Incredible Hulk Trailer Is Up

The new full Hulk trailer's up.

I don't dislike what I'm seeing here, but nothing in this new trailer makes it obvious why we needed this Hulk reboot. It doesn't tweak any nostalgia I have for the TV show (aside from those three notes they snuck in at the end), there isn't any interesting visual stylistic flourishes going on, and judging from the animation quality of the Norton-Hulk, CG hasn't really gotten good enough in the last four years to make CG Hulk look like anything other than a semi photo-realistic cartoon. So I'm interested to see this movie, but not really excited. What I hope is going on is this: a trailer for a big expensive summer movie has to get the 12-year olds into the theaters. So that trailer has to emphasize the monsters, the helicopters, and Hummers blowing up in a park. But if the script, which Norton was deeply involved in, is actually really good, then it's quality might not be readily apparent in a trailer meant to show just action action action. So could still be great. But William Hurt looks and sounds very cool, and I'm happy to see Tim Roth back in a big movie, so color me hopeful.

(Did anyone else think the giant action scene in the park just looked like an obvious cost-cutting measure? I can think of less interesting places to blow stuff up in a movie --- oh wait. No I can't.)

Iron Man, Jeremiah Wright and South Korean Freaks with Harvard Fetishes

It's been a while, so here's some Inanities catch-up:













1.) I am completely hyped for "Iron Man." Like total DragonCon-nerd kind of excitement. I'm listening to Audioslave's "Cochise" and Sabbath's "Iron Man" all the time because they're in the trailer. Recently I picked up some "Iron Man" comics, just to see what was up with Tony Stark these days in the Marvel Universe (turns out he's now the director of S.H.I.E.L.D.. Fellow nerds will understand immediately the implications of that statement.) All this hype and anticipation is, of course, entirely manufactured by Marvel Comics (who financed the movie all by theyselves), and a week after it's out I'll have forgotten all about Tony Stark and will be looking ahead to the cinematic exploits of Banner, Jones and Wayne later in the hot months, but until Friday, "Iron Man" is looking to be a very big deal. (Also, Aintitcool's Harry Knowles and Moriarty both raved about the movie after they saw an early screening. Things are looking up for this thing not to suck.)

2.) Reverend Wright is bringing me way down. His very public, very unapologetic, very impolitic appearance yesterday at the National Press Club was all about him, I think, no matter what he says he was doing with regards to defending "the black church." Listening to snippets of his press conference on NPR on the drive home yesterday, I could hear how much fun he was having up behind the lectern fielding questions. He backed down from nothing, and only helped Obama once when he confirmed Obama's claim that Obama had not been present for Wright's most incendiary sermons. But besides that, Wright was busy plunging a chef's knife into Obama's side over and over again, defending his 9/11 comments and reaffirming his belief that the US government invented AIDS to wipe out the black race.

Mostly what Wright did yesterday was deepen the suspicion that many working-class white voters already have (a group Obama's apparently had trouble connecting with) that despite Obama's inclusive, hopeful rhetoric, Obama is an African-American of the Sharpton/Jackson/Wright mold, an angry black activist in other words, and if president, would not have their interests at heart, would in fact be working against their interests. That is, of course, a myth, but Wright helped yesterday to perpetuate it, and from a cursory viewing of all of this one can reasonably assume Wright may be attempting to sabotage Obama's bid for the White House. I can't even begin to understand why Wright would do that, but the evidence is plain. Is Obama going to be able to get out from under this guy?

3.) Who but freaks get into Harvard anymore? I read this article from the Times the other day about elite South Korean prep schools that focus like laser beams on getting their students into America's Ivy League schools. Fifteen-hour school days. Parents who scold their kids when they come home with a 98 on a test. Sixty-seven of your classmates ace the math section of the SAT. Here's a day in the life of a student at an elite S. Korean prep school:

"She rises at 6 a.m. and heads for her school bus at 6:50. Arriving at Daewon, she grabs a broom to help classmates clean her classroom. Between 8 and noon, she hears Korean instructors teach supply and demand in economics, Korean soils in geography and classical poets in Korean literature.

At lunch she joins other raucous students, all, like her, wearing blue blazers, in a chow line serving beans and rice, fried dumpling and pickled turnip, which she eats with girlfriends. Boys, who sit elsewhere, wolf their food and race to a dirt lot for a 10-minute pickup soccer game before afternoon classes.

Kim Hyun-kyung joins other girls at a hallway sink to brush her teeth before reporting to French literature, French culture and English grammar classes, taught by Korean instructors. At 3:20, her English language classes begin....

...Evening study hall begins at 7:45. She piles up textbooks on an adjoining desk, where they glare at her like a to-do list. Classmates sling backpacks over seats, prop a window open and start cramming. Three hours later, the floor is littered with empty juice cartons and water bottles. One girl has nodded out, head on desk. At 10:50 a tone sounds, and Ms. Kim heads for a bus that will wend its way through Seoul’s towering high-rise canyons to her home, south of the Han River.

“I feel proud that I’ve endured another day,” she said."

I'm not sure this is a snapshot of a future America where everyone is working in the service-industry because absolutely everything else has been outsourced to frighteningly-driven kids like this, but it may be a glimpse into how much work we may soon have to ask our kids to do just to stay competitive with the other 6.3 billion people in the world. And all that work won't be to stay ahead of the world and improve our quality of life, all that work will be just to keep our heads above water.

Hulk Smash

When Norton said he was keeping the film more in line with the tv show than with the comic, I don't think he was kidding. Ang burned me bad with the Bana/Ang Lee Hulk, but this looks like it could actually be pretty good.

Chris Matthews is Endearing

This is what I read during my lunch break today. Great article. I've always been a fan of Chris Matthews. One day he'll say something that makes my head explode with indignation, and then the next he'll say something that I totally agree with, (and I like this because I don't usually like things that challenge my assumptions). If you've ever seen his show, you probably already have a good sense of who he is, or so this article asserts. What you see is what you get with this guy. He's a loudmouth and sometimes he has to cram his foot in there. Like the time he saw Tipper Gore on-screen while he was anchoring MSNBC's coverage of the opening of the WWII Memorial and said, his admiration evident in his voice, "She's a good-looking woman." And then, immediately after, "I shouldn't have said that." Or those times he references, seemingly apropo of nothing, a scene from an old movie (like "Lawrence of Arabia" for example), never caring how long it takes to set up the scene, tie it to current events and finally make his obscure point. He doesn't seem to self-censor, and he clearly loves his job more than any political wonk on the beat. That's worthy of admiration. So to find out that he doesn't get much respect from his peers, is kind of surprising.

"Tim — as in Russert, the inquisitive jackhammer host of “Meet the Press” — is a particular obsession of Matthews’s. Matthews craves Russert’s approval like that of an older brother. He is often solicitous. On the morning of the Cleveland debate, Matthews was standing in the lobby of the Ritz when Russert walked through, straight from a workout, wearing a sweat-drenched Buffalo Bills sweatshirt, long shorts and black rubber-soled shoes with tube socks. “Here he is; here he is, the man,” Matthews said to Russert, who smiled and chatted for a few minutes before returning to his room. (An MSNBC spokesman, Jeremy Gaines, tried, after the fact, to declare Russert’s outfit “off the record.”)

Matthews has berated Russert to several people at NBC and has told friends and associates that Russert is like John F. Kennedy while he is more like Richard Nixon. Kennedy was the golden boy while Nixon was the scrapper for whom nothing came easily. It’s an imperfect comparison, certainly (Matthews is Irish Catholic, for starters, and Russert is not charismatic by any classic Kennedyesque definition), but it does offer a glimpse into how Matthews perceives himself, especially in relation to Russert. It’s also worth noting that Nixon was obsessed with Kennedy, and Kennedy could be dismissive and disparaging of Nixon."

And this:

"According to people at NBC, Matthews has not been shy in voicing his resentment of Olbermann. Nor, according to network sources, has Olbermann bothered to hide his low regard for Matthews, although when I spoke to him, Olbermann denied any personal animosity toward Matthews and told me that he appreciates his “John Madden-like enthusiasm for politics.”

The article goes on to say that with Matthews' contract is running out, some at NBC are thinking of letting him go and putting David Gregory in his place. This mystifies me. If MSNBC is in a hurry to promote pure unadulterated boring, then they definitely should replace Chris with David Gregory, the Wolf Blitzer of NBC News. But no one I know is looking for a better source for boring, so maybe that doesn't make much sense.

I don't know if Matthews is worth $5 million a year (which is how much he makes currently), but no one can say he doesn't work for it. Most weekday mornings he's up at 7am to give "his take" to viewers on "Morning Joe," MSNBC's morning talk-show, and later he does his evening Hardball shows, and then he also has his weekly "The Chris Matthews Show" which airs Sunday. The guy works. Gregory? Other than a couple run-ins with the White House press secretary, and a faux-pas or two on the unwatchable Today show, I can't remember a single interesting thing Gregory's said, or an interesting story he's reported. I kinda doubt he has. Good-looking and mediocre is preferable to unpredictable and entertaining, I guess.

Anyway, the article's great (and long! And in this case that's a good thing!), and you ought to give a bit of it a read.

And finally, click here for some "Pineapple Express" poster action. Good stuff.

Obama and the New US Foreign Policy

Former TalkingPointsMemo writer Spencer Ackerman wrote an article called "The Obama Doctrine" for "The American Spectator" magazine. In that piece, Ackerman interviews some of Obama's foreign policy advisors like Samantha Power, (she of the "Hillary is a monster" comment), and Anthony Lake, (Clinton's old national security advisor), to get a sense of how an Obama administration would approach international relations. In plain language these advisors explain how an Obama presidency could truly mark a new beginning in how we deal with the rest of the world.

"What's typically neglected in these arguments [about the efficacy of Bush's stated policy of "spreading democracy" to the exclusion of all other concerns] is the simple insight that democracy does not fill stomachs, alleviate malaria, or protect neighborhoods from marauding bands of militiamen. Democracy, in other words, is valuable to people insofar as it allows them first to meet their basic needs. It is much harder to provide that sense of dignity than to hold an election in Baghdad or Gaza and declare oneself shocked when illiberal forces triumph. "Look at why the baddies win these elections," Power says. "It's because [populations are] living in climates of fear." U.S. policy, she continues, should be "about meeting people where they're at. Their fears of going hungry, or of the thug on the street. That's the swamp that needs draining. If we're to compete with extremism, we have to be able to provide these things that we're not [providing]."

This is why, Obama's advisers argue, national security depends in large part on dignity promotion. Without it, the U.S. will never be able to destroy al-Qaeda. Extremists will forever be able to demagogue conditions of misery, making continued U.S. involvement in asymmetric warfare an increasingly counterproductive exercise -- because killing one terrorist creates five more in his place. "It's about attacking pools of potential terrorism around the globe," Gration says. "Look at Africa, with 900 million people, half of whom are under 18. I'm concerned that unless you start creating jobs and livelihoods we will have real big problems on our hands in ten to fifteen years.""

It's a totally different way of looking at things. I think if Obama's elected President, we'll have seen the last of the market-tested sloganeering that passed for foreign policy debate these last 7 and a half years.

A George W. Bush Movie in Theaters in 2008?

Oliver Stone's planned biopic of George W. Bush is moving forward at lightning speed. Word is it will be "available for distribution" before the November elections, and will definitely be released before Bush goes out of office, so this one's going to happen quick. Yesterday Stone's choice for the role of Laura Bush was announced, and today the actors who will play George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush were announced.

First, here's W:


















A choice Bush ought to be flattered by, but not much in common physically. It'll be interesting to see whether Brolin opts to do an immersive, quasi-Method approach to the role a la Anthony Hopkins' portrayal of Nixon, or more of a version of Bush that will be recognizable enough for audiences to suspend disbelief -- kinda like Travolta playing a Clinton-like character in "Primary Colors." That inevitable first photograph of Brolin in his W getup is going to be very telling on this score.

Now, the long-suffering Laura:

















If it were anyone but Laura Bush, I might wonder whether Elizabeth Banks had enough range to portray a living person, but I don't think there's a whole lot going on beneath the surface with Laura Bush, so hiring a Meryl Streep-quality actress to take on the role doesn't seem necessary. Banks should do fine.

And no Bush family would be complete without its matriarch. Here's Barb:

















Ellen Burstyn is, for my money, the best actress of her generation. Her performance in "Requiem for a Dream" is all heartbreaking and tragic and scary and all that stuff that makes acting good. The only thing I don't think she can do as an actress is a southern accent (for evidence, please review "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood." On second though, don't do that.) This is great casting. Almost as good as...

Stone's choice for Bush the Elder:

















James Cromwell's played a version of H.W. Bush in "The Sum of all Fears" (and he also happens to bear a distinct physical resemblance to the guy), and he's accustomed to playing cranky patriarchs, so this is a natural choice. I'm sure he'll be great.

Here's an excerpt from an interview Stone gave to Variety about the movie, which actually does shed light on some of the questions I asked above:

"It's a behind-the-scenes approach, similar to 'Nixon,' to give a sense of what it's like to be in his skin," Stone told Daily Variety. "But if 'Nixon' was a symphony, this is more like a chamber piece, and not as dark in tone. People have turned my political ideas into a cliche, but that is superficial. I'm a dramatist who is interested in people, and I have empathy for Bush as a human being, much the same as I did for Castro, Nixon, Jim Morrison, Jim Garrison and Alexander the Great."

Stone declined to give his personal opinion of the president.

"I can't give you that, because the filmmaker has to hide in the work," Stone said. "Here, I'm the referee, and I want a fair, true portrait of the man. How did Bush go from an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world? It's like Frank Capra territory on one hand, but I'll also cover the demons in his private life, his bouts with his dad and his conversion to Christianity, which explains a lot of where he is coming from. It includes his belief that God personally chose him to be president of the United States, and his coming into his own with the stunning, preemptive attack on Iraq. It will contain surprises for Bush supporters and his detractors."

Sounds like Stone understands something about what makes Bush's story interesting, but "Frank Capra territory" seems way too whimsical a way to describe a film about a guy's rise from coddled trust-fund manchild to president and war criminal; I know Stone's trying to be careful not to get the wingnuts telling people to avoid the movie before he's even shot a foot of film, but seriously. Frank Capra?

Obviously I'm hoping the film (tentatively titled "W") is closer in quality to "Nixon" than "Alexander," but I think it's going to make big money at the box office no matter what. As much as the guy repulses about 3/4 of the country, I think most Americans, whether they care to admit it or not, find him fascinating. Repugnant, yes, but fascinating.

Indiana Jones Trading Cards

From time to time I like to just straight up steal blog posts from other blogs. Today is one of those times. So feast your eyes on some cool Indiana Jones trading cards Topps is putting out. If you follow that link you'll find 4 sheets of cards. From the illustrator's blog: "They are one of a kind original sketches that will be inserted in every box of cards (one per box), along with autographed cards by Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and others who worked on the films." I'm not a 12-year old kid, so I'm not going to drop any money on these things, but what is impressive is how perfectly the artist, Patrick Schoenmaker, captures the essence of these characters with just a few well-placed lines.

My personal favorite: Melty-Face Nazi at the top.

Even Chris Wallace Thinks "Fox and Friends" Is Creepy

Sometimes, Fox News is so nakedly a propaganda arm of the Republican party, it even makes other Fox News employees uncomfortable. One of them anyway. Watch as an uncomfortable Chris Wallace, moderator of Fox News Sunday, takes the Republican mouthpieces that host "Fox and Friends" to the woodshed for spending two hours bashing Obama on the basis of a quote they'd misleadingly truncated.

It's squirmy but also hilarious. Chris Wallace comes on to tease his show tomorrow, tells the hosts they're being bad, and then each of the three hosts has to explain themselves to Wallace. Like children. Awesome. It's clear Steve Doocey (or however you spell it) is the worst of the lot, but the lady host is the most embarrassingly defensive, saying, and I'm paraphrasing, "if [Obama] wants to have conversation about race, then let's talk about the double standard for certain phrases and words." I'm not sure what she's talking about here, but it sounds like she's one of these white people who still don't quite get why they can't use the n-word. For her, that's what a "real discussion of race" is all about.

Best moment: Doocey at the end saying, "You sure got a weird way of showing it."

Shai-Hulud Will Not be Denied--Will Get Big-Screen Treatment Again in 2010; Also, Mighella; Also, Obama and Race

Frank Herbert's epic science-fiction novel "Dune" is once again getting the big-budget studio treatment. The director who's been lobbying hard behind the scenes for many a month to get the gig is Peter Berg, the actor/director who brought us "Very Bad Things," "Friday Night Lights," and, most recently, "The Kingdom." I haven't seen most of Berg's oeuvre, so admittedly I'm not the best guy to judge whether or not he's got the chops to remake "Dune," but you can color me hopeful about the result, though not really optimistic. I'm hoping his apparent passion for the novel will translate to the most faithful adaptation of Herbert's classic yet, but I have my doubts that the guy who made the execrable "Very Bad Things" can pull off an epic science-fiction film based on a beloved novel.

I love Lynch's 1984 adaptation. The little idiosyncrasies that drive some people crazy about it--the voice-overs, the over-the-top costumes, the new ending--make it a better, more interesting film to me. And even though I believe Lynch's "Dune" is one of the best science-fiction films ever made, it is not, strictly-speaking, a faithful adaptation. The miniseries produced by the SciFi Channel in 2000 hewed more closely to the novel, but it's limited budget prevented the filmmakers from truly realizing the scope of Herbert's novel. Berg has a chance here to make the definitive "Dune," which would be a boon to him personally, of course, but also to fans of Herbert's six "Dune" novels, some of which may get the same big-budget treatment by Paramount if Berg's adaptation clicks with audiences. If Berg and Paramount find a way to make "Dune"--a geopolitical novel laden with political intrigue, environmental science and philosophy--resonate with a mass audience, then they could have something resembling the "LOTR" franchise on their hands. Obviously, that's the best-case scenario. Worst-case, Berg goes back to making disappointing movies and "Dune" reaffirms its reputation as a hard-sell for mass audiences.

In other news, Oscar-winning writer and director of "The English Patient", Anthony Minghella, died today of a brain hemorrhage. He was 54.

And in political news, Barack Obama made a speech today intended to speak directly to some sermons given by Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor, and the larger issues of race in America. You can find the full text here. If you want a more stark contrast between Democrats and Republicans, look no further than this speech. Where Mitt Romney, the right-wing Republican golden child, was exclusionary in his big "Mormon speech," saying that non-religious people had no place in American life, Obama was inclusive in his "race speech" today, speaking frankly about where America stands right now on the issue of race. Here's a short excerpt:

"The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow."

Viable politicians rarely (if ever) discuss these issues frankly, which is, in part, why this speech is so fascinating. I don't know if this speech will be enough to counter the impact those grainy videos of Jeremiah Wright thundering away at the pulpit had on some voters, but I hope this thoughtful and inclusive speech will go some way in doing that. Definitely read it.

"The Comfort of Strangers" and a Recent Change in Status

I finished a novel Saturday morning and it's been stuck in my head since. It's called "The Comfort of Strangers" and it was written by Ian McEwan. He published it back in 1981 but it carries nothing between its covers that would distinguish it as a work written during that decade. At best one could place it as occurring sometime during the late 20th century, but it's difficult to get more precise than that. Not only are there no references to times or dates, McEwan never precisely identifies the city the story is set in. The city he describes is a stylized Venice, Italy, but McEwan has wrung it of all of its storied charms and infuses it instead with a dreamy quality in which dread and a kind of genteel hostility are pervasive. The result is unsettling. While some writers compose books that amount to love letters to various cities and countries, with "The Comfort of Strangers" I think McEwan has composed a hate letter to Italy.

Briefly, the plot follows Mary and Colin, two beautiful Britons, not quite married, on vacation in the aforementioned city of quasi-Venice. As the novel opens we find them cultivating mutual resentments in their lavish hotel room with passive aggressive silences and banal small talk freighted with meaning. That night they venture forth into the city to find a suitable restaurant, knowing full well they'll probably get lost in the city's twisting streets and narrow alleys. Hours later, lost and frustrated in their search for an acceptable eaterie, they happen upon a local man named Robert, who leads them to a bar patronized solely by locals. (During the extended bar scene, Robert tells them a story from his childhood that is one of the most sustained pieces of long-form dialogue I've read in fiction.) There's something off about Robert. He shares inappropriately. He's more familiar with them than is appropriate, touching them in ways that willfully ignore the conventions of personal space. Colin and Mary dismiss these faux pas as nothing more than a difference in culture, but to their detriment. Soon Robert demonstrates his peculiar gregariousness, tinged as it is with menace, is an exaggeration of the surrounding culture, but particular to him.

The novel builds in suspense as Robert manages to insinuate himself more and more into the lives of the two tourists. Much of the feeling of dread that characterizes "Comfort" emanates from what is unspoken and what is only hinted at; rarely do the characters even acknowledge the strange things they witness or the moments of probable insanity they encounter in others. It's as though the hapless tourists are sleepwalking through a nightmare for which the reader is intolerably awake. So little happens in an overt sense during the story, that the ending, which is as overt as it gets, is so shocking I read it over three times to make sure I was reading it correctly. I was, and boy is it a doozy.

And I say that "Comfort" amounts to a hate letter to Venice (and, more expansively, the country of Italy), because when we finally discover what's wrong with Robert, it's clear McEwan is making a larger statement about his views of Italian culture, namely their preoccupation with the notion of manliness and the acceptance of a role of subjugation for women (in one scene, a woman tells Mary that if a man is known for beating his wife, it gains him some measure of notoriety among his friends and acquaintances). When one adds in McEwan's characterizations of the mise en scene, this city that is and is not Venice, one gets the sense of a dying, useless city filled with malignantly self-involved people. If McEwan ever visited there (and it would appear he has), after reading the book it seems doubtful he'd ever willingly return.

(If you'd like to read a negative take on the book, read this 1981 review of the novel by John Leonard of the New York Times. Though be warned: the reviewer gives away far too much of the plot in an effort to be cruelly dismissive. With the benefit of 27 years of hindsight, howeverm I think this reviewer seems a tad short-sighted on the subject of Ian McEwan.)

This is the sixth novel I've read by him, and though I don't think it's his best, (I still think "Atonement" carries that title) I do think it's his most tightly controlled work, and one of the most successful attempts by a writer to depict in a work of fiction that intangible quality called "atmosphere". As I read through it chapter by chapter, I recounted its plot to my wife and sister -- they were as weirded out by my retelling as I was by reading it. My wife says she doesn't even want to know how it ends, which I'll chalk up to her discomfort with the lurid subject matter rather than her being bone-tired of the sound of my voice.

Interestingly, in 1990, Paul Schrader made a film of the book. Rupert Everett stars as winsome, beautiful tourist Colin, and none other than Christopher Walken plays the role of Robert. I can't wait to see it.

Anyway, sorry I've been slack on the updates of late, but I think I have an okay excuse this time.

I got a job. I started it on the 10th of this month.

It's one of those hourly-type things that spit out paychecks every couple weeks. My job title is "copy editor/proofreader"and I work for a small company in a suburb of Atlanta just north of Marietta. I wanted to be sure I managed to STAY employed for a full week before I posted up about it, and since I accomplished that, I feel fine to announce it here.

So anyway, if I'm remiss in posting up blog entries (or in returning calls), it's because I'm still adjusting to the whole working stiff thing. I'm going to try to post up an entry at least once a week to begin with. Hopefully they'll get more frequent as the weeks go on.

Also, you should know that my being a "proofreader" will not make me any more careful with the entries I post up on here than usual. Rest assured, they will be of the same slapdash quality you've grown to love.

"Tropic Thunder" Teaser Teaser, and the Writers of "The Wire" Have A Final Thought on the War on Drugs

A couple things on this Sunday.

First, a teaser for a teaser for Ben Stiller's upcoming film, "Tropic Thunder." NCSA's own Danny McBride (a.k.a Fred Simmons), co-stars in this film along with Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., and Jack Black, and gets his name in big letters (as well as a line) in this teaser-teaser. This from Moriarty's aintitcool post:

"I’ve been hearing great things about this script ever since last year’s now-legendary round-table reading, where guys like Bill Hader and Danny McBride were destroying with regularity, and where I hear this thing really came to life."

So "Thunder"'s got Robert Downey Jr. playing a self-absorbed actor doing blackface, Danny McBride "destroying with regularity", and what looks to be a hilarious cameo by Tom Cruise. Should be a lot of fun. The full teaser is supposed to be released a week from Monday. Teasing teasers teaser.

Second, the fifth and final season of "The Wire" wraps up tonight on HBO. The show's writers put out a statement this week which is, in part, an attempt to turn the questions they've asked, the angst they've felt, and the anger they've carried in researching and writing the show into political action. You can read the entire statement here; the most pertinent snippet is below:

"If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will — to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun's manifesto against the death penalty — no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens."

After having seen read what I've read about the failed drug war, and after watching four seasons of David Simon's deeply-researched show, this declaration of "jury nullification" for non-violent drug offenses makes a lot of sense to me. Though some drug policy folks in Washington might sniff at the idea of TV writers sticking their nose into this complicated problem, I think they'd do well to listen closely. What these TV writers have done for the plight of the American inner city with five seasons of this show, is not dissimilar to what Dickens did for the plight of the poor in Victorian London with his many novels. For that Ed Burns, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Richard Price, and David Simon (the "Wire"'s writers) have a right to weigh in on the issue, and their protest against this wrongheaded and unjust war deserves, I think, consideration.

New "Watchmen" Publicity Stills

Aintitcool.com put up some sweet new publicity stills for the cast of Zach Snyder's upcoming "Watchmen" movie, each actor photographed in full costume. (Pictured above is an actor named Jeffrey Dean Morgan who plays The Comedian.) Snyder's casting unknowns for the main cast (with the exception of Carla Gugino and, possibly, Jackie Earle Haley), which is fantastic because it encourages audiences to view the actors solely as the characters they're playing and not merely as celebrities of varying wattage who all just happen to be starring in a movie together. As with everything I'm seeing come out of this production, I'm heartened by these new images. So far, no missteps. And because it's Snyder helming this thing, I'm not expecting any.

Some Constructive Criticism for the Clinton Campaign

In an earlier draft of my previous post, I wrote of a second option Hillary might decide to use to beat Barack, but decided to delete it because it didn't a.) help her win the nomination, and b.) didn't really suspect of her of being this Machiavellian. Turns out I probably should have included it.

This is what I almost included: "Hillary may attempt to weaken Obama so badly that McCain defeats him in the general election, thus leaving Hillary as the Democratic heir-presumptive in 2012."

As of today, an argument can be made that this crazy, scorched earth, throw the Democratic party under the bus game-plan is now part of the Clinton campaign's new strategy. Evidence, you ask?

This is what she said today:

“I think that since we now know Sen. McCain will be the nominee for the Republican Party, national security will be front and center in this election. We all know that. And I think it’s imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold,” the New York senator told reporters crowded into a bedroom-sized hotel conference room in Washington.

“I believe that I’ve done that. Certainly, Sen. McCain has done that and you’ll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy,” she said.

Calling McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee a good friend and a “distinguished man with a great history of service to our country,” Clinton said, “[Both McCain and I] will be on that stage having crossed that [commander-in-chief] threshold."

So when Obama's the nominee, does anyone think the McCain campaign won't be sending out talking points to all of the right-wing pundits use saying, "Even Hillary Clinton, a member of his own party, thinks John McCain's more qualified to be commander-in-chief then Barack Obama." This statement, along with her fear-mongering 3 a.m. phone call ad, her calculated "as far as I know" on the question of whether Obama is or isn't a muslim, is doing real damage to the party, and I think Hillary and her campaign need to dial it back and find others ways to claw their way to the nomination. In my view, the path they're on now is the worst possible route to get there.

Where the Democratic Race Stands Now

If you're an Obama supporter, Tuesday night was kind of depressing.

As you've no doubt heard ad nauseum for the past 36 hours or so, Hillary won Texas and Ohio as well as Rhode Island. Obama won Vermont.

If you're a Clinton supporter, simply watching the news is enough to keep your hopes up. But if you're an Obama supporter, then I think you'll be heartened to read this article from Newsweek. No matter how you look at it, the math is very tough for Hillary to overcome. If this thing gets decided solely on the basis of elections and caucuses, Obama will win the nomination. Here are some scenarios in which Hillary could win.

1.) Obama's involvement with Tony Rezco blows up. If Obama is seen to be much less than forthright about his involvement with Rezco (who's currently on trial in Chicago for corruption) or worse, Obama is found to have actually been a party to unseemly business, Clinton could make a case to the superdelegates that she's got less to hide than he does and would make a better nominee.

2.) Hillary goes after Obama with a scorched earth negative campaign. If she or her surrogates sully Obama badly enough among those Dem voters inclined to believe rumors about Obama's Muslim upbringing and his lack of patriotism, then she can try and make the case to the superdelegates that they should go against the will of the voters and caucusers and pledge themselves for her.

I'm doubtful that either of these scenarios is going to happen. I don't think Obama had much to do with Rezco's crimes, nor do I think Hillary's going to go overtly negative to try and game the election. If Jonathan Alter (who wrote the Newsweek piece) is right, then Hillary may be angling for a V.P. slot. I'm ambivalent about the prospect of an Obama-Clinton ticket -- I'd like to see someone running with Obama who more strongly neutralizes McCain's appeal -- but if that's what it takes to get this race settled before the convention, then it ought to happen.

Obviously, the worst-case scenario is that the Democrats find a way to blow the general election in a year when we ought to have it handed to us.

Now You Can Add Yet Another Name to the List of Fake-Memoir Writers

So the big Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island primaries start up in about 15 minutes, but before I glue myself to CNN, I wanted to direct your attention to something completely non-political.

Last week I read this review in the New York Times by Michiko Kakutani for a new memoir entitled "Love and Consequences." The review is accompanied by a disorienting photo of the author, Margaret P. Jones (pictured left) taken, no doubt, from the book jacket. I say disorienting because the woman pictured is white (actually half-white and half-Indian), and the memoir describes a rough-and-tumble childhood as a foster kid on the streets of South Central Los Angeles. Her experience runs the gamut on the issues one might expect to find in a memoir set in this milieu: gangs, racism, poverty, drugs, etc.. According to Kakutani, the memoir is "amazing." Jones "write[s] with a novelist’s eye for the psychological detail and an anthropologist’s eye for social rituals and routines." She also said the book was "deeply affecting" and "humane."

Turns out, as the New York Times reported today, Margaret B. Jones, whose real name is Margaret Seltzer, made it all up.

"Margaret B. Jones is a pseudonym for Margaret Seltzer, who is all white and grew up in the well-to-do Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, in the San Fernando Valley, with her biological family. She graduated from the Campbell Hall School, a private Episcopal day school in the North Hollywood neighborhood. She has never lived with a foster family, nor did she run drugs for any gang members. Nor did she graduate from the University of Oregon, as she had claimed."

As a result of Seltzer's "mendacity", her book tour, which was to start today, is no longer happening, and all copies of her book have been recalled.

After Seltzer had been profiled in the Times' House & Home section last Thursday, Seltzer's older sister called the publisher to say the author of "Love and Consequences" had made the whole thing up. To make it all the sweeter, Gawker had some choice quotes from an interview Jones/Seltzer gave prior to her outing. Here's a taste:

"Q: How did this book originate?

A: During my senior year of college one of my professors told me a friend of hers was working on a book and wanted to interview me. I declined. I wasn’t interested in the whole “South-Central-as-petting-zoo” thing. Then my home girl said the teacher might mess around and fail me for rejecting her friend, so I ended up calling the author and doing the interview. She was real nice and asked me if I had ever written anything. I ended up giving her one of a number of short stories I had written for my brothers’ kids and for the kids of my homies serving life sentences."

Wow. Seltzer sounds egregiously white. It's a wonder that her agent heard Seltzer slinging those "homies" and "home girl"'s around at lunch meetings and thought to herself, "she is completely authentic and her story is perfectly believable."

I think the fact that this book hasn't been out for more than few days makes this fake memoir scandal less impactful than the James Frey debacle a couple years back, or the J.T. Leroy/Laura Albert brouhaha last year. Frey, as you'll remember, fooled Oprah and millions of readers, and Albert conned dozens of cool "indie" writers as well as thousands of readers, myself included. But where Frey exaggerated to the point of lying, and Albert created a dreamily horrific hard-luck life out of whole cloth and then wrote stories supposedly informed by that life, Seltzer imagined a hard-scrabble childhood that, one might safely assume, is actually being lived/endured in cities all over the country by, mostly, minorities. Of course she's not the first privileged white person to invent a poorer, more ethno-centric past for themselves to lend themselves a little "street cred" (Vanilla Ice, anyone?), but it's just as off-putting in this instance as it's ever been. It's like the rich stealing the character they lack from the poor.

But the publisher of "Love and Consequences", Riverhead Books, is also, I think, equally culpable in this half-perpetrated con. One would think that after James Frey was exposed as a fabulist, and after Oprah shamed the industry (or attempted to shame) into fact-checking their would-be memoirists, that the least publishers could do was verify the most easily-verifiable claims made in the memoirs they publish. A fact-checker could easily find out, for example, whether or not a woman named Margaret B. Jones graduated from the University of Oregon in the year Jones claims she did. Jones/Seltzer did not go to that school, but because no one asked this question (or any other), Seltzer managed to string her agent, her editor, and her publisher along for 3 years while they all worked on "Love and Consequences." With their help, Seltzer very nearly duped thousands of readers.

If publishers continue to insist that fact-checking is not their responsibility, the credibility of memoirs as authentic and reasonably truthful works of art is diminished, and this in turn hurts those memoirists who aren't making up the facts of their lives for the sake of book sales. But some of these more outlandish memoirs don't seem to require a lengthy and exhaustive fact-checking to find those first telling cracks in their stories. Like the woman who recently admitted her memoir, in which she is raised, in part, by wolves, was made up. How hard is it really to guess that that lady's whole goal was to tell lies? And when a white, 33-year old, U. of Oregon alum says she was a drug-runner for gangs in South Central Los Angeles when she was growing up, don't you, the publisher, at the very least, make a phone call? If the corporations who own all the publishers don't want to employ fact-checkers, that's one thing, but when agents and editors won't even use their own god-given common sense to separate the talented liars from the merely talented, then maybe the publishing industry's doomed to be forever disconnected from the readers they're supposed to be selling to. And they wonder why they're not selling more books.

Admittedly, I'm not a big memoir guy, but reading about Seltzer's fabrications so soon after Frey and Albert were exposed for theirs, makes me think the publishing industry needs to address what looks like a growing problem sooner than later.

Fred Simmons is "King of the Demo"

Click here to see Danny McBride on Conan O'Brien's show Tuesday night. Unlike most film actors who come on talk shows to promote an upcoming movie, usually to trot out some "funny" stories from the set, Danny came out completely in-character as Fred Simmons, the "hero" of the upcoming "Foot Fist Way," and did some exceptional work. The movie's hilarious, and Danny's brilliant in it (ditto Jody and Ben), but what I was most impressed/surprised by when watching his appearance on Conan, was how subtle and in-the-moment he could be on what is essentially a live show. For instance, when Conan uses the word "Mecca" in a question, Danny, abashed, leans over to ask what the word means. There were a lot of obvious ways to sell the character's ignorance, but Danny, fully committed to selling the reality of Fred Simmons, a hapless Tae Kwon Do instructor from Concorde, North Carolina, goes for complete naturalism First he considers answering the question without knowing the meaning of the word, thinks better of it, then leans into Conan and, with a little laugh, asks him what the word means. When Fred arrives at his own understanding of the word as "where my business is at," it just kills.

Some other highlights:
1.) Fred telling Will Farrell to be quiet during "his time."
2.) Will Farrell trying to hide a smile during the interview.
3.) Fred's preoccupation with which cameras are recording what.

Anyway, it's a lot of fun to watch. Check it out.

Democratic Debate, The Resurgence of an Old Word, and Thoughts on the 80th Academy Awards

The debate's about to start, and I thought I ought to post up a blog post while it's going on. You only really have to pay attention to the questions and the first parts of the candidates' answers to know what's going on.

[Holy cow, Tim Russert's got what looks like a passel of moles on his face. Jeez. Is he unwell? Maybe it's just bad lighting.]

Anyway!

While puzzling through a re-reading of "Moby Dick" late last year (yeah, I have some time on my hands), I encountered a word that stumped me: counterpane. I'd never seen it before. Through context and repeated usage, I discovered the word is a nineteenth-century word for a comforter, as in a thick, bed-covering blanket. For dorks like me, that's kind of fun to know. Seeing it again in another book written during the same time period, I figured it was an obsolete word, relegated to a bygone age, and so set to annoying my wife and others by using it when using the word "comforter" would be the less-annoying choice. But it turns out I was mistaken about the word "counterpane." It's not a relic after all. While reading Stephen King's new book, "Duma Key," I discovered King using the term. Looking it up on dictionary.com, the word "counterpane" is classified as "older use"; just short of obsolete, I guess. Well, maybe King's a closet word-nerd. But finishing the very short new book by Ian McEwan, "On Chesil Beach" this evening, I came across it again. So it's official: "counterpane" has either made a comeback in the 21st-century, or, more likely, novelists have been using it forever and I'm only now catching on. Anyway. My wife thought I should bore all of you with this; you know, share the pain.

And no, you can't have that minute back.

So, the Oscars! What a dreary show, first off. I guess uncertainty about whether or not the strike would be over in time for the Oscars ultimately wrecked the show more than I'd predicted. I would figure 10 days would be more than enough time to write and film one of those great filmed intros with all the requisite celeb cameos and in-jokes, but, as it turns out. Nope. Ten days is just enough time to write a short okay-ish monologue and a bunch of patter for the stars to read off a teleprompter. But complaints about the broadcast aside, I was happy to see "No Country for Old Men" do so well in the major categories. For the last couple years the Academy's done an admirable job of handing the Best Picture Oscar to the film that I thought was actually the best picture of the year. I was similarly pleased to see that the irrational exuberance over "Juno" didn't result in a lot of hasty Oscars a la "Crash" or "Million Dollar Baby." It was a good movie and all, but not, I thought, one of the top five movies of the year.

Some other thoughts about the show: I really liked the Best Song award-winner and the couple singing it did an excellent job performing it live. [I'm trying to find it on iTunes now and I discover the track is an 'Album Only' purchase. Oh well.] I'm thinking I'm going to have to check that movie out. Tilda Swinton gave a weird and surprisingly earthy, funny speech, which is in total contrast to the characters she's always asked to play, which are usually cold and remote. Her giving Clooney shit for being in "Batman and Robin" in front of millions of people was ballsy and hilarious. And I also liked seeing the cutaway to Cormac McCarthy standing up and cheering when Denzel read out the Best Picture award winner. Looking at the awards altogether, I think it's a little disheartening that in 2007, a year widely-considered one of the best years for movies in recent memory, that only one of the top five nominated films made more than $100 million dollars. Hopefully next year we can look forward to a few movies that turn out to be both commercial and critical successes in the same vein as "The Godfather," "Jaws," and "Silence of the Lambs."

And, totally unrelated, take a look at this. Kinda fun. It's Jimmy Kimmel's response to girlfriend Sarah Silverman's video, "I'm F#%king Matt Damon." It's a little over-wrought, maybe a little overdone, and not as funny as Silverman's, but it had me grinnin'.

[So the debate's over. I thought, and this is no surprise coming from me, Obama won, but I did think that Hillary's probably not being paranoid when she says the media's giving Obama an easier time than they've been giving her. I think that the debate moderators, and Russert in particular, seem to enjoy throwing hardballs at Hillary where Obama rarely sees anything trickier than a curveball when he's up to bat. I don't know for sure whether that's a function of media bias (as Tina Fey and the SNL writers seem to think) or just that reporters and debate moderators don't have as much to go after Obama with as they do with Hillary on account of her longer record. Anyway, an interesting debate, but at this point, I'm not sure how illuminating these things are anymore. The issues they've decided to "differ" on have been hashed out endlessly over these 20 Q&A's and I don't think there's any new information to be gleaned in by having more "debates" in this kind of format. I think Tuesday's primaries in Texas, Ohio, and Vermont will end up being decisive. Needless to say, I'm very excited about where this race is headed.]

Drawing is Fun, But Also Serious

I'm nearly finished reading Stephen King's latest novel, "Duma Key." Maybe I'll do a review of it once I'm done with it, but for now I'll just briefly say this: after an excellent first half, the plot has begun to unravel a bit. Events that happen in the second half weren't set up very well in the first, and the supernatural universe in which "Duma Key" is set, seems to expand conveniently to suit the needs of the plot. Not totally unlike how some have characterized my own book. Maybe having read and absorbed everything the guy's written over all these years has influenced my own work in ways I hadn't realized; right down to mimicking his weak endings. Ah well.

Anyway, another effect of reading the book is that it's given me a drawrin' itch. And not the kind you can get rid of with various ointments and creams. The hero of the story, Edgar Freemantle, has an accident, loses an arm, and moves to Florida to decide whether or not he wants to keep house on this mortal coil. He soon discovers a latent artistic ability in himself that produces masterpiece after masterpiece. Whether his medium is pencils or paint, he can do no wrong. Of course something else might be at work, but that's for another blog post. King's glowing, some might say overheated, descriptions of the ecstasy of production and the cheering crowd-inducing quality of the finished products incite a kind of "art longing" in me. So, in addition to a few drawing table misfires, I've been daydreamily perusing some websites and blog featuring oodles of fantastic artwork, much of which seems deceptively simple to execute, and saying to myself, "I could do something like that." Well, as Hillary's been saying a lot of late, there's a difference between saying and doing. Here are a couple of sites I've been looking at that you might like to check out.

1.) "The Perry Bible Fellowship." I haven't done much reading on the artist behind it, Nicholas Gurewich, but I've gone through nearly all the comics posted on his site, one by one, and with the exception of Larsen's "The Far Side", I know of no more consistently hilarious comic strip. Many are done in an artistic style specific to the content of the strip, almost always wittily employed to heighten the comic effect. For instance, take a look at this strip entitled "Utter Pig." It's style -- suggesting a children's fable -- smashes up brilliantly with it's dark and subversive content. He makes it look so easy, and he makes it damn funny.

2.) A how-to blog by Mad Magazine caricaturist Tom Richmond. He makes sitting out at amusement parks and drawing bad caricatures of sweaty kids driving tiny cars day all day seem worth it if doing so means that one day you can draw caricatures this funny and this spot-on. He goes through the basics of caricature drawing, talking about the five shapes, head, eye one, eye two, nose and mouth, and that the heavy lifting in caricatures is done when the artist gets the relationship between these shapes right. To the left is Richmond's caricatures of Ben Emerson, the guy who plays villain Ben Linus on "Lost," and Jake Gyllenhaal, he of "Brokeback" fame. Richmond goes on to say that one of the three components of a good caricature is "Statement", or editorializing on the part of the artist. I think I know what editorial comment Richmond's making with the Gyllenhaal caricature. No one said the Mad guys were subtle. Funny, yes. Subtle, no.

And then there's this guy:

3.) Craig Thompson's blog. As anyone who's read Thompson's excellent "Blankets" knows, Thompson has a very unique, very clean style that manages to cut right through all the tricks of technique and style to get to the heart of whatever emotion he's trying to convey. Thompson hasn't put anything out since "Blankets" that comes close in size or scope or ambition (just a couple of his travel journals filled with coffee-shop sketches excellent enough to give any artist sketchbook-envy), but if you're interested to see what he's been up to, and a good sampling of his post-"Blankets" artwork, his blog's a good place to go.

Anyway. I should go and draw something.

A Link to A Big Teaser Becomes a Rambling Diatribe Against the Writerly Impulse to Overexplain

On the campaign trail of late, Obama's been telling crowds "we're the one's we've been waiting for." That's a great phrase, inspiring and all of that. But also, as it turns out, totally wrong.

Here's the one I've been waiting for.

The montage of the previous movies in this teaser didn't do anything for me, but the footage of the new film makes "Crystal Skull" look like, at the very least, a good time at the movies. Harrison seems to wear his 60's well, Shia doesn't annoy me right off the bat, and the action looks suitably Indiana-Jonesy.

I do worry, though, that this movie is going to try and tie together the other three movies in a deeply stupid and unnecessary way, and from what I've gleaned in these months of pre-production, I think they might be.

When a franchise goes on for more than a few movies, the temptation is always there to explain itself. Look at the Hannibal movies. The fourth movie takes us into Hannibal's childhood to explain why Hannibal eats people. No one was clamoring for that answer. Take, for another example, "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen." I know it's a comic book, but it's a good example of this bad impulse in otherwise good writers. In the first few installments of "League", we follow a bunch of 19th-century literary characters as they fight baddies who threaten Victorian England. However, when we get to the most recent "League", titled "Black Dossier," Alan Moore decides that no reader can possibly tolerate not knowing for even one more "League" story how a bunch of totally fictional characters can jump outside the books from whence they came and be actors in the real (although still fictional) world. So instead of non-stop comics fun, we get a long and needlessly obscure explanation of some inter-dimensional Valhalla (rendered in pages which require the wearing of 3-D glasses) in which all things and all people and all characters live together in harmony. So my point is this: if Lucas and Spielberg and whomever else decide to tie the mythos of the three Indiana Jones-film artifacts together so as to tie them to a neat macro-mythos, then I worry they'll be doing a lot of hard work for no good reason, and will be misallocating resources away from just making another entertaining Indiana Jones movie. I know that's a lot to infer from a teaser and some early promotional tidbits I've seen on movie gossip sites, but it's all I have to go on. So we'll just have to see this summer.

Anyway. If anyone can pull off goofy over-explanation and needless tying-together, it's Little Stevie Spielberg.

Anyway. Happy Valentine's Day, y'all.

"Pineapple Express" Slams into the Internet

Thanks to everyone for their happy birthday wishes. I did indeed turn 31 on Monday, the 11th. I am now officially in my 30s. Yeah I know, I was 30 for a whole year, but thirty itself is kind of a novelty. Not so with 31. Thirty-one is deadly serious. But anyway, I did have a very nice birthday, and thanks for asking. You guys are great.

On Wednesday of last week, friend (and blog reader!) Peter Fedak, accompanied by his lovely wife Daniele, flew south from the wilds of suburban D.C. to visit my wife and I here in Marietta. Fun was had. Though we didn't get to spend a whole lot of time with Daniele -- she was the Matron of Honor at her friend's wedding, after all, and had to attend to her matronly duties -- we got a lot of time to hang out with (sigh) Peter. In addition to playing LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga all the way through the "Attack of the Clones" section, we toured many of Marietta's big box outlets in search of video games and, later, video projectors. Actually pretty fun. Anyway, it was great seeing them.

Anyway, the reason I'm posting today is because a good friend emailed me a link to a leaked NSFW R-rated trailer for David Green's "Pineapple Express" this morning, and I just had to post that goodness up on the blog. The trailer's great all by itself, but the movie looks like something really different and good. I don't know too much about "Express", but I'm definitely interested in seeing it this August. And by the way, the song they use in the trailer, M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes", is damn catchy. I downloaded it the second I finished watching the trailer and I've been listening to it all day. Anyway, check out the trailer.