Monday, April 20, 2009
Monday, April 13, 2009
Important Court Case
Finally, these guys are getting their day in court!
I do think the fashion in question is incredibly stupid-looking. But to make it illegal? Ah, the American funhouse...
I do think the fashion in question is incredibly stupid-looking. But to make it illegal? Ah, the American funhouse...
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Wendy and Lucy
Kelly Reichardt's third film is Wendy and Lucy, in which Michelle Williams' down-and-out hipster, Wendy, searches for the director's dog, Lucy. In KR's previous film, Old Joy--not to be confused with Oldboy--I thought Lucy's performance edged out that film's leads, but here Williams holds her own.
And more so. This is a superb film and it's built around Williams like a little cabin in the redwoods. It seems somehow cozy and expansive, though there's nothing cozy about the futility, the darkness, knawing at the edges of this simple story. I'm not the first to be struck by its similarity to Carver, though it's actually based on a story by Jonathan Raymond.
I was impressed with the rigor and beauty of Old Joy, but ultimately didn't have enough curiousity about the characters to sustain the narrative minimalism. Here it was different. In Carver's best work, his effects come across in how the reader constructs the spaces between what he's given us and tries to resolve what he's denied us. Reichardt, too, allows us to know very little for sure about our heroine (that is to say, Wendy). She's "passing through," she's estranged from her family, she's counting her last hundreds in her drive across country, hoping to make it to the canneries of Alaska. Her golden retriever mix, Lucy, is pretty much all she has.
But we don't get cheap clues or clumsy exposition or voice-over or flashbacks or really anything more to help us fill in any other facts of Wendy's life. Rail-thin, she's largely desexualized in her hipster boy-clothes and cropped haircut, unless you like that sort of thing. She's still rather stunning, of course, because it's a movie and she's Michelle Williams. For that reason and because she's so down-and-out, she has our sympathy from the beginning.
And she continues to have it, for the most part, but throughout the film--and days later, it seems--many questions spin out from her circumstances, even as they deteroriate. It's a wonder to be watching a film that depends on you to help construct what you're seeing and doesn't simply spoon feed you. Wendy and Lucy, in its still, quiet way, constantly asks you to respond. What would you do in her shoes? Would you help her? How did she get here? What's the right move? How did she screw her life up like this? How far away from this am I? Your sympathies shift moment to moment as you scrutinize her more and more closely.
The film encourages--demands, really--a deep, close reading. Like Gus Van Sant's best work, Wendy and Lucy cannot merely be watched. To do so, frankly, is to risk boredom--it would be like watching someone else play a game. These films are meant to be engaged with, stepped into, like Mia Farrow in The Purple Rose of Cairo.
Lucy the dog, by the way, is a remarkable screen performer. She was such a good doggie in Old Joy that she upstaged pretty much that whole movie by her very...well, joy, actually. Hmm, I think I've just realized something. Anyway, her long absence in the new film lends the story its dread, touching on, in its neo-realist way, the Northwest Gothic dread of Twin Peaks, the dark whistling pines at the forest's edge a metaphor for the unspeakable state of nature beyond.
We fear for Wendy that, though things look bad now, they may get much worse just down the road.
And more so. This is a superb film and it's built around Williams like a little cabin in the redwoods. It seems somehow cozy and expansive, though there's nothing cozy about the futility, the darkness, knawing at the edges of this simple story. I'm not the first to be struck by its similarity to Carver, though it's actually based on a story by Jonathan Raymond.
I was impressed with the rigor and beauty of Old Joy, but ultimately didn't have enough curiousity about the characters to sustain the narrative minimalism. Here it was different. In Carver's best work, his effects come across in how the reader constructs the spaces between what he's given us and tries to resolve what he's denied us. Reichardt, too, allows us to know very little for sure about our heroine (that is to say, Wendy). She's "passing through," she's estranged from her family, she's counting her last hundreds in her drive across country, hoping to make it to the canneries of Alaska. Her golden retriever mix, Lucy, is pretty much all she has.
But we don't get cheap clues or clumsy exposition or voice-over or flashbacks or really anything more to help us fill in any other facts of Wendy's life. Rail-thin, she's largely desexualized in her hipster boy-clothes and cropped haircut, unless you like that sort of thing. She's still rather stunning, of course, because it's a movie and she's Michelle Williams. For that reason and because she's so down-and-out, she has our sympathy from the beginning.
And she continues to have it, for the most part, but throughout the film--and days later, it seems--many questions spin out from her circumstances, even as they deteroriate. It's a wonder to be watching a film that depends on you to help construct what you're seeing and doesn't simply spoon feed you. Wendy and Lucy, in its still, quiet way, constantly asks you to respond. What would you do in her shoes? Would you help her? How did she get here? What's the right move? How did she screw her life up like this? How far away from this am I? Your sympathies shift moment to moment as you scrutinize her more and more closely.
The film encourages--demands, really--a deep, close reading. Like Gus Van Sant's best work, Wendy and Lucy cannot merely be watched. To do so, frankly, is to risk boredom--it would be like watching someone else play a game. These films are meant to be engaged with, stepped into, like Mia Farrow in The Purple Rose of Cairo.
Lucy the dog, by the way, is a remarkable screen performer. She was such a good doggie in Old Joy that she upstaged pretty much that whole movie by her very...well, joy, actually. Hmm, I think I've just realized something. Anyway, her long absence in the new film lends the story its dread, touching on, in its neo-realist way, the Northwest Gothic dread of Twin Peaks, the dark whistling pines at the forest's edge a metaphor for the unspeakable state of nature beyond.
We fear for Wendy that, though things look bad now, they may get much worse just down the road.
Vermont and the National Organization for Marriage
Following closely on the heels of my last post, Vermont has now legalized same-sex marriage. Thanks to last year's political campaigns, I am on way too many liberal email lists for having signed this or that petition, or maybe even giving money somewhere along the line. So I get mail the other day, warning me about the existence of this video:
I only post this video because I don't think anyone viewing it on my blog is going to take to the streets in opposition of gay marriage from having seen it. It's pretty hilariously stupid. What I think about when I see this kind of bullshit is about the poor actors in the video. I mean, do they believe what they're shilling? or are they just whores, AKA desperate actors?
I frequently wonder myself whether I could make a commercial for an organization as detestable as this one. Some days I try to embrace the kind of hard-partying, hedonistic, omnivorous self-interest I admired so much in some of my old-school libertarian conservative buddies in college (looking at you, Lewis). Other days I can't muster the requisite self-loathing.
But if you start rejecting work on the basis of moral outrage and contempt for idiocy, how quickly your opportunities as an actor dry up.
And then there's the issue of Damon "Rainbow Coalition" Owens. Who is Damon Owens? For those of you who clicked through and actually read the linked article, I mean, holy shit: Opus Dei? That got weird pretty fast.
The capper for me is that this organization uses the acronym NOM, which was my acronym. Bummer. Thankfully, I don't think it's gonna catch on.
There's small print in the video as the "California doctor" comes on to tell her story of religious persecution at the creamy-smooth hands of the gays, which says, "The stories these actors are telling are based on real incidents. Find out more at www.nationformarriage.org" I note the lack of trailing period there, which I take to be a sign of anxiety. Will the kids find our website as easily as they can be recruited by Harvey Milk?
Won't someone please think of the children?
I only post this video because I don't think anyone viewing it on my blog is going to take to the streets in opposition of gay marriage from having seen it. It's pretty hilariously stupid. What I think about when I see this kind of bullshit is about the poor actors in the video. I mean, do they believe what they're shilling? or are they just whores, AKA desperate actors?
I frequently wonder myself whether I could make a commercial for an organization as detestable as this one. Some days I try to embrace the kind of hard-partying, hedonistic, omnivorous self-interest I admired so much in some of my old-school libertarian conservative buddies in college (looking at you, Lewis). Other days I can't muster the requisite self-loathing.
But if you start rejecting work on the basis of moral outrage and contempt for idiocy, how quickly your opportunities as an actor dry up.
And then there's the issue of Damon "Rainbow Coalition" Owens. Who is Damon Owens? For those of you who clicked through and actually read the linked article, I mean, holy shit: Opus Dei? That got weird pretty fast.
The capper for me is that this organization uses the acronym NOM, which was my acronym. Bummer. Thankfully, I don't think it's gonna catch on.
There's small print in the video as the "California doctor" comes on to tell her story of religious persecution at the creamy-smooth hands of the gays, which says, "The stories these actors are telling are based on real incidents. Find out more at www.nationformarriage.org" I note the lack of trailing period there, which I take to be a sign of anxiety. Will the kids find our website as easily as they can be recruited by Harvey Milk?
Won't someone please think of the children?
Friday, April 3, 2009
Really Proud of Iowa Today
Word comes today that the Iowa Supreme Court has overturned the state ban on gay marriage, making it the first Midwestern state to legalize the practice. This makes me proud, because I am a former Iowan. When I was in high school in Ottumwa, Iowa, I was one of the so-called "drama fags," for my participation in school plays, and I also got called a fag for wearing Birkenstocks to school a few years before they were cool. Thinking about that second example, well, I can kinda forgive it. I mean, I still think "fag" is a funny word - what I mean by that is it still has the capacity to sound transgressive in our absurdly P.C. world, which few words any longer can. When someone like Cartman says it, it's going to be funny, like it or not. And, you know, it's funny when you say it to your friends. Sorry.
I remember that I was putting up a poster for my literary magazine, Chautauqua, in the school cafeteria during study hall. There was a group of...what? Redneck heshers? I had moved to Iowa in 8th grade from Maryland and, even by the end of high school, I still thought of those folks as just Iowans. But redneck heshers works. So, there was a little gang of them nearby and they sent over one of their groupies to ask me if I was a "fag." I followed her back to the table to tell her boyfriends that if they had wanted to ask me out, they could just have done so. They didn't need to send their girl over to do it for them. They could not think of any clever responses, so I think they just told me to fuck off.
Here's the best part of the ruling, apart from that it's another repudiation of prejudice on the part of the courts and apart from that it allows gays and lesbians to get married:
"Same-sex marriages will be permitted in Iowa for at least two years, because the legislative process required to overturn the ruling would take that long. A constitutional amendment would require the state legislature to approve a ban on same-sex marriage in two consecutive sessions after which voters would have a chance to weigh in. Despite opposition to the ruling by Republican lawmakers, Democrats, who control the legislature, have given no indication that they intend to introduce such an amendment." (Davey & Robbins, NYT)
So the Mormons are going to have wait two years to force their bigotry on Iowans. Ha! Take that, Latter Day Dicks!
I remember that I was putting up a poster for my literary magazine, Chautauqua, in the school cafeteria during study hall. There was a group of...what? Redneck heshers? I had moved to Iowa in 8th grade from Maryland and, even by the end of high school, I still thought of those folks as just Iowans. But redneck heshers works. So, there was a little gang of them nearby and they sent over one of their groupies to ask me if I was a "fag." I followed her back to the table to tell her boyfriends that if they had wanted to ask me out, they could just have done so. They didn't need to send their girl over to do it for them. They could not think of any clever responses, so I think they just told me to fuck off.
Here's the best part of the ruling, apart from that it's another repudiation of prejudice on the part of the courts and apart from that it allows gays and lesbians to get married:
"Same-sex marriages will be permitted in Iowa for at least two years, because the legislative process required to overturn the ruling would take that long. A constitutional amendment would require the state legislature to approve a ban on same-sex marriage in two consecutive sessions after which voters would have a chance to weigh in. Despite opposition to the ruling by Republican lawmakers, Democrats, who control the legislature, have given no indication that they intend to introduce such an amendment." (Davey & Robbins, NYT)
So the Mormons are going to have wait two years to force their bigotry on Iowans. Ha! Take that, Latter Day Dicks!
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