Comments Post! Imus: Redux

Mmm, controversy.

I did this once before that I can remember, back on the global warming post, but I'm a gonna do it again for Tuesday's Imus post. I'm going to post up some of those excellent, well-reasoned comments and then respond to them and thus, possibly, keep the discussion alive.

(Just as a news update, Imus lost his TV show today, though he's still on the radio, broadcasting away. Drudge had a transcript of today's Imus show that was pretty funny because throughout Imus whines about losing his MSNBC show but keeps saying he isn't whining and that he deserves all this. You sort of feel sorry for the guy, but then you read this Slate article, and then you actually listen to his radio program for a minute or two, and then it's much harder to feel sorry for him.)

Anyway, onto the comments:

Shawn posted:

Either way, here's my big beef with this thing: it's more sexist than racist. The statement is demeaning to women regardless of race, but that's not to say Imus isn't making the association that black woman = ho. I think he probably is and I think the notoriety attached to the idea of the pimp in our culture over the past decade or so has sort of made this the acceptable norm in a way. Pimps and hos is a black thing right? Well, it shouldn't matter - it's a gender and power thing first and foremost.

I think Shawn's right here -- the sexism in Imus's oft-repeated comment has definitely been overlooked during all this. I wonder if the less-discussed sexism may be what's adding fuel to the fire -- it's like a double whammy of offensiveness, racist and sexist, and that much harder to brush off. And historically Imus has enjoyed using the pimps and hos imagery to spice his descriptions of black people. He called the New York Knicks "chest-thumping pimps" (And just to keep on with the Knicks, he once called Patrick Ewing once a "knuckle-dragging moron". )

Heath wrote:

I don't even care to argue whether he should or shouldn't get fired (or resign) over this, because at the end of the day it has to do with how the communications conglomerate that owns his station views this incident in terms of profit gain and loss. It's business, really, that decides these issues, and most of the time to a huge fault.

This I agree with. It is up to GE-owned NBC-Universal (which did opt to boot him), as well as the Viacom-owned CBS (which so far has opted to keep him). And I also agree that, oftentimes, it is "to a huge fault" that corporate America has so much leverage over what can and cannot be broadcast over the airwaves. Back during the run-up to the Iraq war, Phil Donahue had a show on MSNBC. It was a decent show, its rating weren't stellar but during his critical and skeptical coverage of the seemingly inevitable rush to war, which at the time was fairly unique on TV, his ratings went much higher. In fact, according to one of his producers, it became the most-watched show on the channel. But his show got canceled anyway. A leaked internal NBC memo came out calling Donahue and his show, "a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war ... He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration's motives." So he got canned for expressing the entirely legitimate views shared by about half of the country. So even though his ratings were good, NBC decided, out of a sense of patriotism and for the good of their viewers, that he shouldn't be allowed to have a venue. Somewhat similarly (emphasis on the somewhat), Imus's ratings are way up, and still MSNBC has decided to fire him. But like Peggy wrote in her comment,

The fact is Imus is deteriorating the value of the brands he works for, not only for each station he airs on, but also MSNBC and CBS Radio, which is why they should let him go.

Though perhaps the facts that separate these two situations are more numerous than those that unite them. Imus said something ignorant and racist for a joke and lost his MSNBC job, and Donahue was airing legitimate political opinions unpopular with the NBC brass and lost his job on MSNBC. Pretty different.

Heath wrote:

Crane, your take on this is staggeringly myopic and dangerous. You need to stop watching the news for a couple months, so you'll stop with the left-leaning absolutism. Jesus. Gross. Gross Jesus. You say you're of two minds about this controversy, but are you? Really? I think not. You have a singular vision for a utopian society that's a bit naive, I think. Racism is a delicate subject, but to single out that it's exceptionally delicate for white people, is at it's core racism, too. But, it's the okay kind, right? You know the kind, the anti-white kind? That kind of racism is socially acceptable to you New York Times white apologists, and I can't side with that.

I agree with the second sentence. I do need to stop watching the news for a while -- it's been a real bore of late. But to the point, I don't think I am for a utopian society. In my post I didn't ask that offensive racial language be stricken from the public dialogue by force of law, I'm merely expressing my opinion that Imus ought to be fired for uttering it in this case. In fact, all the people calling for Imus to be fired are merely expressing their opinions about it. And though you may think these opinions wrong or "dangerous" even in the free-est society they'd be allowed and celebrated. And I'm not sure that pointing out that discussions on race are exceptionally delicate for whites is also racist, though it may be. Maybe it presupposes that inside the heart of every white person there's a hate-spitting racist trying to be heard, or maybe it presupposes that there's a tissue-skinned minority waiting to be offended at the slightest provocation, whether intentional or not. On any given day of the week, I believe neither, one or the other, or both. Also, I wonder what, specifically, you're referring to as "the anti-white kind [of racism that's] socially acceptable to you New York Times white apologists"?

Heath:

Were Imus' comments offensive? Sure. To me? No. To someone or a group of people? Apparently. You think there should be consequences, and I wonder what consequences you feel would be appropriate. To me, this falls under free speech, but, because he was speaking as an employee of the station, it's up to the station to determine if this will affect their profits negatively. If decidedly yes, then they should have the right to let him go. And if the voice of the people say they don't like what he says, then they have the right to not listen to him. Those are the consequences I find fair. The law has no place in this matter. Not even a little bit.

I totally agree that the law has no place in this. I hope I didn't give the impression in my post that I did. He has a right to free speech, and so do all of us who condemn it. And yes, it's true as you imply, that one solution would be for those who didn't like his comments to simply not tune in (which would likely effect his ratings not in the slightest as the people most enraged by his comment are not Imus listeners). But as Peggy alluded to, it's more than just that, it's a "branding" issue. Imus falls under the "brand" of NBC-MSNBC, and if he's been deemed a racist by leading and respected opinion makers in the country and that label has now stuck, then NBC cannot reasonably keep an outed racist under the NBC brand.

I think it's a mistake to look at this Imus imbroglio through the prism of this one comment. If it had been that and only that, his shot at holding onto his job would be much better. But it isn't. He's got a history. Journalist and politician guests are Imus's bread and butter. I think it's telling that not a single black journalist, of which there are many, have ever gone on his show. Even before he insulted PBS's Gwen Ifill by calling her "the cleaning lady", she knew enough not to go on his show, which may have been why he singled her out for the racial insult. The exception, (so I've read though I can't find the article at the moment), was Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune. He went on, told Imus to cut it out with all the racial stuff, and was never asked back. Yes, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson want him gone, but so does Barack Obama. Even Al Roker, hardly a reactionary firebrand, thinks Imus ought to go. I think the unspoken boycott by respected African-Americans of Imus's show is very telling, and gives the subtext to this outrage that, to some, seems overblown. I think a lot of people have been waiting a long time for Imus to slip up like this. It was bound to happen.

But racism, systemic and government supported racism, is alive and well in 2007. Today on Josh Marshall's TalkingPointsMemo.com, he lays out clearly what may be underlying the entire US Attorney scandal, namely suppressing the minority vote, specifically African-Americans. Click here for the full post. Therein he lists a few cases featuring voters making innocent mistakes and being prosecuted harshly by the federal government. The gist of his piece is this: some of the fired attorneys were supposedly fired for not pursuing so-called "voter fraud" cases aggressively enough. But, as Marshall says, the overwhelming evidence points to the fact that voter fraud cases are, across the board, trumped up and phony attempts to keep black people out of the voting booths, or to throw out their votes after they've been cast. It's been a Republican strategy for decades, but never moreso than it has been under Karl Rove. Remember Florida in 2000? They stole the election by throwing out huge chunks of the black vote. Hell, not long after I started this blog, I wrote about this great state of Georgia passing a law, sponsored and passed by Republicans, requiring all voters to have a $20 ID in order to cast a ballot. This would disproportionately effect poor minority voters, which was, of course, the idea. But to hear a Georgia Republican tell it, the Voter ID bill was designed to protect against the anti-democratic (and non-existent as it turns out) scourge of voter fraud. Like so much of what Republican's hold near and dear, it's bullshit.

And finally, speaking of Republican bullshit, they're trotting out a shiny red wheelbarrow full of it for our discriminating palettes today. You know those White House emails Congressional Democrats requested in regards to the US Attorney purge? The ones White House officials wrote on the Republican National Committee's email system so as to circumvent the Hatch Law requiring all White House emails be saved for posterity? The ones that no doubt featured tons of damaging evidence of deliberate, widespread Rovian malfeasance? Yeah, well, they lost them.

Another day in the reign of George W. Bush.

Imus

In other news, anyone have any thoughts on this whole Don Imus debacle?

For a brief refresher, Don Imus, nemesis of Howard Stern, cranky old skull-faced radio bastard in the 10-gallon hat, one of the first to be called a "shock jock", said on air Wednesday of last week that the Rutgers women's basketball team were "nappy-headed hos". An uproar ensued, and justifiably. Yesterday, Imus went on Al Sharpton's radio show, "Keeping it Real with Al Sharpton", to apologize and explain himself. While he was on that show, he referred to Al Sharpton and another guest as "you people". This may have been innocent, but may also have been that old semi-subtle racist expression that says more about how a particular person views people of another race than about the race that person is attempting to refer to.

I'm of two minds about this controversy. I do very much like the idea of a broadcaster having freedom to say what they want on the air, and I recognize that radio people have to talk extemporaneously, and for hours everyday, about whatever the topics of the day are. Race is a delicate subject, particularly for white people to discuss, and aspects of this controversy might lead one to believe that for people in the public eye, one poorly-phrased statement can change your life in a very negative, very public way. On the other hand, this is Don Imus. Imus is a dick. Even when he's not putting his foot in his mouth over racially offensive statements, he's trying to be funny by being an ass-hole. And this wasn't a poorly-phrased statement, this was calling the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos". There's not a good euphemism for that. It's just racist. And he's made racially insensitive comments in the past, like calling PBS political analyst Gwen Ifill a "cleaning lady" for example. Rush Limbaugh got fired from ESPN (or officially he resigned) for saying the media wanted to see Eagles QB Donovan McNabb do well because they wanted a black quarterback to succeed. Getting him off TV then was good and it sent a good message: racist statements are not acceptable in the mainstream of today's society.

Should Imus be fired for his comments? I don't know. The statements he made were clearly offensive and, in my humble layman's opinion, there should be consequences. If the women's basketball team, which today agreed to meet with Imus, decides to forgive Imus for what he said, maybe Imus's seemingly heartfelt apologies and the 2-week suspension NBC's already handed down might suffice. If they don't, then ultimately NBC will decide what they're willing to live with in the name of profit. I do like that Imus is getting called out for this; he's being forced to defend his statements. That doesn't always happen. Nationally-known Atlanta-based radio "personality" Neal Boortz called Cynthia McKinny a "welfare drag queen" and a "ghetto slut" shortly after her run-in with a Capitol policeman, and for his racist remarks he received not even a fraction of the condemnation Imus is getting. Though the difference here might be the targets of these racist comments: on one hand you've got the commendable Rutgers basketball players who'd recently lost the championship game, and on the other you've got Cynthia McKinny, whose missteps and impolitic behavior had made her a lot of enemies in her home state. Both Imus's and Boortz's statements are racist, clearly, but when men like Sharpton and Jackson are trying to fight their impossible war, namely to cleanse speech of racist content, they must recognize the need to pick their battles. If it's possible to be more in the wrong than Boortz was last year, then Imus has done it. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out.

In completely unrelated news, Jimmy Kimmel subbed for Larry King the other night. On his show he had Emily Gould, a editor from Gawker.com to defend a feature on their website called "Gawker Stalker" which allows people to call in to Gawker with celebrity sightings, at which time Gawker posts them after a short delay. Celebs hate this, in particular Jimmy Kimmel. Someone called to report that Kimmel looked "intoxicated" in public. Gawker ran with the piece without bothering to check first with Kimmel's publicist, and so now poor Jimmy's mad and decides to take it out on Ms. Gould on King's show. This is the clip. I never liked Jimmy Kimmel, and this clip only goes to reinforce my poor opinion of him. "I want you to think about your life," he tells her. He implies she's on her way to hell, all because she had the temerity to make Jimmy feel bad. How Bill O'Reilly-esque he is in this clip. How small. His continued success is astonishing to me.

And I know two posts in one day is unusual, so just in case you may have missed it, check out my "Grindhouse" post, located just below this one. And I'm out.

"Grindhouse"

Howdy, y'all. Hope everyone had a good weekend.

Anyone else see "Grindhouse"? The wife and I saw it at the drive-in on Friday night. It was an unseasonably cold night and the lot was packed. Apparently not so the other theaters in the country showing "Grindhouse". This Tarantino/Rodriguez-directed "double feature" made a paltry $11.6 million on its opening weekend, coming in fourth place. "Blades of Glory" was first in its second week, the animated "Meet the Robinsons" came in second, and you know what was third? "Are We Done Yet?", the family-oriented Ice Cube-starrer fresh out of the box this weekend. Analysts pointed to "Grindhouse"'s 3-hour plus running time and its R-rating as checks in the minus column, but $11.6 million? Either I have to fault the Weinstein Company's advertising strategy, or I have to agree with the blog runner on Whatwouldtylerdurdendo.com, who said in response to "Grindhouse"'s anemic box office total: "Everyone sucks."

The film is a lot of fun. I'm guessing that Tarantino was the brainchild behind this project because the filmmakers seem to put as much emphasis on the filmgoing experience of seeing "a grindhouse-style movie" as they do on the actual films that comprise "Grindhouse". Tarantino's own movies are filled with nods to the schlock entertainment titles shown at so-called grindhouse back in the day, particularly his recent "Kill Bill" films. I'm a product of bland suburban multiplexes, myself, so whatever nostalgia high "Grindhouse" might have offered was lost on me. but I appreciated how dedicated to the idea of recreating the grindhouse experience these two guys were. There were a lot of ways they could have expressed their enduring admiration for these old exploitative films, and a lot of them much less risky, less potentially off-putting to casual filmgoers than this. "Grindhouse" is a true double-feature, for one. Rodriguez's "Planet Terror" runs first, than Tarantino's "Death Proof" making it 3 hours and 11 minutes long. They add film-deterioration effects to the film. There is an intermission (I don't know how long it was as I went to the concession stand for candy during it). The dialogue is sometimes purposely bad (I think purposely). In keeping with the customary practice of projectionists snipping out the "best parts" of the movie for their own private highlight reels, both films are missing reels. In "Planet Terror", the missing reel is hilariously pivotal to the plot. In "Death Proof", the missing reel is a hilarious (but malicious) tease. Rodriguez and Tarantino even invited current horror directors to create their own grindhouse-style trailers for nonexistent movies, which run before each movie. (They're all pretty hilarious, by the way.) Even if "Grindhouse" had been a bore (which it certainly wasn't), these guys, including the Weinsteins (though grudgingly) deserve a lot of respect for pulling this off. Though the embarrassingly low totals for its opening weekend box office suggest most of America was either not ready for this kind of project, or was not in the mood.

"Planet Terror" is pretty fun, but for me the weaker of the two movies. Schlocky zombie epidemic gorefest. Josh Brolin is very funny in it, and I liked seeing Jeff Fahey get a plum role in an A-list project, but there was a bit too much of Rodriguez's typical excesses and not enough stuff I hadn't seen a million times. Also, Rose McGowan's charms as an actress were completely lost on me here. "Death Proof" had a lot more going for it, I think. Kurt Russell's turn as the inscrutable and villainous Stuntman Mike was riveting. I'm still not quite sure if Tarantino was off his game in how he wrote Stuntman Mike because at first glance his writing seems uneven and weird; though the more I think about it the more persuaded I am that there are hidden depths to Stuntman Mike that are only glancingly alluded to. I also liked the first killing scene. One of the hallmarks of a good horror movie is a new and shocking way to kill people. Tarantino delivers here I think, but then abandons the idea of a one-by-one kind of killer and the first of the film's two acts abruptly ends with a strange but terrifying act of violence.

But then the second half of "Death Proof" begins and it feels a little like Tarantino hitting the reset button on his movie. A brand new gaggle of mouthy, leggy girls in a car? Check. Stuntman Mike lurking in the background? Check. This second half starts slow, and by the time this new group of ladies starts talking, I'm already getting weary of Tarantino's pop-culture laden dialogue, which has become increasingly esoteric. With each new Tarantino movie it's getting more difficult for me to separate the dialogue coming from the mouths of his actors from the image of Tarantino's grinning gargoyle face hunched over the keyboard typing it up. (Which is another reason I really like Russell's Stuntman Mike. When he spoke his lines, I didn't hear Tarantino nearly as much as with the others). The fact that Tarantino inserts himself into both films doesn't help. But anyway, he makes up for it with the extended car chase scene that comprises most of this half of "Death Proof". He casts Zoe Bell, (who was Uma Thurman's stunt double on "Kill Bill" as herself), and so when she's required to do some hellacious stunt work for the long car chase, that's her you see in mortal peril. Her terrified expression. It's a great idea and it makes the chase scene all the more visceral and real. The end of the film I won't give away, but I will say I had a good laugh when the "The End" title appeared on-screen.

All told, "Grindhouse" is some risky, inventive filmmaking and well worth seeing.

Because it tanked here in the states, Weinstein has said he wants to split the movie into two movies in a couple weeks, and add in the "missing" reels left out of the double feature version of "Grindhouse". Hope they manage to eke out some cash from this thing.

Alanis Cool Again?

Remember Alanis Morissette? This clip is Alanis Morissette's cover and parody video of "My Humps" by the Black Eyed Peas, sung by pop superstar du jour, Fergie. "My Humps" is a song that a Slate music critic called "proof that a song can be so bad as to veer toward evil." Brilliant line, and one I totally agree with. Wish I'd thought of it. This spoof video has got some funny moments but her version of the song itself has a cool Tori Amos vibe and gives this vapid, terrible, catchy song something almost like meaning. It also sounds pretty good. Anyway, enjoy.

"Glengarry Glen Ross", "Blades of Glory", and Oprah Liked "The Road" Almost as Much as I Did

Hey, it's been a lil' while. I hope that Caketown "300" parody was funny enough to keep you laughing all through that hiatus.

Last week was chock full o' doing stuff. Fixing cars, re-reading my own writing, drawing projects, seeing plays, moving sheds from one side of the in-laws' house to the other, etc. More stuff than I'm used to doing certainly. The play I speak of is "Glengarry Glen Ross". The Alliance Theater staged it at their little black-box Hertz Theater and we saw it Tuesday night. Good stuff. Though the actor's were age appropriate, I didn't like their "Glengarry" nearly as much as I did the NCSA production of Mamet's play I was lucky enough to see back in '98 or '99. That was some good stuff. "Glengarry Glen Ross" is kind of a weird play. At the same time I'm enthralled by it I'm also annoyed by Mamet's mannered and anti-naturalistic dialogue. It kind of rides that line the whole way through. But Mamet's treatment of the subject and what he has to say about working in America (not to mention some of those brilliant lines), trumps all of Mamet's hyper-macho staccato delivery bullshit.

One of the interesting choices the director made was casting an African-American to play the Ricky Roma part. The actor, Neal A. Ghant, was much more physical in the part than I'd seen in the NCSA production or in the film adaptation (in which Al Pacino played Roma). When Ghant first appeared he was standing behind one of those tall tables you often find in a bar. While Roma's speaking to his mark, Lingk, who was sitting beside him on one of those stool chairs, you could see the actor playing Roma channelling, faintly, a Gospel-style Baptist preacher. His cadence, his swagger, all of that. An interesting choice but I didn't like it. And when Roma and Williamson have their set-to at the end, Ghant's Roma actually lunges for Williamson and nearly decks him. Bad choice, I thought. These men do battle with words. That's kind of the point. The idea that Roma, the salesman with the sharpest tongue in the whole play, would resort to violence doesn't make sense. I know they were trying to do something new with the material, but I think they overreached . Blah. Whatever. Regional theater.

I also saw "Blades of Glory" over the weekend. I thought it was a lot of fun. I didn't think it was as funny as "Talladega Nights", but it was good wacky fun. Jon Heder has more to work with here than he did in the execrable "School for Scoundrels" but I have yet to see him prove himself beyond "Napoleon Dynamite". A lot of the comedic actors he's been working with lately had an opportunity to hone their chops in improv troupes or on shows like Saturday Night Live. The fact he's never had time to work on being funny limits him comedically, I think, and makes him somewhat timid on-screen. I hope he breaks out of that before the roles start drying up.

Finally, fairly big news in the lit world last week. Oprah chose Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" as her latest Book Club pick, and the privacy-valuing (some might say reclusive) Cormac has agreed to his first-ever television interview to discuss the book. I was pleasantly shocked by the news. The book is set in a post-apocalyptic future and follows a man and his son as they trek across the wasted American landscape without much real hope of survival. Not the standard Oprah Book Club fare. I'm sure the fact of the book's excellence overrode Oprah's concerns about the general bleakness of the story, how palatable her viewer/readers would find it. It's impressive then that Oprah would choose this book. Selecting "The Road" doesn't quite make up for the fact that she's championed the awful and dangerous book/DVD "The Secret" as a legitimate and worthwhile thing, or that she has on numerous occasions given a platform for Bill O'Reilly to spout his awful awful bullshit, but choosing "The Road" means she's got some sense left. Or at least her producers do.

"This! Is! Caketown!"

This killed me.

Enjoy.

A Mess O' Links

Just a few links before I close my laptop for the night.

1.) I had a fun little geek moment earlier this evening when I watched the first "webisode" from the set of "The Mist". Frank Darabont has come back home to adapt and direct yet another Stephen King story, this time one of the leaner, meaner, straight-up scary stories King's written this side of Richard Bachman. Anyway, click here to watch Frank Darabont have a lot of fun shooting the "earthquake scene".

2.) Fun clip from, of all places, CBS's The Early Show. It's a good indicator of what happens when you throw good facts into the wood chipper that is the Bush White House spin machine. Harry Smith is trying to get White House Press Secretary Tony Snow (he of former Fox News glory) to speak about Democratic complaints regarding subpoenaed testimony from WH aides Karl Rove and Harriet Miers. Bush has offered to let them talk to Congress so long as it's behind closed doors, no transcript is made, and no oaths are sworn to. If you listen to Tony Snow, however, you might be coaxed into thinking Bush is bending over backwards to be a nice guy to those mean ole Congressional Democrats. Of course, that's the opposite of the truth. Watching hacks spin is never fun, no matter what side of the aisle you're on, but it seems particularly soul-crushing in this clip. When Harry dejectedly says, "You bet," at the end of this clip, you can tell he's at the end of his rope. But Tony just keeps on smilin'.

3.) Yet another fun clip on a similar subject. This is Patrick Leahy explaining to faux-maverick Republican Arlen Specter what the Bush White House is really offering regarding the Rove and Miers testimony. In a word: "Nothing." Leahy's one of my favorite Senators. (Fun fact: it was Leahy who was at the receiving end of Cheney's legendary, "Go fuck yourself" comment. Anyone who pisses off Cheney has to be an okay guy.)

4.) Lily Tomlin has publicly responded to the recently published clips of her and David O. Russell's freakouts on the set of "I Heart Huckabees". You can read it here. She's good. After I saw those clips I was thinking Tomlin must be a really mean and selfish person. After reading this short item, however, I think Lily Tomlin's totally cool.

5.) Wanna see inside true "green living"? Check out this article from The New York Times. A couple of New Yorkers decided to live "green" for a whole year so the husband can write a book about the experience. The article's currently listed as the Times' most emailed article, and I'd say the fact that the couple have eschewed the use of toilet paper is the main reason why. What do they do, use their hands? Looks like the answer is yes. "Bowls of water and a lot of air-drying" is how the writer coyly alludes to the toilet-going process in the green apartment. (Shudder.) I guess I'll have to buy the book to find out more. Unlikely.

"300" : Reviewed

You know that song I mentioned on Monday? "Insect Eyes"? Couldn't be more tired of it now. I'm actually listening to it now but don't feel like skipping to the next track on my already done-to-death iTunes playlist entitled "Listenable Songs". It's a bad habit of mine -- I find a song I like and then listen it into the ground. I predict the next victim will be "Counterfeit Rules", a song by a group called Snowden. It's real good, I'd been trying to steal it for a long time and finally got it yesterday, but by this time tomorrow, I suspect I'll be shuddering at its first note.

Anyway, "300". As you may already know, I've been following this film with great interest. That first trailer Warner Bros. put out for this movie, replete with digitally-enhanced color palette, apocalyptic imagery, a shovel-bearded Gerard Butler screaming pithy, manly encouragement to his soldiers ("This is where we fight! This is where they die!") all set to a lyric-less Trent Reznor track, worked like gangbusters. And Zack Snyder's great work on the "Dawn of the Dead" remake all promised very good things for this film. Did he come through?

Mostly yes, but a little no.

I saw "300" on opening day. I'd been planning to see it on the IMAX screen up at the Mall of Georgia, but a quick check of Fandango the morning of revealed that all the shows were sold out. (That's how far I usually plan in advance) And all the next day's shows. And all but the midnight show on Sunday. Crushing disappointment. Once I'd stopped shaking and wiped my tears away, we (myself, my wife and my brother) decided to see it on one of the comparatively tiny screens I'm forced to see everything else on.

Overall, I liked "300" quite a bit. Predictably, I think "Sin City" is a good film to compare with "300". Not only are both films adapted from Frank Miller graphic novels, but both directors decided to be slavishly faithful to the source material, in effect bringing the comics to life panel by panel. I think that in this respect, both films succeed beyond expectations. But when bringing the comic to life is the director's primary aesthetic mission, particularly if the comic in question strives for a stripped-down, graphic look, realism falls necessarily by the wayside, and with it go authentic human emotion and the genuine cathartic experience most films are shooting for (even though most never get close). This movie was loud and beautiful and evocative, but I didn't really feel this movie as I'd expected to; I never got particularly wrapped up in the plot. I think Snyder was so deeply engaged with the process of making each shot perfect and trailer-ready that, along the way, the story arc may have been given shorter shrift.

Part of the problem might have been that because each shot in "300" is so finely-wrought and infused with the inherent emotion that comes with depictions of war, there was no room for emotional peaks that most films have at their disposal to really drive home a moment. When Leonidas's wife gives the evil politician a piece of her mind, I didn't feel like there was a lot of resonance in that moment, even though Snyder and his coterie of screenwriters set it up as best they could. The fact that the Spartans in this film are all members of a national death-cult and value their lives not at all weighed against their notions of honor might explain why I wasn't terribly concerned with which Spartans lived and which died. Hell, they didn't, why should I?

To continue with my quibbling, I thought that whenever the story veered away from the 300, (particularly Butler's King Leonidas), the movie was the worse for it. The Sparta sets and the Xerses throne room sets seemed more appropriate for a syndicated Saturday-afternoon action show than a $100 million studio release. Sets built for film are just shitty mock-ups, of course, (any stroll through a museum filled with film props illustrate this fact very clearly) but often the filmmakers help sell the sets as the genuine article through deft lighting. In both the hunchback seduction scene and the scene in Sparta where a bad thing happens to Leonidas's wife, I thought the lighting was slapdash and inappropriately bright and colorful, which made the not-so-great sets look all the worse.

But enough bitching. For the most part, this thing's glorious to watch and I'm looking forward to seeing it again on DVD. Gerard Butler as King Leonidas is fantastic in this. Though he seems like a fresh face, looking back at his filmography, I realized I've actually seen him work in both "Dracula 2000" (he played Dracula) and "Timeline" (he played the bad guy) both of which I'm embarrassed to admit I saw in theaters. But the thing is I still don't remember him in those films. I think he needed a good part in a good movie to demonstrate his star power (chances Orlando Bloom is given frequently and happily squanders), so I think he's here to stay. At least for a while. There's already talk that he wants to do a prequel to "Escape from New York" -- he would play Snake Plissken. I'll keep an open mind but it sounds like a misstep to me.

As for the hullabaloo over the political undertones in the film, I'd say they're blown a bit out of proportion. I don't think Zack Snyder has an axe to grind or a message to deliver with "300". (Though Frank Miller might have had one back when he wrote and drew the thing in the late 90's.) Apparently, Iranians are going gaga with rage over the movie back in the former Persia, just from hearing the descriptions of how they're portrayed in the film. (In this case, I think seeing the film would only make them more angry, and likely with cause).

Truth be told, seeing this film I got the distinct impression that "300" really was a pro-Bush, pro-"War on Terror" propagandist film. The warriors, led by their warrior-king, are the good and righteous ones who realize that war is the only answer, while the craven politicians are back at home in the Senate, debating and being devious, cynical ninnies, undercutting the "troops" with their nasty dissent. Throughout the film the nebulous concept of "freedom" is given a great deal of import by the steely Spartans who've been hung out to dry by their own myopic countrymen as well as Leonidas's stoic wife left behind to keep the homefires burning. Sean Hannity might as well have been the screenwriter. But my guess is that while that interpretation is valid, it exists outside of the film or the filmmakers intent. I don't believe anyone involved with this film was in anyway making a pro-"War on Terror" movie. It just happens to be one because that's how Miller wrote it back in 1998 (three years before September 11th, incidentally). Snyder's pled ignorance on the subject of political statements, and I'll take his word for it. But if some New Yorker article comes out in 5 years that reveals Zack Snyder is actually a big friend of all the Fox News personalities, "300" will make a lot more sense.

Anyway, this is already so long I suppose it doesn't matter if I want to drone on a little longer about the movie. Here's two things I thought were funny.

1.) One time Leonidas's wife actually says these words: "Freedom isn't free." I thought instantly of the song with the same title in Trey Parker and Matt Stone's brilliant "Team America". The next lyric in that song, by the way, is, "No, there's a hefty fuckin' fee." My wife turned to me when she heard it to whisper the song to me. (The true cost of freedom is a "buck oh five.") Very funny. I was kind of shocked that got all the way through into the finished film; didn't Snyder or any of them see that movie.

And 2.) the high angle wide shot looking down on the Spartans as they tromp en masse towards their deaths. Every single one of them is ripped and cut in exactly the same way. Fat pecs, sculpted abs, rippling arms. There was just something very gay about it that made me laugh. Were all those guys really that cut do you think, or was there some prosthetics and make-up involved? Had to be, right?

Anyway, despite the movie's flaws, I think Snyder's work with "300" bodes well for "Watchmen". Some reports say that Snyder's adaptation will be set in the 80's (perfect) and it will be a long film (as it should be) and that Gerard Butler will have a role in it (hopefully as the Comedian). So far, I haven't heard a single thing I don't like about what Snyder and his team are up to. I think because Alan Moore's graphic novel is more layered and nuanced and well-written than Miller's "300", we have a stronger foundation on which to build and the makings of something really great. Or the biggest letdown in a generation. We'll see.

Lily Tomlin Snaps and David O. Russell Adolescentizes Before Your Very Eyes: VIDEO PROOF! (Also "Watchmen" Tease and Davendra's "Insect Eyes")

Hello all. I'm back from my sickness. Pretty sure it was strep throat. Probably the worst viral dustup I've had in my life - during the worst of it, when every swallow of water was an ordeal, I felt acutely every one of my 30 years. I've still got a lingering cough that makes getting to sleep slightly problematic, and eating takes a little effort because my throat's still kind of swollen, but the worst of it is over.

Anyway, over the hiatus my Nyquil-sloshed brain has been half-heartedly composing blog entries (mostly about "300" and "Zodiac"), but I'm going to save those for another day. Today, something appeared on-line that demanded the immediate attention of the Inanities. Indeed, it demands your attention.

A few years back (perhaps more) I was over at a fledgling cinematographer's apartment who lived in the same building as me. We'll call him David. While I was over there, David's roommate, a fledgling editor we'll call Mike, popped a DVD into the player. On it were two clips unlike anything I'd ever seen before. What they showed was an actress (Lily Tomlin) and a director (David O. Russell) screaming obscenities at one another on a movie set ("I Heart Huckabees"). The director even trashes the set and throws things, narrowly missing humans (but then hitting one accidentally). "Is this what goes on on Hollywood film sets?" I wondered. "Or is this kind of bullshit unique to these people and this movie?" I don't know but I suspect the former. Anyway, I looked for those clips later to watch them again and revel in the bad behavior, but they were nowhere to be found. Well, no more. Today they're up for all to enjoy, for all eternity. Click here for the clips.

It's hard to tell who's the bigger asshole from these. If you only saw the car one, you'd think Lily Tomlin deserved the prize. If you only saw the office clip, you'd think it was Russell. In a way, they kind of offer both sides of the story: they're both assholes and they each deserve the abuse they so liberally heap on each other. Though I haven't heard of Lily Tomlin being quite as awful as this on other film sets, I have heard of David O. Russell being a belligerent asshole on the set of "Three Kings". Such an asshole in fact that George Clooney had to physically pull Russell's big ass off of some Iraqi extras who weren't seeing the fullness of his vision. So perhaps the asshole edge goes to Russell.

And finally, I saw this a while back but never had a chance to put it up. Since "300" blew up two weekends ago, the heat on Zack Snyder's next project, "Watchmen", got turned way up so that even non-geeks are interested in it. Turns out Zack, Mel Gibson-like trickster that he is, inserted a conceptual, pre-production still from his work on his next project into a late trailer for "300". Here's the link to the Aintitcool story, but I thought it would be easier if I just posted it up. So here it is:










Frickin' cool huh?
Anyway, it's the first in a long sequence of cool, teasing imagery that will culminate in the first big trailer, which will be amazing, and then the sequence will end when the actual film's released, which won't be half as good as we'd all been led to believe. Perpetual build-up and letdown. The new Hollywood model.

And lastly, have you guys noticed the cool weird song in the "Hills Have Eyes 2" trailer? It starts up about halfway through and it's pretty much the only eerie thing about the trailer. The song's called "Insect Eyes" and it's by an artist called Devendra Banhart, in case you want to grab it up off the internet for the price of $On The House. It's kind of cool.

Okay. All done.

Update: Sick But Alive

Howdy ya'll. I came down with something pretty mean a few days ago and it's laid me up pretty good. I'll be back to blogging as soon as it clears up (which I'm hoping will be soon), and I'll return phone calls (you know who you are) when my voice isn't quite so froggy.

Scooter Takes a Bullet for Darth Cheney, and Alberto Axes US Attorneys for Not Being Political Enough

Some interesting things going down in Washington these days.

First, there was the guilty verdict today for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on charges of lying to federal prosecutors and obstruction of justice. To some extent, I feel bad for the guy. Other than being a conservative in the awful Bushie Neocon mold, his biggest flaw, legally speaking, is that he worked for the Vice President -- that can't help but compromise a guy morally. Sure, he could have said "No" when Cheney asked him to be his Chief of Staff, but who could have known what Cheney would become once in power? He seemed so level-headed as SecDef back in Bush the Elder's days. Then again, you run with a bad crowd long enough, their bad behavior's bound to rub off eventually. Now he's going to jail.

Anyway, what the trial made clear was that orders came down from Cheney to squash Joe Wilson (the diplomat who investigated the since-debunked claims that Saddam was looking for "yellowcake" plutonium in Niger), and Scooter dutifully fell in line and started a'squashin'. It's since come out that Richard Armitage, the relatively dovish right-hand man to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, was actually the guy who gave Valerie Wilson's name to Richard Novak (as well as Bob Woodward). This inconvenient revelation dashed the neat storyline that the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame was a concerted effort by the White House hawks to stamp out any dissenting voices in the run up to the war. The trial seemed to bear out something a little more convoluted than that, but no less nefarious. Cheney's office DID run a campaign to discredit Joe Wilson by making his trip to Niger look like nepotism (his wife worked for the CIA and got him the gig, therefore Joe Wilson isn't credible -- still not sure how that works, but anyway), and even though Cheney had to out a covert CIA agent to discredit Wilson, he was prepared to do it. If nothing else, this administration is filled with end-justifies-the-means sort of people.

As Cheney didn't testify during the trial, today's guilty verdict puts pressure on Cheney to explain what he was doing, and what he knew during this period. Some pundits are making the prediction that this deep-vein thrombosis Cheney came down with after his recent trip around the world will give King Cheney a convenient reason to resign and avoid all those pesky inquiries from his subjects. But then again, this is Dick Cheney. One gets the sense he'll do whatever it takes to keep his white-knuckled stranglehold on the Presidency.

The other emerging story involves a group of eight US attorneys who were recently fired by Alberto Gonzales. Hearings on the subject started today on Capitol Hill. The evidence seems to suggest some political motivation behind the pink slips. In one case, two New Mexico elected representatives, one a Senator and one a Congresswoman, appear to have put pressure on at least one of the US attorneys to hurry up and indict some Democrats before the recent elections. When the US attorney(s) in question resisted, he (or they) got the axe a few short months later. Another fired lawyer was knee-deep in the middle of a massive corruption investigation (the largest in US history) that would have swept up a number of key Republicans when she got the boot. Another US attorney out of Arkansas was fired without cause and replaced with a deputy of Karl Rove who just happened to specialize in so-called "oppo research", or digging up dirt on political opponents. That the firing happened to be in Arkansas makes the political overtones politically obvious: Rove may well have sent his man to dig up dirt on Hillary to use in '08. The US attorneys were all given BS reasons for their dismissal, everything from "not aggressive enough prosecution of border-related crimes" (that from NM-R Senator DeMenici), to overly aggressive prosecution of alleged child- molesters.

The whole thing stinks like crazy, but luckily, we've got Dems in power who can investigate the hell out of these people. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who's shaping up to be even worse than former AG John Ashcroft (I know, hard to believe), looks to be right in the middle of this. Taken together, the major crime perpetrated here is this, as Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo writes:

"There is a clear and growing body of evidence that at least three of these firees were canned for not allowing politics to dictate their prosecution of political corruption cases. Or, to put it more bluntly, for not indicting enough Democrats or indicting too many Republicans. Which is to say they were fired for not perverting justice."

If this gets any bigger, Gonzales may not weather this storm. How great would that be? Cheney AND Gonzales resigning? And Bush fast on their heels when his term's up. What a beautiful dream.

Anyway, for some fantastic in-depth reporting on these issues, you ought to visit TalkingPointsMemo.com and its sister site TPMMuckraker. And Andrew Sullivan's usually got a good take on the overreaching of this administration.

See "Zodiac"

I saw David Fincher's "Zodiac" on Saturday afternoon. If proclaiming, in March, that a film is the best movie of the year so far wasn't a kind of backhanded compliment, I'd say that "Zodiac" is the best film of the year so far. It's actually a bit better than that. I'm guessing it'll make my top ten list when December 31st rolls around. I'm a little hesitant to talk about the movie because I haven't gotten that film critic's knack for talking about a film without giving anything away (then again, so haven't a lot of film critics), and the things I liked about this film aren't spoilers per se, but might dampen the enjoyment of the film for the uninitiated. So I'll just say, go and see it. It's 2 and half hours long but I wanted another 20 minutes. It's a detective story, but seeing it made me feel like I'd never actually seen a detective story on film before. "Zodiac" feels like something completely new and I think it deserves a look while it's still in theaters. Though its $11.3 million weekend gross as compared to "Wild Hogs"'s almost 40 million dollar take makes me think "Zodiac" won't be in theaters long. Take advantage while you can.

Kerry Confronts His Defamers, And "The Departed": Revisited

For anyone who felt that Kerry was grossly mistreated by the so-called "Swift Boat Vets for Truth", the group that sunk the Kerry campaign in '04, then you should take a look at this clip. It's long and it doesn't really start getting fun until a few minutes in, but I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Kerry's icy prosecutorial skills come out on someone who really deserves it.

The clip shows John Kerry questioning a Bush nominee for an ambassadorship on Tuesday the 27th of February. Turns out this nominee gave $50,000 to the Swift Boat group back in '04. As far as I can tell, it's the first (and likely only) opportunity Kerry has had to confront one of these guys. True, this dumb schmuck wasn't the one doing the slandering, but he helped finance it, which is pretty bad. What's best about the clip is that the guy is just as craven and mealy-mouthed as you'd expect a Bushie Republican hack financier to be. He calls Kerry a "hero" to his face, but when asked if he would condemn the Swift Boaters who called that heroism into question, he demures and says that kind of tactic was necessary, because "the other side was doing it, too." He also can't recall actually giving the Swifties the $50,000. "When asked for money," he says, "I usually just give." Seriously.

Weak.

He cites the "Bush is Hitler" MoveOn.org ad that a member created and which MoveOn posted up on its site as an example of the terrible negative stuff "the other side" was doing in the '04 election. That's really the best this guy can come up with. A stupid user-created ad that MoveOn pulled off their site within hours of it going up. I'm sure it put a lot of people firmly in the Kerry camp. Anyway. It's a wonder Kerry didn't so much as raise his voice at the guy.

On a slightly related note, Bill Kristol, oh he of odious Neocon fame, has been railing against HuffingtonPost recently. Not because of anything the site itself posted, but rather because of things the readers posted up in the comments section. When Vice-President Cheney was supposedly the target of a suicide bomber in Afghanistan the other day, some readers chimed in with their sincere and inarticulately-worded regret that the bomber hadn't been successful. (I didn't actually read the comments on political blogs. Who does? So many whackos.) So Kristol blasts Huffingtonpost based on these comments, in effect characterizing Arianna Huffington as a leader of the pro-assassination left. Does it get any more intellectually dishonest? I wonder what we'd find if we trolled some of the comments on the righty blogs? My guess is I'd find as much illiterate vitriol there as anywhere. Andrew Sullivan has a moderate conservative's take on it here. Ugh. I used to think Kristol was a conservative in the David Brooks mold, that is a fairly reasonable person, but Iraq and his unceasing warmongering ever since we went in have put him squarely into the dangerously delusional knee-jerk Coulterian whacko stratosphere.

Anyway. Watched "The Departed" again yesterday. [I'm going to talk about this movie as if everyone's seen it, so alert: SPOILERS AHEAD!]

Just amazing. Every scene is so smart and thought-out and inventive. I forgot how often Scorsese played with the score (or the "scorce" as David McHugh called it). Some Irish song would be going full blast and then Matt Damon starts dialing his cell phone and the song cuts out like Thelma hit the Stop button on the CD player. It's as if, every now and again, Scorsese wants to remind you that these people are actors and the story is made-up -- in other words, he wants to remind you you're watching a movie. One of the few guys making movies who'll take little risks like that, just to see how they'll go. One thing I appreciated more on the second go-round was how artfully Monahan and Scorsese set up Sheen's character as a kindly paternal anchoring presence in the film - they do it to a.) balance out Mark Wahlberg's abrasive character, but mostly to b.) make his death really sting. In a way Sheen's death echoes Gandalf's "death" in the first "Lord of the Rings" movie. In each case the death of the kindly, powerful, knowledgeable character that everyone really liked makes the audience feel acutely how solitary the path is the hero has to take for the duration of the film. An excellent device and a great script. Of the nominees I'd say Monahan absolutely deserved Best Screenplay and Scorsese deserved Best Director for that movie. Good stuff. (Though watching it again I see a little more clearly the things that irked me about Nicholson's performance. The rat-pantomiming thing he does in the last bar scene, for example. I wish Scorsese had done a few more takes here and there, or at least used less over-the-top, hammy takes in the finished film. Ah well. Nothing's perfect.)

Ruffalo Says "Nuh-Uh" To Whining to the New York Times

Today I've got a follow up to this post regarding the New York Times article that was sort of about "Zodiac" but mostly about Fincher being a director actor's don't like working with.

In this follow-up interview Reeler did with "Zodiac" co-star Mark Ruffalo, Ruffalo offers a different take regarding Fincher's interactions with the actors on-set than the New York Times article did. In this brief item, Ruffalo says the following:

"Yeah, you hear stories about him being so hard and intense," Ruffalo said. "And then I met him, and I immediately just loved the guy and was thinking , 'Well, when is he going to change? When is this guy that you keep hearing about going to pop up?' And my relationship and friendship with him got deeper as we went along. I think Fincher, what he has no patience for is incompetence or just a casual attitude toward the work. If you come in and you don't know your lines and you're not prepared, Fincher's going to eat you for breakfast. You know? And so the actors who complain about Fincher are usually the ones who don't show up knowing their shit, kind of."

He goes on in the article to essentially call out Gyllenhaal and Downey Jr. for being unprepared on-set. Ruffalo seems credible here, but I'm not sure his perception on the matter totally reverses the impression left by the NYTimes article, though it definitely calls it into question. In any event, I'm hyped for "Zodiac" this Friday. Early word has been very good. I'd have been happy with "Panic Room" good, but some of the critics seems to be talking "Se7en" good. Can't wait.

"Squid and the Whale", "Employee of the Month", and "Kramer vs. Kramer". Your Tuesday Passel of Movie Reviews

With this Blockbuster Total Access thing we've been doing, I've been seeing a lot of movies. We just took the two we got in the mail yesterday back to the store today and got "The Departed" and "The Prestige" in exchange (for free!). Yesterday the wifey and I watched both "The Squid and the Whale" and "Employee of the Month". One was much better than the other. I'll let you take a guess as to which one was which.

1.) "The Squid and the Whale". I'd been avoiding this one for a while, never interested enough in the premise to grab it off the shelf instead of some other movie. But when it came in the mail yesterday (as the wife put it on the queue -- even though "Black Sunday" has been at the top of the queue for quite some time, it's never come -- I'm beginning to think Blockbuster's banned it from our household), we watched it right away. The film was a pleasant surprise. Jeff Daniels plays English PhD and creative-writing professor Bernard Berkman, husband to Joan (Laura Linney) and father to Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) and Frank (Owen Kline). Bernard is a once-famous writer tapped out of the Grady Tripp mold (Michael Douglas's character in "Wonder Boys") whose rage at the slow decline of his writing career has slowly destroyed his marriage and forced his sons to take sides between the parents. Written and directed by Noah Baumbach, the film is based on his own life growing up with two writers, the novelist Jonathan Baumbach and the Village Voice writer, Georgia Brown. The heart of this story is Walt's freeing himself from his father's burdensome expectations and unhealthy advice, but taken altogether "The Squid and the Whale" is also a 2-hour seminar on why it's never a good idea to get divorced. Particularly if you have children. Baumbach looks at the divorce of the two parents from everyone's viewpoint, and it's wrenching and sad and painful for everyone. Though the mother (Linney) comes off best, everyone has their moments of pettiness or extreme self-absorption. In other words, it's difficult at times to feel sorry for any of them (though the youngest boy is a true innocent through all of it, despite his icky behavior). At times it feels like perhaps Baumbach is, perhaps, too frank with the facts of his adolescence during this painful time in his life, but overall it's a strong film. Everyone's good in it, but Jeff Daniels was a real stand-out to me. Partly because the role was the most fleshed-out and best written (Noah seems to have the most to say about this character), but mostly because Daniels completely inhabits the role of a guy who's so wrapped up in himself and his own feelings he can barely spare a thought for his children, and even still manages to make him sympathetic. Though just barely. Anyway, a good film.

And right after that I took in...

2.) "Employee of the Month". Not good. The trailers succeeded, I thought, in making this thing look like a good-hearted, solidly funny dumb comedy from the Adam Sandler school of filmmaking (the tolerable Sandler movies, anyway). But honest-to-God there isn't a real laugh in this entire movie. I think that the middling, amateurish script (curiously devoid of jokes considering some of the funny people involved; I would have thought that Harland Williams or Andy Dick could have written up a laugh line or two, but no such luck) is a big part of the problem, but I have to say the star of the film, Dane Cook (for whom this is his first starring role), is really the weakest link for me. His performance is so shot through with a kind of phony "aw-shucks" sincerity that you can never see past Cook's look-at-me-and-love-me performance to the story (such as it is) beyond. It's as if he was told by his management team that to be successful as a Hollywood movie star, it's not about being funny or interesting on-screen, it's about playing characters that audiences like. There's some legitimate argument to be made there, but no matter how likeable Cook tries to make his characters, the fact that he is neither funny or interesting in this film, can't help but derail his nascent career if he keeps doing stuff like this. The fact that he's got another big role in the upcoming Kevin Costner/William Hurt movie "Mr. Brooks" says to me he's got a good agent, and a studio with a close eye on Cook's comedy tour grosses. Not to pile-on, but this movie just has so very little going for it. Dax Shepherd, the weird Zach Braff clone, is game with a dumb role but with this movie and "Let's All Go To Prison" under his belt, I wonder if he isn't getting the stink of Bad Movie on him. time will tell. Jessica Simpson is in way over her head here with the role of romantic interest. Her vacuity is on full display here, but the director, to his credit, must have noticed this, and tries at every opportunity to distract the viewer from her blank-faced performance by presenting her air-conditioned breasts in revealing tops. This tactic usually works. Anyway, a bad movie. I was kind of surprised. I thought Cook was funny on SNL, I think some of his jokes (stolen or no) are funny and well-told, and thought at least some of that would come through in this movie, but man does it ever not.

And then Saturday night on AMC, I caught all of ...

3.) "Kramer vs. Kramer". AMC was showing a bunch of Best Picture Oscar-winning films (without commercial interruptions -- how great is that?), and I started into this one and never once lost interest. "Kramer" won the Best Picture Oscar for 1979 (beating "Apocalypse Now") and though I don't think it's a better film than "Apocalypse" (they seem way too different to even compare), I thought it was memorable and very well-done. The movie starts with Joanna Kramer (Meryl Streep) walking out on Ted Kramer (Dustin Hoffman) and their son, little Billy (Eight-year old Justin Henry, who got himself a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his performance -- he was the only nominated member of the cast to lose). So Ted, who's a big time ad executive, has to juggle raising his kid and a high-stress job with very little help. The scenes where he and his son adjust to a wifeless and motherless existence are effective and moving. Predictably, Ted has a hard time handling all of these responsibilities, and soon loses the support of his boss who doesn't like that Ted isn't working his usual 80-hour weeks, and then loses his job altogether. The sequence when Ted vows to get a new job in 24 hours (and then does!) is riveting. The film serves in some respects as an indictment of the judicial system's unquestioning preference for the mother over the father in custody cases. I guess director Robert Benton should be commended for not making Streep's character more unlikeable, or obviously less fit as a mother -- that would have been ham-fisted and preachy -- she gets fairly even treatment in the film and it's that balance that keeps the movie real and engrossing. The movie succeeds, I think, in making the point that a father's role in the upbringing of a child is in many ways just as important as the mother's. The film's ending was too happy, too pat, and not terribly believable -- the honest ending for the movie was obvious but the filmmakers (and perhaps even the author of the original novel) disappointingly opted for a more audience-friendly end, but aside from that, a great movie.

AND! And I now understand another of the "Family Guy" movie references. This scene comes directly from "Kramer vs Kramer". Funny stuff.

Tepid Oscar Wrap-Up

I think last night was the first time (in a long time) that the best movie I saw in a given year won the Best Picture Oscar. I was very pleased to see Scorsese win Best Director and his movie get Best Picture, but what a giant slog to get there. At least I predicted that last night (even if I got Best Supporting Actor and Best Picture wrong). Since I'm having trouble forming coherent sentences right this minute, I'll just do a quick Liked and Disliked in a listish form.

LIKED: Ellen's hosting. The musical number with Will Farrell, Jack Black and John C. Reilly. Very funny but a little wobbly in places. And Jack Black making eyes at Helen Mirren was pretty funny. The little factoid that appeared during the Cameron Diaz interview in the pre-show that her childhood nickname was Skeletor. I laughed and laughed at that. She DOES look like Skeletor! Children can be mean, but they can also be witty little bastards. The Al Gore/Leo DiCaprio presentation where Al ALMOST announces his run for the Presidency, Michael Mann's movie montage, Scorsese's win, "The Departed"s win. The part where Ellen asked Spielberg to take a second picture of her and Clint Eastwood. "Maybe center it a little more?" Funny. Maybe that's it.

DISLIKED: The speeches. God, the speeches. Didn't they do away with speeches one year in the seventies? They need to try that again. Or maybe require that everyone submit one and have a group of Academy members screen them for any mentions of anyone who works in the entertainment industry. I didn't even like Forrest Whitaker's speech. The song performances. Uniformly dreary. And Melissa Etheridge's song for "An Inconvenient Truth" was probably the worst Best Song winner since, well, last year's win for that "Hustle and Flow" rap song. Man, it's really bad just about every year. Pretty much all of the other film montages. Ennio Morricone's all-Italian acceptance speech. (Does Clint really know Italian?) The chorus of "foley" artists, who made the art of foleying sound pretty much like something anyone can do. All those damn "Pan's Labyrinth" wins. Scorsese's Oscar speech. I thought he was maybe going to say something he'd prepared, talk about film from a film historian's perspective, but it was just more of the same thanking bullshit. I guess everyone in Hollywood still gets jazzed at the idea of having their name mentioned in front of a live television audience, and hold it against you if you forget their names.

Anyway. This show just seemed more boring than in recent years. I don't know if it's because the movies were kind of lackluster this year (and that "Children of Men" didn't get more nominations), or if it was just a straight-up boring as hell show. Probably a bit of both.

Pre-Show Predictions

Before the Oscar telecast starts up tonight, I thought I'd post up some predictions. I'll get right to them.

Best Picture: I got a weird feeling it's going to be "Little Miss Sunshine". I think this movie benefits from being a smart, tightly-written, well-shot movie that people have been dismissing for awards since it came out. It might have enough underdog buzz to eke out the win. I think people thought "Babel" was too alienating, "Letters from Iwo Jima" too Clint-y (not to mention no one's seen it), "The Queen"not sweeping enough and too modern for a movie about the royals, but I think if it's not "Little Miss", then "The Departed" has got the best shot -- it's also helped by being the actual best film of all of the nominees.

Best Director: I think Scorcese's DGA win makes him a lock. If he doesn't get it, we'll know once and for all the Academy loathes Marty.

Best Actor: Forrest Whitaker, and he deserves it.

Best Actress: Helen Mirren, and she deserves it.

Best Documentary Feature: My man Al Gore with "An Inconvenient Truth".

As for Best Supporting, everything I'm reading says it'll be Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson. As for the show itself, I predict a real snorer. Good luck with this four-hour behemoth, Ellen!

Other than that, enjoy the show!

Just a Bunch of Time-Wasting Links

A couple interesting links I came across today.

1.) I like David Caruso. For some reason after he left "NYPD Blue" to star in a bunch of flops and essentially killed his career, I felt bad for him because I thought he was kind of an exciting actor, or at least he could be, and he'd made some bad decisions. Happens to the best of us. So when he rocketed back to fame by being cast in the lead in the first "CSI" spin-off, I was glad for him. This compilation of clips from his show, "CSI: Miami", however, makes me believe that he may have traded in any edge he might have once had as an actor, and has become instead more of a "presence", a kind of "gruff cop" archetype viewers can depend on seeing every week. His slide into a hammy cariacture of himself is actually pretty funny. He's laughing all the way to the bank. You can watch it here. (I have to say the writing has to bear some of the blame for this.)

2.) If you like fun ways to waste your life away, check out Linerider.com. You draw a line, press play, and a little man on a sled rides that line wherever it goes. Good times. Also some fun movies that some users, possessed of a bit of ingenuity and a whole lot o'time, made using the program. The movies made using this program was one of a bunch Slate spotlighted in its feature on so-called "Machinima", or movies made using video games. You can check that out here.

3.) "The 1/2 Hour News Hour" opened with "Daily Show" style ratings on Sunday, so says Variety. Tom Shales's review of the show in the Washington Post is quoted in the article. He said the show "isn't terrible." So far, all evidence to the contrary, Tom. In case you doubt, here's another clip from the show. It's a riff on global warming alarmists and it's just as funny as it sounds. The thing that the "1/2 News Whatever" doesn't seem to get is that although "The Daily Show" does have a left-leaning bent, they don't not go after the Democrats or the excesses of the left. More often, it seems, Stewart and his crew go after TV news in a very scathing and effective way. But the "jokes" on Surnow's new show are aimed exclusively at "left" targets (just as the rest of the network does), so even if there were some moments of humor on the show (none in evidence so far as I can tell), they fall flat because it's a show that, openly, avowedly, has an agenda to push, in this case to "correct" the imbalance the "Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" created. I'm doubtful this show can work on any level. (Also: Heath, you'll love the dig on the ACLU at the end of the clip.)

All right. More tomorrow.

Yet Another Post about "Silence of the Lambs"

I've been watching some of the documentaries on the new 2-disk "Collector's Edition" of "Silence of the Lambs", and there are some fascinating tidbits in it.

* Sean Connery was the first actor Jonathan Demme sent the script to for Lecter. He had a "commercial" Lecter in mind (Connery) and a "perfect" Lecter (Hopkins). When Connery passed, Demme figured he'd done his due dilligence to make the film more obviously commercial and very happily went to Hopkins to see if he'd do it. "Are the lambsh shtill shcreaming, Clareesh?"

* Jodie Foster used to call the actress who played Catherine Martin (the girl in the well) "Patty Hearst" (jokingly) because she was always hanging out with Ted Levine, who played her captor, Jame Gumb.

* Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins never really spoke to each other until filming was nearly completed. Only rarely were they both physically present for a shot because of all the POVs and close-ups.

* Jonathan Demme rarely did more than two or three takes to get his shot, and his cast and crew were happy --Demme created a very collaborative, congenial atmosphere on his set. (I include that to contrast with the Fincher post of yesterday. Cheap shot, I know, and every director's different and all that, but it's definitely possible to make a brilliant film and create a positive working environment. Blah blah.)

*Thomas Harris (the novelist) and Ted Tally (the screenwriter) were acquainted with one another BEFORE the novel's publication through Tally's wife. Harris did business with the art gallery she worked with. Harris sent Tally a galley copy of the book prior to publication.

* Gene Hackman bought the rights first because he wanted to produce, direct and STAR in the film as Lecter. When Tally turned in his screenplay, he said it was too violent and sold the rights back to Orion. Orion gave it to Demme.

Lots of good stuff on that bonus disc. I'm also looking forward to the documentary they did with Howard Shore on scoring the film. It's one of the great scores, I think, particularly because it manages to tell a story that can get almost operatic at times, but the score itself never gets too showy.

Anyway, I'm very into "Silence of the Lambs" right now (as you can tell), and this 2-disc DVD edition is the perfect way to groove on this "Silence" phase I'm in. Just the same way that watching a really bad movie can be a depressing experience, watching a fantastic movie can be exhilarating. They make it look so easy that it gives the impression (false though it may be) that making a genius film is simply a matter of getting out there and doing it. But the truth is that films like "Silence" are an absolute rarity. Even though they assembled an extremely talented crew of people to make that film, none of them, in my opinion, have even come close to being involved in a film as good as "Silence" in the years since. Except maybe Jodie in "Nell".

Ttotally timeless.

Fincher Joins an Elite Club, and The Chairman of New Line Cinema Nearly Dies. Your Tuesday Inanity

A couple of very interesting entertainment stories came down the pike yesterday. Both are from The New York Times.

1.) David Fincher's an ass-hole. I think we all knew that from the stories that filter out from his film-sets (like the professional beakup between Fincher and D.P. Darius Khondji on the set of "Panic Room"), but this is the first time I've seen it laid out in black and white. Jake Gyllenhaal, who stars in Fincher's upcoming film, "Zodiac", had this to say about working with Fincher:

“What’s so wonderful about movies is, you get your shot,” he said. “They even call it a shot. The stakes are high. You get your chance to prove what you can do. You get a take, 5 takes, 10 takes. Some places, 90 takes. But there is a stopping point. There’s a point at which you go, ‘That’s what we have to work with.’ But we would reshoot things. So there came a point where I would say, well, what do I do? Where’s the risk?”

And Robert Downey Jr. said:

“Sometimes it’s really hard because it might not feel collaborative, but ultimately filmmaking is a director’s medium,” he said. “I just decided, aside from several times I wanted to garrote him, that I was going to give him what he wanted. I think I’m a perfect person to work for him, because I understand gulags.”

Mark Ruffalo said:

“The way I see it is, you enter into someone else’s world as an actor,” he said. “You can put your expectations aside and have an experience that’s new and pushes and changes you, or hold onto what you think it should be and have a stubborn, immovable journey that’s filled with disappointment and anger.”

It's not hard to see what they're all getting at. They all hated being on this movie. In the same article, Fincher is quoted saying, "Every once in a while there are actors you can defeat." And, about "Panic Room": "I was kind of impatiently waiting for everybody [he means the actors] to get where I’d already been a year and a half ago." With "Zodiac", he ditched the meticulously-storyboarded approach he brought to "Panic Room" and decided he would, instead, "be more attentive to watching the actors." Lucky actors.

All that being said, I think Fincher's one of the best directors working today. Kubrick was notorious for shooting crazy numbers of takes, and I wouldn't have wanted him to lessen those numbers by a single one to make the actors feel better, or like him better. And I think Fincher may not be too far out of Kubrick's league. I guess it's just a little depressing that at least three men renowned for making exceptional films -- Michael Mann, James Cameron, and now David Fincher -- are all unrepentant bastards while working. Does excelling in this medium require a myopic perfectionist hard-ass with a special talent for making others feel small? I would say probably not (I still haven't heard a bad word about Peter Jackson, for example), but it seems to help. I'm very happy to see their films ( "Zodiac" comes out March 2nd), I'm just glad I don't have to work with them.


2.) New Line Cinema Chairman Robert Shaye nearly died in 2005. He caught the streptococcus A bacteria, came down with a very serious from of pneumonia (the same kind that killed Jim Henson), and the doctors put him into a medically-induced coma for 6 weeks. Holy crap! Can you imagine? Giving the OK to the doctors to put you under for six weeks knowing the chances of dying while comatose were (and I'm assuming here) pretty damn good? Creepy.

Anyway, Shaye's recovery took a long time, but I'd say he was getting pretty close to fighting weight when he got all bastard-y with Peter Jackson about the audit Jackson requested for the "Fellowship" DVD sales. (Jim Cameron weighed in saying that, even with the most transparent studio, you still do an audit. This leads me to believe New Line's got something to hide here). Because of that lawsuit (which Shaye's fighting), Shaye doesn't want Jackson to direct "The Hobbit", and is trying to get Sam Raimi to do it. Ugh. I could MAYBE say no to a non-Peter Jackson-directed "Hobbit" if Shaye got some nobody to do it (or worse a somebody like Ratner or Story), but a Raimi-directed "Hobbit" would be hard to say no to.