So Fucking Special

That Wascally Pwince

Distracting Pompadour!

That's my two word review of Indy 4.

No, seriously, hold on, lady, we're going for a ride.

I'll start where everyone's left off, as we're all in not so tacit agreement on the thing which does not work:

The A Number One fiasco of this whole ordeal, the script choice, can be blamed on Jabba himself, George Howard the Duck/Star Wars Christmas Special Lucas, through and through. His rejection of four different scripts, each penned by a consecutively more renowned screenwriting hotshot, was his first mistake, never mind the fact that Spielberg gushed for Darabont's draft. If you're not listening to STEVEN FUCKING SPIELBERG when deciding on what script to use for your update of a perennial favorite, you're beyond all rational consideration.

So, that being the case, Jabba Lucas sent Boba Koepp on a mission to find the flimsiest story arc he could to suit Lucas's need to, I guess, computer animate a few more prairie dogs for infantile comic beats.
Seriously, is that it? Did Darabont/Gaghan/Shyamalan/STOPPARD not include enough opportunities for prairie dogs to houtini like Jawas? Seriously?

Never mind. I'd made my peace with that awhile ago. When I first heard they were even bothering, post sunset-riding-into after the Cavern of the Crescent Moon, my reaction was "why?".

I went in with low expectations, and had to deal with the lack of a story, the lack of much dramatic momentum (even Temple of Doom has a dramatic appeal), lack of real danger (mostly). In short, I had the same problems the rest of you have had.

Spielberg had to be tied to this project kicking and screaming, and it must seem to many like he just gave in and said what the heck, it'll be fun.

On to what's good:

IT IS FUN. Ahem. Aside from all those caveats, everyone performs well, and Spielberg makes this thing fun to watch in spite of all Lucas's attempts to trash the experience for us.

I've never seen this sort of thing happen. A director of unmatched skill, energy, boyish enthusiasm and heedless talent steps up, takes a bad script and decides he's going to make it fucking DANCE. And that's what the film does. The script is mechanical, Spielberg isn't. Spielberg's task this time around is to wander through a mechanized cave of Lucas/Koepp's booby traps, and he sorts them the fuck right out.

The drag-race segment is one of the coolest intros I've ever seen to a movie. Spielberg's camera keeps developing that scene and every subsequent scene in such an exuberant visual crescendo I wanted to applaud the showmanship alone.

I didn't feel like it was an exercise for him. He seemed to be having fun he couldn't have working on films like Munich, an infinitely better film though that may be.

There are other good things I could say about it, there are other bad things I could say about it. I wish Spielberg had directed the Star Wars prequels, because he has a better eye for incorporating CG with actors and an overall palette than Lucas ever will (admittedly, the ending drowns in CGI, falling apart almost before it starts rotating)

The first three films in this series are too imbedded in my consciousness to be altered by the flaws of this film. If the SW prequels had been anywhere near this good there'd be many less bruised and bleeding fanboys out there.

I had fun.

No Interviews Please

In my doldrummy vacation time, I've read a lot and watched the news. No, really.

This is a fairly dark corollary to this week's most famous political blunder:

"He'll be shot, though, that's his problem. If Jack [Kennedy] knew he was going to be shot, a black boy must know it too." Invited to suggest a motive for Obama's persistence, Vidal offers "Curiosity. Even - dare I use a word never used in American political life any more? - honour."

That's from this Guardian article, and I sure as hell hope Vidal's wrong.

This could be a bad sign though:

Yes, Please, Eject Your Preachers from Our Govt.

If the vetting of these two candidates requires the repudiation of two preachers, one a severe anti-American leftist, the other a nutjob standard-issue Religious Right End of Days Christian Zionist, we're already on our way to a better four to eight years.

Early Creepy but Legal Productions Out-take...

Really? A Pandemic?

I thought the year 2000 was way behind us, and I guess I don't go clubbing in Europe much, but seriously?

I agree that trance sounds great when you're on something, but good lord.

Go play the vid at the bottom of that article and you'll see a few thousand people unified in their own lack of discrimination.

I Want This Track

In Principle

Hillary Clinton has the support of "white voters" over Obama? You mean, Obama has a problem getting the support of down home thugs and corn-pone racist jackasses?

Yeah. Actually, he really, really does.

Let's not pretend this ain't still the same world it was before so many of us Baracked the vote.

Ready Ride

You have to discover how long you can live in heartbreak and uncertainty. You have to know how to get to the other side of it. I watched my father lose to it, bit by bit, day by day. Better to go through it now and see the other side, than end up on the losing side. That's the side I've seen, and I must cautiously remember where I came from.

Want Tickets

Also, I'm the only Gay Eskimo that likes Tom Waits, I think.

So THAT's the sound of "Stupid House"

This is fun, but not entirely trustworthy.

A Message to Red Democrats

Got nothing against Hillary. Really don't. I understand her need to win. She's a Clinton, after all. She may be the more practical candidate, but what it boils down to for me is that I'm not a Reagan Democrat, not by a damn long shot, and I would like the chance to finally, at long fucking last, vote please god Rock-me-Amadeus for a liberal candidate, even one that comes somewhere close to liberalism.

As bad as the economy is, as troubling as the war is, I'm for literacy, personal freedoms and intellectual curiosity. The conquering of current traumas, foreign and domestic, can only be truly achieved with an overall cultural goal on the horizon. That goal could help us find a harbor for this sinking boat. We've needed some form of striving; indeed, some possible (perhaps mild) elitism has been called for, for a long, long time. That may not be truly inchoate in Obama (or it might be), but it surely isn't in you, Hillrod

Hush, now, poor woman. I would've voted for you with little trouble, and slept better at night with you in office than the wretched Rovian surrogate we've endured for eight years, but I prefer even the most scant possibility of childlike vision over gas-tax pandering and appealing to our fears.

Not hedging my bets on it, but it's time to at least roll the dice.

What Else Do You Wanna Know?

In other fucking news. Bah.

What I Give Up

Two videos today, cataloged here in place of my own writing, because I get home at night too tired to think.



And now, just because I was thinking of it, the coolest music video ever made:

Z

Dieter Dengler Needs To Fly

If facts were the only thing that counted, the telephone directory would be the book of books - Werner Herzog

I'm pretty sure I need to see Rescue Dawn again too. Maybe before Gone Baby Gone. I watched it in some earlier stages of my return (still pending) to normal human feeling. Full-body exhaustion, weakness, chemical withdrawal, and similar fun slices of lemon pie have made every viewing of a movie since November a kind of Zen-like, stoned overdrive. The movies mean a lot to me right now, and I interpret them through a lens of memory and regret (try quitting smoking while breaking your back at menial labor. Near as I can tell, that, on top of other things I'd already been grappling with, has been the culprit of my shortcomings lately).

Which brings me again to Herzog's previous film, one I didn't think of very often, until lately. It's a more or less plotless movie about trapped men, bonded slowly in insanity. That insanity is caused by the need to survive. Memories of cheeseburgers, home and freedom are all simply memories to those men.

When I was uhh... five or somethin', I was looking out the window, with my brother... and we see this fighter plane was coming right at us. I was not scared. I was mesmerized! Because for me, this pilot was this all-mighty being from the clouds. From that moment on, I knew I wanted to be him. I wanted to be one of them. I wanted to be a pilot.

Dieter Dengler, as portrayed by Christian Bale, gives that description of a pivotal childhood moment, one that echoes a crucial scene from Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun, where the thirteen year old protagonist sees American fighter planes fly over the camp he's interned in.

That thirteen year old protagonist was, of course, played by Christian Bale.

This is certainly a coincidence, as Rescue Dawn is based on fact (Empire of the Sun is based on a memoir). But Herzog doesn't care much for the difference between documentary and narrative, reality and unreality, and I'd prefer to believe it was supposed to happen that way.

What'd I Miss?

Seeing Jef's Original/Unoriginal checklist on a weekly basis has reminded me that I want some kind of regular feature to write. Jef's cataloguing of films that come from a source vs. films that spring fresh from a screenwriter or director's head is an informative, funny time saver for me.

Jef's feature has a simplicity that would be dogged by my unstoppable neuroses. I would immediately start laying out my notion of the transmogrification of previous materials alchemizing a new and sometimes better, purer work (more original for being an update!).

That, however, would be too complex for such a feature, and thankfully, Jef doesn't muddy up the works like I would.

'Round these parts, muddy those works up I will, chiefly bringing front and center the perennial and but recently turned forty years old 2001: A Space Odyssey

This is a film which, by Jef's basic standards, is unoriginal, being gleaned from the Arthur C. Clarke (RIP) material eventually released under the same name. I've never read it, but Kubrick never left a work in its original state. He went Meta on its ass over what was always a long and freakishly psychic process.

The fact that Clarke was writing his book while Kubrick was shooting the film (from Clarke's primary short story, The Sentinel), and that Kubrick was also working (who knows with what fidelity) from a screenplay that he and Clarke had both worked on, leads one further into a quandary of who got it first.

Which leads me finally to my reason for posting, which was Kubrick's comment from an interview in which he rose to defend his film from its early critical (and often NY based) lacerations:

..I would say that there are elements in any good film that would increase the viewer's interest and appreciation on a second viewing; the momentum of a movie often prevents every stimulating detail or nuance from having a full impact the first time it's seen. The whole idea that a movie should be seen only once is an extension of our traditional conception of the film as an ephemeral entertainment rather than as a visual work of art. We don't believe that we should hear a great piece of music only once, or see a great painting once, or even read a great book just once. But the film has until recent years been exempted from the category of art—a situation I'm glad is finally changing.


I would say that of all the films I've seen in the past few months (it being the whirlwind of a year that it's been for excellent films), I definitely have a list of 'em I believe should be viewed more than once:

No Country For Old Men
Four Months, Three Weeks, and Two Days
Michael Clayton
Atonement (Love it or hate it, it might be worth seeing again simply to figure out whether you love it or hate it)
There Will Be Blood
Persepolis
The Darjeeling Limited
Once
In Bruges
Rescue Dawn
Eastern Promises
3:10 To Yuma

And of course, the one I'm most anxious to relive:

Gone Baby Gone

Mind. On. Brink.

Things Keeping Me Going:

Renewing Synapses vis. smoking cessation.

Ishiguru's The Remains of the Day

HBO's John Adams, with Abigail coming off as much less of a bitch than I've heard (but we all knew I'd go for her)

All the freakin' music. Viddy well the charts, down where it says 'charts'.

My 2 new Gigs of RAM.

Things too crazy to handle:

My synapses renewing vis. smoking cessation (or maybe not. I just know my body's changing to something new)

The never-ending exhaustion I've been enduring since November.

The Future.

The Past.

4 Capital Letters

Hate to post two videos in one night, but So Me is my hero.

Uh Uh Uh

If you haven't seen Persepolis, you really, really should.