JERSEY SHORE IS AWFUL, GROSS TELEVISION

A friend came over and made me dinner – lovely – but as if to tip the generosity scale back towards neutral he also somehow persuaded me to watch the pilot episode of MTV’s JERSEY SHORE, a veritable abortion of a television program, obelisk of worship to all things zeppole, Dep, and fakebake.

Though he did couch it in the following terms: here’s a show the Italian Anti-defamation League is all up in arms about. That’s kind of interesting, I thought naively.

In short, eight or so “Jersey Shore Types” meet up in a pimped-out summerhouse to show off their goods, drink out of Solo cups, and backtalk each other for their unanimously odious drunken behavior. Romance, catfights, the entire gamut of REAL WORLD-esque social dilemma will unfold for our tight-bodied heroes and heroines!!

Yet JERSEY SHORE as a production raises a couple of questions. One: why is this show so fucking Italian-themed. Sure, obviously, it’s Jersey and it’s the shore and a lot – Many! Most! – of the annual pilgrims Haji-ing there way on over for the sausage and peppers at Antonio’s Beach Shack are indeed Italian-American. But with every character calling themselves guido or—good god!—“guidette" and embodying the litany of abhorrent stereotype that would make the average Italian-American literally cringe in horror, the production decision to call this simply JERSEY SHORE and not DAT’S A SPICY-A JERSEY SHORE is, at best, deceptive.

Secondly, why now? Last night the weather finally turned December-appropriate, it could have even snowed. Antonio’s is boarded up and barren until next May, when the bikini-and-board shorts set reemerges from Passaic and environs. Why now are we watching the frolicking hedonism of Gotti wannabes in a consequence-free and physically repulsive environment? I’m sure it’s part of MTV’s roll out strategy – wish fulfillment on the chilliest of December nights – but something about the untimeliness of it’s premiere should raise a disingenuous flag or two.

Which brings me to my third major question: why the hell is every cast member so unattractive? At one point, when the first of the GUIDETTES arrived and the GUIDOS began splaying their proverbial feathers, my Australian roommate, quizzical and sincere, noted “oh look they find each other attractive.” It occurred to us that maybe, while we may find “fake bake” and filthy language and barren, idealess whore-mongering as unattractive (even repulsive) maybe we just weren’t the audience. Think of it as an ethnographic film, my friend said. That helped a little.

But of course these people don’t really exist, expect when they do, in which case they scarcely need a normalizing force as omnipotent as MTV to mirror their absurdity. Sure, people may indeed walk this earth who refer to themselves as “The Situation” (because “my abs are so ripped, it’s like a situation"), but for the love of god let them grow out of it and not make them minor, inglorious pop-celebrities. What is the message of JERSEY SHORE, if not: you can be as awful as you want to be – don’t let those skinny bitches tear you down! Is this really worth the 30 bucks or so that apparently went into the production of this show. I’d rather get a couple of pizzas.

But, you know, it’s MTV, and faith in MTV is misguided at best. So more of a criticism of this program I call SHENNANINGANS on anyone who tunes in to this terrible, bigoted, distasteful, retrograde hour. It should not only be cancelled but its executive producers should be strapped in a too-cold Jacuzzi and forced to listen to 400 consecutive hours of Bon Jovi while girls with whiny voices croon some hacked-up version of it’s already anathematic lyrics into their greedy, greasy little ears. Real Italian-Americans, New Jerseyians, MTV watchers, and human beings should recoil and just how loathsome primetime can get.

And people will watch it, because it's candy TV, and as long as we slap it with the "guilty pleasure" label it's okay. Right? Right?



RIGHT?
Va fongul!!!

The Men Who Stare at Dolts

Not too much to say about this tiny, ultimately flat Overture feature. Chalk it up as another casualty of the we need a star! mentality that gets Jim Carrey a cool thirty mil just for showing up to set to eat craft services – the entire budget of THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS’ was necessarily devoted to its stars (Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor)…and it shows.

For a movie that takes us all the way from small-town Michigan to secret military facilities deep within Iraq, there is shockingly little scope, grandeur, or visual interest. Even though some of the scripting was downright bad (Clooney kicks McGregor in the balls) the better jokes and offbeat moments could have been great if the filmmakers had the dough to widen the madcap universe of the film. So it’s not a script problem (and the source material, so I hear, is pretty great). Instead, director Grant Heslov is probably at fault for a film that never wants to take itself seriously – yet always demands that we do. It’s a ludicrous request, especially considering the plot which -- resembling THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE on a great deal more LSD – “climaxes” with dozens of goats being liberated from an Area 51-esque research facility while the entire military unit “trips balls.” Heslov and Clooney worked together on GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK to infinite more success, partly because the material had actual substance, partially because Clooney, who directed that film, had a surprisingly sharp aesthetic sense and terse visual language. I wish he had helmed GOATS as well and redistributed some of the film’s funds away from his co-stars and towards the film’s design and tech.

It’s all a shame because I love films that are tiny, throwaway, origami swans – pretty and intriguing even if, in the end, they are merely folded paper. BURN AFTER READING, a film GOATS aspires to be but never comes close, is exactly that way. Nothing’s wrong with popcorn movies—even stupid movies where every character we meet is a bit of a dolt and no one is relatable—but they have to be told well. This simply isn’t, and while watching I was really just impatiently waiting my chance to get the fuck out of there. And I wasn’t the only one, the entire audience I saw this film with sort of shuffled about the theatre with a blank goat-like disinterest, chewing their stale popcorn, already forgetting what happened just before. It's probably for the best.

This Year's CRASH...unfortunately

Sweet lord Jesus: NY Press’ Armond White is so on-the-money with his PRECIOUS review (http://www.nypress.com/article-20554-pride-precious.html) that I guess I don’t have all that much to add. Armond White is awesome!


Ok maybe a few things...

I totally agree that PRECIOUS reflects more of an affluent fear of human detritus – riddled with incest and violence and hopelessness – than any sort of urban reality. It runs on only one cylinder – the “shock value” of its premise (fat girl, twice pregnant by her father, escapes abusive mother through…math). Unfortunately for me, the last movie I saw was ANTICHRIST, so it’s gonna take a bit more than incest (even tacitly-condoned incest…the MOM and GRANDMA are just as guilty) to stir me up.

Problem is that beyond the “OH NO HE DIDN’T” of it all, it’s a fairly lame, uneventful, prosaic story. White suffered from seeing the film in the film festival petri dish (he calls it an "ordeal" which I can only imagine...consider the self-congratulation), but I saw it on 42nd street where me and my three friends were the only white people in the maximum-capacity crowd. And while I think the audience reaction-factor helped the film (scenes of domestic retaliation, sassy backtalk, and general abhorrence played as QUITE FUNNY to my discerning crowd), it also exposed one of the movie’s weakest traits. That is, by so carefully outlining who we are supposed to root for--who are the nasty rapists, who are the good little girls with big dreams—subtlety no longer plays the slightest part. Then again: for a film about the most abused, neglected, devalued of humans who goes by the name of PRECIOUS, I guess subtlety was never really in the picture.

And when my (white) friend leaned over to whisper "they're like a parody of themselves" (referring to the audience, with all their HOOTIN' and HOLLERING) I realized that he was simultaneously right and entirely missing the point. But that's actually a good description of the film in general.

I do disagree with White about Mo’Nique, whose performance I do think came close to reflecting “depths” within herself. Only in her final monologue, where she breaks down in front of Mariah Carey’s useless social worker, does the film try (and, yes, fail) to do something interesting – complicate the dynamic by giving us just a tad bit of sympathy for MOTHER. And in telling the story of her boyfriend's pattern of sexual abuse, in weeping out its details, Mo’Nique pulls off a neat trick – we hate her even more for her shameful silence through it all, but we respond to her suffering and misery on a purely human level. We feel bad for her, just for a second, and then remember that she is the villain. Mariah Carrey’s character is not even a fraction as nuanced (and her Fran Drescher accent absurd). Nor is her character really even necessary, as really just another iteration of the good, pure, light-skinned teacher—but I guess our celebrity team of crackpot (maybe crack-pipe is more appropriate here) producers thought we needed one more big name.

PRECIOUS’ worst sin, however, is not its flimsy plot, maudlin diatribes, weird racism (dark = bad) or downright crappy photography. Its biggest problem is that it’s just TOO DAMN MEDIOCRE. In a way, it would have been better if it were worse -- at least we wouldn't have to keep discussing it. I wish it was shocking or outsized or verite, instead it’s a contained, do-ragged fairy tale, simplistic and false, keen to see RACE where PERSON would be so much more complicated. PRECIOUS avoids complications, which makes it easy (for some people) to root for, but it isn’t nearly as brave as Oprah would have us think. And, as we’re sure to forget (we always do) when the next independent film flash-point putters to the Hollywood fore, not nearly as precious.

NOT EXACTLY ANTI, FAR FROM PRO

Okay, 48 hours have passed…I can begin to ease myself into life as a normal person again. I haven’t slept. After seeing ANTICHRIST and being total sapped of all enthusiasm, hope, and positivity – I am once again on the road to recovery, my heart beating normally, my mind not wandering to tableaus of still born deer, genital mutilation, blood…

Oh but we are getting ahead of ourselves. ANTICHRIST is of course Lars von Trier’s (THE IDIOTS, MANDERLAY, DANCER IN THE DARK) latest offering. And because I adore some of his films, and because the star power here is first rate (Willem Dafoe and -!- Charlotte Gainsbourg), and because I love horror movies and this seemed truly, genuinely, scary…well I was pretty damn excited.

To get this out of the way: I don’t understand the criticism of this film. And by CRITICISM I mean the critical reaction, positive and negative. There’s so much about how perverse, manipulative and over-the-top this film is. But I have to wonder who it is that is saying such wholly uninteresting things. There is nothing in this film that isn’t matched (or topped!) in J-Horror or K-Horror, nothing in fact really original at all about its metaphor-system or imagery or carnage. But this movie isn’t an egregious piece of trash either, and the hostility it’s gotten for being a dupe and a manipulative sham is undeserved. The reality is that it is too uninteresting to be anything so extreme.

So why my visceral reaction? Why the physical ailment that followed me around even two days after seeing this? The one thing I will give credit to ANTICHRIST for is its mood. About three minutes into ANTICHRIST things get a bit nutty involving a baby and a window sill, and thus begins the strange mood of the film. Sometimes this mood is exploited for horror movie purposes (MATCH CUT TO: shadows rolling over tree branches, the whip of wind) but I don’t think it’s wholly manipulative in like a personally affronting way. It’s well documented how Lars von Trier was fighting depression during the making of this movie, and I think there is evidence here of a real cathartic artistic process. But I wasn’t expecting that by exorcising his depression Lars was actually handing it off: and in this way was leaving the audience with their own bit of his foul outlook. So this may be manipulative but only in so far as von Trier made this movie for his own self, not for me or you or Michael Eisner, and I sort of wish more filmmakers approached their art with such solipsism.

Also, of course, I take issue with the criticism because what horror movie ISN’T manipulative. It’s almost an aesthetic criterion of the form, an attempt to handle or control an audience to produce a reaction. I guess where ANTICHRIST worked for me isn’t in my “reaction” to the film (frankly, I didn’t really like it) but in the feeling I got from it: namely, that things are terrible and everything is most certainly not going to be okay. Oddly enough, in the masochistic feedback loop of a horror fan, the cumulative experience is positive – even if the actual experience was literally awful.

Sounds like bullshit? Maybe, but we have to ask ourselves why anyone would go see a movie called ANTICHRIST without the tiniest desire to punish oneself. Anyway, the point is that the film was successfully atmospheric, so calling it “the worst piece of shit ever” (as one friend who saw it did) seems hyperbolic when plenty of movies come out that have neither plot NOR atmosphere. I'd take this film any day.

Of course that leaves plot, and this is where ANTICHRIST failed me, and this is where I think it fails in general – and why people can’t see past its abhorrent imagery and appreciate the brilliant cinematography and design. The plot of this movie is ridiculous. It starts out with a beautifully shot sequence of a husband and wife having sex to a swelling Handel aria…as their newborn in the other room climbs up onto a snowy window ledge and jumps to his death. Yes, this is awful, but it’s such a stock scenario right out of any given melodrama – what if…what if…we could have stopped him! It also ties in the film's psychological themes in the most straight-forward and uninteresting way; as if von Trier is announcing that sex is associated with violence and death, and if you don’t believe me watch this scene!

Unfortunately this film never evolves much further psychologically from this basic Freudian tenet. In addition to LIBIDO—the life force—Freud postulated THANTOS, our “death instinct.” Everyone is clamoring for a slice of NONLIFE, of UNBEING, of THE WOMB. For Freud, and for ANTICHRIST, Libido in tied to THANTOS in a Gordian Knot -- there is no solution for one that doesn’t involve the other. Listen, this is definitely not bad psychoanalytic terrain for a horror movie to mine; it’s just how does von Trier expect to find gold there when so many others have come before him?

But psychoanalysis aside, the plot’s biggest failing is more in another psychological realm – the whole Behaviorism/exposure therapy conceit is TRULY RIDICULOUS. It’s actually like insultingly bad. First and foremost, I cannot accept that Willem Dafoe is both Gainsbourg husband AND HER THERAPIST. I mean…why? Why couldn’t this movie just be about a man helping his wife through the stages of grief? Why does it have to be couched in prosaic, clinical psychological concepts? Because the truth is it goes against fundamental psychological treatises to have your therapist also be your lover. It actually sort of negates the entire therapeutic scenario. And while you may feel like this is a small thing, it actually is a huge problem in the film.

Actually, it would have been fine if the film took a different turn than where it eventually ended up. I figured they were setting up Willem Dafoe as “the evil one” because of this just totally ill-conceived therapeutic strategy (along the lines of: if he’s a bad therapist maybe he’s also…a bad person). But instead they fall back on what is probably the most uninteresting of all possible scenarios. Willem Dafoe is our hero…it’s the bitch who is crazy. It’s FEMALE SEXUALITY that’s the snake in the grass (the fox in the hole??...aha!). This is so insipid, so prosaic, so easy. I don’t even care about the argument IS LARS VON TRIER A MYSOGYNIST because the climax of this film is too uninteresting to really be taken seriously. Trier was building towards something pretty interesting – the sexual aggression that exists between a couple, before and after terrible personal tragedy. But by shifting it in the end to make one good (Dafoe) and one bad (Gainsbourg) it simplifies this to the point of nullity. How much better this film would have been if the two were just violently attacking each other on a truly two-way street…well I’m not sure it would be MUCH more appealing but at least the psychological perspective would be subtler. At least there would have been a point.

Instead Lars von Trier gives us a beautiful-looking film that has no point, and it’s a sad thing. In some ways I feel he must have known this, because he makes reference to almost every horror movie under the sun. It taps into BLAIR WITCH and THE EVIL DEAD’s cabin-in-the-woods; it has a SAW moment involving a rusty grindstone; it channels Takashi Miike’s AUDITION (among others) with its gore and body fluids; it has a Hitchcockian blackbird and a tell-tale heart and a million other horror movie tropes. I didn’t mind this stuff because it at least looked good, but I was hoping that all that homage was being used to better present what is ORIGINAL. Then I realized there isn’t much that’s original, and I went home, and I didn’t sleep for two nights.

So who knows? Maybe that in itself is a measure of the film’s success, or maybe I just need Ambien?

The Sorrow and the Pity 2 : Electric Bugaloo

I’m a serious Coen Bros. fan so it was only a matter of time before I got my jew-y self over to the multiplex for the jewtastic and jexrageous (and did I mention Jewish-themed) A SERIOUS MAN. Like their last film BURN AFTER READING the Coen’s have provided a challenging little nugget – hard to love, unabashedly quirky, yet (in my opinion) eminently defensible as a movie that offers something wholly unlike what we’ve seen before.

Which may seem like filmy jibberish, after all a good movie is a good movie, right? We can watch the masterpiece that is FARGO and say, unequivocally: this is a good film. We all saw NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and joined in the chorus of praise and awards – no reservations there. But when BURN AFTER READING came out, the Coens’ train came to a sudden and deafening halt. Suddenly it seemed that, for a creative team responsible for so many quote unquote important movies, what happened that they would produce a movie so…so…frivolous.

Of course, for me, BURN’s frivolousness, its joyous insignificance, its rejection of the very concept of oeuvre, is what it made it such a success. Very few people liked this film, but I did…although I would be hard pressed to say I loved it. It’s literally a film that gives you a few funny characters and zany situations and then self-destructs. I remember almost no plot details, I don’t have any real desire to return to it, I thought Brad Pitt was kind of annoying…yet for everything it wasn’t, BURN was exactly what the Coen’s wanted it to be: frivolous, disposable, violent popcorn. And this coming on the heels of No Country’s Academy Award deluge…this my friends is not at accident.

For there are no accidents in the Coens’ world, especially not in A SERIOUS MAN – where every step or misstep is the explicit work of HASHEM. We may not understand why things happen the way they do, but Judaism and the Coen’s own perversity remind us that cause and effect is a celestial process. Ours is not to ask why, after all.

Every time I watch a Coens film, I feel like the filmmakers are testing themselves and their capabilities, and it’s a challenge that is always pleasurable to behold. If the Coens were seeing just how unserious a movie they could make with BURN AFTER READING, in A SERIOUS MAN I get the sense that they are playing with the very idea of causality. As in life, in A SERIOUS MAN there is no accounting for what will happen. Just when we think Sy Ablemen is our antagonist, Sy Ableman dies. Just when a moral choice is explored, a doctor’s phone call renders the choice unimportant. When we are finally able to repay a debt, a tornado appears to wipe everyone’s slate clean. An escape is a dream sequence; a dream is a fantasy. Irreconcilable differences become reconcilable, or at least begin to seem so, watching ones stoned child read from the Torah on his Bar Mitzvah. And if these seem like a random list of unconnected events, that’s because it is. And if it seems a bit easy to pile erratic plot happenings onto one giant, chaotic heap of a film: that’s because it is.

But even if the plot is “easy” in the sense that it doesn’t burden itself with excessive structural demands, this doesn’t mean that it is unintelligent. And it doesn’t mean that this film as a whole is anything less than an important Coen Bros. offering. There are a few missteps: the Yiddish-language prologue doesn't really have a clear conneciton with the rest of the film (besides it jewiness) and the structural device of breaking the chapters up according to rabbis, while it helps to drive forward the plodding action, is indeed a bit obvious. But even if it isn't perfect, I am pretty sure it’s seriously good.

Where the Wild Things Are just sort of, you know, ADHD

I’m sort of lost in the wilderness with this movie, so I’m hoping writing out my thoughts helps me work through some of my unresolved issues with this film – which for the life of me I do not get. Worse off, I can’t understand how people can sit through that film and come out with the idea that what they saw was successful on any sort of filmic or narrative level; that is worked; that it edified in any appreciable way. I don’t get why people liked this film, which is a big problem, because part of my job is knowing why people like certain films. (Although, to be honest, while dear Manohla all but went down on Jonze’s adaptation of Sendak’s children’s classic, the overall critic response has been, at least, divided.)

Lance Acord (Jonze’s right hand cinematographer) is a brilliant professional who has made a huge impact with his camera work. The general plucky intellect he brings to his vision perfectly matches Jonze’s own whimsical indulgences, and what we get is rare and perfect for a film like this. But here’s my gripe – Max rows his way on over to the Land of No Noons -- that is, as one photophile friend pointed out, a place where it’s always “magic hour,” always sunrise or sunset, always an orange and amber explosion drenching everything with meaning and metaphor and brilliance. This makes everything look fucking beautiful, do not misunderstand, but isn’t some of what’s going on in Max’s messed up brain NOT beautiful. Isn’t there room of drab decay, not only to vary our color palette, but as part of the metaphor system at work here – which is an exploration of the full gamut of a child’s psyche, the raging forces of his id? I fear that drenching the movie in so much light is bound to backfire, as it did in (the truly awful)) American Beauty – its sort of glorious to behold until you look back on it later and think: huh, that is sort of easy and manipulative and really…not that good.


Then again they could have gone the King Kong route and make everything absolutely horribly surreal (see the empire state building scene for one of the worst cinematic sunsets ever). But, like King Kong did, this movie really raised another question in my own mind (and, I’ll point out again, the minds of many highly-regarded professional critics) – where did the money go? Although movie budgets are kept notoriously close to the studio vest, it’s pretty commonly held that this is a movie that cost Warner Bros. one hundred million dollars. Sure, a hunk of that goes to Gandolfini-–and god bless the big lug—but seriously man! This is essentially an independent film, plodding and slow and deliberate: why do we need such extravagance? The monsters looked GREAT but the film in general didn’t deserve such brilliant design, didn’t deserve a budget that is ten times the GDP of the nation of Tuvalu. I suppose this is the old we’re-in-a-recession-yet-films-like-Beverly-Hills-Chicuachua-still-come-out debate, but I guess my caveat to the whole thing is that I don’t care if movies cost one hundred million bucks or Tuvaluan dollars or for that matter the actual island of Tuvalu itself – as long as they’re worth it.

And I just can’t help but feel this wasn’t. Beautiful opening as Max chases his family dog (though I sort of felt bad for dog?) and great unshowy work from Catherine Keener. But when Max gets to the island there just doesn’t seem to be much to do. The monsters should each represent an individual strand of Max’s inchoate urges –he feels no one is listening (Alexander); he longs for direction (Carol); he, uh, loves owls!(KW) – yet to me they come off as interchangeably whiny, babyish, neutered. From wild to mild in one, brilliantly lit, fell swoop.

There was so much talk about this being an ADULT movie, about how this isn’t meant for kids, about how it’ll be sad and scary and dark. Was it though? Nothing was scary – not for Max and not for the audience. We just march right in as Carol destroy those giant…um…tumbleweeds, jump into the action, become king, never look back. Darkness is an almost laughable notion in this film, for even the nighttime on Magic Hour Island cradles a big, bright, sleepy moon. And I mean that tonally-speaking as well; what is dark about Max destroying his sister’s room or hirsute muppets blithely deforesting an island? A dark children’s movie is The Neverending Story or, like, Bambi. What has been toted here as dark played out, for me, simply as boring (which by the way is what I heard most of out the mouths of the children who populated the theater I saw this in– not, I’m scared but I’m bored.)

Newbie Max Records seemed to work against himself in the film – he seemed so determined to be a good actor (and by many accounts he was) that he wasn’t exactly a realistic child. Best illustrated in the film’s final moment – which just kills me– Spike Jonze’s direction just rises to the surface and is spot on the nose in all the wrong ways. Seeing Catherine Kenner fall asleep while he slurps down Chef Boyardee, Max scowls in a moment of narcissistic annoyance. But then his sneers fades…he remembers what he has learned…he smiles at his sleepy mom. A moment so singularly prosaic, so cultivated, that I could just imagine the before-the-cameras-roll rehearsal, as Spike makes angry faces for Records to mimic playfully, than mellows out for a smile that will end the film. It’ll be my finest work thinks Jonze, as his child-actor beams at him through the lens.

But it isn’t his finest, not by a long shot. Like music-video-cum-moviedom’s other man-child Michel Gondry, without the structural discipline of Charlie Kaufman’s genius scripts, Jonze seems a bit lost-at-sea. A friend of mine who liked the film quite a bit told me I was ‘primed for disappointment” going in with such high expectations, which is really a comment that I keep returning to. Isn’t that why we go to films at all, because we respect the creative team? And especially here – delivered by the man who gave us Malkovich and Adaptation, and penned by Eggers, a writer who (even if he’s not as important as we thought in, say, 2000) is at least intelligent. Why should I have had anything BUT high expectations? I don’t judge a movie based on my expectations, rather by the actual experience of paying $6.75 for junior mints, and then sitting in a tiny chair while trying not to fall asleep. And for Wild Things that was a bit more of a struggle than it should have been. If expectations rule the day, I would have hated Inglorious Basterds (which I loved) and I would have issued a jihad against the makers of District 9 (which I liked quite a bit). This summer may not have been “great” or even “good” for movies, but it definitely had some wild rides. Eggers and Jonzes’ was just flat out tepid.

As a somewhat-aside, am I also the only one that sees a bit of a calculated, impure something underneath Jonze’s work? His childishness, somehow unlike Gondry’s, seems a bit more barbed – as if he saying: well I’m going to make it like this and to anyone who doesn’t like it I say I’M GONNA EAT YOU UP. It’s the old enfant terrible song-and-dance. Gondry is a child because he seemingly really is that way, really thinks that way. Yet to me Jonze is different -- he seems to recognize he’s found a niche – and he exploits it well. There seems to be a whole lot of young people out there that have found that their daily dose of intellectual self-congratulation is much easier swallowed with a cool glass of jouissance, one that reminds them how good it feels to be a child and not have to be so cerebral all the time. God bless Jonze for making movies for these people – I suppose I’m one – but I see now that his less-perfect offerings (I maintain the Kaufman-penned Jonze flicks are as good as it gets for film) expose his artifice a bit more than his art.

Oh well, bring on ANTICHRIST! Out this weekend!! Now there's a "dark" children's movie.

Watchedmen

In as much as a comic…err…graphic novel…can, Watchman is a story that kicks the living shit out of you. It claws at your brain with the persistence and innocence of a faucet-drip, innocuous in its individual moments, disastrous when allowed to run its course. Seething with rage both political and aesthetic, the story grips you like the best of novels, it expounds upon its own alphabet of symbols and iconic moments with some unimaginably fresh characters, and it leaves you breathless—if, let’s face it, a bit depressed. The testament to its true craft, however, is how utterly enjoyable it makes the experience of going through the ringer. But whether or not you’ve read this genre-defining classic, you probably have some inkling of the scope of this movie’s pedigree, it’s built-in fandom, and—because of all this—its cinematic expectation. But whose expectation? And what does it matter? No, Watchmen the film is not Watchmen the graphic novel. But more than the sad failing that moviemakers see “successful intellectual property” and think “great film,” however, is the resounding fact that one hundred and sixty-seven minute movie simply isn’t that much fun.

Let's start with the good. Jackie Earle Haley is perfect as Rorschach, a fact made even more impressive considering that Rorschach is the character I was most certain director Zach Synder would get disastrously wrong. Also, to my surprise, I enjoyed the handling of Dr. Manhatten – the ghostly de facto god and the only conventionally superpowered hero in the film. To be honest I never quite imagined him that way but it worked almost entirely (I could have done with a bit less flaccid-blue-penis, perhaps): he was surreal, transcendently powerful, and still so stubbornly human. Although I didn’t appreciate Nite Owl’s boy scout-schtick, I understand the compromises they made to his character (who really wants to go to the movies and see a middle aged, flabby, impotent guy in tights?) One character I couldn’t accept or swallow was the Silk Spectre, who stalked around town ridiculously and yodeled so woodenly that her performance almost single-handedly exhumes and then mercilessly rapes the peaceful corpse of Konstantine Stanislavky himself. On the other hand, The Comedian, what we see of him, is fine, played with a certain gritty depth (the “Wolverine” of this particular pack) that makes sense there. Overall, although there isn’t enough of any of them (particularly Rorschach) I do admit that at least the characters approach the general vicinity of the corresponding comic-book namesakes in a vaguely authentic way.

But, otherwise, the greatness of the comic is never quite captured. Like its saucy characterization of Richard Nixon, the filmed Watchman shares certain gross geometric properties with the real deal—here, for sure, entire panels are ripped from the graphic novel for weird, filmic tableaus. But, lo and behold, something doesn’t quite click. The graphic novel (I want to call it comic so badly, it just seems like lying) holds together with its own murky sense of doom; the possibility of death lurks not merely in the story’s apocalyptic finale but in its paroxysms of intense violence, like when Rorschach breaks a man’s fingers, or a Vietnamese farmer explodes into tachyons, or half of New York City is destroyed. But what made the story great is that these moments float like icebergs in seas of political theorizing, narrative tangent, unrushed exposition, and regurgitated Nietzsche. These were not boring sections, for sure, but heady ones where nigh a punch is thrown. Here, the violence is maintained (often, outright copied), and so is the headiness that deepens the story’s so-called “literary value.” But instead of delivering these moments of violence and intensity with the craft of irony or suspense or restraint, Synder’s bad-assery is thrown in our faces with the jolt of Dolby’s most cacophonous atonalities: the whip-of-wind around a thrown punch (WHOOOOOOASSSSH!) or the hollow crispness of a “back” being “broken” ( CRUNNNNCH!). This sort of onomotopeona actually does well to describe Watchman as a whole, a movie that sort-of sounds like the real thing but is synaesthetically within the wrong medium, celluloid when it should be paper, the written THWACK when the thwack of the actual thrown punch stings all the more. In the end, for all its huff and puff and THWACKS, the filmed Watchmen simply doesn’t kick your ass enough.

goodbye Bush

Goodbye Bush

I’m not a political person, whatever that means, but I feel compelled to rant a bit about George W. Bush – a hardly atavistic biological calling in my family (My parents and Grandparents being perhaps the biggest Bush bashers of them all), and something I’m not fond of doing simply because the Stewarts and Colberts and Lettermans out there have the territory covered. So this isn’t a look-at-that-gaffe type of critique, or a watch-the-monkey-fruitlessly-yank-the-locked door excoriation, but instead merely a sort of frustrated exhale of breath. Frustrated because, even for all the criticism and downright antipathy Bush has received from the Bumper Sticker-Set, there still doesn’t seem to be an appropriate level of worry or true disdain for—wait for it—us. Bush, whether or not we like it, was elected twice (so I guess we, the greater We, like it very much). There are many people in the country, otherwise intelligent people, who think statements like: America is safer now and Seven years without a terrorist attack on our soil are not only true but are resounding echoes of a presidency well-executed. “His job is hard,” I heard so many of the Republican call-ins declare on the C-SPAN talk show following Bush’s farewell address that I was listlessly watching last night.

No shit, he’s the God-damn president. The commander-in-chief. The Chief Executive. He wears more hats then the Italian dude in Caps for Sale. There seems to be this great Apologia out there in defense of Bush and Cheney’s political machine. It’s best summarized by a statement Bush made in his farewell address that goes as follows: "You may not agree with some of the tough decisions I have made, but I hope you can agree that I was willing to make the tough decisions."

While I wouldn’t begrudge a leader the fine quality of a willingness to be wrong, this quasi-specious statement is the sort of sleight of hand that Bush has offered for eight years. Let’s not look at facts over here, let’s look at rhetoric over there. Freedom!!!…justice!!!…is that the American Way tucked behind your ear? It doesn’t matter if decisions were awful and life-ending and economy-crushing: look at the brazen fluency with which they were made! Bush thereby turns what should be a criticism to any logical, empirical mind into some Cowboy Myth about being the Decider, about confidently tossing ones lasso and pulling in whatever we happen to snag.

You know what else is willing to make the tough decisions: the Magic 8-Ball I had as a ten year old. Although every once in a while it sputters out the vacillating and tenebrous “Ask Again Later,” I’d say 7 out of 8 times we are given some firm, no-buts-about-it advice. You may not agree that this child’s toy has the diplomatic skills; international finesse; broad-based background in micro, macro, and integrated economic theory; and spotless personal and professional biography to be a good President, but look at how easily it makes decisions!

How far can we take this tautological, asinine reasoning? Let’s not be too hasty in the next primary season, after all Slinky has made a surprisingly good Senator. I mean, look at how it just keeps going despite the varying distances between steps, despite the exhausting toil of the journey – Nope! Slinky keeps slinking down those steps, taking them one by one, as any good leader should, but it just keeps going, you know? You gotta admire that tenacity.

Maybe being able to speak without actually saying anything is in fact a quality we need in a leader. But if lack of substance is a barometer of our times, I think it’s scary times. We voted Bush in, and then again, and—while Republicans may have momentarily fallen before the mass liberal-rallying of Generation O—I still don’t feel like I’m part of my own country. Proposition 8, the continual defense of Guantanamo, the sluggish religious rhetoric around Stem-Cell Research: these aren’t signs that say YES WE CAN. Maybe we can, and, yes, given enough time, maybe even yes we will, but—at least in the immediate future—many people are working to ensure that it all doesn’t happen too quickly.

I’m happy Bush is leaving office and that someone I respect, President Obama, is coming in. But Obama too has his meaningless and spurious bombast: and while his buzzwords and slogans may ring less fearful and reactionary than those of George W. we still need to keep it all in perspective. I’m afraid that unless the American people start looking at content instead of the far-more-easily-digested-but-ultimately-meaningless ring of political rhetoric, we are aren’t going to see the change that Obama promises anytime soon. What does the 8-Ball say?

Ask Again Later.