for some form of a producer credit on one or both. Of course I’ve been down this path before and when push comes to shove there’s still no money in the bank for either of them. I continue to do work on both and have been paid by neither. Story of my life. I wish I could tell you I felt passionate about both of them but this is strictly a money grab situation and should that money not be forthcoming there’s really no reason to bother with either project or for that matter the company itself. I need a victory here or I need to move the fuck on.

Those who used to come here for movie reviews are advised to continue reading my Twitter regularly as I just lack the focus to write about films at length anymore (sorry). I like the limitations of Twitter and the instant gratification that comes from knowing I’ve got a readership who will have my ever tweet sent to their home page. I will say this though: Rachel Getting Married is the most unexpectedly wonderful film of the fall. I didn’t have any expectations for the film prior to its strong showing at Toronto but it’s no fluke that nearly everyone who saw the film at the festival has fallen in love with it (even my boss, who has questionable taste, raved about it). It’s not some cookie cutter romantic comedy nor is it a dreary drama in the Dogme vein (although the influences are there and easily identifiable). It’s the sort of film you just want to embrace while at the same time is too painfully observed to bear at times. Everyone knows a person like Anne Hathaway’s Kym. Some of us have them in their families, and the film has the bravery to acknowledge that while we may love these people, that doesn’t make them any less of a burden to carry. No film has made me feel more alive this year and for that I am truly grateful.

Quick TV obsession to report: whilst watching the first four episodes of “Chuck” on DVD this weekend I fell head over heals in lust with co-star Yvonne Strahovski who is easily one of the five sexiest women I’ve ever seen. And I’m not even a fan of blondes. No idea how this show managed to be on the air for a year without me cluing into her. Truly stunning and, in a wicked joke I’m eternally grateful for, the show has placed her in a situation where she spends a large part of *every* episode in pigtails and a Bavarian beer wench outfit. The show itself is sort of shrug-worthy. It has an engaging lead and Animal Mother himself Adam Baldwin. It looks nice and looks like it costs a fortune but it’s surprisingly draggy for a super-spy show. Still, Strahovski is perhaps the greatest incentive in the world to watch and until I get tired of gawking I will be adding the show to my DVR rotation (as if there isn’t enough on Monday nights these days.

And with that, my download of Entourage has completed. This was fun. I missed this. Maybe I’ll get back into this. No promises.

Small signs of life (iPhone edition)

Don't get excited. This is just a test to see whether updating this blog with an iPhone is even possible let alone worth the effort. Not gonna lie: this is sort of tedious and taking a lot longer than I'd thought. Still, some exciting developments brewing that would definitely keep me from my PC for a spell that I'll probably want to document for posterity's sake.

I guess this test was a success. Check back at this space in the coming months hopefully when I can make a real announcement. Or not.

Distracted… Less so Now

The return of bullet points (not literally)

Covering lots of ground in a short period of time. In my head the “Montage” song is from Team America is playing.

Been absent in my blogging

I could make some excuse about having nothing interesting to say but we all know that isn’t true. Flaked on the Oscars as well as the half a dozen films I’ve seen in the past couple months (p.s., none of them were good). Was involved in a hellish low-budget production which kicked my ass. Then was involved in a startlingly rare “relationship” (her scare quotes, not mine) that really kicked my ass and am now pulling myself out of the flaming crater that is the aftermath. I hope to figure out what the hell went wrong there but in the meantime I find myself with a lot more free time on the weekends.

Been a Twittering fiend

I found my latest fix however in Twitter right around the time I got my iPhone. If you’re reading this now you absolutely should sign up for an account as there’s rarely any thought going through a person’s head that wouldn’t be improved by being condensed down to 140 characters. Sadly the more adept I become at Twitter the less need I’ll have for long form blogging. Call it selling out or giving up or simply no longer caring, but I think I’ve found my new love.

Feeling creative again

For the first time in months I feel flush with new script idea. This extends both to screenplays I’ve already started and ones in the pipeline. It feels good to be passionate about what it is you aspire to do once again.

Plugolla

Steel City will be out on DVD on May 6th. As I’ve spent the past three months scrambling to assemble elements for this event it’s especially rewarding to see pre-orders being taken at sites like Amazon.com and Best Buy. Hint, hint, hint.

Coachella still sucks

Nope, no less bitter about this. Andrew’s unofficial Christmas is still a floating turd and nothing in the past two months has changed that fact. Meanwhile Lollapalooza rumors are heating up and I may have to build a return engagement to the Windy City into my schedule/budget. I wonder if that girl still lives there.

I’m finished.

Giant Ice Cream Sandwich

This thing was so impressive I had to take a picture of it. If you're in Burbank I highly recommend you order it at Elephant Bar.

Meanwhile, who's the cute girl...

More Feist

Alright this is just begging for time in the barrel but I really am helpless against these Feist videos done in collaboration with director Patrick Daughters. Like last summer’s ubiquitous “1-2-3-4” I’m left completely beguiled by how unpretentious the design of the video is, underlining how lovely Feist’s voice is and how playful her songs are. There’s a complete absence of irony and artificial coolness and that’s what actually makes it kind of cool. Someone get this Daughters fellow a mumblecore movie post-haste.

Plus, the song has been my go-to, feel-good dity for the past week or so. I think I actually smiled after the Pats game after listening to this. I defy you to be in a bad mood after giving this a watch/listen. Anyway, if I have to turn in my man card after this admission, then so be it.

Eli Drank Our Milkshake

"Eli Manning just gave me the Eli Manning Face."
--Bill Simmons, ESPN.com

Well, that certainly did suck. A special thanks to Brostrom, Amy Lee, Aaron Rosenbloom, Chris Beaver, Russ Geltman, Dannie Lin and everyone else who’s made a point of rubbing last night’s debacle in my face. Good friends, good friends. You’d think being surrounded by 2-dozen Boston fans would have provided some form of comfort in the aftermath of being spanked by the *really* retarded-looking Manning brother but instead it seemed to bring out every New Englanders collective “why us” anxiety that most of us have barely been on speaking-terms with since 2004. It’s as though the floodgates had been opened and all of us, who admittedly have been on an insanely prolonged sports-high, were awash in the sort of failure we once assumed would great us every year. This was really, really bad.

Some random thoughts:

Lots of people to blame for this one from our decrepit linebackers who somehow allowed Eli to shake free on "the pass." I've never had my emotions jerk violently in that many directions in such a short period of time. It was something along the lines of "YesssgetttttthimmmOHHHHMYYYYGODDDWHATAREYOUDOINGNOOOOOOO!" I may or may not have dropped to my knees with my head in my hands at some point immediately after this play. Let's also throw some love at the offensive line which was completely overwhelmed by the G-men all night, Elis Hobbs for getting burned badly by Plaxico on the final drive and Bill Belichick for playing it safe most of the night. Where was the swagger? Where was the inventiveness? When did he turn into Marty Schottenheimer?

If nothing else, can this please put to rest the entire Tom Brady man-crush bit. That joke not only ran its course years ago but it's starting to get creepy. Didn't guys used to be embarrassed by these sorts of things?

Guess I'm just naive, but I was legitimately surprised how many people wanted the Pats to lose (or at the very least are happy that it's now happened). Granted I used to be the guy who hated the Bulls during the Jordan era and cheered for whichever team played against the 49'ers growing up but, wow, even people who seem entirely disconnected from professional sports are treating this like the Death Star's just been destroyed. Guess the SpyGate stuff really stayed with people.

Also, thanks a bunch to the Boston Globe for pre-selling 19-0 commemorative books (just when I thought we had thought the demons of "1918" chants had been vanquished, we opened a door and gave New Yorkers and "18-1" chant to run with. Outstanding) that will now be sent to third world countries short on toilet paper supplies and Mayor Menino for boasting about the victory parade to the Herald last week. Okay, I now get why people hate this team.

A little perspective however is in order. This wasn’t the worst loss of my lifetime by a long-shot. Watching Aaron Boone trot around the bases in Game 7 was like watching your mom get violated on a pinball machine. Still, can we get some form of confirmation that Paul Crocetti is still alive?

A surprising silver-lining to last night was I had to report to a film-set in Pasadena almost immediately after the game so I didn’t have time to spend the rest of the night sulking and forcing myself to watch replays on ESPN over and over again. Instead I only had to concern myself with staying awake till 4 in the morning and not catching hypothermia as it was in the low 40’s and we were shooting outdoors.

Another unexpected upside: I spent an hour or so curled up on the couch commiserating with/being consoled by a very cute woman. Not exactly how I expected to spend the time after the game, but man it could have been worse.

For the record I made the comparison to the Rams-Pats Superbowl a few weeks ago and was shouted down. Not sure how proud I should be of this.

This whole experience reminds me of the 2003-2004 NBA season (my first living in LA) when I actually allowed myself to root for the Lakers because they’d signed Karl Malone in one last hope of winning an NBA championship before Kobe and Shaq murdered one another, and before Malone and Gary Payton ended up like Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing as first-ballot hall of famers without a championship ring. Of course it felt dirty to cheer for the gross Lakers but it was impossible not to get caught up in the excitement. Of course halfway through the season Malone broke down for the first time in an almost twenty year career, Kobe and Shaq refused to play nice with one another, Kobe accused Malone of making sexual advances towards his wife (this last one got swept under the carpet after Kobe began living out To Kill a Mocking Bird in Colorado the next season) and the Lakers were embarrassed in the NBA Finals by the scrappy Detroit Pistons.

I’d also compare this to the 2001 MLB season which was notable not only for the Seattle Mariners pulling off much the same trick the Pats did (winning a record-breaking number of regular season wins only to choke in the post-season) as well as the Yankees going to the World Series a month after 9/11 when, theoretically, the whole world wanted them to win and they lost to an expansion team (something the Yankees do better than anyone else on Earth).

Pitchers and catchers report in 10 days (first time I’ve looked forward to Valentine’s Day in years). I can only take comfort in the fact that football is a hell of a ride but it’s got nothing on baseball, and last time I checked we’ve got a banner raising ceremony planned for April.

I’m finished.

Why Andrew Doesn't Own a Gun

Some dick cheese side-swiped my car this morning before utterly destroying the car parked next to it. The theory is this failed abortion with a coat hanger still stuck in his forehead lost control of his car, skimmed alongside my driver's side before turning the second car into abstract art. This walking cum stain on the floor of a porno theater then took off leaving a trail of wreckage and two fucked cars in his wake. I can only hope that shortly after he hit my car he careened into a tanker truck transporting AIDS blood.

This all happened around 6:30 this morning. My house mates noticed police cars dealing with the totaled car next to me but failed to notice any damage on my car, which is a little under two years old and was fucking cherry. I didn't notice any damage myself when I got into the car to drive to work this morning but I certainly began to once I pulled away from the curb and I noticed my car was buckling out from underneath me and emitting a high-pitch squeal that sounded a little bit like Ned Beatty in Deliverance. I tried to drive to work on it assuming that the seemingly weeks of rain it had endured had made the breaks wet. No such luck. I drove it to my mechanic (fortunately a few blocks up the road), swerving out dangerously each time I hit a pimple in the road, where I was informed that my suspension and likely axles were damaged by what had clearly been a car accident (shows you the keen mechanical eye I've got).

So after causing me to bail on my second consecutive work day (the first because of the Ebola Virus or whatever the fuck has been making my joints sore, making me cough up small pieces of my lung, making me shiver uncontrollably and not to mention miss the rare party I actually had interest in attending) I spent the entire day waiting around in the waiting rooms of various mechanics, auto-bodies, and car rental places, on the phone with my insurance provider and hitching a ride in a tow truck. I'm left wondering when I'm going to get my car back while I'm stuck driving a hideous-looking boat from Enterprise. I loved that car and now it's been violated like a prom date.

In a perfect world I'd get twenty minutes alone with this cowardly sack of shit who ruined at least two people's day and cost likely tens of thousands of dollars worth of damage. In the words of Vincent Vega, it'd been worth him doing it just so I could've caught him doing it. People like this don't deserve to die but having their legs permanently immobilized doesn't strike me as at all distasteful or an over-reaction. Some people just need to be hobbled. I don't have much faith in the cracker-jack LA police department so once again, the innocent are fucked over.

Goddamnit, I hate days that make me want to be a Republican.

Retiring... Sort Of

In case anyone cares, last week I came to the difficult decision that I no longer had time in my life to continue writing weekly recaps of the television show "Lost" for Matt Zoller Seitz's website. I'd been on the fence about the assignment (which typically took anywhere from four to six agonizing hours every Wednesday night) but because of the strike-shortened season reducing the number of episodes to 8 (by contrast I did 22 of them last year) I figured I could make it work.

Fortunately, or unfortunately depending how you look at it, the real world intervened. I'm going to be working on an independent film starting in early February in a position that requires a lot of responsibility and a lot of time. Complicating matters further, the entire film is being shot at night. This would force me to miss, at bare minimum 1/4 of the season due to work, making the whole endeavor kind of pointless. I don't feel good about bailing on Matt on such short notice but since I let him know last week I feel like I've moved out from underneath a dark cloud. The "Lost" gig was only made possibly due to a highly dysfunctional and not terribly productive work schedule. That it's finally beginning to resemble that of my contemporaries is a good thing even if it does mean I'll be out till 6am for a couple of week. Furthermore, the show moved to Thursday nights, the one night of the week where am I almost guaranteed to have plans. So hooray for personal freedom.

I have full confidence that Matt will be able to corral someone into taking over the position. God knows when I was holding court enough people came out of the woodworks convinced they knew more than I did. I wish whomever takes the job a ton of luck. It's a fun show to dissect but not an easy one. The fact that the network clearly plays favorites with who they do and do not send screeners to will only complicate the matter further. And for those who absolutely have to read my input, I'll no doubt chime in from time to time in the comments section over at the House. After all, just because I don't want the job anymore doesn't mean I think anyone can do it as well as I did.

Heath

I’ve got a couple blog pieces that have been percolating for a few days now that were put on a temporary hold. In part because of a nasty bug that’s apparently afflicted half of LA (it seemed to have arrived with our Monsoon Season) that had rendered me a coughing, shivering mess. This is now the third time since Labor day I’ve battled flu like symptoms, something I was especially gifted at staving off when I was in high school and college. I can only attribute this to my work habits and diet because who wants to consider the alternative.

Of course the other reason was me still stumbling towards some form of perspective on the sudden death of Heath Ledger. I’m not the type of person who goes weak in the knees over the death of a celebrity; I think the closest I’ve ever come was when Mark Sandman, lead singer of the rock band Morphine, dropped dead on stage, but that was a case where I’d actually met the guy. But this undeniably feels different. There’s a universal hurt going around as everyone tries to make sense of something that’s truly senseless to its core. This was the sort of “event” (if one could call it that) that you felt the need to share with as many people as you could as quickly as possible. This was a death that text messaging was invented for.

I feel ill-suited to eulogize the man, who at 28, was eerily close to my own age forcing an unwanted reality check upon me. I was never the champion of Brokeback Mountain that most were, and I recognize that that’s were the majority of the anguish people are feeling is coming from (it’s a glib analogy but remove that one title from the resume and the gulf between Ledger and the equally tragic and dead Brad Renfro is a lot smaller). Still, I had enormous respect for the actor whose attachment to a film guaranteed a performance that would jut out into unexpected angles. He turned a perfunctory supporting part in the largely irrelevant Lords of Dogtown into an unexplained Val Kilmer impersonation, investing every line with a flat So Cal divinity. He was like Spicoli without the quotation marks.

The first hints of what was to come were no doubt found in Monster’s Ball, a role that seemed like an aberration at the time but would lay the groundwork for the tormented outsiders the actor was drawn to over the next seven years. Ledger could have been a matinée idol on the basis of his looks, but like Leo DiCaprio, he went out of his way to distance himself from the Teen People crowd. Working with A-list directors like Ang Lee, Chris Nolan, Todd Haynes and Terry Gilliam, the latter with whom he was shooting a film at the time of his death, making it simply the latest in a long line of “cursed” projects for the filmmaker.

His last completed role is ultimately the one that would have garnered him the most attention on a global level, the coveted role of The Joker in Nolan’s sequel to Batman Begins, The Dark Night. Upon learning of Ledger’s casting in the film there was a universal sigh of relief, as though it signaled that the franchise hadn’t suddenly lost its way by relying upon stunt casting. The film, which is due in July, was arguably the most anticipated film of the year before Ledger’s death; it will no doubt attain the extra level of infamy. I take it as a sign of personal growth on my part that upon learning of Heath’s passing my first thought was not to wonder about the status of the film, but rather to think of the actor’s young daughter,

In closing, I’m reprinting a tribute written by Sean Burns posted on his Myspace. Ordinarily I’d just hyperlink to it but I know a lot of people don’t have Myspace and it would be a shame if that limited anyone from reading it. Burns is a master at these things; it’s an uncanny gift calling upon a skill that’s not usually rewarded. No one does the poetic and the profane better. This will no doubt come across as more morbid than intended, but I’d be honored to get a send-up like this some day.

Here’s the man’s words:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"It’s A Goddamned Shame...

So I've been in a weird, melancholy funk ever since I heard about Heath Ledger yesterday afternoon.

I've always found it strange and borderline inappropriate, having feelings like this when a celebrity dies – I mean, it's not like we were friends or anything. Lord knows I had a grand old time mocking the world's comically hysterical outpouring of grief over The Crocodile Hunter, only to turn around and do pretty much the same thing myself a few weeks later when Robert Altman died. (I know this means I'm hypocrite, but it also means I have good taste.)

The most maddening thing here is that Ledger was just, in the past couple years, really starting to come into his own as an actor, maybe a potential giant -- taking fascinating risks with his performances and choosing chancy projects. He seemed to have his head screwed on straight, at least career-wise, and I was already looking forward to seeing what he'd pull out for those upcoming Malick and Gilliam movies. (We won't even get into the pants-pissing squeals of fanboy delight that blurt out involuntarily every time I watch that fucking awesome DARK KNIGHT trailer.)

But at least we'll always have Ennis Del Mar. Although I've never been naïve enough to think that a movie can change the world, I still do believe that certain characters find their way into our hearts, and because of this special kind of empathy sometimes folks just might leave the theater looking at things a little bit differently.

Working at a cinema that showed BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN for months on end, I amassed tons of anecdotal evidence – guys joking uncomfortably on their way in, coming to see "the faggot cowboy movie," only to find themselves unexpectedly, profoundly, moved.

It's Ledger who made that happen -- communicating the exquisite, agonizing torment of a man who cannot allow himself to be who he really is, inarticulate and clenched, his few, carefully chosen words escaping in almost glottal burps.

It's a towering, anguished performance --one of this decade's finest by any yardstick-- and during the film's lengthy run I must admit I watched that closing scene at least two dozen times. Ennis' reaction to his daughter's engagement is fraught with unspoken sentiments and hidden communications. Upon each and every viewing I was captivated all over again by Ledger's careful use of his body language -- the roughneck, kutzy character's belated, strangely delicate ascension, at long last, into some sort of elusive peace.

It's a goddamned shame we've just been robbed of any more moments like that one. What a fucking waste."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alright, I got that out of my system. Back to being petty.

Oscar Nominations Response

**I’ve found myself in the weird spot of not hating the Oscar nominations.

In fact, I think they’re kind of awesome.

Proving that they’re not you’re father’s father’s Oscars, the same Academy that once upon a time gave its highest awards to films like Driving Miss Daisy and Dances with Wolves built upon its relative edginess of last year’s Scorsese coronation and went with a best picture lineup of the following:

Atonement
Juno
Michael Clayton
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood

Opinions will vary, and there are choices here I don’t necessarily agree with, but it looks to me to be a pretty sexy list.

I’ve gone on record often and early as a Juno booster so I’m especially happy that the film has not only survived a snarky blogger backlash (which will no doubt become deafening as the film is compared to everything from Napoleon Dynamite to My Big Fat Greek Wedding to… shudder… Crash), but eeked out a surprise nomination for the highly underrated Jason Reitman (somewhere out there Burns just got a douche chill). Talk about a conciliation prize for not getting to go on Oprah. Meanwhile I’m starting to believe that the similarly gnashing and unpleasant No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood will end up canceling one another out allowing for Juno to sneak in and win best picture pleasing myself, Roger Ebert and millions of text message teenage girls.

I’d started to doubt There Will Be Blood’s chances in the past week but that was obviously wrong. I’ve never been a PT Anderson guy but I’m happy he’s being rewarded for, in the words of Mike D’Angelo, finally “calming the fuck down.” Of all the nominated films, There Will Be Blood is the one that I feel will benefit the most from repeat viewings. It’s such a black-hearted, resentful film; I’m both surprised and really pleased that it exists even if I doubt it will ever be the film its champions claim it to be.

Then you have No Country For Old Men, a film that’s been in the driver’s seat for so long it’s easy to forget how pulpy and fatalistic the film is. I’d once feared that the film was too successful as a suspense film to be taken seriously as a drama, particular with the direction the film takes in its last act, but no one seems to have encountered these issues and the film has to be seen as the favorite at this point. Also could this be the first time in history a filmmaker wins 4 awards in one night (for producing, directing, writing and editing)? It’s always possible the Coens will have one of their buddies pretend to be Roderick Jaynes for the night (does anyone remember how this worked back in ’95?) but still, quite the accomplishment.

I consider a film like Michael Clayton disposable in the very best sense of the word. It’s not really about anything—you can pretty much fit the plot on the back of a match book—but it’s so well done and so supremely confident in itself that it’s the sort of film you can imagine yourself watching over and over on cable. Clooney is one of the true honest to God movie stars; everything he does is done with style and authority without ever crossing the line into preaching. I’m a little bit baffled at anyone who’d put this bit of comfort food at the top of their list, but I can certainly appreciate that it’s probably the most purely entertaining mainstream drama of the year.

And then there’s Atonement, the only one of the five best picture nominees I actively disliked. I found it to be costume porn and bad chick lit (easily my two least favorite genres) and it seemed as though the opinion-makers agreed with me but, in the end, it hung in there. Never underestimate the staying power of a period drama I suppose. Although, to be fair, in its own way the film’s every bit as unpleasant as Blood, as intentionally unsatisfying as Country and as cynical as Michael Clayton. Plus, it tosses around the “C-word” more often than my dad watching a Hillary speech, so props for that one.

The Academy just seemed a little bit more “on” this year than usual. Viggo Mortensen received his first nomination for his exemplary work in Eastern Promises, another violent genre film that in any other year would seem to be too "out there" for voters and yet there he is, all slithery menace and coiled intensity. He doesn’t stand a chance of winning but he’d have my vote.

Or how about the smarts to see through the gooey grandstanding of Paul Haggis’ In the Valley of Elah to recognize Tommy Lee Jones’ devastating performance in the film. It can’t be easy to rise above material this horrid and yet Jones doesn’t have an insincere moment in the film.

I’m pleased Laura Linney somehow found her way into the best actress race. She feels like one of those actresses who will never be recognized for how consistently great she is because she refuses to play to the cheap seats. This won’t be her year either but the more her name and face are out there the better off she’ll be.

Also worth pointing out: how stacked is the Best Supporting Actor category? Not a bum performance in the bunch.

Even though I think Ratatouille is the better film, I can’t help but root for Persepolis in the foreign language category.

Then there are the omissions. Apparently the Academy really didn’t like Sean Penn’s Into the Wild. I’m sure someone will spin this as a rejection of Penn’s politics, but I think the more obvious answer is that older voters found Emile Hirsch’s character to be a self-absorbed asshole who treats his parents cruelly. Guess it was hard to relate. American Gangster predictably was a non-issue receiving a lifetime achievement-style supporting actress nomination for Ruby Dee for a part consisting of convincingly slapping Denzel (I guess one could make the same case for 80-something year old Hal Holbrook in Into the Wild although that one feels more earned to me) as well as a nod for art direction (“that’s alpaca! Blot that shit!”) Sweeny Todd was doomed by its lousiness picking up a now automatic Johnny Depp nomination and not much else. Can’t help but giggle over the fact that for all his steadicam hotdogging, Joe Wright is on the outside looking in in the Best Director category. Man that Reitman nomination just keeps getting better and better.

The big question now is whether there will even be an Oscars because of the ongoing writer’s strike. The show’s producers have promised… something although they’re being short with details. I hope they took a long hard look at the Golden Globes fiasco before trying to turn the event into a Billy Bush hosted press conference.

Of course the one year I actually care who wins they would hold the show hostage on me.



**note:

Halfway through writing this, the news about Heath Ledger’s death broke. I was feeling decidedly less funny/boisterous after that and I think it shows in this sort of schizophrenic piece.

Clovershit

The thought of possibly seeing a worse film in 2008 than Cloverfield has me thoroughly depressed. There are certainly people who will respond to this film and what it’s attempting to do but it is first, last and thoroughly fraudulent; both painfully wedded and conveniently indifferent to its high-concept premise resulting in a film that’s satisfying neither as a post-modern experiment nor a monster movie.

Say what you will about The Blair Witch Project, and for the record I thought it was pretty close to being a masterpiece seven and a half years ago (my God has it been that long?) but the compulsive need to document a waking nightmare in that film was derived from boredom, frustration and loneliness. So much of the horror in that film came from documenting after the fact, as though recording it on camera would somehow make it all more real and easier to comprehend.

Here we have a bunch of asses walking around downtown Manhattan, fending off Godzilla (or whatever the fuck it is), lice monsters, falling bridges, fireballs, and military gunfire and for whatever reason they keep the camera rolling, dutifully pointing the lens at whatever complications come their way. Scaling the face of a building, carrying an injured friend, attacking giant spider monsters: these activities are best accomplished with two hands no matter what the Bad Robot people would have you believe.

So much of the film’s design is built around its perceived verisimilitude from the way the monster remains mostly just outside the frame (all the better, once we actually see it in daylight it’s terrible looking) to the approximation of “real time” to the way exposition is mostly foregone in favor of panic and unexpected revelation. Yet, at its core, the film is utterly false, traipsing on crude 9/11 imagery (Spielberg failed in this regard, don’t know why anyone thought the guy who created “Felicity” and wrote Under Siege 2 would succeed) in the service of an utterly bullshit rescue plot that flies in the face of both common sense and the audience’s presumed desire to see these people survive. How much of a routing interest is there really when every character on-screen lacks self-preservation instinct?

Of course it’s arguable whether we ever would have cared about these people even if they did put the camera down and not continuously walk towards the big scary monster tearing down buildings. Drawn from the J.J. Abrams model of self-absorbed Yuppie c*nts (the man’s legacy as a storyteller will no doubt be his affinity for pretty, affluent, vapid, white people in spacious apartments), Cloverfield finds us hurtling towards eminent danger to save a pretty girl our hero banged once and surprisingly indifferent to all the friends and family picked off along the way. Because really, what are they worth next to the girl you had a one-night-stand with who a few hours ago you’d resigned to never seeing again?

The film’s documentary approach is meant to lend extra insight into an extraordinary event yet its very existence only creates distance. We never feel like actors aren’t performing for the camera’s benefit, riffing about pop culture at inopportune times or babbling incessantly in an encouraged improvisational style (maybe we need the writers back on the job after all). Grief is predominantly ignored or swept under the carpet almost instantaneously. Emotional resonance comes in self-contained doses that don’t carry over to subsequent scenes. We don’t really get a sense of the toll the evening has taken on the characters, the fear and frustration that they should be going through having spent the night scurrying away from a giant lizard creature, let alone the annoyance of a douche bag shoving a camera in their face while they bleed out onto the floor.

In attempting to be realer than real, the film only reinforces the monster movie clichés it’s strenuously trying to avoid. In showing us how “normal, everyday” people would react in this situation it couldn’t be any less insightful or recognizably human.

Gun to my head, I’d rather watch Devlin & Emmerich’s Godzilla again.

Andrew really doesn’t hate everything…

First weekend back in LA after escaping from a floating prison in the south Atlantic was spent sitting on my ass as we’ve entered the most awesome time of the year for football fans. I live and die baseball, but you really can’t beat the NFL’s one and done playoff system where your fortunes can change in a matter of seconds. I made the “mistake” of watching only the Saturday games (aka the games that went down exactly as planned) and skipped both of Sunday’s stunning, tear-stained upsets. Thanks to those wily Chargers we as a nation will be spared the latest over-hyped Colts vs. Pats game which CBS is kicking itself over but every Patriot fan alive is secretly thrilled about (we all know they only barely squeaked by back in November).



But no one reads this thing for sports talk. I watched a couple of films this weekend that were pretty low on my radar that I loved to varying degrees in spite of mounting evidence that they would fall into the “meh” category. Of most immediate concern is Charlie Wilson’s War which was one of 19 films released on Christmas that I’m only just now getting around to and has already been chewed on and half digested by everyone of note. Going in, I knew how “horribly miscast” Julia Roberts would be and how “de-balled” the film was by not delivering viewers at the doorstep of 9/11 and how slight the film was because of it. And the truth is, all of the above is true to a point, but that doesn’t begin to get at all the great stuff that the film is as well. Namely how smart and funny and proudly R rated and (for the most part) unwilling to pander Charlie Wilson’s War is. This is a film about a bunch of people who like to drink and fuck and say really clever, biting things in-between funnel a billion dollars to a volatile, fundamentalist, Third World Country because they want to kill Russians as much as we did.

If we’re looking just at recent films, this most reminded me of Spielberg’s Catch Me if you Can (which, for the record I liked way more than most people) in that it’s essentially taking a serious issue and viewing it as a frothy good time floating above the surface of something horrible that’s destined to bubble to the top. Wilson and company no doubt viewed their actions as altruistic but the spirit of the film is one of a con-game; maneuvering on the sly and often in amazement at what you can accomplish simply through manipulating humans organs of all shapes and geographies and a healthy amount of bullshit.

I rarely have nice things to say about Mike Nichols as a director but he really is the perfect filmmaker for this material, treating major world events as though it were a sex farce fueled on recreational drug use and slipstream of booze. There’s an arrogance to the characters and a terminal short-sightedness to their dabbling in world events that comes across as an implicit criticism the more aware we are of what’s to come. The more the film presents Wilson as a kid playing with an ant farm, arming angry young Muslim men with RPG’s without pausing to think about what they’ll be doing with that training and weapons once their done shooting down Ruskie helicopters, the more sickening the noose tightening around your neck feels.

In fact, if there’s a critical error made on the film’s part it’s not the exclusion of the original script’s now infamous “9/11 ending,” it’s that it tries to create audience empathy in Wilson late in the film’s third act by forcing the character to address the after-effects of his actions. Embarrassing, bordering on didactic scenes of Wilson pleading with his supervisors for a measly million dollars (versus the half a billion they’d spent on weapons) to rebuild schools in Afghanistan only to be summarily turned down. Scenes of Wilson sitting alone in his apartment with tear stained eyes, quietly pondering what’s come of his life. The film places the brunt of awareness on Wilson’s shoulders, as though only he’s conscious of what he’s truly done and is helpless to fix it while the world showers him with praise. It’s cheap moralizing that arrives far too late that only weakens the film’s argument. By giving us a mirco-realization it undermines the idea that these people were dabbling with governments and ideologies they had no real understanding of only to be left completely blindsided at the blowback that came their way decades later as a result.

Still I really do have to tip my hat at what the film has done, and specifically to Aaron Sorkin, who I’d left for irrelevant after his “Studio 60” car wreck. The film is essentially the cynical, mirrored version of “The West Wing” crossed with a 1930’s screwball comedy that involves spitting out a lot of politico-speak and war machine jargon that never gets bogged down. Roberts is far too frigid and young to play the part of a billionaire, born again cougar (Burns put the idea of Susan Sarandon in my head but for some reason I kept thinking of Marcia Gay Harden during the film) but she’s essentially a footnote to the Hanks and Hoffman show. Hanks seems to be taking this opportunity to play Dean Martin, as he was once supposed to have in the long defunct Rat Pack film Scorsese was planning a decade back and its glorious watching him smirk, grope and spin as he leaves the over-reported but not really accurate image of Saint Tom in his dust. But really, this is the Philip Seymour Hoffman show. Fat, unshaven, foul-mouthed, ill-behaved and with a cigarette hanging from his lip, Hoffman’s CIA agent Gust Avrakotos is such an awesome movie character I spent half the afternoon trying to think of other films that would have been improved if he were in them (how much better would American Gangster had been if it were Gust chasing down Frank Lucas instead of boring old Russell Crowe in a Dorothy Hamill wig?)

Charlie Wilson’s War is such a remarkable film because it’s a bit of a Rorschach test for audiences. As a time-killer for 100 minutes, the film is bracingly funny, understated and really clever; an old-fashion “movie star film” that goes down like Kentucky bourbon. At the same time it’s laying out the groundwork for the most prolonged armed combat since Vietnam (and the clock’s still ticking) as well as the cavalier attitude that lead to it. The film doesn’t have to beat us over the head with present day events for its thesis to come through loud and clear any more than M*A*S*H or Apocalypse Now did. And for the record, I’m really happy that the film is quietly finding an audience after a slow opening. One of the few films currently in theaters that I’d feel comfortable recommending to, really, anyone.

**




If Charlie Wilson’s War was a pleasant surprise than Mathew Vaughn’s Stardust was pretty much a stunner. I had no expectations (read: zero) for this film. It somehow made its way to the top of my Netflix que while I was away from my computer for a week, but aside from the off-hand “it’s not bad” I heard from the handful of people who went to see it last summer, the biggest factor weighing in on the film was that it was Harry Knowles’ favorite movie of the year (and that aint much of an endorsement where I come from). So imagine my shock at how completely wonderful the film is. Pretend The Princess Bride wasn’t directed by a visually inept Rob Reiner on the back of a studio lot in 90-minutes of medium close up or written by William Goldman wearing out his arm from patting himself on the back and you get a sense of how bizarre and special Stardust is.

I was pretty indifferent to Vaughn’s Layer Cake which belonged squarely in the “please let it die” genre of the British criminal underworld flick, but I can no longer deny that there’s a sizable gulf between him and his former cohort Guy Ritchie. To the point, the film’s charming as a motherfucker, existing in the realm of storybook logic without ever becoming overly precious or whimsical. The film keeps jutting off in weird, unexpected directions that I suspect originated in Neil Gaiman’s book that Vaughn rolls with without missing a beat. The narrative is fairly simple yet, like all good fairy tales, it finds room for digression in traveling off the well trodden path.

The film is heavy on cgi but its greatest effect is the radiance given off (literally at times) by Claire Danes as the human personification of a fallen star. Danes is one of those actresses who never lived up to her early promise, often coming across as wooden and too self-aware to ever give herself over to a part. Yet Vaughn has coaxed out of her her most natural and open performance on film yet. We don’t need a digital assist to watch the actress glow. Despite saddling her with distracting bleached-eyebrows, Vaughn makes extraordinary use of Danes face, which has never been quite this expressive before. The actress sells every peculiar moment of the film with a disarming mixture of weariness and naiveté as though she should know better than to let herself fall in love but is helpless to fight it. It’s really difficult not to fall hard for the character.

Meanwhile how great a year is Michelle Pfeiffer having? Between this and Hairspray I’m starting to think she should play aging villainesses for the rest of her career. She seems to be having a grand old time letting herself aging horrifically on-screen (in marked contrast to the plastic surgery she’s supposedly had in real life) that would almost qualify as bravery.

There’s some queasy sexual politics in the film that I suppose are inherent to the type of story that it is, but what struck me the most about the film is its generosity and affection towards its characters. The way Robert DeNiro’s fey (although not explicitly gay), cross-dressing pirate is embraced by his crew after being outed, or the ever-growing assemblage of dead princes who serve as the film’s Greek chorus, cheerfully commenting on the world of the living behind disfigured visages. How every supporting part no matter how small the part, seems to be fully conceived and inhabiting this world. And, without giving anything away, there’s something really heartwarming and hopeful without becoming sappy about the implications of the film’s final shot that takes a really refreshing spin on what’s kind of a romantic mainstay. If I were to actually publish a year end ten best list (which I won’t) I don’t think I could keep this film off of it.

**

God, that was a fucking slog to write. You see why I mostly stick to negativity?

And the Presidency Goes To...

Right around the time of the Iowa Caucus a theory started floating around on some of the movie websites I visit positing that there was a parallel between the (it would now seem temporary) fall from grace Hillary Clinton was enduring and the turned fortunes of the at one-time, written in stone lock for Best Picture, Atonement, which has been summarily ignored by both the Screen Actor’s Guild and the Director’s Guild. This got me wondering whether the peaks and valleys of a presidential race was really any different from the equally unending “race to the Oscars” and whether there where any other comparisons to be made between the candidates in both the presidential and best picture race.

A couple caveats to start: This should be taken in the spirit of fun. I’m not looking to hear how I’ve grossly simplified such and such candidate. Obviously I had to stretch to make some of these work (my Romney comparison is especially iffy) but these more or less reflect how the media is presenting these people at this point in time. The other thing is I’m limiting this to major candidates since I have no desire to try and find parallels between Bill Richardson and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly or Ron Paul to 3:10 to Yuma. That said…

No Country For Old Men: John McCain
The tentative favorite but no one feels very confident about it. Been in the game forever; viewed by some as “due” but may be too quirky and angry to get a majority vote. A superficial resemblance to previous winners but is pretty much a text book case of marching to the beat of their own drum. More popular with men than women.

Juno: Barack Obama
A ton of media hype at the moment which may not be reflective of actual popularity with voters. The one people are actually emotionally invested in. Skewers younger and outside the usual interests of the competition which will either end up causing a stunning surprise victory or the crumble most cynics have been calling for. All about verbal dexterity which detractors claim disguises a lack of depth. Will piss off *a lot* of people if they somehow win.

Atonement: Hillary Clinton
Was the early front-runner, now it’s kind of shocking to find someone who actually likes them. Gives the outward appearance of a contender but there’s really nothing there beyond the prestige and air of self-importance. Makes a point of calling attention to how smart they are. Technically proficient but completely airless and unsatisfying. More popular with women than men.

Michael Clayton: Mitt Romney
Has the air of a contender to them (wears suits well) but no one seems capable of nailing down what either is actually about. Rides the fence between activism and good old fashion showmanship. Just vaguely out there without any real vocal supporters. Keeps showing up at all the run-offs but seems likely to always come in second.

There Will Be Blood: Mike Huckabee
Passionate support but, at the moment, too localized to make a difference. Rather unpleasant the more you think about what they’re saying. Kinda bloated. Knows a thing or two about drinking milkshakes. Walks an uneasy line between creepy religion and the secular world. Emanates strange music.

Into the Wild: John Edwards
Just good old fashion, bleeding heart liberalism. Seems to belong to a bygone era when the country used to eat this sort of earnestness up but now it’s either falling on deaf ears or siphoning votes from stronger candidates. Surged a bit lately but is likely too little too late.

American Gangster: Rudy Guliani
The rockstar in the race that no one thinks can win. A big name that everyone is familiar with but when you really look under the hood you can’t help but be disappointed that they aren’t more impressive. No one really wants to badmouth them although the consensus is they just didn’t quite live up to their early buzz.

Moment of Slow Realization

"I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people...

There are times when I look at people and I see nothing worth liking...

I see the worst in people. I don't need to look past seeing them to get all I need. I want to rule and never, ever explain myself."

I'm starting to think I should have liked this movie a lot more than I did. Second viewing in the coming weeks should be quite eye-opening.