When Sex is all There Is

SHAME, directed by the other famous British McQueen (Steve, the not dead one), is an NC-17 rated indie-drama released this weekend in theaters after doing the festival rounds this year, during which it was honored with the various awards and recognitions that are customarily bequeathed onto the latest critical darlings; awards doled out at times indiscriminately, like a West Virginian trailer park mom going at her daughters' school cloths with the brand spanking new Bedazzler she requested, and received, for Christmas. But unlike a movie such as PRECIOUS, which perniciously gathers and maintains it's award momentum through sheer white/liberal guilt, SHAME deserves at least some of its recognition.

Coyly framing the life of a man who can't stop jerking off at work, and banging women after work, McQueen beguiles us to consider our own transgressions--perhaps not as numerous or flagrant as the film's Brandon (a role performed by two stars, both up-and-cummin, Michael Fassbender and his wang), but transgressions still. As they say, let he who is without sin throw the first Palm d'Or. SHAME is uncomfortable in a good way, because while we can surely censure Brandon for his actions, and while we recognize the pain and alienation that underlie his behavior, we can't quite outwardly castigate his entire existence. We feel sorry for him, yes, but in the process envy him -- he is, surely, the playboy many of us wish we could be, even briefly at night, tucked into bed with a box of Kleenex safely on our nightstand. And isn't is a bit sweet when he offers his sister juice or makes small talk with a colleague on their first date? Is there a normal guy somewhere underneath all this?

Granted, there is an inclination to fault SHAME for it’s meandering brand of plotting, distinct lack of focused energy, and something of a narrative fizzle -- the movie just sort of happens, you aren't delivered anywhere, and we end pretty much where we began. And while it could be said that this is a bit underplotted or simplistic, I'd counter that any slightness within SHAME’s storyline fits well the striations of the film’s overall theme – for truly, and importantly, there really is no story to tell. Brandon’s addiction chains him to circles and circles of pleasureless pleasure, but doesn’t leave room for the very stuff of high drama – the emergence of a True Love, the Heartbreak of Losing Her, the Glory of Her Return. There is no magic in sex, when sex is all there is. Similarly, the little we know about Brandon (born in Ireland, “from” New Jersey, successful, wealthy, neat) is all we really need to know—he is merely a cipher for his addiction, which is clearly the star of the show. Without a doubt SHAME's greatest strength is McQueen's tremendous restraint as a filmmaker and screenwriter, providing only the specific bleeps of information we need to hang on but allowing the muddiness of this Rorschach to retain its projective attributes. Scenes are long and laborious, meticulous unhurried, probably to the point of annoyance for the casual film-goer (and to at least one of the people I attended the film with). When a long tracking shot follows Brandon on a midnight jog through midtown Manhattan, the scene ends without consequence--no furtive sexual encounters, no mugging, no suicidal running-into traffic (to just imagine a few of the more bathetic Hollywood scenarios we may expect to transpire during something like this). You may wonder "what's the point" but a scene like that turns out to be my favorite in the film. In exposing the tiredness and lulls in Brandon's life as flagrantly as it exposes his sexual energy and dick, I realize how little sex means when that is all there is. He's not running-from or running-towards anything in a half-baked psychoanalytically emotional sense, because there is nothing else at all. At least that's how it worked for me.

Despite this meritorious restraint, the shame of SHAME is that its faux-enlightened disengagement from morality, its refusal to judge, comes off as more of a trick of the indie-film-as-essay and less a stance of the filmmaker. Not that films need to be political, but this film takes pains to be almost caustically neutral. Where is the titular shame anyway?--is it Brandon's when he's crying in the rain? Is it ours when we see him debase himself to--God Lord!--is that a gay club he is going to?? Is that anal sex they are having?? Are those...Lesbians?!?!?! Or is the shame his sister, intoning the "bad place" she and Brandon come from while the movie intimates, just barely, that maybe their sibling relationship isn't quite "right"? Donde estas, Shame?

It would be quite a trick if McQueen had the shamelessness to pull it off. Instead even in such an ethical vacuum, story creeps in to restrain such unwieldy emotional intangible into the digestive biscuit of filmic trope. First married woman, then his friend's women, then gays, then threesomes...it surely will go on and on. But by mounting his 'crimes' in such an arch and fabricated way, McQueen creates a pat narrative bridge even in a film where he shuns such easy connections. We don't need to see Brandon crying or his sister with slashed wrists, because if the film does anything it provides us with enough information about how these characters feel "deep down"--the suicidal bits and all the crying seem both redundant and overstated, ironically cheapening the depth of the characters' despair. Maybe it's a good act break, but why does SHAME need acts at all?

I suppose that's sort of an anti-film conclusion--film as entertainment, film as art. But SHAME for me was a human study that is refreshingly antihuman, we are a tangle of insecurities after all, and probably not much more than that. David Cronenberg reaches for the same straws with his psychobabble (and by my estimation, horrible) film A DANGEROUS METHOD, also out now. But, as always, SHAME proves actions speak louder than words (Sorry, Sigmund). It would be a real shame, but maybe there just is no escape from our addictions--maybe it's just who we are? If so, that would be the scariest thing of all.

The Best Album I Own

Duncan Sheik’s PHANTOM MOON is the best album I own.

I’m someone who loves the absolutism of rankings and “best of” designations. As anyone who has asked me what the best pizza in New York or game in the Mario Brothers franchise knows, my opinions tend to skew towards the draconian and pedantic. But I’m not apologizing.

But even with my opinionated mindset I have a hard time pinning down one music album as THE BEST I OWN. Music is so mood-dependant, and my own tastes are so varied, that it’s counterintuitive that one thirteen-song collection could be like qualitatively head-and-shoulders above the rest. But here I am saying that the third studio album by that guy from New Jersey who wrote the radio tune “Barely Breathing” is more important to me personally then, I dunno, Pink Floyd’s ANIMALS or ABBY ROAD or GRACE.

Released in 2001, it got proportionally the amount of attention that a third studio album from a sometimes-touring singer-songwriter got in the pre-John Mayer age (the B.M. epoch, which is an apt designation because that guy is literally made of feces). This is to say—very little. No one has heard this. Adam turned me on to it years and years ago, and I have no idea how he heard it, though I chock it up to him being from New Jersey and just being awesome about knowing things.

It is painfully beautiful. It is tristful and susurrus, and other words I like that asymptotically approach a description of the mood it evokes. Evocative is only the beginning. It almost has a message to deliver, but seems uninterested in whether or not you receive it. Even further, PHANTOM MOON, more so then most albums, feels like it lives. Like it is something that exists and goes on and on looping its tracks ad infinitum, and occasionally you tune in to an old friend saying wise things who may not sound quite new or exciting but, god damn it, they get you and they’ve seen you grow up and they know you’re gonna be okay if you just keep on being the good person you are, you know? Maybe I’m projecting. This album is breathing alright, and not barely, it’s so vital and rich and—here is the kicker—MELANCHOLY rather than sad.

I guess that’s what made me sort of pine on it this morning, the dictional difference between these two words, and the mastery at which Sheik and co-writer Stephan Sater walk this line (correct, ten years later the pair would reunite to score the Broadway hit, and only fitfully good SRING AWAKENING….but this is so much better). Though the entire album is contemplative and raw; though many songs are richly minor in key; though it has slow, nagging moments that seem to be trying through sheer force of will to materialize in the physical universe as poetry or I dunno a fucking transcendent vista, it isn’t sad. Some tracks are upbeat and peppy. Some aren’t. But all of them make you feel like you are listening to honest-to-god music, something that doesn’t come around that often these days.

Track by track, it doesn’t miss a beat. Bookended by a prelude and full version of the enigmatic and sparse THE WILDERNESS, we understand Sheik and Sater are interested from beginning to end with those areas outside the bounds of the city and its neuroses, no love stories here, no terrestrial woe. It is larger than that. THE WINDS THAT BLOW and TIME AND GOOD FORTUNE seem almost a biblical in their importance, parables that have truth to offer if you’ll listen. MOUTH OF FIRE is the oddest track, with a palpable yearning, an almost sexual energy that the pair again would re-visit (with much more populist, broad strokes) in SPRING AWAKENING. LO AND BEHOLD is also something of a vague religious story, but doesn’t feel nearly as flimsy as a Sufjan Stevens joint. SAD STEPHEN’S SONG is not sad, but rather bubbling and surreal. It feels like a musical version of “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock.” They have always existed in the same room in my mind and both claw at the same dream-logic and sensibility. (maybe it’s all the “Mermaids” imagery, but it has got to be more than that). It’s the best track on the album.

I could go on. And you’re probably not reading this because there’s nothing worse than an album review for an album you haven’t heard. Or you think I’m lame that such a crooning, serious work is “my favorite.” I could protest that I like all sorts of music and that I love the energy of dance or hip-hop, but I feel like that’s the equivalent of that white woman yelling ”I’m educated!” to the conductor who tried to quiet her down on a Metro North train. So I’ll stop there. But if you want a meaningful CD for an afternoon at home, or busywork in the office, or really anything less energetic than running at the gym, you can’t beat this one.

By the way, the best pizza is Di Fara and the best Mario game is Mario 3. Definitely.

GOOD KID

In the interest of full disclosure I saw TERRI mostly because my roommate works for ATO pictures, the company that distributed this small indie feature and Sundance hit. And, to continue with the honesty, I was expecting the film to be worse than bad—a lugubrious fat-kid-coming-of-age story a la PRECIOUS, with a white obese protagonist and John C. Reilly in the Mariah Carrey role. Leaving the theatre, I was delighted to find TERRI was something wholly other than what I expected, that despite its setup and (sorry, Jesse) pretty bad trailer it is something PRECIOUS was not even for one moment: good. This is a good movie, a very good movie in moments, and one I wish more people would huff off to see.

And why is it good? Well it’s related to the very fact that is it so stridently un-PRECIOUS, in all senses. The simple storyline, a taunted fat kid plods through a grab-bag of high school moments with the help of some misfit friends and a good-natured principal who sees his potential, betrays the film’s complexity and the skill of its creators. There’s more honesty in Terri’s fat little finger than in the rotund entirety of PRECIOUS, and this honesty comes out in perhaps by favorite filmic way: lack of causation. The script is so loosely-plotted and dreamily-directed that you never quite know what’s going to happen, what people are going to say, what tone is going to be struck, what shots are going to hold, what cuts are going to pull us away from such gossamer emotional tableaus. The events of one scene certainly inform the next, or a scene five or six down the road, but there isn’t an urgency to the proceedings here. Terri just exists and wanders through these scenes, hobbling in his way, and this allows us to accept him as a real character rather than simple a conceit (Precious existed only to eat fried chicken and get punched round by Mo’Nique, Terri lives and breathes on camera and off). In another film maybe such a peregrinating pace and lack of cohesion would be a flaw, here it saves the film entirely.

That is, coupled with another element of TERRI which I love, and also saw recently in the simply-playing (and similarly-distributed) WIN WIN. This element is that Terri (like the blond-haired wrestler in WIN WIN) is something we see shocking infrequently in the movies these days: a GOOD KID. The movie prefers a more evocative term—“a good hearted kid”—but we know Terri because we know people, and we know he’s just kind of a good kid, just as we know others are just kind of bad kids. The more facile and surely-easier-to-write version of TERRI or WIN WIN is to show the kid as a guarded asshole, angry at the world for its juvenile injustices, on the verge of ‘pulling a Columbine’ or trying to off himself at least, pulled back from the brinks of despair by the one person who will look at, AND REALLY SEE, the person they are inside. Terri doesn’t belabor us with such a hoary cinematic calculation; we get something so much less certain that the only other thing it can be is true. Instead of watching the familiar character change and be reborn as someone who doesn’t reject adult authority (FREE WILLY, I’m talking to you...), we see a kid that just starts out good, that we can root for because they are so good-natured in the first place and we want them to stay that way.

And, despite the trailer suggesting otherwise (it presents the film as something of a two-hander, John C. Reilly’s character helps Terri negotiate high school but TERRI teaches his principal something about dealing with his own problems, in the form of his contentious wife), the film doesn’t pander to us with the egregious suggestion that this is really John C. Reilly’s story. We don’t meet his wife or ever see him break down and “confide” in Terri beyond a very casual, natural, relationship-appropriate way. When Terri stumbles upon John C. Reilly sleeping in his car in the school parking lot one sunny Saturday morning, we can piece together he’s been there all night after fighting with his wife. The film doesn’t need to belabor or even MENTION this, it respects our intelligence enough to allow the pieces to be the pieces and for the filmmakers to just play with them without unnecessary explanation. This is Terri’s film, and John C. Reilly is an incredibly empathetic principal, wise in such a brilliant and almost suburban way, a goofball but meticulously not weird. But it’s a triumph and even a central pillar of the film that it doesn’t delve into the principal’s personal life much, that his wife never appears, that Terri doesn’t ask him TOO many questions or offer TOO many canned pieces of folk wisdom (those all come, appropriately enough, from the principal himself...to help Terri with his own doubts and problems). This may be, deep down, a symbiotic relationship but it is never CALLED THAT, and that's why it is therapeutic or transformative for the young man.

So no matter what, don’t accuse it of being PRECIOUS: despite its indie themes, bemused tone, soft lighting, piano score. TERRI is everything it is because of the things that it so stridently is not: it refuses to yield to such “classic” indie tropes that have no truth to them, that may tie up the script but leave us stranded emotionally. Terri’s absent parents don’t reemerge and cause crisis (and that’s where WIN WIN buckled under cliché); Terri’s sickly uncle doesn’t die and cause him to reevaluate life. Terri’s weird rat-catching fascination or pajama-wearing isn’t riddled with specious psychoanalytic content (thank god he doesn’t slip on jeans in that final scene). The inevitable drug binge doesn’t lead to dramatic stakes and maudlin consequences (Terri’s friend pisses his pants, but nobody overdoses, nobody seizes the moment to steal a kiss). Terri never snaps and shoots the school bully. He doesn’t begin to diet. The film doesn’t demand narrative justice because it knows the universe doesn’t either, and it is infinitely wiser because it doesn’t have to be wise.

SUPER 8 MY HOMEWORK

For months I had looked forward to JJ Abrams (LOST, ALIAS, the latest STAR TREK film) secrecy-shrouded feature SUPER 8, his homage to his once-hero and now-mentor Steven Spielberg and his awesome grab-bag of iconic ‘family-adventure films.’ Some Spielberg directed (E.T., RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND) and some he just produced (GREMLIN, THE GOONIES), but his trademark stamp is impossible to ignore. Usually it takes kids and sends them on big adventures, pits them against big enemies, stacks against them what seem impossible odds and, experiencing these adventures and enemies and odds alongside them, we remember what it feels like to believe in magic.

SUPER 8 is also a lot like CLOVERFIELD, the monster-attacks-city movie from a few years ago that JJ Abrams produced and I loved as an allegory to 9/11 anxiety that there is nothing scarier than something loud and destructive slamming against buildings in New York. In SUPER 8 the fear is decidedly more post-9/11: there’s a monster out there that the government knew about but had covered up. It’s Patriot Act horror: what happens when the lies we aren’t told “in order to protect us” get out? What will we do if we aren’t prepared with the truth?

Unlike the claustrophobia of CLOVERFIELD (which forced us to recognize the “big city” was just a series of small spaces in which we could get trapped) SUPER 8 sets are sprawling, airy, idyllic expanses. The monster destroys plenty because he has plenty of room to destroy – but it’s a different kind of threat than that of his counterpart loose in the narrow, skyscrapered lanes of NYC. Somehow, because it has more room to run amuck, the creature feels more like an angry puppy than some unholy beast from beyond. It isn’t as real of a threat; the materials it demolishes aren’t hard steel and concrete but trees and houses, like a child destroying a Lego set after having too many grape Kool-Aid Kool Bursts. In fact, while CLOVERFIELD felt like it had a setting (however glossy or embellished), SUPER 8 feels more like it’s simply on a set – production values may be high (the call for “production values” is the mantra of the child-director making the zombie movie in the film) but this isn’t quite cinema verite.

And that’s the general vibe of SUPER 8 and one that works for it fairly successfully. It is also in line with J.J. Abrams postmodern tendencies to care more about storytelling than (and this is certainly the case here) the story. SUPER 8 is a monster movie about kids making a monster movie, and so throughout it all are touches of the wide-eyed DIY qualities that any kid fucking around with his friends and a camcorder know so very well. I look back on my own experiences being a film geek alongside childhood friends with nostalgia and, yes, some embarrassment (side note: I’m still upset I was never part of Josh’s original home video ATTACK OF THE AMISH, which somehow, despite my having nothing to do with it, stands like an obelisk in my memory: “when you’re buttons are all gone, and your VCR ain’t there, and you can’t find your blow-dryer so you can’t dry your hair…Attack of the Amish!”). SUPER 8 aspires to and tributes a prepubescent feeling of almost pre-embarrassment: when everything was possible, nothing is shameful; when the world was full of stories and ambitions and nights to almost-kiss the girl of your dreams. This is surely Spielberg’s modus operandi and maybe such puerile goodwill has no place in the cynical world of government-sanctioned lies and outsized threats from outer space….but for a moment, before the train crashes, before shit hits the fan, when the kids are filming and the night is warm and Elle Fannings’ sort of outrageously good performance hits just right, there is a bit of magic. It is ephemeral and slippery, and Abrams loses it surely, but it was there. You know it when you feel it.

I wish there were more attention paid to SUPER 8 clever Brechtian alienation and less to its undeniable faults. When the child director rewrites scenes to illicit an emotional response from the audience in order to “to make them care” it’s more than a tongue-in-cheek Ha-Ha aimed at the “real” audience; whether or not you know what your laughing at it’s actually the postmodern attribution of “standards” to a genre. Just as SCREAM taught us a lesson we didn’t-know-we-already-knew (never say: ‘I’ll be right back…”), so does SUPER 8 concern itself with concepts one Russian-Stacking-Doll further out from what’s physically going on on screen. But maybe SUPER 8's problem is that of the SCREAM sequels (2 and 3 anyway…I can’t bring myself to see 4): it’s a clever way to speak but there just may not be that much to say. Abrams has almost nothing to add to Spielberg’s family-friendly wonderment/awe/catharsis formula, so the best he can do is try to replicate it, and quite frankly, he can’t. He did his homework on Spielberg, fine, but he didn't CREATE anything that's his own. It's a mathematical problem that doesn't seem to occur to Abrams: no matter how perfectly you solve an equation, it isn't the same as designing a theorem. It isn't as elegant.

Further, in caring more about storytelling than story, Abrams overestimates his storytelling, because the story blows. Full of holes and inconsistencies, falling on trope and convention in an almost lazy way, populated by adult characters whose hokey motivations are straight from 1993, what actually happens in SUPER 8 doesn’t matter at all. We know where this train is heading and we know that, even if it is detailed along the way, it’ll get there somehow. The children are the bright spot here (‘manipulative!’ cry haters) and a reason to see the film; ironic since it’s famously-coy marketing campaign teased the monster itself as the carrot on the stick. The monster, sadly, disappoints—sort of Clifford the Big Red Dog meets the CLOVERFIELD Monster, with of course the motivations (and table manners) of E.T. Its design is far too similar to the CLOVERFIELD monster—which is inexcusable really because the thing could have looks like ANYTHING to tell the story Abrams was telling. It’s nothing but a creative failure, any way you splice it.

I don’t begrudge Abrams the intellectual preoccupation with Spielbergian convention, hell anything that successful and populist should be carefully considered, but SUPER 8 would have been better if Abrams had the creativity or gumption to give us some major BREAK from this convention, not only to surprise and entertain us but also to further educate about what it means to be a Spielberg movie in the first place. Instead of something original, we get an ending right out of E.T., made even further flaccid of course because we’ve seen it so many times since. The misunderstood alien goes home, the kid’s are vindicated as more than mischief-makers, life returns to normal. SUPER 8 fails to distinguish itself in the end, a common failing for so many action movies I see, but here it’s somehow even more toxic to the overall film: what’s the POINT of seeing SUPER 8 when E.T. in streaming on Hulu? What’s the POINT of caring when it all ends the same way?

And so, yes, not exactly the ground breaking film I was hoping for nor the latest monster to haunt my geeky monster-movie dreams. Still, I defend SUPER 8 as a well-made film. And it’s innocuous, hardly a compliment usually but here it almost (almost!) is. SUPER 8 trades in its innocuousness, its ability to neuter the monster movie and make it a family film – an idea that may be clever, that may be postmodern, that may operate successful – but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good idea.


The cross-branding writes itself. Till next time, you monsters.

CHILD LEASHES: A Defense

Yes, I hate GLEE. But I wanted to take a few minutes to un-‘leash’ another diatribe, or at least a sort of aimless philosophical exercise, if you’ll grant me the utter nonsequitor.

At Starbucks yesterday evening (the one near my work; where I’m mayor; where I enjoy a level of popularity among the sassy baristas unparalleled in any social arena at any point throughout my life so far. Free coffee is only the beginning—Tricia told me she wanted to “feel me up” yesterday when she gave me my latte) two women were waiting for their Frappacinos when one of them saw something outside that made her cry: “OH GIRL…HELL YES. I NEED ME ONE OF THOSE.”

“What now?” her friend said, looking. Awaiting my own coffee, it was either eavesdropping or reading the track listing for the 300th time on the Deathcab CD that Starbucks is now selling. Haven’t heard it, but great track titles.


I assumed, both because these women were quite fat and because I am an asshole, that she had seen some sort of food product, perhaps a churro. But then I saw what captivated this woman so: outside there was another large woman wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt with two red-headed children attached to…could it be…CHILD LEASHES?? This was seriously something out of the classist third act of MILLON DOLLAR BABY. Utterly splendid.


The Starbucks woman was impressed—could those really be the first kid leashes she has ever seen?—but her other friend, obviously a more dogged defender of personal liberty and individual freedom of locomotion—told her she was crazy, “LEASHES ARE FOR YOUR CAT” she reasoned.


Okay, so she didn’t have the particulars right—I mean a cat leash is just insane—but generally I agree with her. And we all do, right? It just feels wrong, leashes are for pets, tying up children is cruel and neglectful (as far as TYING ANYTHING TO YOUR PERSON can be considered ‘neglectful’). It’s just plain old wrong.


But sitting on the subway home, I kept musing on this incident and my visceral reaction to it. What’s so wrong about a parent choosing to tether their child, so they don’t run off and get hit by a car, or kidnapped by Tricia the barista, or eat that weird feathery thing lodged in the crack of the sidewalk. I’m not talking about like elaborate and painful harnesses and cat-o-nail-tails cracking their flanks if they get distracted by the ice cream man and break stride, I’m just saying – is it really so different than strapping a child into a car or bike seat? Or going with them on a two-man float on a waterslide?

This is one of the many examples in my life where my initial, egalitarian, liberal, “enlightened” reaction sort of chaffed against a more slowly-determined and reasoned analysis. I’m not sure I think all kids should be manacled to their mothers—some are better off getting as far away from mom as they can, hell this particular one was wearing a MICKY MOUSE SHIRT. It’s when leashes replace responsible parenting that I think we have a larger problem, but I’m not sure why we can’t have both.

In a vacuum, kids should be able to roam free and sprinkle their joy and puerile wonderment on all things they touch. In reality, they break shit. What it comes down to is if we live in a world where parents take personal and financial responsibility for their child’s safety and liability for the damage they cause, throwing a rope around their neck and commanding—patiently yet firm—WHOOOO DOGGY may not be the worst thing in the world.

And he never babysat again.

GLEE-FUL DISDAIN

As we’re only two days from the RAPTURE there’s something I have to get off my chest. Seriously…

…okay here goes…

I hate GLEE.

There, I said it… I feel better now. There probably isn’t another more incendiary three-word comment I could make to The Facebook Community. Maybe “Yoga is Retarded” (ohhh, that’s a good one). It’s my own private version of wearing a ‘Jeter Sucks Arod
 t-shirt on a lazy Sunday at the Bronx zoo.

Why? Because I’m supposed to like GLEE. Glee is doing great things, right? It’s getting people to watch a new scripted show. It’s a least periodically funny with its biting jokes and greased-lightnin’ pace. Most of all, it is THE undisputed champion of egalitarian discipline, the bastion of tolerance we need in a world where gays are bullied, fat people are ignored, and cheerleader/jock romances go too often unrequited.

But I hate it. I hate its stupid face and its stupid songs. Here are three reasons, two of them frivolous:

1) CHARACTERS:
The characters on GLEE are some of the weakest-drawn I have ever seen on network television. I look back at the show like FRIENDS and I think, wow those characters were so shallow and predictable, the eccentric Phoebe or simple-minded Joey never breaking stride in ten seasons of stock-scenarios. But if the cast of friends existed in the world of GLEE they would be Supreme fucking Court Justices. GLEE has not one character with an iota of the believability of Matthew Perry’s Chandler, and that is a major problem, because Chandler and the rest never seemed like real people to me. Maybe that’s where I depart from many of my peers, who watch shows like FRIENDS or SEX & THE CITY and are quick to identify, quick to delineate character-types (“I’m a Miranda with a bit of Carrie when I’m drunk on bellinis”). I don’t have that tendancy, although to be honest I’m like mostly a Jack with some Sawyer thrown in for good measure.

2) SONGS:
Dreadful. Not even a little bit good. Some of them are catchy but that’s because the original songs were good. I can play a couple of bars of moonlight sonata, I can even jazz it up with a left hand riff anachronistic to Mozart, but it doesn’t mean I’ve reinvented the wheel. Watch MOULIN ROUGE and you get the idea – oh yeah, I sort of like Elton John’s YOUR SONG. So go buy an Elton John CD. Baz Luhrman at least stylizes his work, the frenetically mashed-up visual style matches the musical schizophrenia. GLEE’s plundering and reorganization is more insidious -- in a show with no style whatsoever, it makes music worse by adding nothing. It’s a creative asymptote, no matter what they do there’s nothing they can add; it’s never the original, and it will never be better.

3) THE NEUTERING, FACILE, MIND-NUMBING POLITICS (AKA the Characters)

Yes, to return to the characters for a second, we don’t just have flat characters, we have characters that I feel actual negate some of the good GLEE purports to do. The not-actually motley crew of Glee club members include the following well warn tropes: the Dumb-but-Dimpled Football Quarterback; the Histrionic Go-getter; the Punky Asian; the Fat Black Girl with Pipes ya’ll; the Lipstick Lesbian; the Dumb Blonde Cheerleader; the Inoffensive-but-Bland cheerleader (also blonde); and, of course, the Gay. This veritable Burger King Kids Club of a crew even has its own Wheels.

The point of every episode and every second of GLEE is that NO MATTER WHAT CLIQUE YOU FALL INTO, YOU’RE WORTHWHILE. That the long-sought great equalizer of high school politicking is here a glee club choir is mostly besides the point, rather that there is SOMETHING that makes everyone valuable and worthwhile, no matter who they are fucking, praying to, or modeling themselves after. Fine, great. But something about GLEE seems to betray its message, for in its cookie-cutter approach to the various archetypes of a middle American high school, we ignore how vastly different people can be, even gay people (some play sports!), even jocks (some are smart!), even cheerleaders (some are brunette!). Having a gay character, even a likeable gay character like Chris Colfer who stands by his friends and sticks up for his principles, isn’t half as brave or philosophically important as having a character who happens to be gay, but whose entire character isn’t defined by this trait. Whose sexuality is, finally, besides the point.

By wearing each characters’ dominate trait on their sleeve, GLEE positions these traits as ‘handicaps’ – handicaps that don’t matter, they argue, but handicaps indeed. We got a Jew, an idiot, and a red-head gay—but that’s okay because we’re ALL IN IT TOGETHER. WE ARE THE LITTLE RASCALS. WE ARE THE OUTCASTS. GLEE is a show for the outcasts, which revels in the fact that there are more of us out there than anyone thinks.

But by asserting its own anthemic qualities, GLEE reminds me of the latest commotion around Lady Gaga – a self-proclaimed messianic juggernaut that we’re supposed to like because they claim to speak for us at last. Casting aside Gaga, or GLEE, is then equated with casting aside parts of yourself: self-hatred, the arch-nemesis of the enlightened soul.

Look, there are worse things on Fox and in the world. Of course its message of love and acceptance is meritorious and I don’t begrudge GLEE for being at least on the right side of the political fence. Creator Ryan Murphy isn’t the devil, and for all his travail to bring the world GLEE’s important message I’m sure he’ll be raptured in a couple of days (oh wait, he’s gay…maybe not). I just hope that, in Heaven or wherever, he makes better TV than GLEE, because its creative and philosophical sins are numerous. And because commanding the National Ear is a hard trick to pull of, once you do, it becomes a responsibility to shout, a capella, a message more all-encompassing than “I’m Okay, You’re Okay.” When the conversation isn’t about acceptance but rather acknowledging the insufficiency of stereotypes, we’ll be a lot closer to where GLEE—in its good-natured attempts—wants us to be.


Oh and it’s so god-damn boring.


*





THANKS FOR READING MY BLOG, SEE YOU IN HEAVEN, I’M OUT PEACE

HATE-RIOTISM: THE WAY WE WIN

Oh beautiful for spacious skies

For amber waves of grain

For Purple Mountain’s majesties

SHOOT THAT MOTHERFUCKER IN HIS EYE!!!

***

The rockets’ red glare kept America up Sunday night, as soon-to-be-second-term President Barack Obama took to the podium at nearly 11:30 PM in the White House’s east room to make the announcement George W. Bush made hundreds of time, but only in his (probably wet) dreams: Osama is dead. Freedom wins. Count it.

Well, frankly, I’d count that a three-pointer, because there is no greater coup, no single symbolic thing, no more important victory for America’s military policy than the tracking down and killing of this wicked, wicked man. Rarely has a forty-minute military raid have had such metaphorical significance for the country that undertakes it. Whether or not Osama’s death translates to actual physical consequences for international relations or domestic policy is anyone’s guess (I’m leaning towards no), but the thing itself—as a pure symbol, as a signifier—it is as big as it gets.

AS BIG AS IT GETS.

Faced at last with a shared joy proportional to that shared loss we all experienced on in 2001, I reflect on that precious egalitarian and communal spirit that we see among Americans in the worst of times – those Blackouts real and figurative, those grossly-outsized wars that threaten more than our lives and livelihoods but our ideals and values, those darkest hours of our darkest days. We band together; we persevere. So how does America celebrate such an immense joy, such beautiful and dramatic closure to the nightmare of 9/11 and the decade-long war that followed?

Shots! Jose Cuervo. Those mini kegs of Heineken, never cold enough. Lemon Drops. Sex-of-The-Beach shooters. The Flaming Moe.

Lo, we’ve seen the Promised Land and it reeks of Milwaukee’s Best!

I do not deny that this is a time, and a cause, for celebration. But the tenor of the downright partying that has characterized both the world trade center site and midtown at large makes me, at best, uncomfortable…and, at its worst, a little ashamed. The language of this revelry is overbroad, and the posture of the revelers is, in some ways, threatening. DON’T FUCK WITH US, BECAUSE THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS is what this says to me. That general tone much more closely resembles in some ways the jingoism of Bush than the measured but committed tactical pressure of Obama’s military command. What’s the problem with jingoism? I guess nothing, on a theoretical level, as jingoism is just extreme patriotism with a military panache. But as wielded by Bush and his generals, jingoism was a form of jingleism – a procession of meaningless sayings: “mission accomplished,” “smoke em out,” etc. – that distracted from what was really going on: horrific acts of cowardice, staggering acts of bravery. War, very real war, with loss of limb! And life! Broken homes. The lasting effects of tedium and demoralization on young soldiers. Friends who never come home. Stories cut short.

It’s sad to me that the relief and closure Americans feel at this moment can’t be expressed more articulately than a drunken shanty delivered on the backs of off-tune bagpipes. The DAILY SHOW’s “moment of Zen” had it best: a fresh-faced twenty year old college kid at Ground Zero at 1 AM on Monday morning bellowing: “I have two finals tomorrow…but I’m not going to study because WE JUST KILLED OSAMA!!!” This kid was maybe ten when the twin towers fell; likely he doesn’t even remember a skyline that included their iconic silhouette. Yet the rage bequeathed to him by a generation flabbergasted by the events of 9/11 is certainly in tact. And, now that Osama is dead too, the jouissance of victory is his to claim as well. He's earned that.

I know I’m not alone in my dismay here. Some have pointed to Proverbs 24:17, which reads, "Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when he stumbles, do not let your heart rejoice." Some have invoked Gandhi in suggesting that utter scorn for ones enemy only creates further conflict. Yet, while it may eventually make the world blind, sometimes an eye does deserve an eye (could there have been a more perfect place for the fatal shot to have hit?). Osama deserved to die, there is no doubt, and no amount of liberal pussy-footing is going to change that fact. But just because someone deserves to die, and just because they are killed, and just because killing is – in this limited and unfortunately circumstance – justified, doesn’t mean it’s something to celebrate. At least not in that way. Instead maybe we should hold our family and friends near, recognize those that didn’t live to see the day in which, as Obama put it, “justice has been done.” Don’t cry about it, for God’s sake, but take it easy. Reflect joyfully, and be optimistic for a future where retribution isn’t the reason to cheer. Where we don't have to murder murderers, because murders aren't so.

Like probably every one of you, I’ve sat through enough enervating sermons to have wandered to the “Psalms” section of GATES OF PRAYER and noticed—with some sort of misplaced, puerile glee – all FOUR verses of “America the Beautiful” written out. And to think, our Elementary Schools teach us but one—and definitely the weakest—of these noble stanzas. The one I turn to now seems particularly apt for this moment of national celebration and memory:

O beautiful for heroes proved

In liberating strife.
Who more than self their country loved

And mercy more than life! 

America! America! 

May God thy gold refine

Till all success be nobleness

And every gain divine!

Nifty little verse, which stirs a prayer in my heart:

It is beautiful that our heroes—our servicemen, our municipal workers, our parents, children and friends—after nearly a decade of travail and sustained effort to fight for the cause of liberty, have proved their cause to be just. America! It is incredible to reflect on the country that is ours. May God continue to grant us pure wealth, the wealth of a life of freedom, and let our heroes’ successes be the hallmark of our unique and amazing country. But only when our success is NOBLENESS, when we are proud of both our wins and of the way we win, will we have truly—and indelibly—won.

IN/CIVILITY

...

Following my post on Commodore Palin, and after reading Brian Lowry’s column last week (Variety, January 19, 2011), as well as much commentary on Armond White being literally the devil (http://www.nypress.com/blog-8067-connect-the-dots-how-to-criticize-a-critic-when-he-doesnt-play-the-game.html; thanks Joe), I thought I should opine—because my self-aggrandizing, flabbergasted self thinks such things—on the idea of ‘incivility’ in film reviews. I’m talking about the bitchy, caustic climate of online reviewing, altered indelibly as “amateur” film buffs worldwide have access to (however poorly-read) platforms for their ideas.

Twitter gives Joe the Plumber a voice after he belched his way through FURRY VENGENCE (‘genius!’), and lo if I had a blog back when I realized BOYS AND GIRLS: SEX CHANGES EVERYTHING (starring Freddie Prinze Jr, 2000) was the first portend of the prophesized end of human society. Friends have recently given me shit for switching to the Jets (a decision three years in the making, assholes), but I’ve long received guff for a perceived negativity in my movie reviews. When I admitted to someone I hated BLACK SWAN, another friend issued the caveat: “but that’s okay, because you hate every movie you see.” Aside from its outright inaccuracy (don’t make me enumerate, again, the list of movies I ‘liked’ over those I did not like from last year --the ‘likes’ far outnumbering), I always fail to understand these sorts of comments: there is just simply a lot of shit out there and I know what I like and what I don’t.

I guess, though, I do understand a perceived negativity but I think it comes not only out of rhetorical style but also a particular psychological bias on the part of many moviegoers. Starting with rhetoric, yes, I’ll be the first to admit: there’s a certain annihilating flamboyance to my writing: at it’s lightest, a penchant for hyperbole; at it’s most hyperbolic, a douchebaggy cockiness that thinks it knows better than everyone else. After all, it’s not like I directed TITANIC, who am I to say AVATAR is a partial birth abortion of a sapphire fetus? Filmmakers, even bad ones, contribute SOMETHING – a ‘work of art’ or at least a reel of moving images – that didn’t exist before. Criticism, at least chronologically, comes after the abiogenesis of the “something” -- and so, because it doesn’t stand on it’s own, it is more reflexive to societal trends, individual tastes, and general a priori deductions than filmmaking is itself.

As an example: as my friend Adam pointed out to me yesterday, a few early reviewers called TRUE GRIT “good but not one the Coen’s best” and this stance has been subsequently bequeathed onto the critical community, and its readers, at large (until, perhaps, today -- with the Oscar nominations giving credit indeed where it is due. Winning’s a different story.) Maybe, and this is certainly up for debate, this is true -- but the truth is wholly besides the point. To repackage all this: critics comment not only on a particular piece, but the entire EXISTENCE of that thing, its coming-into-being, its “hype,” its historical significance, its ‘worth,’ its flashes of nudity. This isn’t the crucible of art, but of journalism, and thus there is a level of discourse that can definitely seem hostile, inhospitable, even ‘bitchy.’ It’s true, as Lowry points out, “On the internet, it’s often difficult to get noticed without raising one’s voice” and while that is a timely and dulcet lament, I’d counter with what I tell my parents when they can’t work the ionic breeze we bought at Brookstone – deal with it. This is the way of things, this is how communication sounds right now, so we either whine about how great the record player picked up those deep tones or we talk about how to maximize and learn to operate under the latest dispensation. I’m not dogmatically for “Out with The Old,” I’m just pointing out that a LOUD VOICE doesn’t necessarily mean one without points to make. It may be a bit grating, or self-congratulating, but being ebullient or dismissive doesn’t necessarily mean being uncivil. It CAN mean this, for sure, but doesn’t have to. And even if it’s a bit uncivil, in the sense of being a bit brasher than ‘polite society’ generally permits, so what? Even though I think BLACK SWAN is the most egregiously overrated, actually-shitty movie of the year, I don’t think all the people who liked it are moronic assholes. I’d never say this. Loudly saying my opinion on the film, even obstinately in an aghast state, isn’t an attack on you. Feel confident enough in your own tastes to not let the taste of some douche on Facebook offend you so personally.

So we are dealing rhetorically with a problem of “mood” – modern English, lacking a working subjunctive, doesn’t suitably moderate “I believe this movie sucks!” in the way that, say, Spanish would. But we are also dealing with (I mean ‘I believe we are dealing w-- – oh fuck it) a psychological bias, whereby people seem to LIKE more than they DISLIKE things they spend time and money on. I know that’s offensive and ego-dystonic, but I happen to think it’s true. It’s a bad habit – and one I’m often guilty of myself – but (relax) it’s also understandable. Being of limited resources, and desiring generally a state of happiness, I want to feel my purchases are wise and time well-spent. But often I go to the movies and only eat half the large popcorn I paid for; often I have high hopes that are dashed by a mediocre film. This doesn’t make me a fool for having high hopes, and it doesn’t make me a snob for not “just going with it” because (‘after all’) it’s “only a popcorn movie” or it “was just supposed to be fun”. Popcorn movies are fine, fun is fine, not everything needs an elaborate and cerebral metaphor, in fact I wish LESS movies had central metaphors, but there is nothing to be ashamed of to acknowledge that BLADE TRINITY was BAD. X3 was BAD. MARIE ANTOINETTE was BAD. BLACK SWAN was BAD. I don’t regret seeing any of these in the theatres, because I try to only regret things that affect other humans, but I still think they blew major dick. Sue me.

Lastly, turning back towards Armond White (NY Press’s infamously contrarian, but also ruthlessly intelligent film critic), there is the idea that amateur film criticisms somehow harms Criticism with a capital C because it lowers the discourse to that of a unmannerly fracas -- necessitating LOUDER VOICES, as we discussed, to rise above the fray. Granted, I speak from a defense position – and thank you for reading my blog by the way – but I think of it more as an affirmative defense. I think there’s something inexact with the pro-professional viewpoint: Tom Shales, Pulitzer Prize winning former Washington Post critic, points out amateurs lack of “training” and “standards” in Lowry’s piece – though I remember taking more than one film course in my fancy-person college and turning down more than a few sketchy Thai hookers in my travels (no standards-hah!). The question of course is WHAT IS AN AMATEUR (I do not get paid per se for my criticism, but I do get paid by the greater film industry, and writing opinion is part of my job), but this is only half of it. I also think there is something more sinister with the argument that Joe the Plumber should stop tweeting and I should stop wanting hurricanes. It’s something even a bit totalitarian that limits speech because of what it does to other speech. If my thoughts are worthless, don’t read. Armond White is a big fucking asshole, but he’s smart, and even though I only agree with him 50% of the time, I read his column whenever I can. Mr. Shales, delightful for you and your four decade career as a professional critic, but I think the “great equalizing” effects of the internet/Facebook era should be regarded as a good thing, not just for finding an audience, but for advancing THOUGHT. More voices is never bad, until one of them forces you to listen. Be discerning with the opinions you read, not simply because you agree with them, but because you RESPECT them. Sure, this puts the responsibility on the individual consumer, and maybe that’s a lot for many of us to handle, but I’m not sure responsibility is a bad thing either. Think, act, vote, don’t complain.

The word civility, commonly understood today as ‘politeness’ comes from the Latin civilis, which means ‘relating to citizens’. Relating, exchanging ideas, building thought from the ground up. Why would we ever denote which of our civilians should be the ones to speak? Thus, it is in the name of civility itself that incivility has its place – being a bit rude but not purposelessly rude, confident enough to shout, wise enough to listen.

Logging things that bother me about Palin's Special Comment

Logging things that bother me About Media Personality Sarah Palin’s special comment on the “terrible tragedy” ... and a one and a two and a...

WATCH HERE: http://www.vimeo.com/18698532


00:00 Too much bronzer.

00:00 Rimless glasses. I was never aboard.

00:20 “I agree with the sentiment shared yesterday at the beautiful CATHOLIC mass” -- really punched out CATHOLIC, didn’t you? Don’t worry we know you love all good Christian people. Except gay Christians.

00:35 “Our country…so vibrant with ideas and passionate debate and exchange of ideas” -- Who wrote this speech, because I have a few ideas.

01:05 NOT IRONY.

01:33 “Like many, I spent the last few days reflecting on what happened, praying for guidance” -- and here I was, watching SARAH PALIN’S ALASKA, thinking you spent the last few days baking soda bread and birding in Seward Island with Kate Gosselin. You’re a joke.

01:45 REAGAN INVOKED

02:08 “acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own” -- This is the heart of her “argument” (I guess). But it’s also patently untrue. To separate criminality from criminology is the kind of retrograde antintellectualism that will get this total bitch elected. Not to mention what we know about psychology, sociology, and just, you know, common sense. Like, didn’t this deranged man BUY A GUN. Shouldn’t he have been on MEDICATION? Didn’t society somehow “miss” him in its efforts to identify, and help, people who are disturbed? Is all this totally irrelevant, is that actually your argument, that if someone is “evil” enough (you keep saying evil. We get the Miltonian undercurrents, sweetie) a gun will just magically appear in their hands and they will kill innocent people, and there’s nothing society or science can do to help? So we should just give up? So “criminality” just IS and we shouldn’t try to reduce this by intoning age-old “ideas” on how rhetoric can lead to actual physical violence? Are you effing serious?

02:47 “Last November, the other party won” Nader won??

03:29 “Journalists and pundits should not manufacture a ‘blood libel’ that serves only to incite the very violence they purport to condemn” Forget about the fact that ‘blood libel’ is used incorrectly here (the point every liberal commentator is now making). THIS COUNTERS THE VERY POINT YOU JUST MADE, YOU SLAG. So it’s DEFINITELY NOT the fault of Rush Limbough and Glenn Beck, because criminality begins and ends with the act right? But somehow it IS the fault of “journalists and pundits” who criticize violent rhetoric?? This a major logical problem. THAT IS WHAT PEOPLE NEED TO FOCUS ON HERE. So typical poltical bullshitting - -saying one thing and doing the exact opposite in the next breath.

03:53: “But when was [political debate] less heated? Back in those calm days when political figures literally settled their difference with dueling pistols?” First of all, I don’t appreciate your tone here, missy. Secondly: No not then. Sometime after then and before Bush. There.

04:05 in an “idyll” world?? Learn to speak.

05:17 “public discourse and debate isn’t the sign of crisis, but of our enduring strength...It is part of why America is exceptional” Classic sleight of hand. No one is arguing that DEBATE should stop. It’s the quality and content of that debate – the tone of it – that has caused such problems. You’re changing the content of the current debate right now, actually. Very tricky, media personality Sarah Palin.

05:40 “ [we will not be deterred by those who] mock its greatness by being intolerant of differing opinions and seek to muzzle dissent with shrill cries of imagined insults” WAIT WHAT? I’m seriously lost on that one. I think she combined lines on the teleprompter. Who is muzzling and who is imagining here?

06:47 9/11 INVOLKED. Took long enough, seriously man. Six minutes in??? Do you hate America, media personality SP? Do you not respect the servicemen and women who gave their lives for our continued freedom and justice and dignity and freedom and justice and ideas!!!!

06:54 GOD INVOKED.

07:40 Rimless glasses




And so, true belivers, ends another rant on my blog. Palin is a cancer on our planet, and bitch is malignant. At least the whole epidemic gave us Levi Johnston...who is probably the best thing about the Palin years in general. Possible tie going to Tina Fey's SNL impression.

KOAN BROTHERS

True grit indeed: who else but the Coen’s have the sheer chops to make such a water-logged, hefty film? Well, exactly the people who could make its buoyant inverse—BURN AFTER READING—a few years prior. And the same people who made A SERIOUS MAN, the heady existential exercise that bridged these poles. Oh, right, and who also made the Oscar-nabbing action thriller NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN just before those. Oh, and fucking FARGO, which is just the best movie ever made, aye? Oh yeah, these guys can make movies – I forgot.

Still, TRUE GRIT, is remarkable – even in a oeuvre of such pervasive ass-kicking. From the very first shot, this is the real McCoy; nothing is wasted. The bit at the gallows, with the “last words” of the trio to-be-hanged, is a veritable see/hear/speak-no-evil that speaks volumes towards the period, the Coen’s dark humor, and the film’s overall themes of redemption and justice. Or the detail of the dentist wandering the territory on horseback, with a bearskin pelt to keep him warm – not actually a pelt, though, an entire bear skin. There is something so wonderfully odd, and with such tremendous depth, to every single sketch the Coen’s etch out on their filmic pad. They are so unlike most filmmakers, in that the more they tell stories the more I’m convinced they have stories to tell; each successive and wonderful film does not represent the consumption of a finite resource of creative ideas, but rather a forum by which new ideas take shape, where new movies are conceived. There’s something organic and interminable about the Coen’s creative process then, that gives me hope for storytelling in general. And this is a good thing.

The ‘tween’ at the center of this film – a precocious up-and-coming actress named Hailee Steinfeld (Jew Grit) – is the fuel running this furnace. She elevates every scene to another level, which is impressive for any actress, not to mention such a young one, but doubly impressive when she plays against Jeff Bridges—who is Marlon freaken Brando with an uglier mug. Method Acting is only the beginning of Bridges performance here, where he’s as much of a Dude as he ever was, with grit, indeed, to spare. Watching such talent perform, under such meticulous direction and against such intelligent mise-en-scene, gives me that same sensation I have after reading a REALLY GOOD BOOK after a couple of back-to-back beach-reads that, you know what, I actually kind of liked. It’s that edifying moment of realizing what a real artist is capable of; not just entertainment but enlightenment. So much more than fun.

And so they do it again. The Coen Brothers films are experiences that they ask to have with each of us who are wise enough to listen. As if they are producing not films at all but Buddhist koans, tiny paradoxical stories, the contemplation of which, between master and student, achieves an utterly deeper kind of comprehension. And I can’t think of better back-to-back Coen Brothers koans than A SERIOUS MAN and TRUE GRIT, especially when you consider the immensely disparate sensibilities of these works. A SERIOUS MAN, if it’s about anything, is about the meaninglessness of life, the unknowability of God, the futility of plans. TRUE GRIT, recognizing the thematic standards of its genre, is set in a world and in a time of immense order; of clear cut good-and bad; of utter and inescapable justice. It’s Mattie Ross’ RIGHT to shoot Tom Chaney, the man who killed her father. Retribution, and restoration of order, is never a question. There is something so comfortingly unwild about the wild west, at least as it appears on film – its tropes are so grounded in moral justice that we never have to worry about postmodern disorientation, about disorientating pastiche. There is no tornado of meaninglessness undoing the causality that our narrative so stridently achieved (as we saw in the closing of A SERIOUS MAN). In TRUE GRIT, a tornado is just a bunch of air, swirling wildly, kicking up dust. And we know, as we always know, that when the sandstorm calms and the clouds part, the bad guy will be shot dead, the Baby will be born, the Law will be restored to the Land of Opportunity. Words will have meaning again and will be capitalized accordingly.