STAR WARS

Star Wars
1977
**** (out of 4)

Star Wars was not the first movie I ever saw. If memory serves (and it probably doesn’t) it was possibly Snow White & the Seven Dwarves, Charlotte’s Web, Benji, Snoopy Come Home or some similar children’s film. In any case I was too young to process them as anything more than instant gratification or appreciate them in any lasting way.

No, it was Star Wars that introduced me to the movies. My lifelong love of film is a direct result of George Lucas’ vision and, whatever cinematic sins he has committed since, I’m grateful for that. I was eight when I first saw Star Wars with my father. It was not during its initial 1977 run, but during the 1978 re-release that I saw it in full.

I had already been part of the marketing machine thanks to Kenner and its action figures and board games. Our family even has a silent film splice of the dog-fight sequence that was played on our old home projector for special occasions. By the time I saw Star Wars it was already part of my life as it was for my generation and the culture at large. It may be a nostalgic haze that brings me the conclusion that no movie event in my lifetime has ever reached the phenomenal heights of this one, but I doubt it.

I’m not going to pretend any of the following observations are original. Has any film ever had so much written about it? No, Star Wars is communal memory, but it’s also my memory and if I’m going to write about film, it has to start here.

That Star Wars has become communal memory was by design. George Lucas was famously a protégé of Joseph Campbell, an author and professor who specialized in the study of myths. Campbell’s book “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” put forward the notion that there are really only a small number of basic stories in the human memory and, over the span of time and culture, different generations have found new ways of retelling those stories. These basic myths are innate within us. How else to explain why so many similar tales are found among early peoples who could not have had contact with each other?

One basic myth is the hero’s quest. An innocent is faced with tragedy and seeks to persevere through the assistance of a wise mentor. After suffering defeat, he gathers the courage to defeat his enemies and achieve glory. Yes, this is the story of Luke Skywalker, but it is also the story of King Arthur and countless others. Lucas was unique in that he studied these concepts and sought to incorporate as many hardwired myths as possible in his saga.

What he added was the perspective that a film history background provided. He took the old Flash Gordon / Buck Rogers serials of the thirties with their simple heroics and cliffhangers and added a good does of Akira Kurosawa’s 1958 samurai classic, “The Hidden Fortress.” That film featured a Han Solo-ish samurai rescuing a princess with the help of two comic relief peasants not unlike our favorite droids. Any question of inspiration it literally swiped away as both films use the same swiping editing styles.

Another ingredient was, of course, the special effects. They may seem quaint by today’s standards, but they were revolutionary in 1977. Industrial Light & Magic, Lucas’ special effects team, made such advancements that they have remained ever since, the dominant leaders of their field in the movie industry. The great leap forward in model and matte technology was made almost ten years earlier for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it was George Lucas who saw that spaceships and laser swords could be utilized for escapist entertainment outside the science fiction genre.

Make no mistake. Star Wars was not science fiction. In form, it was far closer to a Western or a Japanese samurai film. It did not take place in the future, but “a long time ago.” (myth again.) This decision emphasized the element I most love about the look of the film, ironically called the used future. If spaceships and robots had always been portrayed as sleek and shiny, in a used future they would be grimy and tend to break down. In a used future no Death Star would be complete without a trash compactor.

This may be why the image most deeply embedded in my mind is that of two droids wandering lost through the desert. It was not pure fantasy that fired my imagination, but the ideas of fantasy and reality colliding. The key was that the desert was real and the droids were provided with engaging personalities. I’m not sure this makes sense, but to my eight-year-old eyes, Star Wars was the most realistic film I had ever seen.

Another quality that made Star Wars special was its willingness not to over explain its universe and allow mysteries to fester in young minds. After all we didn’t know from sequels. Why did Obi-One disappear when seemingly killed by Vader? What was under those Jawa hoodies? Who were all those creatures in the cantina? Finally, what exactly was this “force” all about? What a shame it would have been if they had thrown some pseudo-science term at us to explain why some were strong with it (but that’s a subject for another review.)

Something else Star Wars had was gravitas. We children did not know Alec Guinness’ formidable film history, but it was implied in his performance as the wise old Ben Kenobi. You can’t fake that. John William’s unforgettable score is another example. Simple science fiction used whirling synthesizers, but here nothing short of a full orchestral march will do.

We children knew innately how utterly cool Darth Vader was. We may not have recognized the influence of medieval and samurai armor, but we sensed its primal imagery, just as we sensed the wonder of a farm boy looking up to a sky with two suns.

Forever Changes - Love (Album Review)

FOREVER CHANGES
LOVE
1967

I was playing Love’s Forever Changes album for a friend, describing it as a cornerstone of psychedelic rock, when she asked me a surprising but pertinent question. “What makes this music psychedelic?” I guess I was surprised because, to my ears, it just sounded so trippy, but I was at a loss for a proper definition and could only come up with, “Its rock music made in the late sixties that seems to be influenced by drugs and uses non-traditional instruments for rock ‘n’ roll."

After giving it further thought, I’m sticking with that definition. It may sound odd to limit a genre to its time period, but I can’t think of a truly psychedelic song that did not come out between 1966 and 1968. Sure, you can have contemporary artists mimic that sound and come up with a neo-psychedelia, but it’s just not the real thing.

One reason the music is so identified with its time is that it quickly evolved into progressive rock, which shares many of the same qualities, but is distinctly its own genre. Pink Floyd’s Piper’s at the Gates of Dawn was seminal phychedelia, but by Dark Side of the Moon, the sound had evolved into something more in line with prog rockers like Genesis (Peter Gabriel’s) and Queen than Sgt. Pepper or Surrealistic Pillow.

During the psychedelic period, there were generally two camps. Hard rockin’ garage psychedelic bands like The Electric Prunes and The 13th Floor Elevators tended to have very short careers, but listening to them in retrospect reveals an intense vitality, probably due to their not being around long enough to sound dated.

The more prominent albums can be classified as lush psychedelia, the best examples of which create truly beautiful soundscapes. Pet Sounds, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band and Forever Changes are solidly in this category. Revolver, which was The Beatles first contribution to this genre, had one foot in both camps. The Stones, The Who, The Beach Boys and especially The Beatles all had psychedelic periods, but all moved passed it after incorporating it into their larger style.

Love was the brainchild of African-American singer/songwriter, Arthur Lee, who, through the course of three albums, moved from garage psychedelia (of which their biggest single,“7 & 7 Is” is a great example) to the lush version and a defining moment in the genre that is Forever Changes.

Forever Changes may be the only example of a minimalist psychedelic album. The dominant instrument is always the acoustic guitar, which is brought forward in the mix whether during a straight ahead rocker, a soft ballad or a rich arrangement of strings and horns.

The album’s first song sets the scene for the proceedings. Alone Again Or, which is one of two songs on the album I’d heard previously, begins with a soft acoustic guitar joined by Lee’s folky vocals. A quivery violin is subtly added and than finally a Spanish sounding horn solo really kicks it up a notch before reverting to its softer beginnings. Unlike the Moody Blues, who backed themselves with a whole orchestra, Love never let’s the core band get left behind.

The second track, A House is Not a Motel, begins similarly, but grows into a straight ahead rocker with no flourishes. Andmoreagain (not a typo) is probably the most familiar song on the album and is representative of the beautiful melodic progressions that I believe surpasses Pet Sounds and approaches Sgt. Pepper level of greatness.

A song like Old Man takes its melody in surprisingly non-pop directions both musically and lyrically. “I know the old man would laugh - He spoke of love’s sweeter days - And in his eloquent way - I think he was speaking of you” offers the kind of honest sentimentality only The Kinks normally traffic in. At the same time, titles like The Good Humor Man He See’s Everything like this will be sure you don’t forget its 1967.

Forever Changes’ crowning achievement is its final song, You Set the Scene. Like The Who’s A Quick One, it’s one of the earliest examples of a mini-opera with three district sections. Lyrics about nothing less than the search for meaning to life and death join to such an infectious melody that I’m shocked it’s not better known. Only at the very end of this last song does the acoustic guitar finally disappear into a triumphant sea of horns.

So is it timeless or dated? Like the best psychedelic rock, it’s both. That Arthur Lee was not a household name at the time of his death a few years back may be a reflection of the bands short tenure, but the cult remains and new bands like The Polyphonic Spree and Arcade Fire still show the influence of Forever Changes.

Not So Funny Games

So I guess they’ve gone ahead and remade Funny Games. As it’s supposed to be a faithful, almost identical, remake of the 1997 Austrian film from its original director, it’s not something I’d want to see. I hated the original Funny Games, not because it was a bad movie, but because it was insulting to me, as a viewer. It’s a film that made me mad at its makers, which is a very rare reaction, but one I think is interesting enough to explore here.

What could elicit such a negative response? Again, being a bad movie doesn’t do it. I wasn’t mad at the people who made Battlefield Earth. They were idiots for making it and I was an idiot for watching it. Problem solved. (Funniest Jon Stewart line – “Battlefield Earth was kind of a cross between Star Wars and the smell of ass.”)

I’m also not going to get mad simply by being shown offensive images. The reason John Waters’ Pink Flamingos doesn’t bother me is because I will never see it. How can I be so closed minded, you might ask? Well, it’s because I’ve read about it, and at the end, a drag queen eats dog shit. For real! You see it coming out of the dog’s anus and being scooped into his/her mouth. I love all kinds of movies, but I can go through my whole life without ever seeing someone eating either shit, real or synthetic. This is a rule. If the next Scorsese movie shows shit being eaten, count me out. This does not apply to something that may look like shit, but is, say, a candy bar (heretofore referred to as the Caddyshack exemption.)

No, a movie that makes me mad will more likely be made by a talented filmmaker. All the films below have a degree of talent and creativity involved. They would not be worth discussing otherwise. My question is, to what end is this talent being used? The following reviews contain SPOILERS, but that’s OK, cause you probably don’t want to see them anyway.

Funny Games

A mother, father and young son are tortured and murdered by two psychotic intruders. The end. For most of its running time, Funny Games plays as a conventional thriller. Think Panic Room. The baddies are young punks who view their sadism as a kind of public art.

A little more than halfway through, an interesting thing happens. One of the villains breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience. When asked why he doesn’t simply kill the family, he answers something to the effect of - "we don’t want to end the movie this soon." We, as an audience, are now implicated as participants in these funny games.

Intriguing, but having brought us in, director Michael Haneke, makes it clear that we are not welcome. We, who had hoped to be put in suspense by a quality thriller, are now subjected to mindless violence. Its not that there’s an unreasonable level of gore, it’s just that a key convention of a good thriller is that the potential victims have a fighting chance.

I’m not against violence on film. Some of my favorite films are violent. I’m not against bleak endings. When earned, they can be very powerful. This is how Funny Games ends: The mother gets hold of a gun and shoots one of the assailants. The other picks up a remote control, rewinds the film we are watching to before she gets the gun and proceeds to slaughter the rest of the family.

The message here seems to be that we, the audience, should be held accountable as a party to this carnage. Didn’t we go to this movie as voyeurs to see some mayhem? Well, this will show us. Haneke has made a film for which the only proper reaction is to never have seen it. I, for one, will react properly for the remake.


Bamboozled

Spike Lee is a director whose films I admire and whose politics I oppose. To oversimplify the dichotomy set up in his best film, Do the Right Thing, he chooses Malcolm X and I choose MLK. He may have, kind of, sort of come out against interracial dating in Jungle Fever and he definitely used anti-Semitic caricatures in Mo’Better Blues, but his artistic skill cannot be denied with such wonderful films as School Daze, The 25th Hour and, of course, Do the Right Thing, which I believe is a masterpiece despite disagreeing with its conclusions.

Then there’s Bamboozled. Lee’s take on the minstrel entertainment personified by such racist stereotypes as Amos & Andy. The film ends with a very effective montage of so many of the real life degrading imaging that have for too long disparaged black culture. It would have been a fine short, had it began and ended there.

Unfortunately, before this mini-documentary, Lee chooses to criticize the offensive minstrels by creating one himself. Damon Waynes plays a sell-out TV executive with the most bizarre vocal inflections. Fellow In Living Color alumnus, Tommy Davidson, is the African-American actor who performs in blackface for a modern day update called “Mantan: The New Millennium Minstrel Show.”

The content of the show is too offensive to describe in detail, but let’s just say the KKK would be proud. I understand what Spike was trying to do. We’re supposed to recoil from the TV material, but his failure is not contrasting the horrid programming with some behind the scenes drama and a sympathetic character or two. It could have harkened back to Network, but instead, the movie itself becomes exactly what it despises.

He could also have followed in the footsteps of Mel Brooks or South Park and taken the material to such an extreme that we’d be brought to understanding through laughter. Unfortunately, Bamboozled is too goofy to be taken seriously as drama and in no way funny enough to be considered a comedy. All we’re left with is a reminder of a painful experience through a direct recreation of that experience.


Storytelling

Todd Solodnz is a director of films about unpleasant people doing unpleasant things to each other and themselves. His debut, Welcome to the Dollhouse, was about a nerdy 13-year-old girl whose only friend is a boy she hopes will follow through on his promise to rape her, although neither seems to understand what that word means. This is Solondz’ most watchable film. His follow-up, Happiness, brings us an Altmanesque array of horrible people we don’t want to know, personified by a friendly child molester.

Storytelling is not one, but two tales of misery. The first subtitled “Fiction” and the second, “Non-Fiction.” Between them no racial, religious or sexual taboo is left unexplored. Take Selma Blair’s college English student in “Fiction” whose boyfriend has cerebral palsy and who proceeds to seduce her African-American English professor. Not that he needs much convincing.

Two things are notable about the sex scene that follows. One is that, because its kinda rough sex, it had to be censored to get an R rating. The director’s solution is to put a GIANT red box over both bodies to hit home the point that this film hasn’t just been censored, it’s been CENSORED. (Points for Solondz.) The other bit you can’t miss is that the professor humiliates his student by forcing her to yell racial slurs that made me think I was back to watching Bamboozled. (Points deducted.)

In “Non-fiction,” Paul Giamatti is a documentary filmmaker whose wants to study the ideal American family. It was not a surprise when all are revealed to be petty, cruel, hypocritical and generally unpleasant (including the kids!) Most notable is the young boy who treats their Hispanic maid as slave labor.

The bonus to Storytelling is that it acts as its own critic. The Giamatti character’s film is criticized for the same sins that Solondz himself is accused of, namely that he hates his characters. In both the film within a film and the movie itself, these accusations are true. Should the director get points because he’s willing to state openly exactly why his film is bad? I’d say no.

Instead watch…

So as not to end on too sour a note, I would like to recommend three films that also tackle unpleasant and controversial issues. They’re not fun, but they will make you ponder some very dark questions. The differences to those reviewed above come down to one thing, respect for the audience.

In the Company of Men – A very disturbing look at misogyny. Most guys know and many women suspect that there is a darker side to sexual power (that’s power, not prowess) than mainstream romances are willing to recognize. Sometimes psychological brutality can look as ugly as the physical.

Bad Lieutenant – Misogyny is only one of Harvey Keitel’s many vices in this look at a drug dealing, perverse police officer. Keitel is both literally and figuratively naked in a performance of devastating sorrow. How this ends up being one of the most religious movies ever made, I will leave you to discover

Manderlay – Lars Von Trier’s sequel to Dogville is part of this American Trilogy (the third has not yet been released.) Von Trier, who has never been the U.S. is openly hostile towards America, but his attacks are precise and thought provoking. Manderlay is a small town where slavery was never abolished. You may think you know where he’s going with this. You don’t.

Favorite Films of 2007

5) THERE WILL BE BLOOD

2007 saw two of the most effective displays of cinematic evil since Hannibal Lecter's debut. First was Javier Bardem's chilling assassin in the Coen Brother's critical favorite, No Country for Old Men. It was an intense and even Oscar worthy performance in a dark thriller with artistic pretensions. The dark thriller was exceptional. The artistic pretensions were not. Bardem's menace was made abstract and not helped by an ending that was not simply ambiguous, but non-existent (a strange trend this year shared by the otherwise great Before the Devil Knows Your Dead.)

So while the evil represented in No Country, ends up in the same vein as Halloween's Michael Myers, There Will Be Blood is a study of a more human evil given cold blooded personification by the equally Oscar worthy Daniel Day Lewis. These two films have been much compared due to their bleakness (and striking visions of the American Western landscape), but for me, There Will Be Blood is the better film. The Coen Brother's used bleakness in a clever and nihilistic way. Paul Thomas Anderson lets his story and characters dictate the tone.

This is quite a departure for Anderson, whose ensemble dramas, Boogie Nights and Magnolia, were clearly influenced by his mentors, Altman and Scorsese (this is meant as a compliment). There Will Be Blood, on the other hand, is a period piece about the early days of oil drilling and focuses on one character, Daniel Day Lewis's complex and gritty prospector, Daniel Plainview. It's not reminiscent of Anderson's previous work and you never question that you're in a desolate oil drenched hellhole in the first years of the 20th century.

This is one hell of a performance from Day Lewis! He plays the personification of greed and selfishness and somehow manages to be both over the top and scarily authentic. While I was impressed by his cartoon villainy in Gangs of New York, here his range reached back towards Robert DeNiro in Scorsese's Taxi Driver, allowing us to see the hate slowly brewing. It is an accomplishment that the emotional violence is rendered just as intense as the physical violence.


4) SWEENEY TODD

The crowd that I saw Sweeney Todd with seemed evenly divided between fans of Sondheim's acclaimed musical and devotees of the works of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. I belong to the later category. Some audience members were so perplexed when it became apparent that most of the dialogue would be sung that there were a few walk outs. Trailers and promotional materials gave the uninitiated no clue that they were in for a full fledged musical.

I had seen two earlier versions of Sweeney Todd. First, an "in concert" version with Patti LuPone and George Hearn; followed by a grainy video of the original Broadway production. I was not a fan. It was difficult to appreciate Sondheim's score as the songs were not memorable and seemed to bleed into each other without dramatic effect.

Yet I love this new version. Tim Burton has perfected and, frankly improved upon, the gothic style of those old Vincent Price and Hammer horror films. After less interesting forays into the light, (Big Fish / Charlie & the Chocolate Factory) Burton is home in Halloweentown where the line between black comedy and bloody horror is as thin as a razor's edge.

Johnny Depp, as always, creates an unforgettable character in the morose, revenge driven Todd. The treat here is how Helena Bonham Carter matches him step by step. The scene where she imagines them as a family at the beach is a classic because of despite her unbridled optimism, even in her fantasies, Depp's grim pallor never breaks. This sequence alone is worth the ticket price.

I still don't get the Sondheim music though, except that Burton has provided a new context to appreciate it. The songs in this "musical" act in the same way an orchestral score would in a normal movie. When Depp is singing a love song to his razor, it doesn't matter that I can't remember the melody. (Trust me - there are no "Music of the Nights".) What matters is that he's using the songs to further his performance and make his madness even more palpable.

When the score itself takes over and we get a reverse zoom outside the demon barber's window, there we have some real movie magic. Black magic, of course.


3) JUNO

Well into 2008, I must be one of the last movie-buffs to jump on the bandwagon, but true is true and Juno really is a wonderful film. I knew it was the big indie hit of the year and I expected something in the spirit of a better than average crowd pleaser like Little Miss Sunshine. Juno surpasses that and reaches Amelie levels of lovability. That is does so while being laugh out loud funny and with attitude to spare makes it even more of an accomplishment.

While the acting, directing and music are all top notch, it is first time writer and deserved Oscar winner Diablo Cody who shines brightest with cliché-free script featuring the most memorable dialogue this side of Tarantino. A former stripper, Cody is clearly not of the movie industry. We can all guess how Hollywood might treat a pregnant teen, her family and friends, but Cody allows her characters the freedom to act as full blooded people might, not the cutout characters that usually populate teen comedies.

Take Bleeker, the father of Juno’s child. Both a nerd and a jock, he plays shy in a way I haven’t seen before. And it’s funny. Potential adoptive parents played by Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner have their own story arch that again combines truth and laughs. Bateman, in particular, underplays his generational angst just right.

Ellen Page is perfect as Juno. There’s been some criticism that teenagers don’t really talk in the witty dialogue style that dominates the film. I’m sure they don’t, but neither do adults speak as they do in better scripts. The truth is that teens do speak their own language and if its not as smart as Diablo Cody thinks it is, its their loss and Juno’s gain.


2) I'M NOT THERE

There is only one thing I know about Bob Dylan, that he's a storyteller. His storytelling is not limited to his peerless songwriting category, but also reveals itself in interviews and public appearances. Here is a man who refuses to be defined. When reporters, documentarians and Dylanologists attempts to do so, he tells more stories, or, to put it less charitably, he lies. Though it's not always obvious in what way.

There is one thing I know about Todd Haynes' Dylan biopic, I'm Not There. It's that it is not a Dylan biopic. His stories and legends are the canvas Haynes is working with, but, like Citizen Kane, the film is actually about the contradiction of trying to sum up a life in a two hour film. That six actors play Dylan representations is not a gimmick in trying to discover the enigma of Bob Dylan. It is the point of this daring and thought provoking film.

A young African-American boy named Marcus Cark Franklin plays "Woody Guthrie." Though the real Guthrie was well known to be a major influence on Dylan, those looking for realism will note that it is unlikely that Dylan was a freight train riding black kid. It is also highly doubtful that he was swallowed by a whale. These sequences work because I'm Not There is as much about the Bob Dylan myth as the man.

Equally surreal is Richard Gere's appearance as "Billy the Kid" to represent Dylan's current incarnation. In reality, he's still performing and writing vital music, but he's not part of any current musical movement and not the celebrity idol he once was. The Gere sequence shows Dylan as a man comfortable in his own skin, but not of his own time.

One might imagine that he's rather see himself as an aging outlaw than the highly unlikable version portrayed by Heath Ledger as "Robbie Clark," arrogant movie star and failed family man. Christian Bale plays folk singer turned born again revivalist, "Jack Rollins" and Ben Whishaw is "Arthur Rimbaud" elusive interview subject.

The most dynamic performance however belongs to Cate Blanchett who, as "Jude Quinn" has one of the most shocking and memorable entrances in recent film memory. Blanchett erases all questions of gender by embodying the version of Dylan that we think we know best, the 1965 era superstar who revolutionized the folk and rock world by going electric. She also embodies Dylan's caustic orneriness when dealing with the press.

As director, Todd Haynes weaves all these disparate elements into a coherent narrative that takes wonderful advantage of Dylan's song catalog and perfectly mimics the look of its various eras. One need not be a Bob Dylan fan to appreciate the remarkable achievement that is I'm Not There (though you'd get some of the inside references) because, as the title alludes, it's not really about one man, but all of us.


1) BLACK SNAKE MOAN

When I Netflixed Black Snake Moan, I was expecting a sleazy exploitation flick that might offer some cheap laughs and titillation. I was not, I repeat, NOT expecting to witness a great film that would become my top pick of the year. The promotional poster was of a half naked Christina Ricci chained to an ornery old Samuel L. Jackson for pete sake!

The amazing this about this film is that it does, in fact, succeed as cheap exploitation, but it does so much more. First off, it's a filmed blues song. If I can't quite articulate what that means, it's because I've never seen it done before, but all the musical and lyrical elements of those old Robert Johnson, Howlin' Wolf or Muddy Waters records have been dramatized.

Sam Jackson is wonderful as the disillusioned old blues singer. Praising Jackson is redundant considering that he is invariably great in all his roles regardless off the movie surrounding him. He is the most watchable actor on film today and has himself claimed that this is his best acting work (though I still vote for Pulp Fiction.)

What Christina Ricci does, however, will knock your socks off! I've always found it an annoying cliché when actresses are described as "brave" for taking on nudity or overt sexuality (Sorry Halle Berry, you didn't really deserve that Oscar). I have only seen two instances where this description is accurate; Jodi Foster in The Accused and Christina Ricci in Black Snake Moan. She takes on her nymphomaniac hellion with an unexpected fierceness that dominates the film and everything in it.

Even the previously hated Justine Timberlake turns in a fine performance as the boyfriend plagued by panic attacks.

There is a fantastic sequence where Jackson comforts Ricci by singing the title song during the kind of thunderstorm that can only take place in a blues song. By this point, I realized that this little exploitation flick has become a highly moral love story that's alive and pulsing on the screen.

Archive '07 - Hillary for President (Political Opinion)

A number of observations came to mind while watching the Democratic candidates in last week's CNN/YouTube debate:

* It really wasn't so revolutionary. CNN narrowed the video questions out of thousands to the one's they wanted to see asked. I don't think any questions were asked that would not have been in a traditional debate.

* Of course, the way they were asked was different. Singing the questions, costumes and snowman puppets - Not sure how any of that adds to our democracy.

* Dennis Kusinich must've been thrilled to have Mike Gravel participating. It's the first time Dennis has ever shared the stage with someone crazier than he is (and what's more entertaining than an angry old man yelling at everyone?)

But on to the main event, Hillary vs. Barack. I've been backing Hillary Clinton for a few months now, ever since I shrewdly realized that my buddy, Joe Biden, has about as much a chance of being elected as I do. Being from Illinois, Barack is all the rage, but his lack of experience concerns me. That concern was justified when he was asked the question of whether he would meet with the world's most evil dictators. His answer was that talking was not a sign of weakness, which is true enough. But Hillary's point that automatically agreeing to Presidential summits without preconditions or lower level preparation talks could provide our enemies with ample opportunity to take advantage or score PR points at our expense. That is the correct answer.

Hillary Clinton's experience and clear thinking about world affairs has been on display throughout the campaign and I believe she is our best hope for getting our country out of the mess its in. In a field where the vast majority of candidates are falling over themselves to pander to the far left, Hillary's strong centrist worldview shows that we don't have to choose between the authoritarian tendencies of the Bush administration and retreating from our responsibility to win the War on Terror. (John Edwards said that The War on Terror was nothing more than a meaningless slogan, which cost him any chance at my vote.)

Hilary has been right all along on Iraq. Now that Bush's deplorable handling of the war has put us into an awful quagmire, it's difficult to see why the vast majority of Democrats initially supported it. Not just because of weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein's brutality toward his own people, threat to his neighbors and support for terrorism were well established. He has nothing to do with 9/11, but was a major part of the violent Islamist extremist movement that also spawned Al Qaeda ("But Iraq did not attack us on 9/11!" many say. Well, Germany didn't bomb Pearl Harbor, but nobody regrets that we went after them.)

This argument would be conventional wisdom had George Bush and his cronies not mucked it up every step of the way. A definitive victory in Iraq would have made it an example of the success of democracy in a region that knows so little. Victory, however, requires developing contingency plans and not underestimating your opponent. Colin Powell had it right when he said you only go to war with overwhelming force and a clear exit strategy.

Yet we know what happened. Bush only listened to advice he wanted to hear. He did not trust the American people enough to be truthful about our initial reasons for being there and has such meager communication skills that he cannot make the case for why we need to win. Now, with a civil war erupting, things have gotten so bad we may not be able to win. What should have been one front in the War on Terror has diverted our resources away from other possibly more important fronts (Iran, Bin Laden). Bush is further diverted by the Nixonian corruption and secrecy permeating throughout his White House.

All this is to point out that Hillary Clinton is now right again. If we cannot win in Iraq, we must work on an exit strategy to get out. Thankfully, she won't pander to the loony left by promising an immediate withdrawal. Leaving carelessly would be as much a disaster as going in carelessly.

Those who don't like Hillary call her calculating, but don't we want a President who can think a few moves ahead? Watching that debate last week, Hillary Clinton came out at the smartest and toughest in the bunch. She's even starting to become more engaging and likable (but she ought to keep Bill with her just to be safe.) Barring any major missteps, I believe she is our next President, which may be exactly what we need.

Archive '07 - LOST in Tubeland

I spent this Sunday night not watching the Emmys. Well, I'm lying a bit. I watched the first ten minutes, during which time some Family Guy cartoon characters did a musical number about how much TV sucks. This was followed by the host (some pasty bland guy from American Idol) who made the quite accurate point that he could not fill the shoes of his predecessors. At this point I came to my senses and turned off the TV.

After checking out some results online, I do regret though that I missed seeing my favorite current television actor awarded. Lost is my favorite show (maybe of all time! I'm not kidding.) and a big part of that is Terry O'Quinn's consistently fascinating performance as John Locke. At some point, I hope to post my theories about Lost, but the bottom line is, I believe Locke is the key to the show.

This is all colored by the fact that I don't really watch TV. OK, I'm lying again. I watch movies and news shows all the time, but to keep from having no life at all, I really only watch one series show regularly at a time. I realize I'm missing out on a lot because of this, but choices must be made. I've never seen an episode of ER for example and I like George Clooney!

Right now and for the foreseeable future, it's Lost. It started out as a fun mystery thriller, but this last season has been amazing, revealing depths that could never have been guessed at the beginning. Can't wait for Season 4 in January!

Just for fun, I'm thinking of what preceded Lost as the ONE show I watched. In approximate reverse order they were The West Wing, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Sopranos, South Park and Seinfeld. For the record, I vote All in the Family as the best all time sitcom.

Speaking of awards shows, I'm jazzed that Jon Stewart will be back hosting the Oscars next year. If they could just have him alternate with Steve martin every year, we'd be set.

Archive '06 - Favorite Films of 2006

5) BORAT – This one just came out of nowhere. I'd never even heard of Sacha Baron Cohen's Kazakhstani reporter character or seen Da Ali G Show, but I was intrigued by the glowing reviews Borat was getting. They were well deserved. This is the funniest film I've seen since the South Park movie. Cohen interacts with mostly unsuspecting real Americans who are told that this foreign journalist is trying to learn about American culture. What they are not told is that Borat is ignorant, anti-Semitic, homophobic and not quite toilet trained.

Aside from the laughs, Borat is one of the more politically pointed films on the subject of intolerance and bigotry, specifically anti-Semitism. Cohen is Jewish and delights in mocking the most outrageous stereotypes of Jew hatred. For me the most powerful statements on this subject have come from hysterical comedies. In this, Borat belongs on a list with Blazing Saddles and All in the Family.


4) BRICK – The first 2006 film I saw was Brick, which is kind of an inverse of another fine film, The Good German, the last film I caught this year. The Good German is filmed with the black and white look and style of a 1940's film noir. Brick is filmed with a contemporary look, but the performances and plotting echo that classic noir period. It's about a high school outsider who gets caught up in drug deals gone wrong and violent double crosses.

But Joseph Gordon-Levitt (the kid from 3rd Rock From the Sun) plays the role as if he was Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon. Not an imitation – he succeeds in channeling the spirit of Sam Spade. Sure enough, the high school is filled with femme fatales, tough hoods and slimy villains with nicknames like "The Pin." The result is movie buff heaven.


3) HEART OF GOLD - Jonathan Demme's Neil Young concert film, Heart of Gold, is the best concert movie since The Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense back in 1984. It's probably not a coincidence that the earlier film was also directed by Jonathon Demme. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that Demme be required to direct all future concert films, because his camera has a way making music performances immediate and cinematic like no other director. It doesn't hurt that his subject is one of the all time greats of rock n roll, Neil Young. While Young can rock hard enough to be nicknamed "The Godfather of Grunge," here he's in his acoustic folk/country mode.

The first half of the concert is most of his latest album, Prairie Wind, his strongest in years. Having been diagnosed with a brain tumor that he has since recovered from, Young wrote with the passion of someone who felt he might not have much time left. The second half is devoted to tracks from the similarly styled albums Harvest, Comes a Time and Harvest Moon. Aside from Bob Dylan, Neil Young is the only aging rock star who has embraced getting older as a part of his music. The result sounds more vital than most artists less than half his age.


2) THE DEPARTED – Of course I was rooting for Martin Scorsese to win the directing Oscar for Gangs of New York or The Aviator. These were fine films, but the win would have been to right the injustice of his being passed over for his holy trinity of masterpieces: Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas. If he finally wins for The Departed, it won't a career award, it will be because he's returned to gritty form with a vengeance.

Like Alfred Hitchcock's thrillers or Woody Allen's dramadies, all Martin Scorsese's gangster films are kind of the same and kind of not. "Gimme Shelter" may be back but Jack Nicholson has replaced Robert DeNiro, the Irish replaced the Italians, cops are given a closer look than in previous films and the story is based on a Japanese thriller. This, plus a healthy dose of humor, are all like new instruments in Scorsese's hands.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon give career best performances and it's been over twenty years since Nicholson's been this good.


1) UNITED 93 - United 93 is not an enjoyable or entertaining film in the traditional sense. It is, however an important one. It looks at 9/11 with a clear unflinching eye. There's none of the distracting sub-plots or flourishes that trivialized Olver Stone's World Trade Center. Using only information available from cell phone records and ground control eyewitnesses, director Paul Greengrass coldly and accurately recreates the events of that horrible morning.

For me, at least, it brought back many of the feelings I had on 9/11 itself. This film is almost unbearably intense, but because we know how it must end, that tension is not released with suspense. The only comparable film equivalent I can think of is Schindler's List.

One sign of United 93's authenticity, is the fact that the airport personnel on the ground were not actors, but the actual participants playing themselves. by choosing to focus on the one 9/11 attack in which the victims resisted and fought back, Greengrass does provide a glimmer of hope along with the sadness and horror. I was initially very skeptical that a 9/11 film could be made that was not exploitive. Sometimes it's good to be proven wrong.



While I'm at it, I may as well note what I consider the worst film of 2006: Superman Returns. Here are ten reasons it was such an utter disappointment:

1) The new Superman is just doing a Christopher Reeve impersonation.
2) It's nice that they found a beautiful actress to play Lois. It would have been nicer if they found one who could act or be even a little believable as a reporter.
3) The guy from X-Men who played Lois' boyfriend added nothing to the movie
4) Adding a kid to a story that absolutely does not need a kid is a sign of desperation.
5) What's with the whole Superman as Jesus analogy?
6) The entire premise of the film is based on Superman having been gone to find fragments of his old planet. No details are given regarding this mission, which means no thought was given to it and was just a manipulative plot device.
7) "Truth, justice and all that other stuff."? - It's "The American Way" you douchebags!!! Just cause you're trying to pander to an international market doesn't mean you fuck with a classic catchphrase.
8) Very liberal use of the old John Williams score and Marlon Brando outtakes from the first film. There's a fine line between homage and rip off.
9) Luthor's plan is to create earthquake like natural disasters. Gee, that sounds familiar.
10) Superman 1 and 2 exist. They are great movies and if more respect had been paid to why they succeeded, the rest of the sequels may not have sucked so bad.