Friday, December 5, 2008
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
S.O.P.
I think Errol Morris is one of our great filmmakers. I've been watching his latest, Standard Operating Procedure, about the war crimes at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Not a movie it's easy to get anyone else to watch with you. It's not Morris' best, but still fascinating, penetrating, as always - and, apparently, it has made it past the first round of cuts for Oscar consideration.
After speaking with a former solider who spent a year in prison because of his presence in some of the photographs taken at the prison, although he committed no acts of abuse, this exchange takes place:
Investigator: If you were in the pictures while this stuff was going on, you were going to be in trouble.
Morris: Big trouble.
Investigator: If you make our president apologize to the world, I would say so, yeah.
That sort of says it all in terms of the actions taken after the scandal broke. It was much less of a problem that the torture occurred than that it was made public and embarrassed George Bush. Now, writing in the Washington Post, a former interrogator with Special Forces in Iraq points this out:
I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.
There are many voices calling for a reckoning, saying that the officials responsible for America's war crimes, specifically torture, must be held accountable.
Scott Horton's is one such voice, in his piece for this month's Harper's, "Justice after Bush: Prosecuting an Outlaw Administration." He makes a number of useful suggestions for how such a prosecution might be carried out and offers South Africa's post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a possible model.
I believe that the Bush administration ought not be above the law. I believe that some of its members (I'm looking at you, Rummy) ought to be prosecuted for war crimes. If you agree with my first statement, then you will be hard-pressed not to arrive at my second statement, assuming you have the capacity for reason.
But it ain't gonna happen. This is the sad place we are today, as a nation. The fog is lifting and we find ourselves broke, out of work, exhausted, morally bankrupt, deeply depressed international criminals, with all of us to blame. We can't face it and we won't face it.
President Obama will simply not be willing to spend any political capital on pushing for the truth and reconciliation we crave but haven't the strength to seek for ourselves. So we will merely try to slough off this disastrous presidency and these terrible years and go on and, hopefully, never speak of it all again. It's a family shame, hidden away for another generation to bring to light, after we're gone.
After speaking with a former solider who spent a year in prison because of his presence in some of the photographs taken at the prison, although he committed no acts of abuse, this exchange takes place:
Investigator: If you were in the pictures while this stuff was going on, you were going to be in trouble.
Morris: Big trouble.
Investigator: If you make our president apologize to the world, I would say so, yeah.
That sort of says it all in terms of the actions taken after the scandal broke. It was much less of a problem that the torture occurred than that it was made public and embarrassed George Bush. Now, writing in the Washington Post, a former interrogator with Special Forces in Iraq points this out:
I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.
There are many voices calling for a reckoning, saying that the officials responsible for America's war crimes, specifically torture, must be held accountable.
Scott Horton's is one such voice, in his piece for this month's Harper's, "Justice after Bush: Prosecuting an Outlaw Administration." He makes a number of useful suggestions for how such a prosecution might be carried out and offers South Africa's post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a possible model.I believe that the Bush administration ought not be above the law. I believe that some of its members (I'm looking at you, Rummy) ought to be prosecuted for war crimes. If you agree with my first statement, then you will be hard-pressed not to arrive at my second statement, assuming you have the capacity for reason.
But it ain't gonna happen. This is the sad place we are today, as a nation. The fog is lifting and we find ourselves broke, out of work, exhausted, morally bankrupt, deeply depressed international criminals, with all of us to blame. We can't face it and we won't face it.
President Obama will simply not be willing to spend any political capital on pushing for the truth and reconciliation we crave but haven't the strength to seek for ourselves. So we will merely try to slough off this disastrous presidency and these terrible years and go on and, hopefully, never speak of it all again. It's a family shame, hidden away for another generation to bring to light, after we're gone.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Thanksgiving 2008
Kim's turkey was the best I've ever had. My pies were good, but the crust was on the cakey side. Gotta mix it less next time. Good times.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
We'll always have Pirates.
Casablanca repurposed as an anti-piracy PSA. Copyright Warner Bros. I am posting this video as a public service because I think piracy is very, very wrong. I also wanted to offer my support for Warner Bros. efforts to stamp out the repurposing of its intellectual property for contemptible ends.
I ripped this video off the Get Smart DVD. Yarrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...
Thursday, November 20, 2008
The inspiration for Coulee
One of the writing projects on my list is a screenplay I have been working on for some time. It's called Coulee, and it's about a haunted dam.
A haunted dam? Here's how this came about: some years ago, back when I lived with my friends, Hope and Allison, in a three bedroom house near Piedmont Avenue in Oakland, which we called Old Tony, Hope and I were hanging out one day discussing ideas for movies. In fact, we were trying to come up with the dumbest movie idea we could think of, something I could write without concerning myself about things like authenticity, reason, sense - you know, a typical MOVIE.
One of my favorite silly horror movie tropes is the "old Indian burial ground." It serves as a kind of basic rationale for everything that goes on in films from Poltergeist to The Shining. It also describes, ya know, America.
So, a few days later, while we were still trying to come up with "the dumbest movie ever," I was watching a PBS documentary on the building of the Grand Coulee Dam. Guess what it was built on? Yep, an Indian burial ground. Eureka! Haunted dam!
The idea seemed to me to have just what I was looking for: a completely silly, seemingly ridiculous and even boring premise, yet one that was original, and with plenty of socio-historical aspects that I could invent out of whole cloth. That was the other aspect of the project, that I wanted to write a movie with no research at all - so that everything about it would feel vaguely familiar, but have no real basis in fact.
That was several years ago. Since then, now that I am finally actually working on it, I have gotten fairly far in outlining my story, but the "no research" thing has gone out the window.
Perhaps I should interject here and explain a bit more about why I didn't want to do any research. Movies, to me, fall into basically three categories: Great, Good and Idiotic. Great movies are extremely rare and most people do not even know what a great movie is - I do not mean what people mean when they say, "Gee, the new Batman movie was really great!" I'm talking about masterpieces, like Grand Illusion, Citizen Kane and The Godfather. Most moviegoers cannot identify the difference, but that's fine. It's hard to quantify, but mostly it has to do with singularity of vision, uncompromising commitment and artistry. Not all great films are equal, but they are all on a different level than the merely good.
Good movies are much more plentiful. Most Best Picture winners fall into this category. They are crowd-pleasing, well-executed examples of solid, even virtuoso, craftsmanship. Back to the Future, one of my all-time favorites, is a good movie. It could easily have been an idiotic movie (like BttF2 and 3), though, if all of its parts had not functioned so flawlessly together. On the high end, No Country for Old Men is a very good movie, the apogee of its makers' art to this point; and one of the fun aspects of being a movie fan is arguing about which movies deserve to be called great and which ones are merely good. Personally, I don't think we've had a great Best Picture Oscar since 1974 when GF2 won. There's little question in the minds of cinephiles who care about such things that The Godfather, Part 2, is one of the greatest films ever made. Many of the rest of the films to win since have been good, some of them very good, but some of them have been idiotic (viz., Crash, A Beautiful Mind).
Idiotic movies are failures of imagination and authenticity that insult the intelligence to the point where they are no longer even fun. I'm not talking about, say, Airplane! That's a movie about idiots, but it's not an idiotic movie. It's a good movie because it does what it does, on its on terms, with consistency and panache. I'm talking about most multiplex movies, many sequels and remakes and self-important "serious pictures" that lack chemistry, insight and charm, in spite of often obscene costs.
Anyway, to wind this back to the original point, it's important to note that B movies, exploitation flicks and classic "bad" movies are in no way necessarily idiotic. Many of them are actually good. My favorite example is Showgirls, Paul Verhoeven's howlingly awful big budget Vegas strippers (sorry, I mean dancers) exploitation flick. This cannot be an idiotic film, by definition, because it is so much fun to watch. That may be due to its trainwreck quality, but it's such a consistent trainwreck that it becomes utterly fascinating, to the point that it begins to feel like satire. That has been Verhoeven's defense in the years since, that he always intended the film as a satire of a certain Vegas subculture, or American consumerism, or whatever.
I don't think that flies, exactly, but the film can nevertheless be thoroughly and repeatedly enjoyed as satire, even a self-satire, whereas a truly idiotic film cannot be enjoyed even once.
With Coulee, my original intent was to write an idiotic movie that was secretly a good movie. My fantasy was that the movie would be made as a B movie, with second-rate everything, but would also function (perhaps for the kind of viewer who can appreciate Showgirls) as a good movie if you had the right attitude when you watched it. Now I'm more focused on writing a good, thoroughly silly and funny, but also scary, movie.
I thought that by doing no research I could create something that would function on those two different levels, while being essentially and completely artificial. A lot of movies that were heavily researched feel this way, too, and that was the point. The underlying idea had something to do with basic questions about the relationship between art and authenticity.
What I mean is that, given the artificiality of all movies, why do some feel more authentic than others? Is it a function of the degree of literal truth-telling on the part of the filmmakers (i.e., a movie about a historical subject that is shot in the actual castle where the events took place)? Or is authenticity more about emotional or human truth, irrespective of technical accuracy? I'm inclined to believe the latter, which suggests that even the most outrageous, only-in-the-movies situations and behaviors do not matter nearly as much as execution, emotion and imagination. Think about the experience of seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time, for example.
But I do not have quite the imagination and knowledge to do what I need to do with no research. I need information to inspire me.
I've set Coulee to the side, briefly, as I've hit a wall with the story momentarily, but it's one of my chief writing projects right now and I will soon resume. I think I am about at the point where I can begin writing the script itself and see where that takes me.
A haunted dam? Here's how this came about: some years ago, back when I lived with my friends, Hope and Allison, in a three bedroom house near Piedmont Avenue in Oakland, which we called Old Tony, Hope and I were hanging out one day discussing ideas for movies. In fact, we were trying to come up with the dumbest movie idea we could think of, something I could write without concerning myself about things like authenticity, reason, sense - you know, a typical MOVIE.
One of my favorite silly horror movie tropes is the "old Indian burial ground." It serves as a kind of basic rationale for everything that goes on in films from Poltergeist to The Shining. It also describes, ya know, America.
So, a few days later, while we were still trying to come up with "the dumbest movie ever," I was watching a PBS documentary on the building of the Grand Coulee Dam. Guess what it was built on? Yep, an Indian burial ground. Eureka! Haunted dam!
The idea seemed to me to have just what I was looking for: a completely silly, seemingly ridiculous and even boring premise, yet one that was original, and with plenty of socio-historical aspects that I could invent out of whole cloth. That was the other aspect of the project, that I wanted to write a movie with no research at all - so that everything about it would feel vaguely familiar, but have no real basis in fact.
That was several years ago. Since then, now that I am finally actually working on it, I have gotten fairly far in outlining my story, but the "no research" thing has gone out the window.
Perhaps I should interject here and explain a bit more about why I didn't want to do any research. Movies, to me, fall into basically three categories: Great, Good and Idiotic. Great movies are extremely rare and most people do not even know what a great movie is - I do not mean what people mean when they say, "Gee, the new Batman movie was really great!" I'm talking about masterpieces, like Grand Illusion, Citizen Kane and The Godfather. Most moviegoers cannot identify the difference, but that's fine. It's hard to quantify, but mostly it has to do with singularity of vision, uncompromising commitment and artistry. Not all great films are equal, but they are all on a different level than the merely good.
Good movies are much more plentiful. Most Best Picture winners fall into this category. They are crowd-pleasing, well-executed examples of solid, even virtuoso, craftsmanship. Back to the Future, one of my all-time favorites, is a good movie. It could easily have been an idiotic movie (like BttF2 and 3), though, if all of its parts had not functioned so flawlessly together. On the high end, No Country for Old Men is a very good movie, the apogee of its makers' art to this point; and one of the fun aspects of being a movie fan is arguing about which movies deserve to be called great and which ones are merely good. Personally, I don't think we've had a great Best Picture Oscar since 1974 when GF2 won. There's little question in the minds of cinephiles who care about such things that The Godfather, Part 2, is one of the greatest films ever made. Many of the rest of the films to win since have been good, some of them very good, but some of them have been idiotic (viz., Crash, A Beautiful Mind).
Idiotic movies are failures of imagination and authenticity that insult the intelligence to the point where they are no longer even fun. I'm not talking about, say, Airplane! That's a movie about idiots, but it's not an idiotic movie. It's a good movie because it does what it does, on its on terms, with consistency and panache. I'm talking about most multiplex movies, many sequels and remakes and self-important "serious pictures" that lack chemistry, insight and charm, in spite of often obscene costs.
Anyway, to wind this back to the original point, it's important to note that B movies, exploitation flicks and classic "bad" movies are in no way necessarily idiotic. Many of them are actually good. My favorite example is Showgirls, Paul Verhoeven's howlingly awful big budget Vegas strippers (sorry, I mean dancers) exploitation flick. This cannot be an idiotic film, by definition, because it is so much fun to watch. That may be due to its trainwreck quality, but it's such a consistent trainwreck that it becomes utterly fascinating, to the point that it begins to feel like satire. That has been Verhoeven's defense in the years since, that he always intended the film as a satire of a certain Vegas subculture, or American consumerism, or whatever.
I don't think that flies, exactly, but the film can nevertheless be thoroughly and repeatedly enjoyed as satire, even a self-satire, whereas a truly idiotic film cannot be enjoyed even once.
With Coulee, my original intent was to write an idiotic movie that was secretly a good movie. My fantasy was that the movie would be made as a B movie, with second-rate everything, but would also function (perhaps for the kind of viewer who can appreciate Showgirls) as a good movie if you had the right attitude when you watched it. Now I'm more focused on writing a good, thoroughly silly and funny, but also scary, movie.
I thought that by doing no research I could create something that would function on those two different levels, while being essentially and completely artificial. A lot of movies that were heavily researched feel this way, too, and that was the point. The underlying idea had something to do with basic questions about the relationship between art and authenticity.
What I mean is that, given the artificiality of all movies, why do some feel more authentic than others? Is it a function of the degree of literal truth-telling on the part of the filmmakers (i.e., a movie about a historical subject that is shot in the actual castle where the events took place)? Or is authenticity more about emotional or human truth, irrespective of technical accuracy? I'm inclined to believe the latter, which suggests that even the most outrageous, only-in-the-movies situations and behaviors do not matter nearly as much as execution, emotion and imagination. Think about the experience of seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time, for example.
But I do not have quite the imagination and knowledge to do what I need to do with no research. I need information to inspire me.
I've set Coulee to the side, briefly, as I've hit a wall with the story momentarily, but it's one of my chief writing projects right now and I will soon resume. I think I am about at the point where I can begin writing the script itself and see where that takes me.
New schedule
I have spent some time this week devising a new schedule for myself. Last year, when I was looking for work, I could become pretty obsessive about checking Craigslist and other job sites, with the effect that I would find it difficult to do anything else. I don't want that to happen again, so I've created a heavy schedule that still has a fair amount of flexibility and tries to put my many projects into buckets to be worked on at certain times on certain days.
It's Thursday today, so that means this is my writing time, until the afternoon when I have some project time and some time for reading.
It's Thursday today, so that means this is my writing time, until the afternoon when I have some project time and some time for reading.
Thursday
Today I am waiting for my new monitors. Waiting for UPS or FedEx is how I have spent much of this week, or so it seems. Really I've spent more time getting my new machine set up. It's fun to get new gear.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Self-Censorship
Well, I decided to delete a few posts just now at the advice of multiple people. Probably the right thing to do, considering how the Internet works. After all, I wouldn't want someone else to steal my great ideas before I've had a chance to profit from them! Don't worry, you'll hear about them all soon enough.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Persona Contribution...
... from phantomride75:
Scum pit mopper Eyejus Pooped Meself
I like it, though it's a little on-the-nose ...
Scum pit mopper Eyejus Pooped Meself
I like it, though it's a little on-the-nose ...
Quantum of Solace
Saw the new Bond film with Scott and Charlise last night. Here's what I kept thinking:
This video is much better than the film, in spite of how there are better actors in Bond films these days. We sat way in the back, which was a great place to sit (apart from the young children nearby that should not have been there who kept talking throughout) but our vista did not make it any easier to understand the action. As for the story, well, I gave up on that very early. It involved a French dude with stained teeth (a very good actor, the one who looks like a young Roman Polanski), a seriously hot girl and someone from Bond's past named Vespa, which Charlise informed me is Italian for "wasp." She was also able to tell me that the opera featured in the film (at which a group of bad guy conspirators chose to hold a meeting via bluetooth - like, during the opera from their seats) was Puccini's Tosca, and that it was an actual production but without the usual cast.
(About the young children ... I like kids and will soon be a father, but you can't take kids who are under, say, 8 to PG-13 movies that aren't "Mommy and Me" screenings. It's rated that way for a reason, parents! If kids are not involved with what they're seeing - and even if they are, sometimes - they'll just talk, talk, talk. At that point, it is your responsibility to shut them up or leave. For. Christ's. Sake.)
This video is much better than the film, in spite of how there are better actors in Bond films these days. We sat way in the back, which was a great place to sit (apart from the young children nearby that should not have been there who kept talking throughout) but our vista did not make it any easier to understand the action. As for the story, well, I gave up on that very early. It involved a French dude with stained teeth (a very good actor, the one who looks like a young Roman Polanski), a seriously hot girl and someone from Bond's past named Vespa, which Charlise informed me is Italian for "wasp." She was also able to tell me that the opera featured in the film (at which a group of bad guy conspirators chose to hold a meeting via bluetooth - like, during the opera from their seats) was Puccini's Tosca, and that it was an actual production but without the usual cast.
(About the young children ... I like kids and will soon be a father, but you can't take kids who are under, say, 8 to PG-13 movies that aren't "Mommy and Me" screenings. It's rated that way for a reason, parents! If kids are not involved with what they're seeing - and even if they are, sometimes - they'll just talk, talk, talk. At that point, it is your responsibility to shut them up or leave. For. Christ's. Sake.)
Monday, November 17, 2008
Personas
I have been advised that it might be wise to get a blog persona, rather than write about myself so frankly. After all, as I said earlier, someone might actually stumble upon my blog and decide not to employ me based on the shameful scribblings here. So I'm thinking about it. Here are some possibilities I'm considering:
Media critic Josiah P. Barnsplatter
Life coach Arnaud Tiberius DeFong
Real-life vampire Xian Deng Chen
Model train fanatic Cynthia Gordon-Tlatt
New-age Pet-channeler Sunbloom Rae Lakshmi (the former Mrs. Doris Johnson)
Fashion-monger Lyndsie Dawn Stern
Policy wonk Q. Timothy Bratten Mayflower-Heinz Hussein Lehman IV
Conspiracy theorist Barry Charles (not his real name)
Gentle humorist Thorsen Kohler
Goldendoodle-fancier Marjorie H. Jorgensen
Furry fan Felix Kwon
I am taking suggestions, though, so speak up!
Media critic Josiah P. Barnsplatter
Life coach Arnaud Tiberius DeFong
Real-life vampire Xian Deng Chen
Model train fanatic Cynthia Gordon-Tlatt
New-age Pet-channeler Sunbloom Rae Lakshmi (the former Mrs. Doris Johnson)
Fashion-monger Lyndsie Dawn Stern
Policy wonk Q. Timothy Bratten Mayflower-Heinz Hussein Lehman IV
Conspiracy theorist Barry Charles (not his real name)
Gentle humorist Thorsen Kohler
Goldendoodle-fancier Marjorie H. Jorgensen
Furry fan Felix Kwon
I am taking suggestions, though, so speak up!
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Counter-protest
Last night around 6 PM, the counter-protest against Fred Phelps' planned protest turned vigil when Phelps' crew decided not to show up. Probably for the best. I rode my bike over to the corner of Central and Walnut, at the edge of the high school.It was a lovely, warm, blustery evening, a night full of portent. I could have ridden my bike forever under the dark trees.
Kim made salmon, polenta and greens and Val came over for dinner.
Friday, November 14, 2008
More on radiant asshole Phelps
According to other Alameda bloggers, Fred Phelps' group, Super Idiots Supporting Public Assholery, or SISPA, will not be coming to protest the high school's production of The Laramie Project, after all. Frankly, I am a little bit disappointed. I love a circus.
Apparently, though, his group will be in Hawaii to protest the funeral of Barack Obama's grandmother, which is so absurd as to almost be funny, as if Tina Fey had written the line, except that it's not funny because it's real.
People like Phelps, though, are clowns. I mean, why would anyone take them seriously? The answer, I think, is that we all love a circus. Human beings are, essentially, bored to death.
Apparently, though, his group will be in Hawaii to protest the funeral of Barack Obama's grandmother, which is so absurd as to almost be funny, as if Tina Fey had written the line, except that it's not funny because it's real.
People like Phelps, though, are clowns. I mean, why would anyone take them seriously? The answer, I think, is that we all love a circus. Human beings are, essentially, bored to death.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
From the OMFG Department...
There's word that radiant asshole, Fred Phelps, might be in town, in spirit if not in person, to protest the local high school's production of The Laramie Project this Friday. He's the "God hates fags" guy.
We heard the news via porch-flyer. There will be a counter-protest on November 14, 2008; from the flyer:
"6PM at Alameda High (located at 2201 Encinal Avenue)."
View Larger Map
Not to be cynical, but could this be a kind of "wild marketing" campaign? I suppose it is, whether by design or not - God may hate fags, but he loves wild marketing.
But seriously, folks, I'm reminded of a scene from Manhattan. Woody Allen is at a party with a bunch of douchey elites:
We heard the news via porch-flyer. There will be a counter-protest on November 14, 2008; from the flyer:
"6PM at Alameda High (located at 2201 Encinal Avenue)."
View Larger Map
Not to be cynical, but could this be a kind of "wild marketing" campaign? I suppose it is, whether by design or not - God may hate fags, but he loves wild marketing.
But seriously, folks, I'm reminded of a scene from Manhattan. Woody Allen is at a party with a bunch of douchey elites:
- Isaac Davis: Has anybody read that Nazis are gonna march in New Jersey? Ya know? I read it in the newspaper. We should go down there, get some guys together, ya know, get some bricks and baseball bats, and really explain things to 'em.
- Party Guest: There was this devastating satirical piece on that on the op-ed page of the Times, just devastating.
- Isaac Davis: Whoa, whoa. A satirical piece in the Times is one thing, but bricks and baseball bats really gets right to the point of it.
- Party Guest Helen: Oh, but really biting satire is always better than physical force.
- Isaac Davis: No, physical force is always better with Nazis.
Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is when, instead of getting an expert's opinion, you just ask whoever happens to be in the room. Sometimes this works out great, depending mostly on the size of the room.
One of my favorite films, F for Fake, is Orson Welles' lament over the pure chicanery of the "art expert." Fakery, something he knows something about. I admire his distrust of experts in general but that's not to discount knowledge, real study and the ability to teach. Nor wisdom, nor faith. These must matter, otherwise we abandon our discourse for triviality, surface, fetish, whatever, lol ; )
Facts exist. Not everything is a matter of opinion. Srsly, look into it.
One of my favorite films, F for Fake, is Orson Welles' lament over the pure chicanery of the "art expert." Fakery, something he knows something about. I admire his distrust of experts in general but that's not to discount knowledge, real study and the ability to teach. Nor wisdom, nor faith. These must matter, otherwise we abandon our discourse for triviality, surface, fetish, whatever, lol ; )
Facts exist. Not everything is a matter of opinion. Srsly, look into it.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Carrier
"People in the paranormal field say it is one of the most-haunted ships around," Carnahan told an audience of about 70 people on Wednesday at the Alameda Free Library. "It also had a high suicide rate, among the highest in the Navy, and that makes it an active place for both the living and the dead." To illustrate his views, Carnahan and colleague Shane Thornton shared a series of audio and video recordings with the library group. The ghost busters recorded "voices of spirits" on the ship picked up as EVPs or electronic-voice phenomena.
From the Alameda Journal, October 31, 2008
The USS Hornet is the decommissioned aircraft carrier at the old Alameda Naval Air Station.
View Larger Map
I went there a few weeks ago when Mom and Dad were here. Maybe I could make a sequel to my haunted dam movie on an aircraft carrier. It's a creepy place.
The Hornet picked up the Apollo 11 astronauts after they splashed down, then put them in this vacuum-sealed Airstream to protect them from Nixon. My folks wanted to see what that was like.
According to the Interwebs, more than 300 people died on the Hornet in only 27 years of active service. That's a lotta potential ghosts. Or maybe I could turn it into a zombie-type deal, playing off the name "Carrier." The lady in this old-timey poster is looking pretty scared already:
A lot of famous people visit the Hornet, as evidenced by the guestbook:
Finally, this very tough-looking guy kicked us off the boat...and then disappeared...
Saturday, October 18, 2008
W.
Weak tea from Oliver Stone, broad strokes and little insight, a shallow biopic of a shallow man. Richard Dreyfuss and Josh Brolin turn in finely-tuned caricatures; the other performers, less finely-tuned. I've been looking forward to this film, though I still had low expectations. My biggest question, having just seen it, is why make it? Bush is neither lionized nor demonized, and he's only vaguely humanized; I can't figure out what the point was.
W. is an interesting cultural artifact, however. Have any other sitting presidents been the subject of a film? As divisive and ruinous a president as W has been, is this film simply a symptom of our exhaustion? Is it too much to ask the filmmakers to find an angle and play it to the hilt, assuming they're not interested in real subtlety and nuance? Maybe even Stone just doesn't have the heart, as surely the American people do not, to really press this subject. One day, perhaps, someone will make the George Bush film that George Bush deserves.
I think, given some distance from these terrible times, someone might have the balls to really sharpen the knives and make the brutal, pitch-black comedy this might have been. Or even, the great tragedy as we've seen it unfold these last eight years. But, for the moment, we long to forget...
W. is an interesting cultural artifact, however. Have any other sitting presidents been the subject of a film? As divisive and ruinous a president as W has been, is this film simply a symptom of our exhaustion? Is it too much to ask the filmmakers to find an angle and play it to the hilt, assuming they're not interested in real subtlety and nuance? Maybe even Stone just doesn't have the heart, as surely the American people do not, to really press this subject. One day, perhaps, someone will make the George Bush film that George Bush deserves.
I think, given some distance from these terrible times, someone might have the balls to really sharpen the knives and make the brutal, pitch-black comedy this might have been. Or even, the great tragedy as we've seen it unfold these last eight years. But, for the moment, we long to forget...
Monday, October 13, 2008
Needed: New Brain
I think I am growing dumber. Like, actually losing IQ points. Is this
what's happening? Or is it just that I once felt smarter than I really
was and now that feeling has left me?
what's happening? Or is it just that I once felt smarter than I really
was and now that feeling has left me?
Along with this is a sense of becoming more conservative, duller,
fatter, less confident and less creative.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Smoking and the P.C. Left Coast
One thing that's come up a bit this week is the political correctness of life in the urban centers of the West Coast. I grew up "back East," as they say, not in one of the great bastions of curmudgeonly East Coast assholery, like New York or Boston, but some aspects of coarse East Coast forthrightness stuck with me. I love living in California and I especially love the Bay Area, but the culture here can be smug, self-righteous and politically correct to a gagging degree.
Smoking is just one of the ways this manifests. I am a Democrat, even a liberal, but I have some libertarian principles as well, and one thing I cannot stand is public hysteria that tries to interfere with my right to do what the fuck I want to do. I struggle with smoking; I don't really want to do it, but it has me in its grip. In the next year, I will quit smoking, as circumstances have arisen that should finally motivate that. But it's also one of those issues where I think people need to calm the fuck down and let people be. There is now, among certain crowds, an unhealthy social snobbery about smoking, the kind that says, " I am better than you because I don't smoke." Out here, people pride themselves on their open-mindedness; what that means is, rather than actually confronting opinions with which they disagree, because everyone is free to their own beliefs, they will just remain silently, smugly superior.
The refreshing thing about the attitude on the other coast is that it's both more in-your-face - well, fuck you, buddy! - and accepting - now, let's get a drink, asshole! Out here, if you don't agree with someone, you just roll your eyes and back away, and go be with the people who share your exact convictions.
Smoking is just one of the ways this manifests. I am a Democrat, even a liberal, but I have some libertarian principles as well, and one thing I cannot stand is public hysteria that tries to interfere with my right to do what the fuck I want to do. I struggle with smoking; I don't really want to do it, but it has me in its grip. In the next year, I will quit smoking, as circumstances have arisen that should finally motivate that. But it's also one of those issues where I think people need to calm the fuck down and let people be. There is now, among certain crowds, an unhealthy social snobbery about smoking, the kind that says, " I am better than you because I don't smoke." Out here, people pride themselves on their open-mindedness; what that means is, rather than actually confronting opinions with which they disagree, because everyone is free to their own beliefs, they will just remain silently, smugly superior.
The refreshing thing about the attitude on the other coast is that it's both more in-your-face - well, fuck you, buddy! - and accepting - now, let's get a drink, asshole! Out here, if you don't agree with someone, you just roll your eyes and back away, and go be with the people who share your exact convictions.
The Idiot Box
I have to admit, I love television. Sure, there's lots of crap on television, but that would seem to be the nature of any medium so broadly and deeply embraced by a culture. There are something like 1 1/2 billion TVs in the world, yet one can still find plenty of people who claim to not watch television; I know people who don't even have one. I guess they spend a lot of time reading, which I also love to do.
I watch television more or less daily. I embrace it. Kim watches, but gets sick of it after a couple hours. Sure, it's a time suck. I'm just someone who is able to keep watching and watching. Not just TV shows, of course, but a lot of movies. To me, it's kinda all the same thing.
Anyway, here's a short list of what I think are the best shows I've ever seen:
Twin Peaks
Max Headroom
The Office (BBC)
The Wire
Monty Python's Flying Circus
The Singing Detective
Sesame Street
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Twin Peaks, actually, is one of my favorite - what would you call the category into which both TV and movies fall? Moving image narrative? And why isn't Max Headroom available on DVD? I'm trying to track it down. I imagine a lot of people, if they remember Max at all, think of the Coke pitchman, not the TV show. But the show was great, a cyberpunk TV show right around the time cyberpunk was actually a thing, instead of years later. Truly innovative and ahead of its time.
I truly love the American Office, too, it's like great TV comfort food, but it's nothing compared to the British version, which is sheer genius, moment-to-moment, from start to finish. Of course, it's maybe easier to do that when you have a total of 12 regular episodes and a long special episode. Still, the compromises and simplifications made for American viewers (thumb-sucking, unsophisticated Yanks that we are) keep our version from being truly great. Why is British TV often so much funnier (or more serious) and sharper than our own?
I don't think TV makes people dumb; a lot of TV, though, is made for the lowest common denominator and is obviously little more than an advertising delivery vehicle. You could say that people make TV dumb. With some shows, it's a bit difficult to articulate what makes them popular or effective, other than that people watch them, and it's easy to become cynical. But then you get a show like The Wire, which really shows what the medium can do - you know, the Dickensian aspect, the duration, the focus, the superb writing and character development, the long arcs - and one finds that we're really in a golden age of this medium: The Sopranos, Deadwood, Battlestar Galactica (at least the first two seasons), Mad Men, 30 Rock and many more. American TV is so much stronger and more interesting as an art form than American film these days...
Makes me want to make television for a living which, actually, I do already. But, you know, different stuff.
I watch television more or less daily. I embrace it. Kim watches, but gets sick of it after a couple hours. Sure, it's a time suck. I'm just someone who is able to keep watching and watching. Not just TV shows, of course, but a lot of movies. To me, it's kinda all the same thing.
Anyway, here's a short list of what I think are the best shows I've ever seen:
Twin Peaks
Max Headroom
The Office (BBC)
The Wire
Monty Python's Flying Circus
The Singing Detective
Sesame Street
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Twin Peaks, actually, is one of my favorite - what would you call the category into which both TV and movies fall? Moving image narrative? And why isn't Max Headroom available on DVD? I'm trying to track it down. I imagine a lot of people, if they remember Max at all, think of the Coke pitchman, not the TV show. But the show was great, a cyberpunk TV show right around the time cyberpunk was actually a thing, instead of years later. Truly innovative and ahead of its time.
I truly love the American Office, too, it's like great TV comfort food, but it's nothing compared to the British version, which is sheer genius, moment-to-moment, from start to finish. Of course, it's maybe easier to do that when you have a total of 12 regular episodes and a long special episode. Still, the compromises and simplifications made for American viewers (thumb-sucking, unsophisticated Yanks that we are) keep our version from being truly great. Why is British TV often so much funnier (or more serious) and sharper than our own?
I don't think TV makes people dumb; a lot of TV, though, is made for the lowest common denominator and is obviously little more than an advertising delivery vehicle. You could say that people make TV dumb. With some shows, it's a bit difficult to articulate what makes them popular or effective, other than that people watch them, and it's easy to become cynical. But then you get a show like The Wire, which really shows what the medium can do - you know, the Dickensian aspect, the duration, the focus, the superb writing and character development, the long arcs - and one finds that we're really in a golden age of this medium: The Sopranos, Deadwood, Battlestar Galactica (at least the first two seasons), Mad Men, 30 Rock and many more. American TV is so much stronger and more interesting as an art form than American film these days...
Makes me want to make television for a living which, actually, I do already. But, you know, different stuff.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Denial and DFW
I'm having a hard time accepting that David Foster Wallace is dead. By hanging, no less. WTF.
I read Infinite Jest out loud with Melissa when I was in China eleven years ago. It's such a great book, so funny and sad and perverse. I had read The Broom of the System in college. Let me just say that I am against this suicide bullshit. There's nothing romantic about suicide. I can't really believe that he would do it, in spite of being a writer. Is it really that big of a fucking deal if you can't write one now like you could when you were 30 or whatever?
That's probably not the reason. That would be too obvious and according to script. I wonder if he left a note? I wonder how long it was and if it had footnotes.
Was he working on something new? Had he finished it?
I read Infinite Jest out loud with Melissa when I was in China eleven years ago. It's such a great book, so funny and sad and perverse. I had read The Broom of the System in college. Let me just say that I am against this suicide bullshit. There's nothing romantic about suicide. I can't really believe that he would do it, in spite of being a writer. Is it really that big of a fucking deal if you can't write one now like you could when you were 30 or whatever?
That's probably not the reason. That would be too obvious and according to script. I wonder if he left a note? I wonder how long it was and if it had footnotes.
Was he working on something new? Had he finished it?
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Lars and the Real Girl
Some people have recommended this movie to me, so I watched it. I cannot, myself, recommend it. It was as tonally-off a movie as I have seen. The script could have worked as a bizarre comedy, perhaps starring Crispin Glover, but in its present form it doesn't meet rudimentary suspension-of disbelief standards. It's a shame because I admire several of the actors, especially Ryan Gosling, but this one was a big misfire.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Hamlet 2
In a summer with more than the usual number of smart comedies, Hamlet 2 is the best of them. It's a clever parody of the Inspirational Teacher Movie, at it's best zany, filthy and sharp. One can complain about an underused cast - Elizabeth Shue and Catherine Keener are both great actors who barely register here, for starters - or the sheer ridiculousness of the enterprise, but why bother when you have Steve Coogan's best film performance to date, a case of a great comic actor slipping completely into the skin of his character.
Or when you have co-writer Pam Brady, who co-wrote also South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, and is a producer of the TV show, most certainly putting the phrase, "Those Bible-humpers can suck a bag of dicks," in Amy Poehler's mouth, or helping to pen the glorious "Rock Me, Sexy Jesus" musical number that is Coogan's apotheosis.
If it doesn't work at all times, I am inclined to forgive. Director Andrew Fleming also directed Threesome, a 1994 Harlequin Romance in which Lara Flynn Boyle, Stephen Baldwin and Josh Charles have a kind of drawn-out, repressed ménage à trois. I remember watching this film with two female friends of mine in, perhaps, 1995. It was a fun evening.
So, again, Fleming gives us a movie that is an enjoyably bad farce; here, there's also something brilliantly subversive about it. It celebrates free expression with a fuck you attitude, a foul mouth and its "heartsoul" in the right place.
Or when you have co-writer Pam Brady, who co-wrote also South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, and is a producer of the TV show, most certainly putting the phrase, "Those Bible-humpers can suck a bag of dicks," in Amy Poehler's mouth, or helping to pen the glorious "Rock Me, Sexy Jesus" musical number that is Coogan's apotheosis.
If it doesn't work at all times, I am inclined to forgive. Director Andrew Fleming also directed Threesome, a 1994 Harlequin Romance in which Lara Flynn Boyle, Stephen Baldwin and Josh Charles have a kind of drawn-out, repressed ménage à trois. I remember watching this film with two female friends of mine in, perhaps, 1995. It was a fun evening.
So, again, Fleming gives us a movie that is an enjoyably bad farce; here, there's also something brilliantly subversive about it. It celebrates free expression with a fuck you attitude, a foul mouth and its "heartsoul" in the right place.
Outside Lands, Part 2
My second day at the Outside Lands festival (a couple weeks ago now), was a better experience than the first. I was hanging out with Scott (who kindly gave me his extra ticket) and his friends, without a big agenda about what to see, and we smoked some weed and wandered around a lot. The day ended with Wilco, my Favorite Band, and it was a decent, if uninspiring, set.
But that day I also saw what must have been the best act of the festival, the Mexican duo, Rodrigo y Gabriela. I think it was the sickest guitar-playing I have ever seen. They had two giant screens so we could watch them play. Scott told me later every time he looked over my mouth was just hanging wide open. Slack-jawed, they call it. Here's one of their videos:
It was a beautiful day, the throngs were tolerable and the music was great. Also, the sound did not go out much, from what I recall.
Catching up
As it will, time has slipped by me. The last couple weeks have been busy and I have not had a chance to update this blog. I'm sure my legions of readers are furious.
So, I'm going to spend some time today catching up. Now that I've stopped doing freelance work and I don't have anyone coming to visit me for a month, I'll actually have my Fridays free. I have many plans, as always. My life is a long string of unfulfilled plans.
At certain moments, the thought does come: time is slipping away. You can almost feel it. It's like, most of the time, you're just doing your thing, passing through the world. It's not really possible to stop moving; you move in time, or with it. But, occasionally, you feel like you step outside, or above, the flow, for a moment - like swimming out of the river, clambering up on top of the bank and watching it flow past.
So, I'm going to spend some time today catching up. Now that I've stopped doing freelance work and I don't have anyone coming to visit me for a month, I'll actually have my Fridays free. I have many plans, as always. My life is a long string of unfulfilled plans.
At certain moments, the thought does come: time is slipping away. You can almost feel it. It's like, most of the time, you're just doing your thing, passing through the world. It's not really possible to stop moving; you move in time, or with it. But, occasionally, you feel like you step outside, or above, the flow, for a moment - like swimming out of the river, clambering up on top of the bank and watching it flow past.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Woody Allen is my idol; I love his work and I know more about him than any other filmmaker, though there are plenty of directors I think are better. His 43rd film as a director is Vicky Cristina Barcelona; we saw it yesterday at Bay Street, where they had some difficulty projecting it correctly but eventually figured it out. It should not have been such a challenge to frame it up, but anyway.
I am pleased to report that it's his best work in ten years, surpassing Match Point, and certainly blowing away everything (and Anything) else he's done since at least Sweet and Lowdown. Apart from that film's brilliant performances and lush design, I find its structure lacking; VCB is probably better overall, in its breezy, romantic good humor and consistency. Not that this kind of ranking is particularly meaningful except for Woodyphiles like myself but, knowing his work as I do, I automatically try to fit each new film into the oeuvre.
Even his low points, and there have been many in the last couple decades (in my opinion, his last great film was Husbands and Wives in 1992), have some interest for me as I see him shuffling and reshuffling his deck of conceits, jokes, characters, tics, locations, traits, situations, themes and conversations with each film. In VCB he pulls a pretty good hand, with fine, sexy performances, consistent humor throughout, light, deft direction and the inspiration of a luminous new setting.
And I enjoyed this piece, from the New York Times, very much. Classic stuff.
I am pleased to report that it's his best work in ten years, surpassing Match Point, and certainly blowing away everything (and Anything) else he's done since at least Sweet and Lowdown. Apart from that film's brilliant performances and lush design, I find its structure lacking; VCB is probably better overall, in its breezy, romantic good humor and consistency. Not that this kind of ranking is particularly meaningful except for Woodyphiles like myself but, knowing his work as I do, I automatically try to fit each new film into the oeuvre.
Even his low points, and there have been many in the last couple decades (in my opinion, his last great film was Husbands and Wives in 1992), have some interest for me as I see him shuffling and reshuffling his deck of conceits, jokes, characters, tics, locations, traits, situations, themes and conversations with each film. In VCB he pulls a pretty good hand, with fine, sexy performances, consistent humor throughout, light, deft direction and the inspiration of a luminous new setting.
And I enjoyed this piece, from the New York Times, very much. Classic stuff.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Outside Lands
This weekend is the giant Outside Lands music festival in Golden Gate Park. Kim and I went to the first night last night, primarily to see Radiohead. I have not gone to too many festival shows and I doubt I will go to too many in the future. It's a total clusterfuck and just not worth it.
I didn't mind how difficult it was to actually get there - we took the BART, tried to get a cab from downtown, gave up, went to the Muni, gave up, took the Muni back to Powell and looked for a cab again. We eventually found one.
Inside the park, it was cool until we tried to go see Beck. Kim and I got in separate lines for beer and food and an hour later had beer and food. It was just stupid. I'm actually going back on Sunday to see Wilco; I'm going to try to smuggle in some beer because fuck the organizers and their fucking bullshit. I basically paid $160 bucks so Kim and I could stand in line for food and beer and then hear Radiohead from half a mile away. Plus my sciatica was about as bad as it's been in six months.
There was bike parking:
Some delicious oysters:
Looking this way from the beer line, I thought I heard some music that might have been being played by Beck:
Looking the other way, you just get the sense that humans are really stupid creatures. Why would any intelligent creature want to be doing this?
Emanating from that reddish and greenish area, below, were the sounds of the Greatest Band on Earth. Well, it wasn't all bad.
I didn't mind how difficult it was to actually get there - we took the BART, tried to get a cab from downtown, gave up, went to the Muni, gave up, took the Muni back to Powell and looked for a cab again. We eventually found one.
Inside the park, it was cool until we tried to go see Beck. Kim and I got in separate lines for beer and food and an hour later had beer and food. It was just stupid. I'm actually going back on Sunday to see Wilco; I'm going to try to smuggle in some beer because fuck the organizers and their fucking bullshit. I basically paid $160 bucks so Kim and I could stand in line for food and beer and then hear Radiohead from half a mile away. Plus my sciatica was about as bad as it's been in six months.
There was bike parking:
Some delicious oysters:
Looking this way from the beer line, I thought I heard some music that might have been being played by Beck:
Looking the other way, you just get the sense that humans are really stupid creatures. Why would any intelligent creature want to be doing this?
Emanating from that reddish and greenish area, below, were the sounds of the Greatest Band on Earth. Well, it wasn't all bad.
DIY Days
Last Sunday I attended DIY Days at the 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco. My friend Maria, a classmate from CalArts, suggested that we go, so I have her to thank for getting me off my ass. It was an inspiring day of panels and case studies about very independent filmmaking, alternative distribution and self-promotion for your film projects. We heard from Tiffany Shlain, Arin Crumley, Caveh Zahedi and Lance Weiler among many others.
Here Maria is arguing with her friend, Ben, about whether it makes sense to buy people you're trying to network with, or pitch to, or from whom you want something, a cup of coffee:
My favorite talk of the day happened in the later afternoon, when the schedule was starting to bunch up, so it was not given quite as much time as I would have liked. It was called "Cinema and the Singularity," which title intrigued me enough to encourage me to stay when I had been contemplating leaving earlier.
The question the speakers were asking was rather mind-blowing to me. They asked, "What would singularity cinema look like?" A different way of putting that might be, "What happens when the stories start writing themselves?"
This was meaningful to me because, in a sense, it was a subject of my thesis film, Nervous, but I was only scratching the surface of those issues. The idea, though, of avatars in virtual worlds becoming self-aware and spinning narratives of their own is pretty interesting, if difficult to imagine and technologically unlikely (for now). It's a much more interesting topic philosophically than as some kind of prediction. I have thought about working out a feature-length version of the film, in which case I would certainly come back to these ideas.
As it turns out, though, the panels were not the best parts of my day. The second best part was learning about a crazy, amazing super-pen. I'm an avid note-taker, so this pen was one of the coolest things I have ever seen in my life. The kid who showed it to me was a little nervous at first - apparently he had just been trained by the company and had chosen me as one of his first marks to try his pitch on, so I could have easily rejected his advances. But it was a home run for him because I thought the pen was super-awesome.
The best part of the day was totally unexpected. Faye Dunaway was at DIY Days and I got to meet her for a quick moment, just as she was preparing to leave. Apparently, she is really into DIY cinema and fascinated with new technology, which is pretty cool for a woman in her late sixties. She was very nice and pretty low-key and was cool about me introducing myself as a fan and talking with her for a moment. It was thrilling, because I absolutely love her and several of her films are among my favorites, including Chinatown and Network. I gave her directions to Market Street.
Here she is, on her way out:
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Days of Heaven
Things I learn from Terrence Malick:
1. Voiceover is not always bad.
2. If it's not crushingly beautiful, why look at it?
3. Listen to the way people actually talk.
4. If you have to grow a field of wheat so you can harvest it with steam-powered tractors and a hundred extras, then grow another field of wheat so you can infest it with locusts and set it on fire, by all means--do that shit.
5. Life is short.
1. Voiceover is not always bad.
2. If it's not crushingly beautiful, why look at it?
3. Listen to the way people actually talk.
4. If you have to grow a field of wheat so you can harvest it with steam-powered tractors and a hundred extras, then grow another field of wheat so you can infest it with locusts and set it on fire, by all means--do that shit.
5. Life is short.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
So much more than a hardware store
Pagano's is one of the delights of life on Alameda. It's a hardware store that crams everything and the kitchen sink (yes, literally) into a labyrinthine old fire-trap in the Bay Station district of the island (not sure if these districts mean anything or if it's just marketing), a pleasant Sunday afternoon bike ride away. Like that bedeviled Moscow apartment in The Master and Margarita, it's much bigger on the inside.
We bought some twine so Kim can tie up her peas properly.
We bought some twine so Kim can tie up her peas properly.
A Dark and Stormy Knight
When I went to the movies Thursday afternoon, it was to see The Dark Knight again, this time in IMAX. I had wanted to see an art film, something that wouldn't come to Alameda, but San Francisco let me down on that one, as usual, for the time frame that I had. I really wanted to go to the Castro Theater to see The Exiles, but there was no matinee. I too often go to the movies and see crap, because that's all that's ever playing, but I need better films to come to my theater, because I am lazy.
Unlike seemingly everyone else in the entire world, I do not think The Dark Knight is the greatest movie ever made; anyone who does is just being willfully ignorant. I'm pretty sure I don't even think it's the best superhero movie ever made. I don't even know if I could say that I like it better than Tim Burton's Batman from 1989.
But on my second viewing, I did like it better than the first time and IMAX is a pretty great way to see it. Since only some of it was shot in IMAX format, the film only took up the entire screen during those scenes. The gigantic size did not make up for the tedium of the last forty minutes of the film or the pretentiousness of the dialogue throughout or how seriously everyone involved seemed to take the whole overblown enterprise. But the best action scenes were enhanced, that's for fucking sure.
Still, I will never understand why we're not allowed to actually see the action in action films these days. Very often there are so many close shots that are cut together so quickly, that all sense of dynamics, physics and causality are lost. Look at, say, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (which is relatively recent) or The Empire Strikes Back or even T2, or Bullitt, or just about anything made before the last ten years and compare the shooting and cutting of the action scenes to any of today's blockbusters. A lot of shit takes place in wide shots where you can actually see that your heroes are in danger, rather than closeups that telegraph this information with a grimace and a flash-pan, as is the trend today.
Michael Bay's Transformers may have set a high water mark for this kind of incomprehensible shooting strategy; Dark Knight is not nearly such a problem and much of the action is shot quite well. It may be that, when Nolan runs out of ideas, it's more obvious because other moments are so kinetic or graceful. There were too many scenes in which he swirls the camera furiously around two characters talking with gruff intensity at each other, which seems like a cheap attempt to cancel out cheesy, self-important dialogue with false urgency. How about just cutting the fucking scene? No one would miss it, dude.
In my opinion, if you want to see a recent film that gets it fucking-A right, that exemplifies the balance of mise-en-scene and montage necessary for a pure cinema of kinesis, as I refer to it, (usually but not always in reference to the "action" genre), it's Quentin Tarantino's half of Grindhouse, his mock-sexploitation feminist revenge-fantasy car-racing movie, Death Proof. Setting out to make a B movie, QT fails spectacularly at it because he's a cinematic virtuoso who can't help but do it right, even when he claims he's trying to do it wrong. The rest of these guys need to go back to school.
Unlike seemingly everyone else in the entire world, I do not think The Dark Knight is the greatest movie ever made; anyone who does is just being willfully ignorant. I'm pretty sure I don't even think it's the best superhero movie ever made. I don't even know if I could say that I like it better than Tim Burton's Batman from 1989.
But on my second viewing, I did like it better than the first time and IMAX is a pretty great way to see it. Since only some of it was shot in IMAX format, the film only took up the entire screen during those scenes. The gigantic size did not make up for the tedium of the last forty minutes of the film or the pretentiousness of the dialogue throughout or how seriously everyone involved seemed to take the whole overblown enterprise. But the best action scenes were enhanced, that's for fucking sure.
Still, I will never understand why we're not allowed to actually see the action in action films these days. Very often there are so many close shots that are cut together so quickly, that all sense of dynamics, physics and causality are lost. Look at, say, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (which is relatively recent) or The Empire Strikes Back or even T2, or Bullitt, or just about anything made before the last ten years and compare the shooting and cutting of the action scenes to any of today's blockbusters. A lot of shit takes place in wide shots where you can actually see that your heroes are in danger, rather than closeups that telegraph this information with a grimace and a flash-pan, as is the trend today.
Michael Bay's Transformers may have set a high water mark for this kind of incomprehensible shooting strategy; Dark Knight is not nearly such a problem and much of the action is shot quite well. It may be that, when Nolan runs out of ideas, it's more obvious because other moments are so kinetic or graceful. There were too many scenes in which he swirls the camera furiously around two characters talking with gruff intensity at each other, which seems like a cheap attempt to cancel out cheesy, self-important dialogue with false urgency. How about just cutting the fucking scene? No one would miss it, dude.
In my opinion, if you want to see a recent film that gets it fucking-A right, that exemplifies the balance of mise-en-scene and montage necessary for a pure cinema of kinesis, as I refer to it, (usually but not always in reference to the "action" genre), it's Quentin Tarantino's half of Grindhouse, his mock-sexploitation feminist revenge-fantasy car-racing movie, Death Proof. Setting out to make a B movie, QT fails spectacularly at it because he's a cinematic virtuoso who can't help but do it right, even when he claims he's trying to do it wrong. The rest of these guys need to go back to school.
Disclaimer
Friday morning I was pretty hungover from my Thursday night exploits, Thursday being the last day of my work week. Typically, I go to the Lucky 13 and drink and smoke; on this Thursday, though, a coworker had a birthday party in the city, so I stayed after work, went to the movies and then made my way to a Chinatown bar where I played Texas Hold'em on my iPhone for an hour before anyone showed up. Then, after having a couple of drinks with my coworker and his friends, I came back to the island and went to the Lucky 13.
My point is, Friday morning ... yeah. So, since Friday's like my Saturday, I medicated myself and decided to watch a movie I had from Netflix called Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. As much as the first movie had surprised me, I was surprised again at how hilarious this sequel was. I had a good time - and the film, no bullshit, has some complicated and slyly perceptive things to say about race and hysteria in post-9/11 America, a lot more than most films that purport to be about such things, but I'll let that go.
What I thought was kinda bizarre was that, toward the end of the credits of a movie that is basically a wall-to-wall pot joke, with all kinds of other drugs, sex and violence thrown in, not to mention the usual excretory humor, this was the disclaimer someone felt was needed:
Well, that's a relief. I guess there may have been cigarette smoking in the film, though that's not what's most memorable about it (Kumar's graphic, dream-sequence threesome with his ex-girlfriend and a giant, anthropomorphic bag of weed sticks in my head, though). I wonder if, through some strangulated logic, a bong counts as a "tobacco product" in this instance? I do remember one or two of those...
My point is, Friday morning ... yeah. So, since Friday's like my Saturday, I medicated myself and decided to watch a movie I had from Netflix called Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. As much as the first movie had surprised me, I was surprised again at how hilarious this sequel was. I had a good time - and the film, no bullshit, has some complicated and slyly perceptive things to say about race and hysteria in post-9/11 America, a lot more than most films that purport to be about such things, but I'll let that go.
What I thought was kinda bizarre was that, toward the end of the credits of a movie that is basically a wall-to-wall pot joke, with all kinds of other drugs, sex and violence thrown in, not to mention the usual excretory humor, this was the disclaimer someone felt was needed:
Well, that's a relief. I guess there may have been cigarette smoking in the film, though that's not what's most memorable about it (Kumar's graphic, dream-sequence threesome with his ex-girlfriend and a giant, anthropomorphic bag of weed sticks in my head, though). I wonder if, through some strangulated logic, a bong counts as a "tobacco product" in this instance? I do remember one or two of those...
Thursday, August 7, 2008
After the game
There was a day game yesterday at AT&T Park so, when I took my lunch break around 3:15, King Street was mobbed to a surreal degree. To that mob, everything must have seemed just right: leaving the game, big crowd. I wonder if it occurred to any of them that there are some people on King Street with non-Giants-related business?
On the block with my building is an alcove, a concave scoop removed from its building, a smoking area. Sometimes, in spite of the shallowness of the scoop and the lack of cover, it attracts the homeless. Yesterday, as I passed by on my way to get tacos, shouldering through the baseball crowd, a woman sat there in the alcove, legs crossed, and cut off all her hair with a steak knife, the tufts strewn before her, fluttering softly away on the breeze.
When she was finished, she bowed her mangy bald head toward a new task, the circular arrangement of a small pile of what looked like animal droppings on the concrete in front of her. It wasn't the shit of a large mammal, if it was shit at all; it was smaller, white-flecked pieces, like bird shit. Maybe it was from geese.
I looked at this scene for only a few seconds because, you know, it's not polite to stare. Then, for the next hour or so, it remained burned into my retinas, an omen of the apocalypse.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
And another thing...!
In case it wasn't clear from the last post, I'm going to be one of those bothersome old cranks one day. I prefer the term curmudgeon, but crank will do.
That parking space has got my name on it
Here's a thing people like to do: get the cops to slap these stickers on the cars of people who park in "their" parking spots. This is not my car, but this has happened to me before. Someone was parked in front of my house, so I parked across the street. Now, I don't drive too often because I take the bus to work. So I left my car parked across the street for several days.The way I look at it is, I fucking live here and I have the right to park on my own goddamn street. For that matter, it's a public street, so any member of the public has the right to park here, basically forever. But evidently the City of Alameda, and my neighbors, see it differently. When it was my turn to get one of these tickets, my neighbors made no effort to contact me as far as I know. They did not leave a note on my car themselves. They just went for the gusto, called the cops and got them to slap one of these notices on my car, which says:
Section 8-7.8 of the Alameda Municipal code provides that: it shall be unlawful for any person to park or leave unattended any vehicle on a street in the City of Alameda continuously for a period exceeding seventy-two (72) hours.
To comply with this ordinance, your vehicle must be driven at least 1/10 of a mile every three (3) days. (Incidental moving from place to place in the same area does not comply.)
So they covered their bases there, I guess. It is comical, admittedly, the part about 1/10 of a mile. Naturally, this law mysteriously does not apply when parking in front of your own house. I wonder if the cops call it the "Asshole Neighbor" law or something; obviously it was invented to get whiny neighbors to shut up. Merits further investigation. By which I mean, of course, that I should drop it and learn to live by the "community standards." The problem is, that phrase is usually cover for people behaving like idiots.
When I confronted my neighbor about the sticker on MY car, however, I was as sweet and low key and full of remorse for the inconvenience I had caused her as I have ever been in my life. I sometimes regret that life is not a movie in which the Good, by which I mean me, always triumphs over the Bad, by which I mean everyone who pisses me off. I think I may not be alone in that.
I am aware, of course, that many people (like my pal, Val, for instance) DO think that they own the street space in front of their homes, even though they do not, in any way, and HATE it when people park there.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
People love to put up signs
This one is at one of the marinas; I guess stones might...hit the boats? Fill in the channel? Become a hazard for...birds?It's sometimes hard to decipher the rationale for putting up certain signs, if not the meaning of the sign itself. I mean, how big a problem was stone-throwing prior to the signs (of which there are several along the path)? Is it simply a matter of decorum?
Get Spanked
At some point, I will write a bit more about why Alameda has so many hair and nail salons. I have never seen such a concentration of them as can be seen near Park Street especially. There's easily a dozen of them within a couple miles of each other. How they can possibly all stay in business, I'll never know. Or maybe I will know, if I investigate a bit. Last week we saw a new one, up near the marinas in the northeast section of the island.
Most graffitied building in Alameda
Last Sunday, Kim and I biked around the northern edge of the island (the Oakland side) to see how far the public shoreline extended. On the west end of the island, there are a lot of run-down warehouses and derelict buildings near the old Navy base. This one wins the prize for Most Tagged.
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