October 2008 Archives

Skeletons in the closet! Bats in the belfry! Wolves in sheep's clothing! Pit bull-barracudas in Neiman Marcus clothing! Flying pigs in lipstick bursting forth from unlicensed plumbing fixtures! Befitting the sinister tone of season (political and scary), David Bordwell has published a brilliant essay he calls "It was a dark and stormy campaign," in which he examines the concept of "narrative," as it has come to be used in film and campaign circles. This is essential reading:

Clearly the presidential candidates have come to believe that what seizes the public aren't just policy views and promises. Now the campaigns want to tell stories in which the candidates are the protagonists. The life of Barack Obama, or Joe Biden, or Sarah Palin is said to be a story (usually "an American story"). According to Robert Draper's influential recent article ["The Making (and Remaking) of McCain"], John McCain's campaign has deliberately set out a series of "narratives": McCain endures suffering in Hanoi as a POW; he enters politics and fights for reform in government. Mark Salter, McCain's staff member and coauthor, has the responsibility of stitching incidents of the Senator's career into what he calls the "metanarrative" of McCain's life--rather as George Lucas presides over the Bible of the "Star Wars" universe.

My friend Alley Rutzel was so mesmerized by Tarsem Singh's "The Fall" (premiered at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival, but released in the US only this summer), that she put together this index of breathtaking images and locations from the film. She writes: "Watching this movie was incredibly inspiring (I kept saying "I want to go there, and I want to go there...") so I made a game of trying to figure out all the filming locations." She still doesn't have 'em all, so please take a look and let her know if you can identify them...

Ms. Frances Bean Farmer Albert Sinatra Dog (above, 2007) saved my life every day, from her adoption (April 27, 1999; German Shepherd mix of unknown age, from Seattle Animal Shelter) to her death from various illnesses October 27, 2008. She may have been as old as 12 or so. We saw someone in each other. Words can't... they just can't.

Couric and Palin, on piano. This is an ear-opening way to hear spoken words. As notes.

I can think of so many movies in which the images play the orchestra (or band, depending on the kind of music the movie suggests) and the actors are the soloists. Dialog by Billy Wilder, or Preston Sturges, or the Coen Bros. often strikes me as fundamentally musical. But I didn't hear this one coming.

The latest in a series. Real politicians and comedians show you how to use simple word/image associations to create creepy political ads as seen on TV and the Internets!

Still the same game in attack ads: associate the candidate with negative images (in this case, it's the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud -- wait, that wasn't all that long ago!). Word-association, no matter how meaningless, still works. As the SNL Palin rap phrased it: "When I say Obama, you say Ayers! Obama! Ayers! Obama! Ayers!" Or, if you're Joseph McCarthy Michele Bachmann: "Obama! Anti-American! Congress! Anti-American! Investigation! Anti-American! I never said Anti-American!" (See how that works?)

Full disclosure: The anti-Goldwater ad above, perhaps the most scandalous political ad in American TV history (sorry, "Willie Horton"!) actually ran only once. More about it >here.

Make your own here.

Liveblogging SNL:

First: Was the cold open lackluster on purpose? Did Alec Baldwin deliberately read the cue cards badly just so he wouldn't have to look at Sarah Palin? (I worked on an "SNL" when Baldwin co-hosted with his painfully untalented-as-a-live-actor ex-wife, and he's a million times better than that. Lorne Michaels, too.)

See Baldwin's comments on Palin's appearance here.

Second: Because this blog is all about me (see above): How weird to see Sarah Palin in that very hallway where (he suddenly remembered) I was introduced to Paul and Linda McCartney. (That's the only Beatle, or Beatle spouse, I've ever shaken hands with.) My narcissistic perspective: Does Palin deserve to be standing anywhere near that spot? I think not. (Apropos of nothing: You know who I love? Mike Shoemaker and Marci Klein, that's who.)

Third: Regarding MacGruber: I know, but are there really any rich people who were rich a month ago who aren't still rich?

Fourth: Simon and Garfunkel Jack-in-the-Box Burger King commercials.

Fifth: Congrats to Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers (and Palin). This is funny:

In some Scanners comments this weekend, we've been discussing various comparisons between George W. Bush and Richard M. Nixon, seeing as how Oliver Stone has now made made both failed presidents the subjects of Major Motion Pictures. Matt Zoller Seitz and Kevin B. Lee, in a series of visual and print essays at Moving Image Source about Oliver Stone's political portraits ("Born on the Fourth of July," "JFK," "Nixon," "Alexander" -- leading up to "W.") have been re-examining these films as part of Stone's cinematic autobiography-in-process. (I think all these films, for better or worse, say more about their maker than they do about their subjects -- though there's nothing exceptional about that.)

Nixon is a key figure in my life -- the center of many of my political disputes with my late father, who would not find it unflattering to be described a "redneck" from Catawissa, MO, which I think is a pretty accurate description. When I was 10 and studied the 1968 presidential candidates in elementary school, I decided I was for Hubert Humphrey. My dad voted Nixon (though sometimes I suspected him of actually going for Wallace -- a racist gargoyle who could not have terrified this young Seattle white boy more if he had actually worn a gown and pointed hood). To me, Nixon's resignation in disgrace represented the triumph of my morality over my father's. To him, the only difference between Nixon and any other politician was that "he got caught."

Now that I'm older than he was then, I think we both have our points. At any rate, the president the country chooses unquestionably reflects and defines that period in its history.

Which leads me to something Matt writes about "Nixon" (the movie):

"Not since 'Sling Blade' has there been a voice that anybody could do.... Anybody can take a swing at this voice."

"You have to be able to goof on the female politicians just as much, otherwise you really are treating them like they're weaker or something."

Also, she gives credit to Seth Meyers for being the primary writer of the Palin SNL sketches. Classy broad.

(Ebert on McCain on Letterman, plus clips, here.)

"W." is the third in what could turn out to be Oliver Stone's five-part trilogy of movies containing pronounceable capital letters in the titles (after "JFK" and "U-Turn"), if you don't count "Natural Born Killers" and "World Trade Center," sometimes known as "NBK" and "WTC," respectively, in which case it may already be the fifth film in a proposed diptych about the tetralogy of power.

I haven't seen the movie yet, but the timing seems inopportune. Few public figures have faded into irrelevance more quickly in recent months than George W. Bush, whose popularity and name-recognition numbers are now running slightly behind Sanjaya, and I'm not sure I remember who that was.

... and what was that ending supposed to mean?

WARNING: HBO-rated profanity and imagery discussed -- including language previously restricted to top-level government officials, mostly during the Nixon and Cheney administrations.

(tip: Andrew Sullivan)

Before I get to the movie part of this post, I want to toast Paul Krugman. He is one of the few public figures I've ever considered a personal hero. (Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are, too, and I'm not joking.)

In the bleakest hours of the new millennium -- through 9/11, Iraq, soul-shattering scandals, national elections, and impending financial disasters -- Krugman stood as a beacon of hope and, if you'll pardon the expression, moral clarity in what Nick Lowe (and Elvis Costello) memorably called "the darkness of insanity."

Hired in 1999 as the New York Times economic columnist, Krugman wound up doing what so many journalists, even at his own paper, were failing to do. He reported. Not just what people said, but how what they said compared to independently verifiable reality. Week after week, column after column, Krugman was virtually alone (alongside Knight-Ridder, NPR and "The Daily Show") in pointing out, and explaining the significance of, relevant facts that so many didn't care to notice, even when they were right there in plain sight -- and in the public record, if anyone bothered to pay attention.

He wasn't just a good reporter but a fine critic.

Rarely has an American political candidate triggered so many associations with a famed British comedy troupe of stage, screen, television and phonograph recordings:

"I used to think that Michael Palin was the funniest Palin on earth.... [Sarah Palin] is like a nice-looking parrot, because the parrot speaks beautifully and kinda says 'Aw, shucks,' every now and again, but doesn't really have any understanding of the meaning of the words that it is producing, even though it's producing them very accurately.... I mean, Monty Python could have written this."

-- John Cleese, co-founder of Monty Python's Flying Circus (Clip here.)

(See above. Monty Python did.)

"But Palin is as ridiculous as the competitors from Monty Python's Upperclass Twit of the Year competition, jumping over hurdles that are nothing more than a stack of matchbooks." -- Anne Lamott, Salon.com

"Cue marching band music and a big cartoon foot. US Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, hackers have revealed, has used a Yahoo! free webmail account to talk government business with aides."

-- David Winder, ITwire

"As Monty Python used to say, 'No one expects the Spanish Inquisition' -- which is another way of saying that no one expects the unexpected."

-- Mark J. Penn, Politico

So many times over the last nine years (especially the last nine years) I have watched politicians on television and thought of John Cleese. No so much of the parrot sketch (to which he also alludes in the quotation above) but of another beloved Python bit he did...

Fully customizable to fit YOUR blog or site. Just click the "Get Widget" button below. This one's already "transparent," so it'll blend into your page's color scheme, but with a few clicks you make it look however you like. Then just plop the code into your template on Blogger, Facebook, TypePad, WordPress, MySpace or whatever and you and your readers will see automatic updates. It's groovy and fun. You can also get a Roger Ebert's Journal widget by (ironically) looking in the far-right column below...

We've gotta cash in on this quick, so here's my pitch:

Tina Fey plays Sarah Palin as Tina Fey as Sarah Palin in a semi-remake of "Dave."

Animal Control nabs Palin off the street, mistaking her for a stray pit bull whose previous owner tested makeup on animals. Palin is asked to host "SNL" the week before the election, but nobody notices she's missing because the McCain campaign is so successful at keeping her away from the press that they forget where they put her. Security is airtight. Because Fey does a better Palin than Palin does, she is forced to do the show as Palin as Fey as Palin.

"All the really good suicide bombers are gone," laments a trio of bumbling Afghan terrorists early on in "An American Carol," and that's about the high-water mark for humor in this jaw-droppingly awful political comedy from veteran spoofer David Zucker.

-- Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer

After "An American Carol" opened in some cities last week, RogerEbert.com received a few insinuating inquiries from readers asking why we did not publish a review of the film , a biographical musical celebration of the beloved wide-mouthed Broadway star of "Hello, Dolly!". The comedy, directed and co-written by David Zucker ("Airplane!"), is a conservative re-telling of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol, with a fat, unscrupulous, bespectacled, baseball-capped, America-hating documentarian named Michael Malone (played by the late Chris Farley's brother Kevin) as the Scrooge figure. Our correspondents suggested that, because the movie's politics reportedly tilted to the right, perhaps the liberal falafel-loving media establishment was deliberately ignoring it. (Meanwhile, the conservative corporate media establishment was evidently off celebrating a lonely cinematic triumph in a quiet place.)

Oddly, we did not receive a single comment or e-mail asking why we did not carry a review of "Beverly Hills Chihuahua," the Number One Movie of last weekend, but the reasons are the same: neither "An American Carol" nor "BHC" were screened for critics. That is usually the studios' way of ensuring that reviews do not appear on opening day. If any critic-type person still wants to cover it, he or she can simply buy a ticket to a show on Friday or Saturday and file a notice over the weekend.

RottenTomatoes lists 65 reviews for "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" (27 positive), 119 for "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" (85 positive), and 28 for "An American Carol" (4 positive), all of which opened the same day.

To help fill in the critical information gap, are some excerpts from the few higher-profile "American Carol" reviews I could find, some of which are kind of funny. The first one is from a review RT.com categorizes as "fresh":

I still haven't gotten 'round to writing about some of the best movies I saw at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, including "Wendy and Lucy," "Liverpool," "35 Rhums" and (below) "Goodbye Solo":

Here's what distinguishes Ramin Bahrani's films for me, and why I like them so much. When I watch a movie by director of "Man Push Cart," "Chop Shop" and "Goodbye Solo" (which just won the FIPRESCI critics prize at the Venice Film Festival), I don't feel somebody has begun with a pre-set story and then figured out how to film it. I feel like I'm watching something that is rooted in concrete observation, inquiry, exploration. It feels as though the filmmaker has noticed something that has moved him or roused his curiosity, and that he has decided not just to incorporate those things into his movie, but to actually focus on them and see where they they took him from there.

When I first tried to understand what the whole financial meltdown was about, it sounded to me like some kind of perpetual motion machine -- a black box that reversed the first law of thermodynamics ("econo-dynamics"?) to produce energy from nothing, or money from debt. Turns out the principles behind the "financial instruments" that caused the collapse were indeed crafted in part by physicists and mathematicians who designed complex formulas that defied real-world understanding, but that appeared to guarantee profits out of nothing.

Here's my quick take on the smoke-and-mirrors magic-of-the-marketplace that deregulation made possible at the turn of the last century (y'all remember Enron) and how it's manifesting itself in today's financial crises -- using clips from CBS's "60 Minutes" report, "Wall Street's Shadow Market", (10/6/08) and Alex Gibney's documentary, "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" (2005).

And, if she does, how many viewers will be able to tell the difference? Is this gonna be the talent portion?

Bill Zwecker reports in the Chicago Sun-Times:

It's looking more and more likely that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will appear on ''Saturday Night Live'' -- to have some fun with Tina Fey.

As the comedian's impressions of the GOP vice presidential candidate draw laughs from Republicans and Democrats alike, a top honcho from the John McCain campaign tells me there's a debate going on about how to respond.

I can't get enough of Tina Fey's Sarah Palin. I feel about her the way I felt about Dr. Evil in the first "Austin Powers" movie. My eyes light up whenever she's on camera. And then, of course, there are those little starbursts she sends through the screen that go ricocheting around the living rooms of America, as first reported by Rich Lowry of the National Review.

Something strange is happening, though: Fey's Palin is not only sharper and funnier than Palin's Palin, she's also more vivid, more... real (maybe because she's on TV more). It's as if she's the main Palin and the other one is the paler surrogate Palin. In other words, for you baby boomers, Tina Fey's Palin is the Dick York and Sarah Palin's Palin is the Dick Sargent. Sure, they're both bewitching in their own ways, but Fey's is the real Darrin. If you know what I mean.

I was looking forward to the VP Debate opening sketch on "SNL" as much as the debate itself, and I was not disappointed by either. I'm guessing that former "SNL" head-writer Fey contributes to these because they're "30 Rock" precise -- more pointed than what usually passes for "SNL" political humor. (I didn't make it through the obviously obligatory finanical bailout sketch in the first half hour of the show, even though Fred Armisen's Barney Frank was a hoot).

Michael Cera, on his decision to act in "Juno" (or "Juneau"):

"Well, I had a feeling when I took the part that something like that would happen, that Sarah Palin would run and her teen would be pregnant, and so I'm glad that it finally was fulfilled."

☺☺☺☺

The Fargo Interview, with Marge Gunderson:

Gosh darn it, whether ya just love her or ya can't stand her, there's something about that Sarah Palin that's got everybody talkin' -- whether it's tryin' to talk her kinda plain ol' "Say it ain't so, Joe Sixpack" Hockey Mom talk, or just tryin' to figure out what the heck the gal is sayin'! Can ya tell what she thinks she means when she flaps that lipstick, or do ya just like the sparkle motion she makes when the words come out? Get back to me on that! Anyways, here we go again, with a buncha ways of looking at that Sarah Palin Talk that everybody's talkin' about:

Linguist Steven Pinker, "Everything You Heard Is Wrong," New York Times, October 4, 2008:

Since the vice presidential debate on Thursday night, two opposing myths have quickly taken hold about Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska. The first, advanced by her supporters, is that she made it through a gantlet of fire; the second, embraced by her detractors, is that her speaking style betrays her naïveté. Both are wrong. [...]

But it would be unfair to question the authenticity of her accent or to use it as a measure of her intellect or sophistication. The dialect is certainly for real. Listeners who hear the Minnewegian sounds of the characters from "Fargo" when they listen to Ms. Palin are on to something: the Matanuska-Susitna Valley in Alaska, where she grew up, was settled by farmers from Minnesota during the Depression.

A boardroom speech from banker Thomas Dickson, written by Robert Ryskin, directed by Frank Capra and delivered by Walter Huston in "American Madness" (1932). Capra and Ryskin collaborated on many films, including "Lady for a Day," "It Happened One Night," "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town," "Lost Horizon" and "Meet John Doe."

"My cousin's niece has carpal tunnel, so I think I understand a lot about what it's like to suffer from the discrimination against the autistic in our society."

That's not a direct quote. It's also not much of an exaggeration of the kind of things I've heard people say. Maybe because it's election season, many people's sense of identity politics is going haywire, with individuals pretending they have some special qualifications to speak on behalf of others -- or groups of others -- with whom they don't really have much in common. Mainly, I think, this is because of the narcissism of the speakers, who are not so much concerned with the rights and feelings of those for whom they claim to speak, but are chiefly interested in hogging a moment in the spotlight. Yes, it's all about them and their privileged relationship with... the special, the disadvantaged, the shunned. (See "Literalism advocates literally protest the portrayal of literalists in film." OK, that's really a story about "Blindness" and those who object to metaphors that are too obvious.)

When somebody invokes a real or imagined relationship to a demographic they believe has been sinned against, asserting their personal connection without offering any additional insight, I often want to ask: What are you saying? That you wouldn't be offended if you didn't know somebody who you think has something in common with the group you think should be offended? (Sometimes, as in the fictionalized quotation at the top of this post, they can't even establish a meaningful link.) Prefacing a comment with something like "I know somebody who..." (as in, "Some of my best friends are...") is not, in itself, a sufficient argument. It just makes the speaker sound superficial.

Remember the whole "Tropic Thunder" brouhaha way back in August, when groups protested by carrying signs saying "Ban the Movie, Ban the Word"? (The word was "retard.") Last week, when the picture opened in the UK, the The Guardian ran a pointed piece by David Cox called "The imbecilic truth about the Tropic Thunder retard debate, in which he wrote:

By using the word "retard", Stiller relocates those to whom it's applied back in the real world. By acknowledging the distaste they may inspire, he does them the service of taking their situation seriously. And he reminds audiences that cinema's reluctance to engage honestly with them is ultimately the fault of cinemagoers themselves, not the studios, which must work within the parameters of acceptability.

Clips from the on-screen life of the late Paul Newman, actor and movie star:

Richard T. Jameson at MSN Movies:

Paul Newman's entrance in "Hud" (1963) is actually an exit, emerging just past dawn from a nondescript house on the side street of a no-name Texas town that barely has one street to begin with. He's the title character, of course, mid-30s, the lone surviving son of a local rancher, and he's been spending the wee hours with a married woman whose husband is about two minutes away from arriving home. Hud's nephew Lon (Brandon de Wilde) has been looking for him, found his big pink Cadillac brazenly parked in front of the house, and called him out.

So here comes Hud, snarling, tearing himself away from business left unfinished offscreen and lunging onto the small front porch. The shot is pretty straightforward but Hud's an insouciant angle: his body canted so that one side of him is advancing before the other, his spine still in the reluctant process of drawing itself erect, his left arm lifted in anticipation of leaning on the porch post between him and the camera. "This had better be good," he growls, into the lean now and letting his torso sag a little -- signaling that he's in charge here, but also allowing for the possibility, indeed the expectation, that maybe he can get out of whatever this is without raising a hand.

One of the things film critics do for a living is to pay close attention to how people behave, and how that behavior is presented through visual media. This applies not only to actors playing characters, but to people who play themselves, in fictional or nonfictional settings, on and off the screen. It should come as no surprise to learn that some of our best movie critics have backgrounds in psychology.

When Bill Clinton said, "I did not have sex with that woman," it now seems impossible to believe that he fooled anyone at that particular moment. But if any movie critic misread Clinton's voice and body language, that critic should have been impeached. As opaque as the clumsy verbal gymnastics of George W. Bush and Sarah Palin may often be, behind the contortions it's hard to avoid seeing the painful truth, which is simply that they don't know what their own words mean, and even when they know what they've been told to say they don't know how to communicate it. As actors, they're thoroughly unconvincing: You can see the wheels turning inside their heads -- only the gears aren't even engaged. There's a lot of whirring and spinning, but nothing happens. That can be excruciating to watch, but it's also the stuff of modern comedy. Christopher Guest, Ricky Gervais, Steve Carell, Tina Fey, Jon Stewart, Samantha Bee, Stephen Colbert and the whole Judd Apatow crew come to mind.

Patrick Goldstein, writing in the Los Angeles Times, argues that film critics like Roger Ebert, sophisticated in their knowledge of media presentation and human behavior, make more insightful political pundits than the usual beltway-bubble spin-docs employed by television, radio, print and online outlets. In a piece called "From film critic to political pundit," Goldstein writes:

To me, film critics, like TV and theater critics, are especially well equipped to analyze today's politics, which is why Frank Rich made such a seamless transition from theater to media and political commentator. In fact, in some ways film critics are probably better equipped to assess the political theater of today's presidential campaigns, since our campaigns are -- as has surely been obvious for some time -- far more about theater and image creation than politics.

The communal Parallax View film criticism blog, coordinated by Sean Axmaker, has resurrected Richard T. Jameson's provocative, penetrating "Apocalypse Now" review, originally published in the Seattle Weekly (then known only as The Weekly) October 17, 1979. I think it's the most lucid thing anyone's ever written about the movie, and should be required reading after every screening as a way of ensuring substantive discussion.

Jameson's piece illuminates essential truths about "Apocalypse" (and, I think, about Coppola's body of work), with a precision few critics have been willing or able to explore. You may want to argue with it (and by all means go ahead!), but if you read it closely I think it will show you things you may already have felt, even if you never quite noticed them before. That's true for me, anyway. I've just re-read it for the first time in almost 30 years, and I feel it's been there, under my skin, the whole time:

"Apocalypse Now" is a dumb movie that could have been made only by an intelligent and talented man. It pushes its egregiousness with such conviction and technical sophistication that, upon first viewing, I immediately resolved to withhold firm judgment until I'd seen the film again: perhaps I'd missed some crucial irony, some ingenious framework that, properly understood, would convert apparent asininity to audacity. I didn't find it. It isn't there. What is there is the evidence of a reasonably talented filmmaker having spectacularly overextended himself -- Francis Ford Coppola who, having had a toney pop epic widely accepted as great cinema, felt he was ready to make "Citizen Kurtz."

My MSN Movies gallery feature article about Great Movie Underdogs (i.e., dogs whose proper names are not in the titles), is live. And, after the jump, the answers to last week's movie dog quiz -- and a couple of delicious bonus treats.

Regarding great movie doggerel doggies:

My dog Edith does not much like dog movies. At least I don't think she does. Whenever a canine appears on our 55-inch HDTV screen, or any of the surround speakers, she lunges, barking, growling, whining and emitting other noises that sound like a wounded vacuum or a gargling siren.

If Edith were a bit less excitable and territorial, if she were better able to maintain a critical distance, she would appreciate how many fine screen performances have been given by members of her species, if not of her particular mixed-breed-of-color. [...]