Exceptional Men, and Varying Realisms

 

Both the recently released Jobs, about Apple's co-founder and domineering personality, and Tim Burton's Big Fish look at the life of exceptional men. While the biopic purports to be a straight-forward recounting of the rise, and the fall, and subsequent resurrection, of one of the 'visionaries' of our time, Burton's tall-tell interweaves fact and fiction, pushing us to unravel the difference between the two and what our feelings about the proper place of each tells us about ourselves and the world around us. Perhaps because Jobs has a higher bar of reality to surmount before we can deem it satisfactory, the direct approach actually imbues us with less a sense of the world than Burton's novel adaptation. While Big Fish asks us to think about ourselves, Jobs requests that we praise the another's ability.

How can a fictive account strike us as more truly resonant? Surely this is largely an assignment of the observer. Nevertheless, there seems to be more good and true in Burton's work - this is not to suggest that it is a triumph. Surprisingly, Kutcher excels in the role of Jobs, but he is left little to excel towards. The film felt like an Apple vanity project through-and-through. Big Fish nestles into a world where both myth and reality are interwoven. In doing so it creates a world that we can feel, that lives and breathes. Rather than demand our fealty, it excites our wonder. Such is an accomplishment too often overlooked.

The Geopolitical Implications of Armageddon-Inducing Reptiles

The existence of a fire-breathing, ill-tempered dragon suggests the creation of one geopolitical pole. Perhaps the inhabitants of Middle-Earth are simply inured to the existence of fantastical, and violent, creatures.  Yet, it seems that the existence of a super-predator would demand a new political calculus, both within and between societies. The cultural evolution of any group negotiating common space with a dragon suggests the transformation of a society. Surely we can imagine powers within the world so imposing that all aspects of a people would be touched.

This may resemble a certain type of defeatism, yet it is difficult to imagine a social sphere which would willingly antagonize a sleeping dragon. When Thorin and his band arrive in Lake-town, and subsequently announce their intentions to both awaken and slay Smaug the Terrible, surely a debate is in order about rousing this beast. Shut-up in a mountain, quietly sleeping, seems the perfect place for a dragon. The well-worn argument, this evil must be dealt with, while a certainly heroic trope, doesn't address the implications for others. If people are living under a repressive regime it is one thing to loosen their shackles. However, awakening the threat of annihilation while it peacefully sleeps, is another thing entirely. One type of politics can address living life in the shadow of a terrible, but contained, nearby power. Yet awakening that power would forcibly transform all social frameworks. I imagine that the presence of dragons would be cause for a re-calculation of economic and political focuses and power structures. The inclusion of such super-predators always seems to ignore their novel and transformative impacts manifest in how people interact with the world. Rather than a vast opposition, perhaps it would be better to say that the existence of such terrible power would haunt the very words and deeds of men and women in everything they did - at least in comparison to a non-dragon world. If evolution is the co-production of things with their environment, then people co-existing with dragons must become so culturally dissimilar that, over time, we would not recognize their kinship with us. Can we imagine powers so awesome that everything is significantly different in relationship to them? How would this foster novel creations?

Birth of the Modern

That a story which takes place in New York City can feel parochial is, perhaps, an achievement of note. Beyond the nativist versus immigrant violence which mainly characterizes Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York, a violence that is, at turns, political, sexual, spatial, economic, and, mostly, physical, are the currents of history which frame the characters and the story. The influx of the immigration - particularly from Ireland in the wake of the Great Famine - to the United States would, by sheer force of numbers alter the political balance of power. Changing relationships of fealty to familial, religious, ethnic, community, state and national institutions and ideologies would demand a re-organization and re-constitution of a man's, and a society's, overlapping structures of power. The growth and centralization of the political aspect - herein the birth of Tammany Hall - through box-stuffing, the buying of influence, and recognition of differing power-bases, all of these, we might suppose, would eventuate grasps at influence and authority, cause no small bit of hope amongst some and consternation for others. Yes, a political reading (power) to be sure, but Gangs of New York, while it supposes to be about freedom, and America, and inequality, and honor, and other assortments of specifically Americanized, masculine tropes, ends as a statement about how power will be exercised in a society suffering her birthing pangs.

I say parochial because all the machinations and concerns of the rival gangs of the Five Points eventually pale in comparison to the awe-inspiring destructive ability of the Union government. Let these thugs debate the extent to which they will allow pistols in their inconsequential street skirmishes. Make no mistake, if the Union feels threatened it will not hesitate to turn heavy artillery onto the City of New York. Indiscriminately taking the wicked with the innocent, this mechanized government will not allow the quarrels or complaints of such marginal power brokers to interrupt the assertion of one country suffering mortal combat for an even greater cause. The force of violence and the power of persuasion eventually rest in the hands of a government and its new-found ability to conscript its citizens (this is not an attempt to assess the historical accuracy of the work). Herein lies the parochial problem. There is never any sense until the film's climax that the broader effects of the war or a changing society are impacting the concerns of these gangs. In the isolated enclaves, they seem to be at-turns engaged in battle and uneasy truce with one another, separate from the broader city, state or country. While the force of law may seem almost non-existent (sorry John C. Reilly), it will strike back with a vengeance terrible to behold. Are we left to believe, as Bill and Vallon battle it out, that they remain unconcerned with, or unaware of the changes of, and consequences that come with living in, a society around them? There's is but a footnote in the broader tale of America's birth into a modern, mechanized age. Concerns over immigration versus nativists, the rights of whites and blacks, Tammany Hall versus neighborhood independence, draft riots versus law and order, all feel as though they pale at the hands of coming mechanisms and control by a domineering government. The flows of time move around the Five Points and the gangs. In Scorsese's work the characters seem untouched, until they are. Thus, their story cannot help but feel marginalized. While it may seem that history frames the conflict and feud, as we step back, and become displaced from perspective of the tale, we rather become aware that this story inhabits one small corner of a broader picture. The manner of the sudden displacement, however, draws our gaze away from this single stroke, and we wonder had this moment been different would it have changed the broader work at all? To what end these efforts?

On Beginnings

The messiness of beginnings always arouses feelings of uncertainty. D. Graham Burnett calls this uncertainty a messy and startling hubbub. Michel Serres speaks of headwaters; the birth of flows which resemble noise. James Joyce, perhaps most famously, recounted his birth and continual (re?)-creation. We are given many opportunities to fill space, or step-aside; the sum of these decisions results in the creation of time.

The Rum Diaries examines the creation of Paul Kemp. An adaptation of a similarly-named novel by Hunter S. Thompson, we wonder to what extent this is a a recounting versus a fictionalization of the Good Doctor's younger years. But if we have learned anything from Thompson (and Jann Wenner hopes we have) it is that the truth is an arrival of the reporter and the reader; an emergent creation of spirit and event. If "turbulence is an intermediate state between redundant order and pure chaos" (Serres 1995), then life is lived amongst turbulence. We create ourselves and the world between the known, which helps to guide us, and the unknown, which we pursue into the distance. In other words: the creation of time.

Movie Stars in Space!

Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity sets the familiar faces of Sandra Bullock and George Clooney adrift above the Earth. Wheeling freely around the shuttle Explorer, our own minds take flight with them. What would it be like to feel the effects of weightlessness, to at once glance across the Sahara and contemplate the ice-caps? Space. Into the reaches of dreams.

Such dreamy-eyed reflections are necessary because Cuaron too relies upon them to hook us in. Feeling the kinship of common humanity within the barren vacuum: like those courageous astronauts, we too are looking for purchase, something to grab a hold of. But of course, it all goes terribly wrong.

Alone. Stranded. Beyond all vestiges of hope. Death closing in fast.

That grim friend has already smiled upon too many. A survivor's pangs demands a body count. But why this woman? That's the crux really. Woe to he who could not identify with his fellow man - even in a vacuum. Nevertheless: what about Sandra Bullock demands our fealty? So we summon our common humanity to invest in survival - so what?

When Tom Hanks was lost at sea on Christmas Eve in Cast Away he was able to, over an hour, draw us into the vivid world of one. With Sandra Bullock racing against the clock (and the oxygen, and the fire and Russian space debris) we too are scarcely left with time to breathe - maybe that's the point. Nevertheless we are left with what often feels like simply being chased by a rolling boulder. Woman desperately trying to escape, and survive, circumstance. The fierce urgency of circumstance.

Yet the thread is lost at the precise moment common humanity takes over. No, that's wrong. It is revealed that the thread was never achieved. Are there angels in our midst? Dense apparitions? Light-headedness? What is drawn to save lonely man? It could simply remain unclear. Worse: it is realized as uninteresting. That is a vexation which creates distance. In the paradoxical claustrophobia of space the one thing that cannot be abided is such distance.

Beautiful, certainly. A woven tapestry hung in front of us.

If we are not all astronauts, what then, is a movie star in space?

Bad Timing and Love in New York

A small story about us all. Even if we don't display our neurosis as publicly as Woody Allen, its hard to deny that they are all in there. Are his own, any more or less than ours, keeping him from being happy? Do we each, at turns, undermine the possibility of our own happiness? Even if any match between two people is little more or less than an arrangement between colliding deranged personas, this need not marginalize the importance of the loves we share.

Sometimes it works out. Mostly it doesn't. And, really, romances that work are rarely funny, or interesting. Its a take on Tolstoy: all happy relationships are the same; every unhappy relationship is unhappy in its own way. It is the failure that makes them most interesting. But, sometimes, the failure is not of our doing. What if, truly, the time just wasn't right? Allen's Manhattan is mostly about relationships doomed by the intricate failures of time. One of you is married; or both. Someone is too old; or too young. You're going away and I'm right here. It may not be particularly romantic, and certainly undermines any notion of "soul mates," but relationships are also about making our lives fit together at the right time. What if we were always, just, missing the right time to find love?

"Everything ends badly - otherwise it wouldn't end."

So wise, Young Tom Cruise. So... so wise.

He is right, you know. And Cocktail is no exception. It ends badly: with Young Tom Cruise reciting crap, pub-poetry on a bar that he owns. Of course, the journey isn't much better. I was certain Young Cruise would be proven-wrong: that any ending would be a cause for celebration. A celebration we get, but it is on-screen, and I realize Young Cruise has stolen my long-expected moment of triumph. Though I am happy the ending has come, it still ends badly.

Damn you, Young Tom Cruise, damn you.

So.... let me get this straight: this would-be captain of industry (self-appointed) is precluded from proving his mettle by a society seemingly structured against his dreams, decides to become a vice-merchant, never stops lamenting his unrealized desire for monetary success, and finds a measure of happiness in his defeat and shotgun wedding? Supposedly he learns something about happiness when he finds Flanagan dead in his yacht (spoiler!). Tearing up $10,000 checks on his way to the middle.

How dated this pursuit of cynical success feels to the larger cultural milieu. We can almost see the last vestiges of Reaganomics gasping for air on the Manhattan sidewalk. Maybe Young Cruise feels the shallowness, but specifically by allowing him to seemingly succeed - when, in fact his dreams have come to naught - without exploring the ramifications of why he is so driven, or what it is that blocks his success, the film does little more than paint a thin veneer of wisdom gained upon the crushing of one's dreams in a society constructed to ensure that upward mobility is largely an illusion.

Who needs a drink?

"The War is Over; Rock Stars Have a lot of Feelings"

If Philip Seymour Hoffman is right (and, it seems, he often is), then the rock and roll war ended before '72 and there was nothing compelling, novel, or challenging left to do. When the outsiders become a larger part of the so-called "big, bad corporate tastelessness," when the central ethos of protest of an entire art form ceases to be its motivating spirit, then everything changes. It must. Was Mark Perry (later) correct: did punk die when The Clash signed with CBS?

And now its about cool. Or so Almost Famous  would dwell on. And that is what struggling rock bands (Stillwater) focus on. Controlling image in a media savvy world that they have not really begun to understand. This leads to, as might be inevitable of comfortable twenty-somethings, a lot of feelings. Yes, just like anything else in demand people will try to own what you have created. Tough. While it is nice to imagine that everyone leaves the tale more self-aware, what is the compelling reason why this type of story need be told? Ignored is how music continues to evolve and remains important, both to the creators and receivers.

For a movie ostensibly about rock music, people and rock remain highly foreign to one another. Beyond the assured nostalgia of a certain generation, there is surprisingly a lot of music over-dubbed, but little about why the music matters. Notions of "family" and "home" could be found in any other, attempted, counter-culture movement of young people. Why should we care about this, specific, movement? What relevance did it carry at the time? What does it carry still? Why did rock and roll continue to matter? What we have is comfortable people exploring a largely safe medium in which the accepted logic of retrospection is secure. David Bowie is hustled through a room of die-hard rock fans of different stripes and no one attempts to pontificate upon a distaste for Bowie? Really? Was the logic of taste and time so agreed upon in the moment?

Seymour Hoffman was only half-right. The first iteration of the rock war may have recessed from the mainstream, but artists continued to feel stifled by the limitations of the medium - and pushed it to new places. The music continued to speak to people because of the fierce urgency of the moment; this must breed dissension, or cease to speak meaningfully. The Clash and the Sex Pistols; Run DMC and N.W.A.; Nirvana and Pearl Jam; in essence, the song remains the same. Innovation continued to be explored; and innovation must always be at least partially uncomfortable.

How do music and personality integrate to form some semblance of a coherent life? How do people find meaning in someones else's art? What can this tell us about ourselves and the world we inhabit? I wonder.

Beyond Here Lies Nothin'

Jonathan Franzen writes of freedom, in his work of the same name. The question, seemingly, is how we are to make sense of ourselves in modern society. The great triumph of the liberal, democratic ideal, is that people should be free (within quite broad parameters) to create the world as they see fit. Unmoored from any sense of binding responsibility - save taxes - any non-legal morality is entirely of our creation. When social pressure is no longer adequate to keeping us in-line, how do we balance our actions?

Lost in Translation, in setting Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson adrift in Tokyo, makes all of these points eloquently, if not a touch heavy-handedly. With nothing else familiar except a like-minded stranger, is it any wonder that they become each-other's only grounding certainty? Which of us hasn't felt the world, and our lives, spinning out of control around us? Sometimes the only anchor-point will be a similarly confused, scared partner; when everything is foreign, even the smallest of common ground might bind us to each other. When everything else drops away, we can still have each other. Irresponsible? Selfish? Perhaps. But, at times, someone else may become our whole world. It is part of the vast panoply of human experience. The horizon disappears entirely and time and being is composed of this one relationship; this here and now. If we are unmoored, then we can likewise recreate our lives at any second. Before this: the past. Beyond here, lies nothing.

Iron Man in Apparent 3D!

Yes, that’s right, I said “apparent 3D”. I hear you asking yourself: “Did he watch this movie in 3D?” And the answer is no. A resounding, childishly enthusiastic NO! Well, sort of…

I have seen exactly one “3D” movie in my entire life. It was one of the Transformers movies (I forget which one), and I found watching the movie in question in 3D to be a decidedly underwhelming experience. Part of the reason for this was probably that it was not the first of the Transformers movies, and it was, thus, a second-rate film. There was, however, another contributing factor to the low level of enjoyment I experienced while watching this movie: I got ripped off!

Like McCoy, I don’t like to pay to watch movies. Well, that’s not entirely true, I don’t mind paying to watch a movie, as long as I do not have to pay the full price—what am I, made of money!? Considering that I had paid full price and then some (an extra R20 or R30) to watch this movie “in 3D”, I was expecting great things. As I walked into the cinema I thought: “This is going to be great! This new technology is bound to greatly enhance my movie-going experience! People have told me that it seems like the animals/monsters/cars are really coming right at you and you’ll be ducking and diving for cover! By golly, I’m excited!”

I was expecting a fundamentally different movie experience, and I was thoroughly disappointed. What I had failed to grasp before watching that movie “in 3D” (i.e. three dimensions) was that every non-animated movie that I had ever watched prior to that was shot in three dimensions, and I therefore perceived the characters to be moving in a three-dimensional space. Thanks to the miracle of film (and the phenomena known as the depth of field and prespective) and my complex human brain, I had in fact watched these movies “in 3D”. Sure, the film executives probably didn’t see it that way, but I would argue strongly against them. Not once, in all my years of watching films, have I watched as a tiny out-of-focus car (in the background) approaches a large in-focus person (in the foreground) in the two dimensions of the screen and thought, “Oh no! That car is about to crash into that person!”

And therein lies the crux of my argument. I don’t need a silly pair of glasses and a film shot and projected “in 3D” in order to see that chain of events occurring in three dimensions. And I am therefore not willing to pay exorbitant amounts of money to get these things. In my opinion, the “3D” movie is a Hollywood gimic which has been devised to increase profits, without actually providing an enhanced experience for the movie-goer.

The only thing that is worse than paying a large amount of money to go and see a movie in 3D, is paying that amount of money to go and see a movie that you’ve already seen, in 3D! It annoys me that Hollywood directors are recycling plots left, right and centre, and expecting us to pay to see depictions of the same stories over again. What really grinds my gears is that they are now not even bothering to make new movies (and by this I mean at least doing an original take on what might be an old story), but simply digitally “enhancing” these movies and then re-releasing them “in 3D” and expecting us, the moviegoers, to pay more to see them than we did the first time! It’s ridiculous!

And that is why I did not see Iron Man 3 “in 3D”. To this day, I am happy that I made that decision, because I am of the opinion that my movie-going experience would not have been enhanced in any meaningful way had I gone for the “3D” option.

Also, I agree with McCoy—Iron Man 3 was most enjoyable. I got the sense that those who made the movie knew exactly what they were going for. They didn’t try too hard, and they put together an action-adventure film with some great characters, some great one-liners and plenty of big explosions.

"Bullshit Walter!!!"

A Western in the greatest sense, the Coen Brothers The Big Lebowski nestles us nicely into the ethos of the American West and explores the ramifications of living in George Bush's (41) America. The cold war has ended, our global terrors have loosened; the sixties is long over and idealism is for the weak. Gorbachev did indeed "tear down this wall," so to speak. This is Ronald Reagan's American; RICHARD NIXON'S AMERICA!!! Los Angeles style. (These were California men after all.) Pornography? Drinking during the day? Recreational drug use? The occasional acid flash-back? Sure. Why not? This is freedom after all. Death to all those who would whimper and cry. War with Iraq? It's nothing. Pure, unadulterated realism. Dreams: failure. Our better angels have crashed and burned. What are we left with? Bowling?

Well, yeah. Sort of. If Sam Elliot is right, and The Dude is the man for his time and place - a characterization made possible by contingent circumstances, bred by environment, successful inasmch as evolution decrees existence to be a victory of sorts; a great arrival of all that is real Los Angeles - then what other conclusion would we draw. The Dude is a hero, the man for his time and place (again); he fits right in there. Does that mean woe to the American Dream; the idealizations of Manifest Destiny? Is this to be the new paragon of western masculinity? Of course it is.

This is the freedom we fought so hard for. The freedom we wanted. To be loosed of societal and larger concerns and responsibilities. To chart our own course. To create our own identities. Call The Dude lazy; call him a freeloader. A free society will always suffer from free-riders; parasites.

We love The Dude for all that he is - a freak. God bless the freaks, as they say. This is not meant in some sort of carnival barker, old weird traveling sideshow, sort of way. The Dude is specifically not like us; maybe not like anyone we have ever met. He stands in opposition to "the square-community," that everything tells us we are supposed to prize. Woe to the world if everyone listened to whale sounds during a candle-lit bath alone. But he alone who perseveres in the face of the certain spiritual devastation facing us all: that's a good job by him. Viewed in light of our broader, self-imposed roles and rules themselves: this is The Dude.

Maybe he speaks to the less ambitious aspects of our unexplored longings. Surely we might each dream of great things: fame and renown. But can't we not, as well, dream of a small apartment, slippers and robe, nights at our super's experimental theater performances? Where our greatest desires and encumbrances can be spoken of as we also are addressing ten pins, a narrow lane and a ball? Only in our weaker moments? Why? Who says so? This is freedom. We are free to create reality as we see fit. Everything is possible. What do we choose?

We can call him hero; only as we remember that it is contrast to our own deadness.

If indeed, The Dude abides. Then I, too, am left with a measure of comfort in that.

"I Know I Haven't Been At My Best This Past Decade"

A few years ago, I read a biography of Daniel Boone by Robert Morgan (succinctly entitled Boone: A Biography). Knowing, basically, nothing about Boone before-hand, it was alright. (I am pretty sure it inspired a pretty good June Carter Cash song, "The Road to Kaintuck," though haven't attempted to corroborate that with any evidence.) What stuck with me about the work was Morgan's thesis that (great?) men have, roughly, a decade in their lives which is pivotal. If they are prepared properly, and a little lucky, this decade is their best. Everything beforehand prepares them for this, while afterwards their life is largely dealing with the consequences, and, inevitably, a bit of a let down. To whit: Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

Zissou is clearly a man past his prime. That he is portrayed by Bill Murray may have seen, at the time, to be a bit of a harsh judgment on Murray - though the past decade has certainly been a renaissance for him. We can read in Zissou/Murray, a man trying to make sense of the notion that while he is still the same, it no longer seems good enough. Of course begging the question: was it ever? Among other ideas, The Life Aquatic wonders what happens after the curtain falls. If, as Morgan suggests, we all have our big performance, how do we make sense of what comes after? Or, as Jack Black asks in High Fidelity:

"Is it wrong to criticize a once-great artist for his latter day sins? Is it better to burn out, or to slowly fade away."

I think he is quoting Patton.

How do each of us find peace when our motivations are outlasted? How do we continually become in a manner suited to our world?

Maybe I AM willing to pay for movies...

... just not that one.

You know how, a few years ago, you'd be watching a movie you'd acquired through completely legal means? The picture would be kind of pixel-y, the sound fluctuated from ear-splitting when anything blew up to inaudible during dialogue, you could see the shadows of people on the screen, frames were missing or repeated, and the experience, overall, was just kind of shit?

But you didn't mind; you hadn't paid any money to watch that movie, because of the absolutely legitimate way that you'd got hold of it, so you had no right to complain.

Well, today I had that experience. But I DID mind this time, because I'd paid actual money for it, and I was in an actual cinema.

We watched Epic today at the "cinema" in Welkom. I wouldn't recommend it.

That's all.

"Don't Let the Fuckers Get You Down"

Ahhh.... Youth!

As a friend of mine would say in our more reprehensible, unabashedly glorious moments gone-by. The energy and the enthusiasms of the (predominantly male, white) beliefs, efforts and disenchantments of the young american. The crackling, uncertain energy. The fierce desire and passionate longing - all-too-often manifest in form of self-tacking, wayward compassing, drifting hither and yon - that in a confessional sense resonate, at once tired and explosively novel, with each generation of the misunderstood; always in their own eyes. More contemporary shallowness than the unceasing voice of the dismissed longing of the voiceless? Unquestionably. Absolute freedom from responsibility turns only selfishly inward, as, I think, Jonathan Franzen writes. Resonance endures.

"Don't let the fuckers get you down!" Viggo Mortenson (Burroughs?) declares. And he is right. A worthy creed to be certain. The sparkling, the crackling energy of the film On the Road feels like Kerouac. Ginsberg too, perhaps. Energy, excitement, youthful enthusiasm: all worthy of celebration. The outcomes? The expenses to be paid for indiscretion? Surely just as necessary for their inclusion. Where does the end bring us after the night? This too is non-trivial. Journeys inward also are held accountable for the morning after.

Truthfully it could be argued that the message of Kerouac is only for the elite, for the comfortable. Selfish journeys of attempted disconnection from comfort. A particularly cynical interpretation for anyone's longings - nonetheless worthy of reflection. Yet such disparagings do not marginalize the reality of experience. Longings are felt across the spectrum of humanity, the reality of each is accountable only to the pilgrim along the way. Such a message speaks in contradiction. So, too, do our journeys.

"From Here On In I Rag Nobody"

Bang the Drum Slowly is a tale that grows in the telling. Much as the New York Mammoths become more invested in each other and come together around a common, albeit heart-breaking common experience, we too are drawn in to the world of Bruce, Henry and the team. From TEGWAR to Dutch's hot-tub visits, perhaps baseball, and the common experience of team, is best understood as a nexus of relationships - an ensemble of differences that is forced to constantly invent something new. An exercise in rhetoric.

The question I walked away with surrounds the combined experience of the dead march, as "The Streets of Laredo" or "The Cowboy's Lament" would put it, and that which brings men together. Do we think more (or less) of a group of men who gather around a teammate/friend/acquaintance only once his days are numbered? Through what prism do we view the subtle tragedy of the smile on Bruce's face? Do we see a man invested in his last days, fully free? Or, do we see only the young cowboy, desperately hoping to have is story told? The joy in camaraderie that he feels is evident - and saddening. That we know it cannot last; that such joy is finally felt - a pinnacle of effort in life's strivings - creates tragedy. Yet Bruce's smile is too an arrival; an event of co-creation. His final days, his enduring joy, could never have become without the composition of each man. Henry may defend Bruce and work to ensure the peace and strength of his last journey, but he cannot do it alone. Bruce's last days emerge from the better angels of those around him.

If we are to look for the core of Bang the Drum Slowly, it, too is an event of arrival. The core of the film is the passage between individuals; how we can, and do, co-create the world. The whole transcends the pieces, in the film, and life.

Thanks, Chief

All The President's Men: a moment:

“Once when I was reporting, Lyndon Johnson’s top guy gave me the word they were looking for a successor to J. Edgar Hoover. I wrote it and the day it appeared Johnson called a press conference and appointed Hoover head of the FBI for life. And when he was done, he turned to his top guy and the President said, ‘Call Ben Bradlee and tell him ‘fuck you.” 

The Man, himself.

Worshipping at the Altar of Disposable Income

There is a moment, toward the end of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, in which Jay stands outside of Daisy’s window, watching. Myrtle is dead – killed on the road by the very woman she conspires in cuckolding. Daisy and Tom have retreated inside, never to really emerge again. At least, not for Gatsby. Nick departs, Gatsby remains, watching, Fitzgerald tells us, over nothing.

It is no fantastic insight to offer the following: Baz Luhrmann is simply not the calibre of artist that F. Scott Fitzgerald was. Shock! Horror! Blasphemer! Alas, it’s true. And in the balance, his Gatsby suffers most by comparison. Luhrmann is simply not equal to the task of the nuance, the quiet moments in-between the raucous frivolity that make up the soul of The Great Gatsby. In the filling station, as Tom talks down Wilson, even the quiet moment of two desperate men feels like a crazy and confused wheeling, beyond normalcy and control. A riotous party of emotions. The lights shine, to illuminate, nothing.

These quieter, though more passionate, dear, and heart-breaking moments transcend the age within which the story unfolds. Risk and reward, life and death, the illusions we are held by, our inability to transcend ourselves – any story dealing with such recurrent tragedies of the human situation, and the human spirit, ring as contemporary and of immediate necessity. (A contradiction to what I have said: how different is our own time if the relationship between wealth and profligacy does not seem so foreign?) Luhrmann’s Gatsby beats us over the head with certain, simplified points. Yes, Leo, we understand, you think the past is repeatable. The film has selected certain aspects of Fitzgerald’s broader landscape and thrust them upon us. No nuance here. Yet, divorced from the wider pastiche, what remains is flat. Soulless. No, better said, of a different soul entirely. One less variegated and nuanced. Listen to me, the film seems to cry out. In its insistence that we understand, it dooms itself. Fitzgerald’s is a small story about us all. Luhrmann’s is a grand tale of no one.

Val Kilmer's Pony-tail: A Not So Subtle Inversion

There was some vague assertion that Heat was supposed to be a pretty good movie. I suppose it was. Is it wrong that I think that everything it did was done more successfully by The Departed? (I know, I know, The Departed is an America remake of Infernal Affairs.) You’re right, Michael Mann, sometimes the lives of good and bad are not that simple. Sometimes we are forced into dubious positions. Point taken.

Hermes Does Not Know My Friend.

Hermes, is not Pontius Pilate.

Ostensibly, he, therefore, does not know Pilate's friend, Biggus Dickus.


Nevertheless, Jason and the Argonauts is entirely enjoyable.

What Manner of God Could This Be?

The Ark of the Covenant is meant to represent the manifestation of the Lord’s own fealty to his people, Israel. In essence it is a sign that the great Destroyer, ruler of the desert, recognizes the special place of the Jews within creation and has come to dwell with them. So the Hebrews built the Temple of Solomon to house the Ark, thus providing an embodied, literal, sanctuary for their expressed relationship to God.

Turns out, as that great piece of history Raiders of the Lost Ark tells us, history and the (literal and figurative) sands of time, intervene. The Temple of Solomon was sacked, subsequently destroyed, and the Ark of the Covenant was lost. This much history – biblical or Spielburgian – seems to agree upon. That the Ark would be pursued requires no fanciful invention. Thus, it is really only the smallest flight of fancy to suppose a world (even if it is in an already past time) in which said Ark might be found. After many hijinks, brawls, chase-scenes, and devil-may-care, ruggedly handsome camera shots of Harrison Ford, this is exactly what happens. With the help of Karen Allen (whose attractiveness remains undiminished by the intervening years) snakes are avoided, death is cheated and traps are sprung, only to see our heroes shackled helplessly as the Nazis unleash what is certain to be a weapon of ultimate power.

As becomes face-meltingly obvious to the Furher’s henchmen, things don’t turn out so well. Han Solo and Katie (Animal House) escape back to Washington D.C. and, in what appears to be another sign of strange US military intelligence decision making, the Ark is put into storage with a bunch of other boxes (signifying what, exactly? That the US intelligence community has a vast store of divine weapons that it simply couldn’t be bothered to do anything with except properly catalog?).

The question thus posed: what sort of God is this? The evidence stands as such: the Lord is finally tamed to a relationship with Israel. He thus creates a symbol of their union that is so terrible to behold, simply looking upon it leads to an unspeakable death (perhaps worse). The wrath of Jehovah, at least to those not represented in his covenant, defies description. And yet, this same deity allows for his only manifestation on Earth to be buried for ages, uncovered only in a sort-of academic pissing contest, marched through the desert, only to be opened to wreak havoc upon those who gaze upon it. With these seeming unworthies out of the way, it is easily transported to some government storage crypt, where it will most likely be opened by some poor government functionary in years to come. The Lord is apparently unspeakably powerful and terrible, yet, plays no part in securing, moving, influencing, or dealing with his manifestation on Earth. He is at once destructive beyond comprehension and absent beyond question.  Is this the “small, soft voice” or the pillar of fire? If, as has been argued, he is both, then what a strange way to make decisions. What sort of priorities does this Lord/God have? What if his seeming absence is only meant to challenge the faithful? Are those who seek His manifestation thus rewarded with their own assured destruction? Is He suggesting that to seek him in this world is folly? Or, that to seek beyond the everyday for him brings a curse? Once again, oh Lord, your ways are mysterious. Such apparent contradiction seems to demand that we accept your presence/absence unquestionably; that you demand nothing less than fealty. So why does the adventurer and medium by which your manifestation is uncovered get the girl? 

SWEET LORD: John Wayne is enormous!

Add it to the litany of standard cultural tropes that I somehow missed out on: John Wayne is huge! Obviously The Duke casts a broad shadow across film history. But that is hardly what I mean. Now, I am not an expert on floor design and foundation planning on the Texas frontier, but unless there is a detailed historical record explaining how farmhouses maintained drastically tiered floors, then Wayne absolutely towers over other cast members. Some light research indicates that Wayne's stature played no small part (get it?) in his role as an American icon of masculinity. Huh. So there's that.

That being said, this is not the place to discuss the problematic nature of traditional models of masculinity, of which Wayne may have been the pinnacle, and its potentially pernicious effect on estimations of the self-worth of the American male in an increasingly depersonalized, industrialized, fluorescently-lit, perhaps even effete, modern society. I am sure that has all been done. We are nothing if not original.

It just so happens that I recently read a history that John Ford's The Searchers was at least partially based upon. The raids of the Comanche on the Texas frontier were legendary for their pugnacity and brutality. No embellishment is required to convey the terror with which the horse tribes kept settlers and soldiers along the edges of Llano Estacado. Likewise, the tales told upon the return of those few who were taken captive and survived gained permanent place within American cultural mythology. Foremost among these was the life of Cynthia Ann Parker, who would be sought-for by her uncle for some 24 years. The rub, perhaps hardly fit for Hollywood, is that Parker's eventual return to 'society' was marked with a deep unhappiness for the rest of her life. She had lived longer in the highlands of Comancheria than with the, long-since massacred, Parkers. Cynthia Ann, or Nadua, felt a deep and abiding kinship to her adopted Comanche family. She had married, had children (her son Quanah was to become a, perhaps the final, great chief of the Noconis band) and lived within a close-knit community that welcomed her as one of their own. Knowing this history, though the film departs greatly from its actuality, deepens what is already an exceedingly rich accomplishment.

Upon my first viewing I will simply say that the film does much, and seems to do it all very well. While John Wayne's character may seem like another case of the (formative) traditional masculine paradigm come to life on the silver screen, in truth he suggests a personage that is much deeper. For as black and white as the politics and ethos at work appear, the film does much with a studied subtlety that, upon first view, seems slightly incongruous. In its seeming celebration of a certain type of heroism, history and politics, The Searchers works suitably as a celebration of American mythos. But, if you will allow it space, the quieter moments reveal that much else is at work, that motivations and actions are rarely so simple. Relationships between enemies are as complex and fraught as those among loved-ones. How we make sense of our own responsibilities, towards ourselves and others, is rarely, if ever settled. The strength of Wayne, and the movie, is that it allows us to make much or little of the story. We will find only what we seek for.

Upon my first viewing I cannot hope to convey all there is on-hand. Thus, I will watch it again. 

Iron Man 3 - not bad, and that's good enough for me

I'm afraid that if you've started reading this review expecting something as well-thought out, erudite and historically-aware as some of the other posts on this Blog Fantastic, then you are going to be sorely disappointed.

In much the same way, if you start watching Iron Man 3 expecting it to be much more than lots of explosions, snappy one-liners and more explosions, then you are going to be... well, not sorely disappointed, because explosions and one-liners are AWESOME. But you won't get what you expected, if you weren't expecting explosions and jokes.

Perhaps not an earth-shattering conclusion, that, but I'm new at this movie reviewing malarkey. Once I've got a few under my belt I'm sure I'll develop a style or formula, much like Skyd has when they review products.

Rest assured, however, that I will not be asking whether any movies I review are a hat. Unless I'm pursuing some sort of elaborate metaphor.

So, Iron Man 3. Is it a bad movie, like Olympus Has Fallen? No, and not only because no one was stabbed in the brain. Iron Man 3 lacks Olympus' bevy of plot holes and stupidities (apart from the villain's motivation to destroy seeming to stem, primarily, from a dislike of the hero after a relatively minor slight way, way back in the past when the villain looked a lot uglier but RDJ was as attractive as ever).

Is it a good movie, then? Not really. There aren't any crazy twists in the plot, there are no profound messages or lessons to learn, and no characters so great, so incredible (on this blog, referred to as "Characters Fantastic"?) that you just have to know more about them.

Iron Man 3 is a superhero movie, with lots of references to other parts of the franchise; I'm sure there were many that I missed, and that people with a greater knowledge of Marvel's comics will be able to spend hours arguing over the consistencies of the various movies.

But while I enjoyed the feeling of a movie fitting in to a larger (and cohesive) whole, that's not really why I enjoyed Iron Man 3. I enjoyed it because it was fun. It didn't take itself too seriously (and try to have a profound message or lesson) so you could just relax and enjoy it. But it took itself seriously enough that it wasn't bad, and attempted to convince the viewer of nothing that a reasonable suspension of disbelief wouldn't allow.

Maybe that is the easy way out when making a movie: put in enough effort that it's not crap, but not so much that people will think you were trying hard, and therefore hold you to more stringent requirements. Maybe we should be asking more of the film industry as discerning consumers of their art (with AND without inverted commas).

But maybe that's good enough for me: to be able to go to the cinema, enjoy a movie and not feel like I got ripped off.

Another Mid-Nineties Jim Carrey Vehicle: Batman Forever

Merchandising. Merchandising. Merchandising. Merchandising!!!!

Confession time: I loved Batman Forever when it came out. I remember seeing it at Mann's Grandview Theatre with my best friend, James Pinkett, on opening night. The place was packed. This was to be the first Batman movie of our time - being a little too young to appreciate the import of Batman Returns. Jim Carrey was exploding on the scene, at the height of his powers,and we were enamored of his slapstick gesticulations and gyrations. The hype was everywhere, the anticipation was palpable: this was a summer movie blockbuster at its finest.

It is a certainty that I saw the film more than once. I probably could have relayed the general plot to you, even these 16 years later (assuming I probably saw it sometime after 1995). But, watching it again, what struck me most was the merchandising. Even my memory has become commercialized. Most commonly I thought: "I remember that (toy, card, McDonald's promotion)." The Batmobile and the Bat-Wing (had the latter, friend had the former). The soundtrack. The Riddler's cane (check) and at least two or three of those crappy McDonald's glasses. Visions of trading cards, action figures, video games and movie posters dance in my head. THIS was a summer movie blockbuster at its finest.

I suppose it had to be all those things, for the film begs to be forgotten. Tommy Lee Jones as the over-the-top Two-Face. Val Kilmer's smell-the-fart acting.  Nicole Kidman's undergraduate psychology - that fucking ink blot looks like a bat, I don't care what she says. Alfred's two-penny humor. And Chris O'Donnell... I am glad he is no longer a part of my life.

Yet everything is largely window-dressing for Mr. Carrey. He excels given the strictures placed on the story, the abrupt transitions and the total lack of contextualization for his mania and rise. Adjustment issues, lonely, mad scientist, hero-worship gone awry; you know the drill. But he does more with a cartoon than anyone else could. Manically prancing across the bat-cave, he is the proverbial insane super-villain in the candy-shop. When he and Two-Face set-out on an old fashion crime spree - sticking up banks and knocking over jewelry stores - his childlike sense of fun is pitch-perfect. He remains a bright spot, even if it bears little relation to the rest of the effort.

And, at its heart, Batman Forever is supposed to be fun. Clearly the product of studio group-think and pitched at a younger audience, like my ten-year-old self, we can only judge a piece of art based upon the premises under which it was conceived. In the balance this is where the third Batman installment fails the most spectacularly. Mr. Carrey aside, its a bore. Kidman's will-I or won't-I love machinations, Dick Grayson's attempts at rage and vengeance, too much glow-in-the-dark thuggish face-paint, all make Gotham and the people who inhabit it part dystopian comic fantasy, part shoddy thesis on power and madness. Everything and everybody is (at best) a two-dimensional  piece in a puzzle that doesn't fit together. It's not that the film is incoherent.  Rather, it is many different kinds of nothing.

Except a commercial. After all these years, it is still a commercial.

And now, a word on Balloon Animals; or, as I discovered, Balloon Modelling

Despicable Me  is a relatively charming, totally forgettable movie. For all intents and purposes, you have seen this movie before, and that is not necessarily a bad thing.

I fell asleep half-way into it and didn't feel at all bad about that.

But one scene led me to wonder a bit about balloon animal-making (you could say that Despicable Me is less than fully engaging).

To whit: the following is from an interview with Art "Jolly the Clown" Petri:


"One odd thing that I remember from the early days [assumedly on the balloon modelling scene]  was encountering a few twisters who thought that I was doing balloons all wrong. Their opinion was that it wasn't true balloon sculpturing if you used a pump or if you used a marking pen. Accordingly to them, inflating by mouth added moisture to the balloon which somehow made it better. I don't know where that philosophy came from. But I was curious to find out if there was something to it. So I tried twisting dozens of balloon that had been mouth inflated against dozens that had been pump inflated. I found no difference. At any rate, I haven't heard that philosophy in about 20 years, so it looks like it may have died out. My opinion is that if adding a few marks on a balloon makes it look better or if it gives it a personality, then why not do it? After all, who are we trying to please, the person receiving the balloon or some type of balloon police?"

If you're scoring at home, Mr. Jolly intimates that such disciplines as balloon twisting philosophy and theory have a rich history. Furthermore, the field is rife with issues surrounding the practical application of conceptual bricolage.  What is most terrifying, surely, is a coded suggestion alluding to a clandestine and shadowy enforcement of construction protocol by, surely, some well-funded, paramilitary organization. 

How deep does the rabbit-hole go? Glad you asked.

The Ohio College of Clowning Arts
Founded in 1989, in Akron, Ohio, (we can only imagine the road not taken), The Funny Shop Comedy Club upgraded to full college status in 2002 - seemingly to clear-up a dispute (my guess is intellectual property issues) with Ringling Brothers. True to form, the Board of Directors is composed largely of clowns (and Pat Julian - the Director of Operations at "a large furniture manufacturing company"). 

Curriculum Includes:
Clown Characterization
Performance Practicum and Costuming
Balloons and Magic for Clown

Founder Robert Kriedler, a.k.a. Rufus D. Dufus, passed away in 2010. He is sorely missed, but his spirit lives on.


So... there you go.

Why I Feel Bad For Not Liking Badlands More Than I Did

Badlands is unquestionably a good movie - it is probably even a great movie. It explores questions of innocence and loneliness, desolation, isolation, and making your way both into adulthood and finding your way in the world. Sissy Spacek's innocence is heartbreaking, while her falling-into and out-of love with Martin Sheen could be rendered as tragic. Martin Sheen's wandering eyes morph from unsettling into something slightly-less than full blown psychotic. Its a twisted, modernist anti-fairy tale and Terrence Malick has certainly achieved something unique. I recognize that the movie will grow in my consciousness, and that I may find myself puzzling over how the isolated incidents of violence, distanced from the surrounding psychological violence of society take on a different dimension and succeed in a subtle shift of meaning.  And plaudits and plaudits and plaudits can continue to follow. All of these are true and not to be marginalized - it is a great piece of art.

Withthatbeingsaid, Badlands for me, groaned under the weight of its own (potential) transcendence. I cannot remember a movie that had so much to say, seemingly achieved it with such felicity, and yet pushed me away from the experience so much. It would be trite to blame an overly hokey-ness of the constructions which Kit (and perhaps Holly) seem to be rebelling from. Yet I could never shake the notion - his one insightful existential scene aside - that Kit was a young man with little to offer, who made violence his excuse for holding himself above the norms of his world. Holly does what any teenage girl might do with a perverse fascination - she gets sick of Kit. Simple enough. Try as he might, not even Kit's violence can disconnect him from a world of triumphant normalcy. He is doomed to be a forgotten episode of crazy violence. While Kit's selfishness and braggadocio brings about the death and downfall of himself and others, being unable to care for him seems to render the rest of his universe, and therefore his actions, meaningless. The film's nihilism isn't what bothers me; to the contrary it is not unsettling enough. Trapped in its own perspective, we are left remote if we simultaneously cannot enter in. The journey from life as traditionally-defined, to outlaw status in a world of your own making requires an investment in the journey's origin.

While it would be tempting to say that such disconnects irredeemably flaw the experience, I can conversely understand how all of this gives the film its evocative power in the first place. Or maybe I cannot see beyond its almost universally acclaimed status. Perhaps the normalcy that is meant to begin (and end) the journey is never meant to be so normal. Perhaps the journey is one into the self more than out into the barren expanse. Rupture rarely come as a cosmological tearing of fabric; we fall in contradictory times, simultaneously bound by the moment and imbuing a folded time into it. We depart, only to return. Is it any wonder that our grip is lost through subtle shifts and  perturbations within and across moments we never would have expected? The film is contradictory: sparse and jam-packed; vacuous and full-of-meaning. Perhaps hinting at a deeper statement. Surely, it is fitting that I felt similarly conflicted watching it.

Gerard Butler is Infallible, or, “I am gonna stab you in the brain with my knife.”

Olympus Has Fallen

We learn a few lessons when North Korean (or is it South Korean) terrorists attack, and successfully take, the White House in Millennium Pictures’ Olympus Has Fallen. First off, that even though 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is supposedly the “most heavily protected building in the world” it can be over-run with comic ease by what amounts to a well-funded, decently coordinated street gang. The whole violent incursion is a flimsy excuse to perpetrate a third-world style coop on American soil – complete with smoking capital shots, machine gun-toting men in ski masks and ammunition, ammunition, ammunition as far as the eye can see. Let me tell you, if Gerard Butler wasn’t so proficient at the patented around-the-corner-no-look-straight-to-the-head kill-shot, Harvey Dent might never have gotten out of there.

Yes, the President is being held hostage in a White House bunker, along with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Vice-President and the Secretary of Defense (remember the comic ineptitude of America’s security apparatus). The bad-guys are down there and they are extracting launch codes. Which brings us to lesson number 2: torture works. And it is not just the shady Koreans. Witness our vigilante hero stabbing unsuspecting captives in the throat to entice their buddies to divulge a totally useless piece of information. I guess America is fully over that whole messy Abu Ghraib thing then? No, now is not the time to pussy-foot around, just ask Dylan McDermott: “Globalization!” “Wall Street!” The only way to exact justice is by any means necessary. Everyone’s cards are on the table and you gotta know when to play ‘em, even if you bet your soul in the process.

In the end, this movie suffers from a total failure of anyone involved to question the validity of the counter-argument; or, really, what is at stake. When the President is being held hostage, with the nuclear codes, in a bunker, with all the other people with the codes, from a place where those codes can be deployed to wreck a nuclear holocaust, it is understandable that the antagonist would want to by the one setting the tone of the debate. Yet the counter is never broached: umm… this guy has zero bargaining chips beyond the President. Aaron Eckhardt’s classic good looks are the whole show. There is never any case for why this man must survive. If it is only because he is the President, then the minute Morgan Freeman takes-up the mantle, the whole drama is erased. If you don’t buy that this control over the office-as-embodiment makes our villain powerful, then the whole premise of the movie falls apart and turns into little more than a farce. And farce, sweet dear lord, farce it is. The whole thing could sound like a twisted Bob Newhart sketch. “What? You say you’ve got the President? And to get him back we have to start World War 3 and subject our country to nuclear holocaust? Listen, fella, let me tell you something about the phrase collateral damage.” At no point does one waiver from the thought, fuck it, just kill the Aaron Eckhart and our problems are solved. I suppose that emotion is a worthwhile experience in and of itself. The movie takes what could be an interesting, nuanced problem of how to balance the idea of government with national security and absolutely refuses to say anything novel. Well, better to have Gerard Butler stab guys in the head anyway.

Here is looking forward to: White House Down. Yes, another one. Bring on Channing Tatum.