Red Bluff trip

Over the New Year's long weekend, Kim and I decided to head upstate to Red Bluff, some place neither of us had ever been. We talk about one day buying some land out in the countryside somewhere, a place where we could camp or eventually build a cabin, and we wanted to check out the Red Bluff area as a potential location. Located about 30 miles south of Redding, with the Trinity Alps, Mt. Shasta and Lassen ringing in this northern end of California's central valley, Red Bluff is a wild, beautiful spot.
We stayed at the Motel 6 and spent one day driving in each direction. We went up to Lassen, which was mostly snowed in; on our way back we turned off the 36 and went for a short walk in the woods outside Red Bluff. We tried to drive back into town on Hogsback Road, but had to turn back when the fog rolled in and darkness fell. The road started out as a typical backcountry gravel road (except for the red-rock gravel) but soon declined into more of a volcanic rock-studded groove than a road. Kim's Subaru, which like all Subarus is a four-wheel drive, nevertheless lacked the clearance to reliably make the trip.
Another day we cruised up to Redding to see the Whiskeytown area and Lake Shasta - I'll write a follow-up post about the dam there. We saw the Sundial Bridge and strolled around the Turtle Bay Park a bit. Our third day trip took us west of Red Bluff out along the 36, into the stunning countryside where we hope to find a patch of property someday. Rolling hills, broad meadows and a network of rivers and streams, with snow-capped mountains on the horizon in three directions. It was some kind of dream of the West, an old and peaceful landscape.

Classics at The Alameda!

Kudos to the Alameda Theatre and Cineplex which, beginning next week, will be running a classic film series on Wednesdays and Thursdays. I am very excited about this, even though I have seen this particular slate of films many, many times:

January 14-15: Vertigo
January 21-22: North by Northwest
January 28-29: The Maltese Falcon
February 4-5: Rear Window

It's interesting that's it's basically a Hitchcock series, with a Huston thrown in - but they'll get no complaints from me. I hope this continues on throughout the year. I have longed for such a series since the fabulously renovated theater re-opened in May, but had not dared to hope there was room yet for repertory film programming in this world of ours. I will be attending every one of these films - and hopefully will be able to twist some nearby arms to attend with me.

I believe I have only seen Vertigo on the big screen in the past - though possibly Rear Window, too. The opportunity is simply not there often enough. I hope folks come out for these screenings so they will continue. The theater has changed the website announcement a couple of times since I first saw it; at one point the films were labeled as being on AFI's list of the 100 Best American Films, which suggests they might explore more of that list in the future. Yay! I hope they show Citizen Kane (which actually happens to be one of my favorite films, absolutely thrilling every time I see it, and I've seen it A LOT). I get the feeling that few people have actually watched the "greatest film of all time."

Which, about that - I brought up this series last night at the Lucky 13, where I successfully warded off the urge to smoke as my friends were doing, and there was some general argument about the relative weakness of AFI's list. I'd have to agree that lists that rank films (or whatever) in order of greatness are usually pretty stupid. Or perhaps the word is boring, or pointless. Whether the "greatest film" is Kane or The Rules of the Game or Ants in Your Pants of 1939 is really not a very interesting question. How the estimation of a film changes over time is rather interesting, though, which is why I think the Sight & Sound poll is valuable - this is a critics poll, taken every ten years since 1952 (with a separate director's poll, since 1992) by the British Film Institute, that asks for a list of the ten greatest films. Kane has topped the list since 1962, but what has come next has changed dramatically over time. The first film in The Alameda's series is now regarded as the #2 film of all time, for instance, though it didn't appear in the list until '82.

The best response to AFI's list, now a decade old (though it has been updated since), is that of my favorite film critic, Jonathan Rosenbaum. He rips AFI's list to shreds, for all the right reasons, and proposes an alternative list, unranked, that is vastly more idiosyncratic and worthwhile. Check it out here!

Whereas, this time in L.A., it was like this

Same zone, different girl. Any kind of life lesson in that, buddy?I was there this time to help Andy with the reshoots for his long-awaited feature, Frogtown, for which I am one of the producers. Here, Jason hangs some diffusion while Andy talks to his actors, OS.Every time I go to LA, there's a new brunch spot to try. This one was pretty fuckin' good. It's on Sunset near the Arclight.Had fun with Ben in Venice prior to shooting.Here we are shooting on the boardwalk after hours.Here's Andy, that soulful fellow, with the rig. Frogtown has great potential, more than he realizes. It's hard to find perspective when you're in the trenches.

I'm playing catch-up now: this all happened nearly a month ago. December happened, the holidays intervened, and there was just too much to do. This week, the first of the new year, in which I will turn 35 and in which my son will be born, I am ramping back up slowly to life-speed. There is so very much I need to do - one foot in front of the other.

The last time I went to L.A., it was like this

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.

Bees

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.