Quarantine the Past

Quarantine the Past has moved

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Quarantine the Past is now Print the Legend. I'll be updating there regularly. Hope you check it out!

Kiarostami's Close-Up

2010-08-23T12:00:00.000-07:00

I know it's been a while. Unemployment has a way of turning days into months. Here's a review I wrote for Abbas Kiarostami's 1990 film Close-Up, recently rereleased by The Criterion Collection on DVD and Blu-ray. Hope to begin updating with greater regularity soon.

Of all the lyrics they could've chosen,

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they had to choose this one for their greatest hits album. Perhaps this'll mean a few accidental hits?

Top Films of the Decade: #1 Mulholland Dr.

2010-01-01T10:40:00.000-08:00

Mulholland Dr.
(2001)

Today I'm joining Film Comment, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, and indieWire to call Mulholland Dr. the best film of the decade. This wasn't a difficult decision. A cinematic sugar rush, dizzying and dazzling, Mulholland Dr. bursts with moments of pure inspiration. It challenges and rewards in equal measure, making it the most satisfying film in David Lynch's 30-plus year career. The writer/director injects his nightmarish style with healthy doses of heart and humor to lure us into his film's world. Mulholland Dr.'s immediate pleasures turn its macro-level puzzle into something inviting, hypnotic, and even fun.

Let's start with those immediate pleasures, or what I'll call the micro-level. Mulholland Dr. began as an open-ended pilot for ABC, which accounts for its disjointed first hour, when characters appear and vanish without much warning. ABC rejected the 94-minute pilot, leaving Lynch with a string of mesmerizing sequences and no resolution. These standalone vignettes rank among Lynch's most memorable scenes, ones worth revisiting again and again (if Lynch would allow scene selection on his DVD, that is). Who can forget The Espresso Man, The Winkie's Diner Man, The Hitman, The Cowboy, or, towering above them all, the Club Silencio? These sequences play like museum pieces of Lynchian filmmaking, each with their own set of bizarre logic. Yet Lynch continually grounds the MoMA-style surrealism with humor, suspense, and sheer visual bravura. The sequencing isn't off-putting or pretentious; it's haunting, -- a shape-shifting dream with no beginning or end.

Divorced from the rest of Mulholland Dr., standalone scenes like this lose none of their power.

Here's a list of every inspired choice I noticed while re-watching this scene just now: Starting the scene mid-siren to create an immediate sense of unease; the lead actor's big eyebrows make him instantly memorable; the slow line-delivery mounts tension; the way the camera hovers higher and higher over the characters' shoulders, making the lead look increasingly vulnerable; the lead's unnerving grin as he talks; the quality of the monologue, which would frighten me even without Lynch's audio/visual mastery; the ominous sound design, which creeps in so slowly that one barely notices its stranglehold on the scene; the shot of Man B standing at 2:57, which merges reality and the dream world in a flat two seconds; the way Man B's comment remains inaudible (and thus creepier) at 3:15; the way music and sound blend into one unsettling soundscape -- for example, at 3:26, when Man B opens the front door, we hear a splash of audio that somehow sounds like music and cars whooshing at the same time; at 3:41, the change slat on the phone booth is pulled down, which highlights the not-quite-right feeling of the scene; the use of silence during the scene's big reveal.

And I'm sure I missed some gems. Elsewhere, a cowboy with no eyebrows, an espresso snob, and a bungling hitman emblazon the film with unforgettable moments, each detached from the primary narrative like glorious little tumors. So how does Lynch string these scenes together to form a coherent feature film? Having written himself into a corner with a defunct TV pilot, Lynch, so to speak, runs up the wall, turning the whole film in on itself. I subscribe to the "classical interpretation" of Mulholland Dr., which posits that a good two-thirds of the film exists in Diane Selwyn's head.

Now we've come to the macro-level. Lynch's visionary structure allows him to explore Hollywood as a "dream factory." The dream sequences in Mulholland Dr. all reference specific film genres and stars. Most obvious, the movie's lighting, setting, and central mystery echo film noir, with at least one blatant reference to the genre classic Sunset Boulevard. As a love story, Mulholland Dr. evokes broad Hollywood melodramas; notice how over-the-top Naomi Watts' performance registers in the first two-thirds of the film in comparison to her naturalistic turn after her character awakens from her dream. Also in this world, Hollywood operates like a gangster film, complete with shadowy mob bosses and brawny henchmen, while hired assassins mangle killings in a Tarantino-style farce. Even a cowboy, once the emblem of American cinema, makes an appearance.

The list goes on. At every turn, Lynch alludes to film history. Why? To capture the subjective experience of his protagonist, Diane Selwyn -- a would-be actress. Selwyn moved to Hollywood, fell on her face, fell in love, and got dumped. That's her reality. Her dream, a 100-minute wish-fulfillment fantasy, comprises the first chunk of Mulholland Dr. To embellish this dream, she taps into a reservoir of movie images, genres, and cliches. The stuff that drew her to Hollywood in the first place. In promoting Mulholland Dr., Lynch always used the same terse catchphrase: "A love story in the city of dreams."

Which leads to my last point: For all its beguiling ambiguities, Mulholland Dr. can make you cry. And I don't mean "cry" at the beauty of Lynch's images or at the elegant way his plot strands coalesce. I mean good-old emotionalism. Amidst nods to cinema's past and an elaborate narrative structure, Lynch crafted a real romance -- the first of his career. Watts' unhinged performance deserves enormous credit here. The violent disconnect between Dream Betty and Real Diane makes Mulholland Dr. one of the great films about jealousy and the ways it warps the mind. When I think of jealousy, I think of the image accompanying this post. That's the magic of Lynch's film: It experiments with cinema, employing visionary techniques, to chart one of the most primal and universal emotions on the map.

Top Films of the Decade: #2 In the Mood for Love

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In the Mood for Love

(2000)

My heart can't quite endorse this ranking. It believes In the Mood for Love is no less than a gift from heaven. It considers this movie infallible, perfect, beyond criticism. It gets violently defensive when people put it down, be they critics or message-board trolls. It palpitates at the sound of this movie's score. It bathes in its quixotic images. It shatters and dissipates at its ending. With dogged romanticism, it cannot fathom a better movie from this decade, or really any other.

My heart, you see, can get carried away. Especially when it sees pretty things.

Wong Kar Wai's seventh feature lingers with me like no film I've seen. From the striking compositions to the elegant costumes, In the Mood for Love is all about, well, mood. Its every detail seems fashioned to evoke sweet, lasting sorrow. Like unconsummated love itself, the film stays with you. It perverts your thoughts the longer it stews, taking on a seismic sense of importance. The film loiters in the mind, forcing you to ponder the what-ifs of an unfulfilled romance. It understands that we, as humans, have an unyielding urge to romanticize what we don't have. A love that never begins can never end. It goes on forever, looping in your head. A mental security blanket for the realities of modern living. A trumped-up splinter of perfection. A go-to thought for the emotional masochist in you. What if, what if, what if. If only, if only, if only.

In the Mood for Love presents a romantic, almost twee vision of love. In real life, things would probably play a lot crasser. The film's protagonists would meet, flirt, fuck, and deal with the consequences. Alcohol would likely be involved. But In the Mood for Love has no interest in realism. It uses fantasy to arrive at truth. In this way, it embodies cinema's most primal appeal: seeing our desires acted out in an idealized world.

To depict this world, Wong and cinematographer Christopher Doyle craft images that look beamed in from some faraway dreamscape. You can't oversell In the Mood for Love's visual gorgeousness. The film repeats shots, gestures, and songs to mimic the rhythms of a lingering love that won't go away. It circles around this love like a jazz composition infatuated with one blistering riff. Wong uses cinema's everyday tools (slow motion, montage) to capture obsession and loss, leading to a climax of almost unbearable beauty.

That climax, set to a devastating composition from Michael Galasso, moves me like no other moment in cinema. If the first nine-tenths of In the Mood for Love exist in a dream world, one in which coy would-be lovers exercise inhuman restraint, then the film's final minutes show the harsh awakening to reality. Our protagonists may have won the moral victory by shunning infidelity, but that doesn't make them any less alone. One disappears from the film; the other releases his love into the ether. Wong refuses to give us gratifying closure. Instead, he leaves our wounds open, so that we may feel like his characters: helpless; our heads filled with dreams of an ideal love that never was. We relish in fantasy, just as we do most nights when we go to the movies.

Top Films of the Decade: #3 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

2009-12-22T13:51:00.001-08:00

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

(2004)

Few films capture the funny/sad cycles of romantic relationships like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Like the two remaining films on this list, Eternal Sunshine tells a love story both moving and cerebral. It toys with cinematic norms to showcase the rhythmic ways humans love and hurt one another -- over and over again. The film wrings emotional trauma for laughs, forcing us to smile at the neurotic ticks that make relationships crumble. It, in short, ranks alongside Annie Hall as the most insightful romantic comedy ever made.

The comparison to Woody Allen's film comes easy. Both Annie Hall and Eternal Sunshine present an epic romance in jumbled chronology. Both feature flighty, borderline-manic female leads. Both depict relationships as an inescapable folly, as something "totally irrational and crazy and absurd," despite their magnetic appeal. A direct lineage links Woody and Eternal Sunshine; the film's screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman, "aspired to be like [Woody]" as a young man entering showbusiness.

Most striking, Annie Hall and Eternal Sunshine end with scenes of remarkable beauty and truth. In Woody's film, his protagonist famously concludes that humans endure relationships because they "need the eggs." Most of us know -- from experience and elsewhere -- that relationships often end in turmoil, but that doesn't stop us from swan-diving into them, if given the chance. Meeting someone new tends to pulverize our cynicism. This one won't be like the others, we tell ourselves. I've learned, I've grown. This time will be different.

In Eternal Sunshine's closing moments, Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet embody Einstein's theory of insanity: They're ready to do the same thing over again, expecting a different result. The entire movie exists to service this scene. Kaufman has two budding lovers hear the awful things they'll come to say about one another. Imagine, for a second, how terrifying that would be. Imagine returning from a dizzying first date, only to hear your tape-recorded voice from the future, muttering hostile complaints about your object of desire. Could even such an impossible scenario as this convince you of love's folly? Could your future self rein in your early-relationship euphoria? My guess: Not a chance. Nothing at that point -- not even material proof of your eventual misery -- could lower your high. That's the beauty, the irrationality, of human love, crystalized for all time in one movie moment.

Director Michel Gondry gives life to Kaufman's musings, crafting the film as a flurry of gorgeous visual fragments. Eternal Sunshine is one of the great achievements in special effects, digital or in-camera. Gondry's aesthetic trickery propels the narrative and creates a unique, dreamlike world; he never lets style usurp the film's emotional core. Every virtuoso flourish helps posit the movie's primary question, one first proposed in another Woody Allen film: Are memories something you have or something you've lost?

Top Films of the Decade: #4 Inglourious Basterds

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Inglourious Basterds

(2009)

"If I reach high points with Inglourious Basterds, it is partly because Paul [Thomas Anderson] came out with There Will Be Blood a couple years ago, and I realized I had to bring my game up." (full clip)

Quentin Tarantino, like the films he makes, is nothing if not self-aware. He must have known something was off in 2007. Paul Thomas Anderson, his dear friend and competitor, unleashed There Will Be Blood as he drooled out Death Proof, a masturbatory and insular B-movie homage. One was an instant classic; the other a Tarantino-dialogue vehicle, this time with chicks. To some, the movie marked his "creative death." By 2009, Tarantino didn't just need to bring his game up. He needed a veritable game-changer.

Inglourious Basterds, his almost unclassifiable WWII picture, was that and so much more. A European art-house film. A revenge crowd-pleaser. A slap in the face to self-serious cinema. An uncompromising thriller. A joyous slice of entertainment. A Leone-style western. A men-on-a-mission throwback. A substantive tale on the powers of myth-making. Not to sound cute, but it might just be his masterpiece.

Inglourious Basterds is a postmodern movie about the importance of images in society. In almost every scene, characters broadcast images and conceal true aspects of their real selves. They lie, exaggerate, and hide in the name of escaping death (if on the defensive) or spreading fear (if on the offensive). Some, like Goebbels, use visual media to propagate myths about themselves and their enemies. Others, like Brad Pitt's Lt. Aldo Raine, take a viral approach. They roam the woods, terrorizing Nazis, and leaving survivors to speak of the horrors. Both share the same goals: rallying supporters and scaring the shit out of foes. At its core, Inglourious Basterds unfolds like a murderous PR battle. No surprise, Tarantino uses the film-within-the-film to quote another piece of cinematic propaganda, Battleship Potemkin.

In two of the film's show-stopping scenes, characters appear under direct interrogation. They sit in countryside cabins and basement barrooms, crafting false images to survive. Characters must lie, and convincingly. Here, the movie's preoccupation with image-building plays on a person-to-person level.

Tarantino hints at his themes everywhere. Just look at these two stills, which echo his obsession with the difference between truth and image-level deception:

The first shows truth. That man is a real Nazi, and you can see it in his skin. The second shows a simulacrum. That man isn't Edgar Wallace. He's a fake, a copy. But, as postmodern theorists argue, in a society inundated with images, The Truth and The Image become indiscernible. It's all "real" if you can convince people it's real.

I've taken a pretty academic approach here because, well, most of this movie's pleasures don't take much analysis. This movie is fist-pumping fun. Tarantino's dialogue remains as vibrant as ever. His characters speak in artful, memorable rhythms ("Au revoir, Shosanna!"). Scenes come equipped with satisfying payoffs. Villains possess disarming charisma. Bizarre titles and freeze frames intentionally shatter the film's tone for laughs. Brad Pitt talks in a funny accent. Nazis get killed. These delights -- of which there are many, many more -- don't take much to appreciate.

Lastly, Tarantino's love of Jean-Luc Godard and the French New Wave registers here in powerful ways. Just as Godard and others rejected the stuffy "quality films" of their elders -- the so-called "Cinema de Papa" -- for a youthful, of-the-moment approach to filmmaking, Tarantino mocks self-serious period films through a barrage of devices to distance viewers. Where a film like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button does everything it can to immerse viewers in A Serious Movie, Inglourious Basterds prefers a self-aware approach. Tarantino sprinkles his story with randomly-timed Samuel L. Jackson narration, David Bowie interludes, and other self-conscious devices to distance us. Like Godard, he wants us to know we're watching a movie. Unlike Godard, he actually cares to entertain. Tarantino brings postmodern filmmaking (and, with Inglourious Basterds, theory) to a wide audience.

Top Films of the Decade: #5 No Country for Old Men

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No Country for Old Men
(2007)

Image #1: Close up. A hand clenches a loaded revolver. Its index finger begins to squeeze the trigger.
Image #2: A flock of birds rise in unison, leaping into flight.

What happened here? Well, we know loud sounds startle birds, and we know guns make loud sounds. Therefore, we deduce that someone fired a gun. Yet we never see the trigger pulled, the gun fired, or the bullet reach its target. And, because these shots stem from The Docks of New York, a 1928 silent film, viewers don't even hear the gun go off. But the images make perfect, intuitive sense as a pair. The first shot informs the second to create a concrete idea in our heads: Someone fired a gun. The filmmaker conveys this information cinematically, not literally. As art critic Rudolf Arnheim wrote in 1933, "What is particularly noteworthy in such a scene is not merely how easily and cleverly the director makes visible something that is not visual, but by doing so, actually strengthens its effect."

Joel and Ethan Coen continue this tradition like no other directors working today. I call it the Cinema of Smoke. If a house burns to the ground, most directors show you the fire; the Coen brothers show you the smoke. We see the consequence (smoke) and deduce the action (fire). The duo make the most of the medium; they use images, sounds, and the clashes between them to tell stories in inventive, uniquely cinematic ways.

No Country for Old Men is the apotheosis of this style. At every turn, Joel and Ethan Coen either visualize the unvisual or leave visuals implied off screen -- all in the name of mastering suspense. Here's just one example of the former: In this instant-classic scene, watch how the filmmakers visualize an abstract idea (a long pause within a conversation of mounting tension) with, of all things, a plastic wrapper (jump to the 2:37 mark).

No Country For Old Men Coin Toss Scene
Uploaded by Hitman6936. - Check out other Film & TV videos.

Here's the opposite effect at work. In this scene, the directors convey narrative information (the death of a hotel clerk) not by showing his death on screen, but by the dim, evocative ringing of an unanswered phone (58-second mark).

Imagine the tension this scene would lose if it began with a shot of Anton Chigurh murdering the clerk.

Even the explosions in No Country for Old Men appear in the periphery.

These stylistic choices all speak to the Coens' careful control of image and sound. Nothing appears accidental in No Country for Old Men. Cameras don't shake in the name of realism. Characters don't mumble inanities to capture how people talk "in real life." Instead, the Coens fully embrace artifice; they're out to craft the most compelling, heart-stopping thriller they can.

Aside from its formal delights, No Country for Old Men offers the decade's great movie villain in Anton Chigurh. Like Hannibal Lecter in the '90s, Chigurh is a mythical, quotable machine. He grounds the film's foggy nihilism in one frightening bowl cut.

No Country for Old Men plays best as a straight-up suspense film, one designed to reflect an era of anxiety and panic. If you find a stronger genre movie from this decade, please do tell.

Top Films of the Decade: #6 Distant

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Distant
(2002)

The men of Distant lead lives of quiet desperation. One drifts through life, guided by apathy, married only to his meaningless daily routines. The other, a villager displaced in Istanbul, floats around town, ogling women and hunting for work. His neuroses (and illiteracy) render him unemployable and unattractive.

Like the other Nuri Bilge Ceylan film on this list, Distant shows the stuff of everyday life. It's a film of small moments, detailing how two introverted men long for external joy yet remain shackled by inertia. The film captures that unfortunate truth: Human beings will always fear change, no matter how mundane their circumstances. Things could always get worse. Rejection and failure lie one misstep ahead. The day-to-day institutionalizes us, until we act not out of desire, but out of sheer habit.

Ceylan arrives at these themes through Mahmut and Yusef, an odd couple living together in Istanbul. The guys watch a lot of TV. They bicker about cleanliness. They debate the proper way to terminate pests. In short, the men interact on autopilot. They speak only when necessary, sidestepping human interaction for the easiest exit to their respective bedrooms. They remain alienated from the people and places around them. Fitting "The Individualist" personality type described by The Enneagram Institute, Mahmut and Yusef "long for someone to come into their lives and appreciate the secret self that they have privately nurtured and hidden from the world." That's the sad way many of us live. We seek genuine interaction yet recoil at its onset.

By showing a friendship that never sparks to life, Ceylan articulates the absurd ways we choose to pass the time. Mahmut and Yusef, like so many of us, live life like a losing team running out the clock. In the end, one man makes a bold decision, while the other sits on a park bench, alone, fantasizing about a life he'd never dare lead.

Top Films of the Decade: #7 Wendy and Lucy

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Wendy and Lucy
(2008)

We witnessed a quiet mini-movement in American independent cinema this decade. Films set all across the country -- from the Pacific Northwest to New York City and the Mississippi Delta -- offered unglamorous glimpses into the lives of working-class and impoverished outsiders. Think Slumdog Millionaire, stripped of the frenetic style and gratifying closure. Shot with a poetic minimalism, films like Ballast and Chop Shop typify what A.O. Scott dubs "neo-neo realism."

Wendy and Lucy flaunts the American minimalist M.O. at its finest. The movie addresses unspoken political concerns through a single tragic story, much like the post-WWII films of Italian neorealism. It preys on our emotional pressure points -- the fear of unemployment, the helplessness of losing a pet -- to convey the relentless horrors of poverty in America.

Wendy and Lucy is a parable of sorts, though its agenda barely registers when you actually watch the movie. Director Kelly Reichardt imbues her film with such subtlety and grace; it never plays like a liberal sob story on the ills of capitalism. Like another film on this list, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Wendy and Lucy presents a case study of one person's turmoil given their sociopolitical surroundings. It lands a one-two punch to the head and the heart, hanging its politics on a bittersweet fable fitting for a children's book. The unassuming performances, plotting, and visuals culminate in a devastating scene of dramatic resolution. We're left with some answers, some questions, and an unshakable sense of sorrow.

Wendy and Lucy is a piece of anti-escapist social commentary, only devoid of the hard-edged antagonism found in many art films (including the one mentioned above). It doesn't conflate seriousness with punishing the viewer. Reichardt's sympathy, for her characters and audience, make this a film as satisfying as it is sober.

Top Films of the Decade: #8 Climates

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Climates
(2006)

Few artists trigger my tear ducts like Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Climates, his sublime fourth film, elicits pure awe -- the stuff of Stendahl syndrome. This movie hit me like a panic attack. Watching it, I felt my chest balloon, as though Ceylan himself had stuck a bike pump in my heart and pushed down with all his weight.

Confession: When it comes to Nuri Bilge Ceylan, I have a problem with hyperbole.

In Climates, Ceylan trains his photographer's eye on expressive facial close-ups and ominous Turkish landscapes. Note the image above, as well as this one:

Faces (and the environments in which we see them) speak louder than dialogue in this film. Such images riff off a central thesis: Seasons change and so do hearts. Summer transforms into fall; lusty looks become apathetic glances. Vibrant eyes grow vacant. Love fades. Resentment, boredom, and alienation take its place.

Ceylan's fixation with the human face echoes one art-house master (Ingmar Bergman), while his fascination with those alienated by their vast surroundings recalls another (Michelangelo Antonioni). But the similarities end there. Climates, unlike many movies by those directors, feels like the work of a real human being, not a detached observer spotlighting mankind's flaws. There's nothing cold, clinical, or nihilistic about Climates. Ceylan reveals our weaknesses, not to prove that love is futile, but to portray an honest, adult depiction of our species. His findings ring authentic, not misanthropic. Ceylan actually wants his characters to find happiness; he doesn't mock them for trying. To dive in despite the odds, after all, is only human.

A simple story about love and loss, Climates is a feature-length poem on the funny/sad patterns you'll find across romantic relationships. It's the work of a natural filmmaker emulating his idols (Andrei Tarkovsky and the above-mentioned directors) while injecting a humanism all his own. Climates captures the conflicting emotions of love: the euphoria, the bittersweet, the catty, the crash. Like Josh Brolin said, there's "a helluva a lot of truth in it."

Top Films of the Decade: #9 There Will Be Blood

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There Will Be Blood
(2007)

"All of life's questions and answers are in [the film]," Paul Thomas Anderson, director of There Will Be Blood, said in 2007. "It's about greed and ambition and paranoia and looking at the worst parts of yourself."

Taken out of context, as I've done so here, that sounds like a self-flattering synopsis for his own movie, doesn't it? Those words -- greed, paranoia, ambition -- trigger distinct images in my head, namely ones of Daniel Day-Lewis browbeating a gangling zealot in a bowling alley. But Anderson isn't talking about his movie; he's talking about his favorite movie, The Treasure of Sierra Madre.

I mention this because, as with Quentin Tarantino, Anderson is a filmmaker guided by his cinematic obsessions. He hails from the "video store" or "VCR" school of American indie cinema. That is, he learned his craft through osmosis, by exposing himself to tape after tape, DVD after DVD, of the classics. Films like The Treasure of Sierra Madre comprise the foundation of his filmmaking powers.

There Will Be Blood stands among his best work because it satisfies on so many levels. The movie succeeds as a sociopolitical screed, a period drama, a family drama, an acting showcase, a rise-and-fall epic, a compelling yarn, and, of course, as a cinephile's wet dream. Anderson channels his influences (Malick, Kubrick, Madre) into a seamless, coherent whole. There Will Be Blood never feels like a highlight reel of Anderson's favorite movies. Watching a film like Kill Bill Vol. 1, on the other hand, feels akin to sitting in a friend's living room, swirling my drink in silence, as he manically shuffles through records, letting 30 seconds play, only to chirp "oh, OH!" before pulling a new vinyl out of its sleeve. It sure seems fun for him.

There Will Be Blood doubles as an immersive character study and an origin story of American values, both familial and political. It grounds Big Themes with concrete specifics; who can forget Plainview's bromides, Eli Sunday's impish requests, H.W.'s silent sadness, or the film's anamorphic visual beauty? As such, the movie approaches that holy grail of storytelling: allegorical potency coupled with the immediate pleasures of a gripping narrative. There Will Be Blood is a standalone work of modern art indebted to, but never reliant on, the thousands of cinematic images swirling in Anderson's head.

Top Films of the Decade: #10 Finding Nemo

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Finding Nemo
(2003)

Finding Nemo is just about perfect. Memorable voice acting? Tight script? Quotable jokes? Childlike whimsy? Timeless lessons? This is the stuff of Pixar, distilled here into one remarkable story.

As with all the Pixar greats, Finding Nemo is a masterclass in commercial screenwriting. The film feels effortless, like floating 'round a lazy river, from start to finish. Writer/director Andrew Stanton establishes his characters (their motivations, flaws, and quirks) with efficient grace, then sends them whirling downstream with constant narrative motion, like an underwater road movie. We love the characters so the stakes are high. We escape into the film. For 100 minutes we care only about Nemo, Dori, and Marlin.

As David Bordwell and many others have written, classical Hollywood films strove for an elegantly invisible style. Directors wanted to immerse you in the film; they didn't want you analyzing how they constructed the individual shots and plot points. They wanted every detail to appear natural. Finding Nemo achieves this effect like few films I've ever seen. The form disappears when I watch this movie. I don't look at the screen and think, "Hmm, that was a clunky line" or "Hmm, this scene goes on a little long." Just like I don't look at a picture of the Lotus Temple and think, "Hmm, a little indulgent, don't you think?" I don't see the individual windows and slabs of marble; I only see the gorgeous whole, about which I wouldn't change a thing.

Where some Pixar titles border on the esoteric (Ratatouille, WALL-E) and others on the juvenile (Cars), Finding Nemo best exemplifies what the studio's all about -- creating entertainment that everyone can enjoy. Like the Beatles to a family road-trip, Finding Nemo is always a safe bet, no matter who you're bunking with.

Top Films of the Decade: #11 Caché

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Caché

(2005)

Though I've never had Michael Haneke bury his fingers in my throat for two hours, I think I can approximate what that sensation must feel like after viewing Caché. Few films have exercised such sadistic control over an audience's emotions. Haneke's grasp waxes and wanes, draws blood, and even gets a little boring. The German director equips cinema's cruel devices (extreme long takes, bursts of violence, Kubrick-like coldness) to punish his characters and — to an even greater degree — his viewers.

Caché, like many of my favorite French-language thrillers, transcends its genre to explore the abstract notion of "bourgeois complacency." You can read Caché as a tight suspense film, a political allegory, both, or neither. At its core, the movie shows a man who refuses to believe that the wrongs of his past have any relevance to the horrors of his present. This disbelief, the film argues, stems from the systematic way upper-middle-class families become hermetic, depoliticized enclaves from the outside world. Caché's protagonist feels no guilt for wronging an Algerian child in his past, just as French citizens feel no guilt for the Algerian War, or Americans remain detached from the foreign policy decisions that preceded 9/11. When you've spent your life repressing past mistakes, locked safe in a comfortable suburban setting, you tend to greet the social ills of the 21st century (namely, racism and terrorism) with utter bafflement. Why is this black man so angry? Why do the terrorists hate us?

Or so Haneke's argument goes. It's a conversation-starter, to say the least. What impresses me is how he imbues such academic material into a riveting, plot-driven film. In this way, Haneke is heir to the past masters of the French-language thriller: Henri-Georges Clouzot and Claude Chabrol. Just as Clouzot subverted the genre with 1943's Le Corbeau and Chabrol with 1995’s La Cérémonie, Haneke uses thrillers to reveal the ugliness humans are capable of given their political environment. Unlike those directors, though, Haneke antagonizes his viewers, prodding them to draw connections between themselves and his protagonist on screen. Caché draws us in with its premise, only to lead us to the very places we go to the movies to ignore.

(p.s. I hope you'll forgive the slight font change. Blogger and accent marks really don't get along, from my experiences).

Top films of the Decade: #12 -- 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

2009-10-24T16:19:00.000-07:00

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
(2007)

For my money, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days contains the single most powerful shot of this decade. I've written about the image before. About halfway into the film, director Cristian Mungiu has mounted enough visceral dread to rattle even the most jaded viewers of Euro art-house cinema. We've watched his protagonist, Otilia, sacrifice her body and sanity. We've witnessed the queasy minutiae of an illegal abortion in 1980s Romania. And, just as tensions have peaked, we see Otilia abandon an ailing friend to have dinner with her boyfriend's chattering family.

So Mungiu treats us to a five-minute take of the above image. Five minutes of Otilia's blank stare, as the surrounding elders trade inanities. Five minutes of a woman who must sit still, despite her body's cries to shiver, scream, and run out the door.

I love this scene, and the film as a whole, for how it weaves the personal and the political. Consider all the reasons Otilia must sit at that dinner table -- the gender and generational politics that force a young woman to sit quietly while her friend whimpers across town from a slipshod abortion. The film offers no easy antidotes to patriarchy or totalitarianism. Instead, through one harrowing case study, it shows us just how terrifying the invisible sociopolitical norms of a specific time and place can be.

(p.s. I can testify, through experience, that 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is one of the worst date movies of all time).

Top Films of the Decade: #13 Children of Men

2009-10-20T13:58:00.000-07:00

Children of Men
(2006)

Children of Men is a film of stunning individual moments. The operatic car chase. The countryside escape. The breathtaking birth. The frenetic war zone. The infant whose mere presence -- if at least for a minute -- sparks a cease-fire.

Those fucking long takes. They kill me every time.

Like another one of this decade's greats, Inglourious Basterds, Children of Men parades scenes of walloping cinematic power like marquee floats in one grand, ticker-tape spectacle. I'll focus here on the film's strongest selling point: its visual bravura. These images, of course, propel a dystopian story with clear allusions to Bush-era politics, but I'll leave those musings for someone else.

At its best moments, Children of Men connotes key information not in any traditional way (i.e. dialogue, close-ups, music cues), but through its images alone. This approach forces viewers to remain alert and active, to not let the film wash over them. It also creates a dense visual world, one where peripheral billboards, TV screens, and graffiti harbor as much meaning as the expression on a character's face.

Director Alfonso Cuaron rewards us when we give him our full attention. Consider the birth scene, shot in a long take with substantial distance from its subjects. Clive Owen's character, an established alcoholic and burnout, scrambles to deliver the first child born in decades. He begins by sterilizing his hands. Look closely, and you'll see with what: a splash of his beloved Jack Daniels.

It took me four viewing to notice this detail. Cuaron could have highlighted the motion with any number of dramatic cues -- a close-up, a look of pause on Owen's face -- but, instead, he presents it as just another action in the frame. The moment, of course, signifies his awakening from boozed-out apathy. It's the kind of moment most commercial directors would sledgehammer, but, in Children of Men, it remains buried. And here's why:

"Cinema has become a medium you can watch with your eyes closed," Cuaron argued while promoting this film. With that in mind, I read Children of Men as an interjection. As movies gravitate toward a televisual style that stresses the 3 C's (Conversation, Cuts, and Close-ups), Children of Men illustrates the unique powers of purely visual storytelling. Unlike escapism, this film makes you work. Cuaron packs his frames with meaningful objects and gestures, then leaves us to spot and decipher them ourselves. Our eyes must remain open. His images, meanwhile, leave us wide-eyed.

Top Films of the Decade: #14 WALL-E

2009-10-13T12:31:00.000-07:00

WALL-E
(2008)

Really, praising Pixar's a little unnecessary at this point. Who can deny the studio's output? In 15 years, Pixar has released 10 features -- nine critical darlings, 10 box-office behemoths. Can you think of another studio (or director, or actor, or producer) in the history of moving images whose work brings critics and their children to tears, in equal measure, time and time again?

WALL-E offers so many of Pixar's trademark treasures. All the obsessions are here: The Old versus The New, the value of collective action, the ills of materialism. Let's unpack those.

1) The Old and The New. Clearly, WALL-E is a love story between two machines -- a relic of the past and an emblem of the future. Analog and digital. Mechanical and computerized. Squint and you've got Woody and Buzz. But notice also how the film's structure mimics this divide. WALL-E begins as a throwback to silent-era storytelling, complete with broad comic and emotive gestures. With dialogue-free images of barren landscapes, the first half-hour echoes another cinematic depiction of the past: Kubrick's "The Dawn of Man" sequence from 2001. The film, much like 2001, then catapults into space, hurtling viewers out of the past and into a foreign future. We move from WALL-E's quaint, Chaplin-like world to a dystopian image of our current society. The effect is beautiful.

2) The Value of Collective Action. WALL-E attacks convenience culture like few films I've ever seen. Today, in 2009, we lurch more and more toward an individualistic society. We like cell phones, not landlines. Water bottles, not public taps. iPods, not the outside world. WALL-E takes a funhouse mirror to these tendencies, presenting a warped but not impossible logical extreme to our current lifestyle. We see a world of maximum comfort, convenience, and efficiency -- all at the expense of genuine human contact. WALL-E's climax, like Finding Nemo's, shows the positive outcomes of collective behavior, the kind that forces you to interact with your fellow man.

3) The Ills of Materialism. Convenience culture, like a living organism, creates waste. WALL-E forces viewers to confront this fact. It still amazes me, the audacity it takes to set the first half-hour of $180 million summer movie in a landfill. If the movie's critique of materialism is a bit on-the-nose, I for one forgive it. What a striking image: A society, founded on consumption and waste, leaves its ultimate mark on Earth -- skyscrapers of shit.

Top Films of the Decade: #15 United 93

2009-10-07T12:00:00.000-07:00

United 93
(2006)

In his unassuming way, director Paul Greengrass reshaped English-language cinema this decade. Many, I'm sure, would argue for the worse. His jittery-cam technique, pejoratively labeled run-and-gun by David Bordwell, has become the go-to tool for crafting tension and urgency. Greengrass' imprint marks even the biggest of blockbusters (i.e. Star Trek). No doubt, the trend infuriates lovers of classical cinematic norms. I won't mount a defense of shaky-cam here; such matters often fall on taste, anyway. I will, however, argue for United 93 as the perfection of the form.

In a way, United 93 was a sequel to Greengrass' Bloody Sunday. Both films used the same techniques -- nonprofessional actors, hand-held cameras, location shooting, naturalistic lighting -- to present an ambiguous historical event with documentary-like claims to authenticity. Both movies also portray a dichotomy between personal heroism and institutional incompetence. The Battle of Algiers and Italian neorealism have clearly shaped how Greengrass makes films, while this decade's love of reality TV gives United 93 its uncompromising sense of dread. You can't really defend jittery-cam on intellectual grounds; cinema, after all, is artifice. A shaky image is as constructed as a stable one. But, employed as a technique like any other, the Greengrass style hits you with enormous visceral shock. Just as noir lighting evokes moodiness, the Greengrass style evokes immediacy, terror, the unexpected -- even the cameraman could get knocked to the ground. Commercial cinema means manipulating audiences for a desired emotional effect. Given the amount of time we spent watching reality TV and YouTube this decade, I can't imagine a more direct way of achieving that emotional reaction than what Greengrass has done here. United 93 shook me in ways I didn't know films could.

Counting down the top 15 films of the 2000s

2009-10-07T11:55:00.000-07:00

Later today, I'll begin a top 15 countdown of what I believe to be the best films of the 2000s. So let's get right to it.

The Biden Birther Manifesto featured on "The O'Reilly Factor"

2009-10-06T22:06:00.000-07:00

In my obituary, this will likely get mentioned in the first four paragraphs.

The Biden Birther movement

2009-08-20T16:31:00.001-07:00

Get ready.

Thoughts on Funny People

2009-08-04T18:40:00.000-07:00

Funny People is a bizarre, 146-minute dramedy about dying and dick jokes.

(Minor spoilers)

Let's start from the beginning: I adore Judd Apatow's previous work. His first two features (The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up) were unambitious and beautiful for it. Both had logical beginning- and end-points from which to hang a narrative based on improv comedy. In Virgin, the story begins when Steve Carell's friends learn about his virginity. It ends when Carell loses it. With Knocked Up, we start with Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl having unprotected sex. We end with Heigl giving birth.

These plots sound facile on paper, but Apatow's genius lies in how he riffs off a simple premise. Judd's work is strongest when he crafts a charming story, fills it with believable characters, collects a pool of razor-sharp comics, and lets them loose on his material. Within this formula, Apatow acts more as ringmaster than director. His films unfold like a form of controlled chaos. Effortless, plot-driven stories collide with the sloppiness of individual scenes. Such is the pattern with Judd's first films: Tight overarching narrative, loose distinct sequences.

And, for me, this works. The films are long, but their narratives remain in perpetual motion. Judd drives the story, while his actors -- through their breathless asides about Munich, Steely Dan, and pot -- careen it into a ditch, scene after scene. The sequences breathe with the slow-flow of real life; they don't feel like mere plot points.

After two films, Judd already seemed like an auteur. Both his features explored this idiosyncratic structure, creating a style of American comedy uniquely Apatow-esque.

Which brings us to Funny People. Judd's apologists will applaud this movie for its "mature" and "complex" narrative. But the difference between complex and incoherent, mature and self-serious, is a big one. With Funny People, Judd bites off a miniseries' worth of material and streamlines it into a feature. Imagine "Freaks and Geeks," Judd's beloved 1999 TV show, as a feature film. Imagine the character arcs and narrative turns paraded one after another. Much of the charm would evaporate, wouldn't it? Suddenly, each scene must have an overt purpose, because when you're dealing with a half-dozen characters in a shorter run-time, those Apatow-esque digressions give way to the bottom line: plot.

Let's take one scene from Funny People to illustrate. Toward the end of the film, Adam Sandler, Leslie Mann, and Seth Rogen watch a video of Mann's daughter performing a Cats number. As they watch, Sandler repeatedly flips open his phone to read texts, then cracks a crude comment about how the clip would have been even funnier on acid.

More than any moment from Judd's previous films, this sequence paints in broad strokes. The scene exists solely to illustrate how Sandler can be a jerk. It functions as a plot point, nothing more. Later in the film, Mann uses this moment as ammo for why she should stay with her husband -- because Sandler didn't cry during her daughter's performance. Had Sandler just faked interest like a normal person (his character is, after all, a "good actor"), it follows that Mann wouldn't have had second thoughts, and the course of the film would have shifted dramatically. But, instead, Sandler play the scene like an ass, because that benefits the plot. Sandler acts illogically for the convenience of our story. Judd then overplays an already-dismal hand, cutting to multiple reaction shots of Rogen and Mann looking disgusted. With zero subtlety, Judd telegraphs his plot point: Maybe Sandler isn't ready for a family after all. Maybe Mann should stick with her husband.

Not every scene plays this clumsily, but the greater point remains: Large Cast + Commitment to Character Development + Multilayered Plot + Limited Run Time = Corners Cut. At least in this case.

Had I made Funny People, I would have cut the number of scenes and padded the length of the ones remaining. Apatow, god bless him, is the only director working in mainstream comedy who provides too much character development. As an extreme reaction to There's Something About Mary's brand of surface-deep comedy, Judd adores his characters and their every motivation. And, here, it's to a fault.

For the sake of telling a modest story effectively, I'd cut the follow scenes and subplots:

Rogen's romance. I'd cut the entire thing. Again, this feels like one giant plot point. These scenes exist because Apatow wants to establish that Rogen has a stronger moral compass than Sandler, at least when it comes to women. He needs to do this, of course, for the convenience of his plot. Rogen takes the moral high ground in the film's climactic airport sequence, and Judd wants to avoid having this character trait come out of left-field. So, he uses Rogen's romance to show that Seth has a traditional, romantic streak. He's the kind of guy who thinks asking a girl on a date means you're officially "dating." I'd tone down Rogen's moral hysteria in the last 45 minutes, thus eliminating the need to prime viewers for his antics with a forced romance.
Sandler's family. Cut the scene with his sister and the one with his parents. Unlike the conversations in Knocked Up between Seth and his dad, these scenes play like lifeless, obligatory stabs at character development.
Eric Bana's affair. This doesn't eat up much screen time, but it's lazy and a cheat. To make viewers feel better about Mann's behavior, Judd throws in a few lines about Bana straying. Develop this further, and you'd have something. As is, it's a shortcut to show that Mann is unhappy in her marriage, and a cheap ploy to create viewer sympathy for her. Plenty of people have feelings for past lovers, even if their current partner isn't a schmuck.
iTunes playlist scene. No human being would storm out of a room because 30 seconds of some acoustic guitar ballad (one which they've presumably never heard) sends them reeling. Further, no one would ever put an acoustic guitar ballad on a mix designed to cheer up a friend.
Celebrity cameos. Judd has a lot of power these days, and with a $70 million budget he can afford to indulge in excess. But these scenes rarely added to the story, and, even worse, they weren't particularly funny. One of Knocked Up's clunkiest moments involved a Ryan Seacrest cameo. Here, we get Eminem taking easy stabs at his anger-management issues. Scenes and entire characters feel rushed, but boy was that Norm Macdonald cameo worth it.
Dick jokes. I've yet to hear a good argument for the movie's wild tonal shift between sentimentality and crude humor. Some might say the tension between the two is "interesting," but I'd more call it nonsensical. What are dick jokes meant to signify? The man-child mentality? If so, why does the film's mature character (Rogen) pop just as many dick quips as the movie's adolescent anti-hero (Sandler)? These jokes flesh out the film's unique tone -- subdued and languid, with the occasional burst of juvenilia -- but my question is why? I fear Judd inserted them to keep our attention, which doesn't say much for his meandering, aimless storyline.
Opening credits. You have video of Sandler making crank calls when he was a young comic, and I'm sure this footage means a great deal to you. So does the whole film. Funny People is clearly your labor-of-love project, your Synecdoche, New York. But just watch the clip again, Judd. It's just not that funny. Would have been hilarious if you were there, no doubt. But, on screen, to open your film, it's a red flag for what we're about to get: a heaping scoop of self-indulgence.Save yourself 90 seconds and cut it. It'd make a killer special feature for the DVD.

Now, I've been pretty hard on the film, but this comes from disappointment more than anything. Were this Judd's first film, I might be writing about an uncompromising new voice in American comedy. And there's a lot to like here. The film does have laughs and a few touching moments, including a lovely scene with Sandler at Thanksgiving dinner. Jonah Hill makes me laugh every time he opens his mouth. But, in the end, I'd have to agree with the critical community: Funny People is a shambles. It's one big cauldron of Judd's trademarks, taken to the extreme, and with little regard for coherence.

Perhaps this comes down to taste, but I tend to prefer modest films that execute their goals with precision over behemoth, mixed-bag ambition projects. I prefer Eternal Sunshine to Synecdoche; No Country for Old Men to There Will Be Blood, The Orphanage to Pan's Labyrinth. I'd call Funny People a failure, but one worth seeing.

Andrew Sarris: Lion of film critics

2009-07-20T18:50:00.001-07:00

The New York Times just published a great profile on Andrew Sarris, the legendary 80-year-old film critic who was laid off by the New York Observer earlier this year. Sarris is known for importing the auteur theory of film criticism from France to the US. I've been reading his 1968 book The American Cinema off and on all summer, almost as bathroom reading (the longest chapter is about five pages). In it he asserts, among other questionable claims, that Kubrick was a charlatan and Wilder was a knee-jerk cynic.

If nothing else, Sarris provokes, and does it well. In old age, I've found him a little insuferable (here he is dismissing Children of Men like a curmudgeon on life support). Historically, Sarris is a fascinating figure. He's emblematic of a different era, when cinema was not yet considered an artform. It took Sarris and Pauline Kael's torrential bickering to elevate the medium in the eyes of many.

The Times article is a great read and a terrific gateway into '50s-'60s film criticism.

Jerry Schnoor on CGRER and sustainability

2009-07-07T11:16:00.000-07:00

Dr. Jerry Schnoor argues for an interdisciplinary approach to sustainability, using the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research (CGRER) as an example.

Video shot by Ben Hill of the University of Iowa Center for Media Production and edited by myself. Learn more about Schnoor's work here.

Jerry Schnoor on the dangers of continuing coal

2009-07-02T10:35:00.000-07:00

Dr. Jerry Schnoor discusses why Iowa can't afford to build new coal-fired power plants.

Video shot by Ben Hill of the University of Iowa Center for Media Production and edited by myself. You can learn more about Schnoor here.

Dr. Jerry Schnoor on "sustainability tax"

2009-07-01T12:57:00.000-07:00

Jerry Schnoor, my boss at the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research (CGRER), argues for a sustainability tax to supplant the income tax.

Video was shot by Ben Hill of the University of Iowa Center for Media Production and edited by myself. You can read Schnoor's scroll-like resume here.

Sonic Youth at The Vic in Chicago

2009-06-30T09:44:00.000-07:00

This Sunday, I saw Sonic Youth play The Vic in Chicago.

Here is a blurry image from said show. Thurston Moore is on the right. Kim Gordon, the sexiest 56-year-old on earth, is smack in the middle.

The band closed their second encore with "'Cross the Breeze," my absolute favorite Sonic Youth song.

Right outside The Vic, Chicago's largest gay pride parade had taken over the streets.

A fun time was had by all.

Mark Johnson performs "Love Scripts"

2009-06-30T07:30:00.001-07:00

Mark Johnson, singer/songwriter of the Chicago-based band Tough but Fair, performs his song "Love Scripts" at the Awake Cafe in Chicago.

Mark is one of my very good friends. When I was 18, I wrote and directed a 20-minute movie called "Singer/Songwriter" that starred Mark. For the role, he wrote a handful of spectacular songs from the perspective of his character -- a morose indie troubadour who alienates his obsessive fans with a series of saccharine sweet records. Mark knocked these songs out of the park, creating parody tracks that were hummable and enjoyable on their own terms.

Listen to songs by his band Tough but Fair here.
Listen to his solo material here.

Video was shot June 27, 2009.

Iowa City mourns Iranian protesters

2009-06-26T09:35:00.000-07:00

Below are two photos from a gathering last night to mourn those who've lost their lives in Iran. The event was held in downtown Iowa City. Over 75 people held candles in honor of Neda and other protesters who've died on the streets of Iran.

Bill Callahan live at The Picador in Iowa City

2009-06-22T09:11:00.000-07:00

Bill Callahan, aka Smog, aka (Smog), played a show at The Picador in Iowa City on Saturday, June 20. I saw Callahan perform at the very same venue (then called Gabe's Oasis) six years ago -- my very first concert in a bar.

Below, you'll find videos I took of Callahan performing two of his bigger singles, "Sycamore" and "Cold Blooded Old Times."

Plastic bottle consumption

2009-03-08T11:52:00.001-07:00

Earlier this week, The Daily Iowan published an op-ed I wrote on plastic bottle consumption. You can read it here.

Bike sharing

2009-02-05T09:45:00.000-08:00

I wrote a guest column for today's Iowa City Press-Citizen on campus bike sharing programs. You can read it here.

New Politics, New Media

2009-01-14T16:37:00.000-08:00

Iowa City's alt-weekly Little Village just published an article of mine on Barack Obama's new media campaign.

You can read it here.

The piece features quotes from scholars Doug Kellner and Jennifer Stromer-Galley, as well as the authors of 2007's Netroots Rising, Nate Wilcox and Lowell Feld.

I hope you enjoy it.

Colbert and Costello

2008-12-07T20:25:00.000-08:00

Two great entertainers defend Christmas. I'm surprised by how moved I am by this song:

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

A Colbert Christmas: Colbert/Costello Duet

Colbert at Christmas
Colbert Christmas DVD

Green Screen
Bill O'Reilly Interview

An interview with Douglas Kellner

2008-12-03T19:56:00.000-08:00

It's hard to get a soundbite out of Douglas Kellner. A preeminent scholar of social theory, media spectacle, and postmodernism, the man is all about nuance.

Kellner is the George Kneller Chair in the Philosophy of Education at UCLA, and his work is ubiquitous in the University of Iowa mass communication department, and others I'm sure.

Along with scores of journal articles, book chapters, and other titles, Kellner's penned The Postmodern Adventure, Media Spectacle and the Crisis of Democracy, and this year's Guys and Guns Amok: Domestic Terrorism and School Shootings from the Oklahoma City Bombing to the Virginia Tech Massacre.

I spoke with Kellner over the phone yesterday about Barack Obama's new media campaign, a subject he recently wrote about for Mediascape. We discussed the death of newspapers, the 2008 media/election circus, Obama's skills as a television performer, and Neil Postman's seminal indictment of television, Amusing Ourselves to Death.

......

Me: How much attention did you pay in this election cycle to Barack Obama’s new media campaign?

Douglas Kellner: I have an article on this UCLA site Mediascape, and I just wrote it up for another book. It was about the election and the media spectacle: first the Obama spectacle versus the Hillary spectacle and then the Obama spectacle versus the McCain/Palin spectacle. I have a long, detailed study of it.

Me: What did you think of Obama’s campaign specifically? Do you see his election as a victory for Internet activism?

DK: I would say that that is a component of it. You’ll see in my article that I have some paragraphs on Obama and the Internet spectacle, but also there was artwork for Obama. There were the campaign events; his appearances were media spectacles. I would say it’s a combination of Internet and television.

Me: Since 2000 we’ve seen a societal shift, particularly generational, away from old media like TV and toward new media like the Internet. Is this a positive thing?

DK: These things are so big that the terms "positive" or "negative," "good" or "bad," don’t really apply. It’s a massive shift. I think definitely young people are much more into the Internet, text messaging, and cell phones, while older generations are into television. I think you can get more and better sources of news and information from the Internet. On the other hand, you can get a lot of crap on the Internet. So it’s a complex thing, it’s not one-good, one-bad. Both of them are mixed bags and big bags.

Me: But in terms of political news coverage, would you say the Internet has been a generally positive force?

DK: Oh, absolutely. I’ve written a lot on this. Things I’ve written with Richard Kahn, for instance, on Internet politics, and in my book The Postmodern Adventure with Steve Best on technopolitics. Blogs, wikis — I have some articles on. Definitely I see a whole lot of positive things on the Internet that open politics up to progressive voices and young people. It’s really a democratization.

Me: In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman talks about the Age of Typography becoming the Age of Television. Are we now in the Age of the Internet? What are the traits of this age you see in play?

DK: I would say, generally, yes, we are in the Age of the Internet. The positive thing with the Internet vis-a-vis television is that the Internet is more participatory and it’s more bottom-up, or at least it has that potential. Television is a more passive, consumer thing. It’s corporate-controlled, more top-down, etc. But, television is still the major force for news, information, and politics. The big events happen on television.

Me: As the Internet surpasses a medium, it tends to swallow its traits. Given the rise of YouTube and online video in general, can there be an argument made for the Internet as a cultural extension of the Age of Television?

DK: There’s always some continuity between media, McLuhan argues, but I think here there’s also a big discontinuity as well. I mentioned some of the features of what’s new about the Internet — it’s more participatory, more democratic, more open, more active.

Me: I ask that question because, to me, the Internet is hurting typography and print in incredible ways financially. Do you see the Internet as being harmful to print in a similar way that Neil Postman saw television as being harmful to print?

DK: I see this differently here. I agree with those points, but I would make contrasting points. The Internet, to some extent, is a return to typography. We type. Literacy, reading, and writing are more important than ever before with the Internet. You have more to read and you have to read faster; you need to respond faster with email and blogging. But there’s also a downside to this. See, everything is dialectical. There are positives and negatives, continuities and discontinuities — the negative being that it’s a debased form of writing. You know, ‘How RU?’ with the ‘RU.’ Writing loses some of its richness and complexity, particularly with text messaging.

Me: Does this relate at all to the decline of newspaper readership?

DK: I’d say it’s television and the Internet. Newspapers are more and more a thing of the past. I mean, I’m a newspaper junkie. When I was a kid, I delivered the Washington Post for about five years. I’d read the post cover to cover, everyday. Then I moved to New York and read the New York Times. I delivered the New York Times and read it all the time. Then when I went to Austin, Texas, I subscribed to the New York Times when they started national delivery. Here in LA I’ve been reading the LA Times. On the one hand, I love the materiality of newspapers, just like I love the materiality of books. But the Internet gives you every single newspaper for free at your 'tips. So, on the one hand, newspapers are declining, but on the other hand, a lot of their material is more accessible to more people than it’s ever been.

Me: When you read about a news staff getting cut back or another study showing that more and more people are going online, how do you react to that?

DK: Well, it’s too bad that newspapers are declining. The LA Times has been just decimated with corporate takeovers and cutbacks. I’ve seen it, month by month. It’s still a relatively good newspaper.

Me: That’s one of the worst in the country as far as cutbacks.

DK: But, I follow entertainment closely and their entertainment section is one of the best in the country still.

Me: In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman described John Marshall as the preeminent Typographic Man — someone who was "detached, analytical, devoted to logic." He also described Ronald Reagan as the prototypical Television Man. Is Barack Obama the prototypical Internet Man?

DK: I would say you cannot personalize an Internet Man. It’s a generation and it’s a multiplicity of voices. There’s no one person that embodies the Internet as a mode of communication. I would say that Obama’s genius was as a television performer. Obviously he himself doesn’t do much on the Internet. I think his supporters used the Internet in brilliant and original ways, but I don’t associate Obama himself with the Internet as a mode of communication. He’s clearly a TV guy.

Me: So you see the campaign as more Internet-oriented whereas he himself—

DK: I see the campaign having a very strong Internet component, but I would say equally if not more so — with Obama himself — it was a television campaign. Everyday he looked great on TV. He looked great in the debates. He was cool, calm, and collected during all the fights with Hillary, and then during the campaign with McCain and the global economic crisis. He always kept his cool. And that was Kennedy. Kennedy was totally cool, and I’m using that in the [Marshall] McLuhan sense, as a media and TV figure. He just always looked in control, sharp, and on top of things. I think Obama is also cool in the hipster sense. He’s like a cool guy. His favorite TV show is “The Wire.” Someone told me they once bumped into him in a gym in Los Angeles, this was before he got gigantic, and he was working out and listening to Eminem on his headphones. He’s like a hip black guy. You know, culturally. And he’s cool in the sort of Kennedy/McLuhan sense, which is good for TV. McCain was way too hot. Sarah Palin was very, very hot. At first she was dazzling but then she became a joke, a caricature of herself.

Me: It seems to me that the notion of being "on message" has become more and more important in elections. Politicians have become fearful of Macaca-style moments, which can be repeated infinitely on YouTube.

DK: And Obama had none of those moments, which is fairly astonishing.

Me: McCain’s campaign stopped doing the Straight Talk Express because of the fear of cameras. Is that healthy, that because the Internet brings this 24/7 aspect to politics, politicians have become afraid to speak without a script?

DK: Yes and no. I think McCain and Palin totally self-destructed because they were such fools. They ran such a ludicrous campaign with all the media coverage everywhere they went and YouTube. YouTube was big on this. From the positives like Obama Girl, to the negatives like Paris Hilton mocking McCain. So I see this as not bad. It exposes the truth in a sense. Obviously there is a downside; [YouTube] sensationalizes and decontextualizes. It has a reductive aspect.

Me: I'm interested in your comparison to Kennedy. It seems like another way of saying a politician is cool and in control is to say a politician is "on message." So this need to be constantly on message hasn’t necessarily amplified with the Internet.

DK: Reagan was famous for it. They had a message of the day and never went off it. Clinton learned from that and tried to do it. There’s always been a continuity in TV politics.

"The Big Bang Theory"

2008-12-01T14:29:00.001-08:00

During my flight from Portland to Denver, I watched an episode of NBC's "The Big Bang Theory." I'm pretty sure it's the worst sitcom I've ever seen on a major network. I cannot believe such a thing in the world even exists.

I'll show you around this Alphabet Town

2008-12-01T10:26:00.000-08:00

Here are some photos from Portland. I hope you'll forgive the non-stop Elliott Smith references.

At my sister's suggestion, I went to Saint Cupcake, a Portland sensation. One coconut cream cupcake and two cups of coffee later, impossible was nothing.

I went for a brutal, uphill walk into Washington Park. The clouds hung low, hovering just above the (mostly clipped or dead) roses in the Rose Garden. It was ghostly and beautiful.

And here are a few of the other sites from Portland. I'm typing this as my plane is about to board to Denver and then back to the Midwest. It has been a good time.

Portland

2008-11-29T20:11:00.000-08:00

The last time I was in Portland, I had never used a cell phone. Elliott Smith was still alive. I spent my average night on AIM. My favorite movie was Good Will Hunting. I could count the number of drinks I'd had on one hand. I couldn't name you more than two Bob Dylan albums. Most of my favorite books -- Anna Karenina, Lolita, Watchmen -- I'd never picked up. Many of my good friends were strangers.

Five and a half years is a long time.

I remember walking around Portland in spring 2003, Either/Or on my headphones, thinking I'd never make it past 19. I remember the future feeling like something alien, something that didn't concern me. Something that other people worried about and looked forward to. Now I'm 23, listening to "Alameda" on YouTube for the 8th straight time, thinking I'll never make it past 24.

There's nothing like a person or place from the past to remind you of how little you've changed. Five and a half years is a long time, but some things just won't quit.

A summation of this trip

2008-11-28T23:45:00.001-08:00

I'm sitting in wet boxers. On a Comfort Suite loveseat. In Portland. It is our first night in town. We went to a Rogue bar, which was really quite something. I got the hat from there. We tried to attend a Trailblazers game tonight, only to find out that the cheapest tickets left were $100-plus. About a half-hour ago, Sean and I hit up the Comfort Suites pool and hot tub, just before closing. Hence the clingy boxers. We also went to a Burger King across the street, where, I leading the way, we ordered steakhouse mushroom 'n' swiss burgers with veggie patties. The Burger King was completely empty, so I don't think the cashier minded the special order. Tomorrow, we head to the famous Powell's Books, as well as a number of breweries. Photos of Portland will follow.

Thanksgiving dinner and Rachel Getting Married

2008-11-28T09:54:00.000-08:00

Sean and I had Thanksgiving dinner with Thomas (Sean's friend with whom we're staying) and his family. It was a warm, pleasant time. Every pissant bone in my body was melted.

After dinner, Sean and I went to Rachel Getting Married. I thought it was quite good, despite the severe case of motion sickness that struck me after five minutes of jittery camerawork. The director, Jonathan Demme, shot Married in the Dogma 95 tradition, a movement I've always liked in theory more than in practice (look, we use cinematic artifice to make the film look like a documentary. so natural! so real!)

The camerawork aimed for a psychological effect (intimacy) but instead got a physiological one (nausea). Assuming that you might be less prone to this side-effect than I am, I'd highly recommend Married. I loved how the film was political at heart, yet never once made any of its themes explicit. The marriage in Married, both the actual ceremony and the interracial union in particular, represents a liberal wet dream of multiculturalism and collectivism (notice how Demme incorporates video his actors shot into the final movie). So, in short, it's fun, devastating, and always engaging to watch Anne Hathaway self-destruct amidst the blue state Utopia.

Music I've bought this trip

2008-11-28T01:13:00.000-08:00

This trip will be a bit of a last hurrah for me in terms of buying music. At least for a month or two, I plan to go on vacation from obsessive record store rummaging.

So here are the discs I've picked up -- all used, all under 10 bucks -- on this trip.

Sonic Youth: Sister
Pavement: Wowee Zowee
Patti Smith: Easter
Charles Mingus: The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady
Iggy and the Stooges: Raw Power
Wire: Pink Flag
Brian Eno: Here Come the Warm Jets

I think I could go a month only listening to these records, easy.

First day in Seattle

2008-11-27T00:40:00.000-08:00

Wang Chung'd part deux and drive to Seattle

2008-11-26T10:01:00.000-08:00

So, we went back to the auto glass repair place. The window was back to normal, though we noticed for the first time that the bandits had left a few items of their own for us. Perhaps they were trading: $1000 worth of electronic devices for a can of tuna and one bent-to-shit Hustler. Chris picked up the Hustler with the tips of his fingers, as our old friend the attendant smiled, "Oh ya, you'd be surprised how much stuff like this we find in people's cars." He then began flipping through the Hustler for a good ten seconds. "As long as they're not kissing each other..."

As we drove away, we spent several seconds theorizing on what that meant. Probably something homophobic, we decided.

Anyway, here are some more photos. These include our drive from Seattle, as well as one choice shot of Chris rocking "The M."

Getting "Wang Chung'd" in Vancouver

2008-11-24T10:41:00.000-08:00

This morning, Sean had to wake up at 6am to renew his parking spot in a back alley lot.

At about 6:15am, Chris and I woke up to Sean's stammering voice: "Guys, my car got broke into. They shattered the back window."

Vancouver has been an interesting time.

The bandits made off with a number of electronic appliances, totaling about $1000 worth of Sean's stuff.

As the sun rose, we killed time in a coffee shop until Broco, a window repair shop, opened at 8:30am. We drove for quite a while to find a coffee shop with parking directly in front of it, so we could keep an eye on the car.

At Broco, we met a very interesting attendant. He referred to our encounter as getting "Wang Chung'd"; suggested that we kill the immediate hours at an "exotic ballet" club featuring "the extreme team"; expressed his disappointment with American strip clubs because the strippers "always had their underwear on"; riffed on his disgust of clean needle programs and drug addicts; and derided Canada's social welfare programs in general, joking "Hell, I bet you guys could get some welfare right now, and you're not even citizens."

Right now we are killing the hours until we can pick up the repaired car. We're considering asking this man for his thoughts on immigrants when we return, to bait him into another diatribe. Something like, "Man, there're a lot of people who don't speak English here. We're not used to that in Iowa. What's the deal?"

I'll post developments as they, well, develop.

More photos from first day in Vancouver and the drive up

2008-11-23T17:30:00.000-08:00

Drive to Vancouver

2008-11-23T10:16:00.000-08:00

Here's what we saw on the long, long drive from Missoula to Vancouver. We took the scenic route through the mountains, the novelty of which pretty much instantly wore off once the sun went down and we were stuck in curvy, 45mph roads.

Here's our view from the Super 8 in Missoula.

We got stuck in mountain traffic in a standstill for about 20 minutes. To pass the time, we got out and took pictures.

8:00am

2008-11-22T07:25:00.000-08:00

Just woke up from four and one-half hours of sleep. Have that three six mafia song that won an Oscar stuck in my head for no reason. It will be a long day.

Bro'd Trip Day 2: From Denver to Missoula

2008-11-22T00:49:00.000-08:00

Evening, ladies and germs.

I am two days deep in a delirious, 12-day bro road trip (or bro'd trip) with two great friends, Chris and Sean. I will be updating this blog throughout our fun-ventures with photos and the occasional pithy insight. But, mostly, it'll just be photos like this:

Below you'll see Sean (seen above), Chris, and the sights of a 14-hour drive from Denver to Missoula, Montana.

Next up: Sleep. Then Vancouver.

Obama-as-cult-leader, meet Obama-as-anti-Christ

2008-11-17T16:41:00.000-08:00

Some people just won't quit.

In the link above, you'll see a just-published Newsweek column on Barack Obama's similarities to the anti-Christ. Obama-as-anti-Christ, of course, is a sister talking point to the Obama-as-Hitler and Obama-as-cult-leader memes.

Wesley Pruden and the Obama-as-cult-leader meme

2008-11-15T13:02:00.000-08:00

Of all the "conceptual scoop" stories from this past election cycle, none offended me more than the Obama-as-cult-leader meme.

Does it ring a bell?

If you recall, this narrative reached its zenith in February, when a slew of conservative and pro-Hillary columnists scrambled to frame Obama's popularity in negative terms. Faced with a candidate adored by millions, a candidate who inspired apathetic young people to become politically engaged, a candidate surging in the national polls against Hillary Clinton, these writers attempted the seemingly impossible: to use Obama's popularity against him.

In a 20-day span, stories exploiting the "cult meme" appeared in:

New York Times (Krugman)
New York Sun (Skenazy)
Washington Post (Krauthammer)
Los Angeles Times (Stein)
Boston Herald (Fitzgerald)
Politico (Lerer)
ABC News (Tapper)
Time (Klein)
Washington Times (Pruden)

This post focuses on that final name, Wesley Pruden. He's the editor emeritus of the Washington Times, a conservative daily with a circulation of about 93,775. Pruden has written a twice-weekly column titled "Pruden on Politics" for the Times since 1993.

From the Iowa caucuses on January 3 to Election Day on November 4, 2008, Pruden published 86 columns in the Washington Times, 84 of which mentioned Barack Obama, according to my search on LexisNexis. I read every single one of these columns -- don't ask me why -- and I can safely say that Wesley Pruden was one of the most ardent advocates of the Obama-as-cult-leader meme.

Here are the numbers:

Number of stories in which Obama supporters are described as members of a "cult": 7.
Number of references to Obama as "the Anointed One": 7.
Number of references to Obama supporters as "glassy-eyed": 10.
Number of references to Obama as "the American Idol": 11.
Number of references to Obama as a "messiah": 16.

And this is just a taste. There are countless, less enumerable examples. On July 15, for example, Pruden previewed Obama's Germany address by writing "Soon Obama is off to Berlin in pursuit of a Leni Riefenstahl to duplicate spectacle when he stands before the Brandenburg Gate." Riefenstahl, of course, was Adolf Hitler's propagandist. There's a lot of user-made bullshit online comparing Obama to Hitler (I thought about embedding a YouTube video, but I didn't want to up the view count. Feel free to Google the two men's names for a torrent of Photoshopped images and the like), but for a veteran editor and journalist to use the hateful comparison is astounding.

In his very last column before Election Day, Pruden went all out with an extended comparison between Obama and the Pied Piper. The comparison, he wrote, lied in both men's ability "to identify with children." Obama, thus, sends us impressionable young people into a trance, like the mythical Pied Piper. He elsewhere referred condescendingly to Obama supporters as "robots" and "crazies" who're duped into submission by their "orator Prince."

So what was the harm in all of this? Why have I spent so much time detailing Pruden's attempts to frame Obama as a cult leader and his supporters as cultists?

I have two reasons.

First, I believe writers like Pruden created an environment for this line of attack:

Pruden even linked Obama to Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears a full six months before John McCain's campaign.

Second, and more importantly, I found the Obama-as-cult-leader meme shockingly offensive. I worked as a new media intern for Obama's campaign in Iowa. I met dozens of young Obama supporters, college kids who took semesters off to work for the senator. According to Pruden and other right-wing columnists, we were a group of Kool-Aid-drinking drones. We worshipped Obama as though he were "born in a stable in Bethlehem," as though we were an impressionable mass of Obama Youth.

I can understand wanting to tear down a political opponent, but this line of attack was downright socially irresponsible. We are a country marked by low voter turnout among young people, no one can deny that. My generation, prior to this election, was defined by its apathy. So it is inexcusible for Pruden and other conservatives to have framed young political activism as fanatical and cult-like; their words did nothing but make apathy more appealing to people my age. Plenty of kids I knew internalized the Obama-as-cult-leader meme during this election -- some even cited it to justify their political detachment.

Pruden, more so than any mainstream writer I've come across, pushed this message mercilessly, week after week. Along with every other writer who propelled this opportunistic, destructive attack, he ought to be ashamed of himself.

YES: Video of Malkmus covering "Funk #49"

2008-11-03T12:52:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in my last post, one of the absolute highlights of Stephen Malkmus' Halloween set in Iowa City was a balls-out cover of The James Gang's "Funk #49."

Some good soul in St. Louis managed to do what I should have done that night: Get it on video.

Brilliant.

Stephen Malkmus in Iowa City

2008-11-02T09:21:00.001-08:00

It was a perfect storm: Friday night // Halloween // Stephen Malkmus // The Picador.

The night began at about 5pm. I called the Picador to ask about tickets. Only 20 left, I was told. I got in my car, bumped "Black Book," and rushed to the Iowa City staple.

Just as I entered, a man exited the bar, looking eerily like the guy in this video:

I bought my ticket at the bar and neurotically speedwalked up the street. I wanted to prove to myself that it was him. I knew if I didn't, I'd bore friends the rest of the night with my "I think I saw Malkmus, but man, I shoulda said something" stories.

Malkmus, whom I've written about before, wore thick glasses, a plaid shirt, and had a backpack strapped tight up against his back, like a real nerd. A quarter-block up the street he stopped to get something out of his bag. I walked past him and pretended to read a text-message. I was 90 percent sure it was him. I flipped my phone closed and took the ticket out of my shirt pocket. Then we had this exchange:

Me: "I think I just bought a ticket to see you."
Malkmus: "Oh, yeah? Thanks."
Me: "I'm really looking forward to it."
Malkmus: "It should be fun. All the kids'll be in costume."
Me: "Do you have a costume?"
Malkmus: "You know, not yet."
(pause)
Me: "But yeah, I think you guys are great."
Malkmus: "Thanks. You know, Blitzen Trapper's really good, too."
Me: "Yeah, I'm excited to see them, too. I hope you like Iowa City."
Malkmus: "Thanks. It should be a good night."

I can't imagine a better way to get pumped up before a show.

At the Picador, Malkmus performed songs from his four post-Pavement records -- Stephan Malkmus, Pig Lib, Face the Truth, and this year's Real Emotional Trash -- and one left-field cover. He shared the stage with his Jicks: Mike Clark, former Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss, and former Elliott-Smith-dater Joanna Bolme.

I can't provide a setlist because I didn't know every song they played, but I can tell you a few of the songs he definitely did play (highlights in bold):

Pencil Rot
Freeze the Saints
Church on White
Jenny and the Ess Dog
Hopscotch Willie
Dragon Fly Pie
Real Emotional Trash
Cold Son

And that left-field cover? Just picture Malkmus and the Jicks reemerging for their encore. Then picture the Blitzen Trapper gang trailing behind them. Then picture Malkmus, sans guitar, take the mic off the stand. From a crowded stage erupts a rendition of this:

Malkmus, who operated with relative restraint all evening, belted the lyrics to The James Gang's "Funk #49" while us kids went apeshit. He started busting out moves from the bravado rock 'n' roll playbook -- doing jump-kicks after each chorus, falling onto his back, singing on the floor, etc. It was perhaps the most over-the-top encore I've ever seen.

Exhausted with an uncontrollable grin, I left the bar and struck "Stephan Malkmus" from my list of artists to see before I die.

Sick Byrne: Talking Heads frontman in Cleveland

2008-10-24T09:15:00.000-07:00

This past Thursday, I saw David Byrne perform in Cleveland, Ohio, as a part of his current Byrne-Eno collabo tour.

Here's a weird photo montage-thing from the event:

David Byrne, Cleveland, 10.23.08 from John Soeder on Vimeo.

Byrne performed songs from More Songs About Buildings and Food, Fear of Music, Remain in Light, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, and this year's Everything that Happens will Happen Today. I've been listening to copious amounts of Talkings Heads and Brian Eno over the last month, and the investment paid off. This was one of the best shows I've seen in the last few years. Byrne busted out a few Stop Making Sense moves, including his running-man dance during "Life During Wartime" and "Burnging Down the House."

Here's a taste, albiet from a different show:

Byrne looked twice as old as anyone else on stage, this is true, but the 56-year-old New Yorker had more than enough vitality to avoid embarassing himself. He geared the set toward his new album, which is easily the worst of the five, but he still managed to play half of Remin in Light(!), arguably the greatest Talking Heads record. Here's the full setlist, with the highlights in bold:

Strange Overtones
I Zimbra
One Fine Day
Help Me Somebody (the set's real stunner)
Houses in Motion
My Big Nurse
My Big Hands
Heaven
Never Thought
The River
Crosseyed and Painless
Life is Long
Once in a Lifetime
Life During Wartime
I Feel My Stuff

Encore I:
Take Me to the River
The Great Curve

Encore II:
Air
Burning Down the House
Everything that Happens

Five Years

2008-10-21T17:54:00.000-07:00

"Five years, that's all we've got." -- David Bowie

I was a freshman in college, just 18, when Elliott Smith died on this day five years ago. I remember taking the bus downtown for a 9:30 a.m. class that day. I got off the bus and had about 10 minutes to burn before "Philosophy and Human Nature." This was usual. The way the bus routes worked, I always had about 10-15 minutes to kill in the morning. So I paced to the university library, went up one floor, and found a row of empty computers. If we were in the library now, I could show you the exact spot.

Within three minutes, I hit this. My first response, honestly -- I thought it was a joke. A strange, unprovoked joke. Back then, I visited Sweet Adeline everyday; my fingers spasmed the URL and I waited for the page to load. It took a few seconds. It was like turning a blind corner.

The page appeared, not in its usual layout. An enormous photo of Elliott faded in, tagged "1969-2003." He was smiling. I clicked back to Pitchfork with violence. I read the lead, absorbed the facts in a frenzy. Every detail made the joke go away. Los Angeles, Jennifer Chiba, two-stab wounds to the chest. This was real. He committed suicide, I remember thinking. He finally did it, he actually did it, I never thought he'd ever do it, I never wanted to believe he'd do it, but I knew some day he would, or he might, and now the safety drill is real.

His last written words, scrawled on a Post-It note, made me shut off the computer: "I'm so sorry--love, Elliott. God forgive me."

I called a close friend and spoke words I never thought I'd say. Then I cried in a lecture hall with over 100 students. Then I skipped work and my afternoon classes.

I'm unnerved by how distant that day feels to me now. Five years after the fact, I remember details and breakdowns, but even my most emotionally masochistic impulses can't resusitate how I felt in October 2003. Maybe I was just a bigger feeler at 18 -- my highs higher, my lows lower. I'm not sure.

Elliott Smith left me -- and us -- with five devastating albums, not to mention two posthumous releases. I could dedicate an entire blog to those seven records, if I could conjure up that post-trauma drive to collect, buy, and write about all things Elliott Smith. The kind of drive that led me to buy VHS bootlegs and $45 tee-shirts on eBay; to amass outtakes, b-sides, live covers, and interviews; to create and update everyday a month-long countdown to From a Basement on the Hill's release date on the Sweet Adeline message boards; to care actively and deeply about not forgetting him or his music.

Now, at 23, I've amassed all I'm likely to amass. The unbridled passion is gone; what's left is a lifetime of cherishing the songs and the memories associated with them. I miss him as much as I could miss anyone I've never met. I miss knowing he's alive, knowing the sounds from my speakers are coming from a living human, not a relic from the past.

As Alan Alda said in Crimes and Misdemeanors, "Comedy equals tragedy plus time." Five years later, at least I can laugh.

Laziest review ever: W.

2008-10-19T15:10:00.000-07:00

Sorry I've been away. It's been a very busy month. I will write more (much, much more) when the election is over. For now, here is a review of W., presented in bullets of likes and dislikes. Simple and to the point -- just how George W. likes his memos.

Pluses:

Solid acting. Brolin does a good job of avoiding caricature. Cromwell as Bush senior is just as strong; he keeps the "Daddy Issues" thread from becoming an Oedipal bore.
Structure. I thought the temporal back-and-forth structure of Weiser's script was effective. It accentuated Stone's central goal: to illustrate the shocking transformation of Bush the burnout to Bush the president. Placing the two time periods beside one another created an effective, funny split-screen image of Bush.
Entertaining. Simply, it's a slight film, and slight films don't take much of a toll mentally. The film deserves credit for presenting presidential politics in an engaging way without over-the-top imagery and historical revisionism (see JFK and Nixon) or SNL-style parody.

Minuses:

Though I liked the structure, I can't recall a single sequence in the entire film. Sure, there are scenes, but the film jumps around so much that each moment stands in isolation. Though it might sound trivial, this is a serious flaw. Almost every scene begs for a lead-in or a follow-up, to reveal how Bush prepared for or digested the iconic moments of his presidency. Stone recreates the "Mission Acclompished" moment, which is fine, but imagine how much more revealing that scene would have been if we saw Bush in the aircraft before landing. What was he thinking then? Did he have any feeling that this could be a major political blunder? In another scene, we see Bush speak to injured soliders in a hospital, a not uncommon image within the news media. The scene is meant to be tragic, but it's not much different than seeing the president speak to soldiers on CNN. If we saw how Bush responded emotionally and tempermentally to the image of wounded soldiers, however, that would be something. Would Bush lose sleep, would he be tempted to shift policies, would he care? Those are the questions I had going into the film, and, of course, Stone answered none of them.
Reliance on "iconic" moments. This goes along with the first point. Perhaps Stone wanted to avoid allegations of overreaching and bias to such a great degree that he decided to focus on what cannot be refuted: the images on TV. Right-wing critics can't say Stone fabricated Colin Powell's UN address or Bush's "Mission Accomplished" address. I think those moments should have been in the film, certainly, but Stone uses them as placeholders for actual insight into his characters.
Most scenes can be boiled down to one simple purpose. This relates to the above two faults. Becuase the film leaps so much in time, Stone essentially forces himself to cram "an important moment" in every scene. Thus, every scene could begin with a title like "Wherein W. decides the oil rigs are not for him," "Wherein W. decides he will become born again," "Wherien W. addresses the State of the Union on Iraq's nuclear ambitions," "Wherein W. is shown as a rusty, inexperienced politician," "Wherein W. decides he will run for president." Simply, W. shows us the dots in George W. Bush's life, but rarely does it connect those dots. It'd be easy to transcribe the film into a bullet-pointed PowerPoint presentation, to strip every scene of the fat to reveal an obvious plotpoint. Though I liked the film's structure chronologically, I didn't like the Crash-style development of plot and character. These moments felt like necessary pitstops in a meaningless tour of the president's life.
Use of Bushism in dialogue. This was just silly. Maybe a viewer 20 years from now will hear Bush's "is our children learning?" line and laugh, but Stone obviously isn't making this film for future audiences. Why else would he rush the production for a pre-election release date? As a 2008 viewer, the Bushisms have an awkward distancing effect. They're artificial and contrived, and they rupture the film's restrained tone, no less.
The Daddy storyline. While I don't think the Jr./Sr. relationship is an inherently idiotic narrative thread, it lacks complexity and borders on trite. I might have felt differently about this, however, if the film had ended on a different note. (SPOILER FOLLOWS) Had the film ended with W.'s reelection, that would have been narratively satisfying. I wanted a scene between W. and Bush Sr. on the night of Bush's reelection in 2004. Did either of them make explicit that W. had succeeded where his father failed? Was it the elephant in the room? Did W. no longer feel he needed his father's approval because he had done what his father could not -- namely, catch Saddam and get reelected? These elements make for satisfying, ironic closure (ironic given how W.'s second term has gone), but Stone doesn't go there. Instead, the daddy storyline -- like the rest of the film -- just slowly fades away, seemingly arbitrarily.

Final grade: B-. I don't regret seeing it. I like the idea of a slight, unambitous film about a divisive president, but the execution was just so off that it'd be a real stretch to call W. anything other than OK.

A letter to Diablo Cody

2008-09-19T08:45:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I read this article about Diablo Cody responding to her critics, and it got me thinking about Juno again. I've wanted to ask Cody a question or two about the film ever since I first saw it.

So, sparked by her new blog post, I did what anyone would do: created a MySpace account and asked Diablo Cody to be my one friend. In order to message Cody, you have to first be her MySpace friend. Seems reasonible. So right now I'm waiting for her to either confirm or ignore my friend request.

If she confirms, this is the email I will send her. If you haven't seen Juno, I'd avoid reading the rest of this post -- it contains spoilers and probably wouldn't make much sense anyway. I'd like to know how the rest of you feel about the film and the questions I've raised:

Let’s get one thing straight: I’m not a Juno hater. So please don't hit delete just yet. I did have mixed feelings about the movie, though, and most of my sentiments stemmed from a simple confusion: Your feelings toward Jason Bateman’s character.

I just want to ask you this: How do you, personally, view this character?

Here’s what I saw in the movie, and, please, tell me if I’m wrong: You seemed to have more contempt for this character than anyone else on screen. Bateman, the aging Gen-Xer, realizes halfway through the film that suburban life is not for him. He’s a city dweller, and it’s obvious. He writes commercial jingles to pay for his house, but it’s clear he hates himself for it, deep down. He’d much rather be—as Little Edie would say—in any rat hole in New York City, probably ripping off Sonic Youth with his new band, than where he is now.

So, Bateman is out of his element in the family-oriented suburbs, and it takes the idea (or threat) of a kid to make this hit him on a visceral level. Suddenly, with the notion of an adopted child, he realizes that he can’t fake it anymore; he can’t pretend to enjoy where he is and what he does. What’s more, he shouldn’t, for the sake of his soon-to-be child. So he makes a decision before they adopt the baby, to avoid the fiasco of divorce with children.

From my view, you clearly fault Bateman’s character for his actions—and laud Jennifer Garner’s. But this has continued to puzzle me ever since I saw the film months ago. Do you realize the implications of what you’re arguing?

The film defines what is socially acceptable and what is not; clearly wanting to pursue a career in the city and not having a child at Bateman’s age is unacceptable to you. Why else would you kick his character to the curb once he makes this decision, excluding him from the rest of the film? Why else would you give Garner a number of lines mocking his lifestyle (“your shirt is stupid”) and not afford Bateman the same? Why else would you show everyone—smiling and happy—toward the film’s end, except Bateman; does his happiness not count because it’s not within the confines of normal adult behavior you’ve constructed? Why else would you associate his desires with pedophilia, as if to imply that his unbridled selfishness will invariably lead down a path of big-city hedonism and immorality?

That last one’s the real kicker. Part of me doesn’t want to believe that, in the otherwise effective slow-dance scene between Bateman and Page, you were suggesting that Bateman was coming on to her. I remember seeing this for the first time and screaming (in my head) “She did NOT just go there.” But, again, why else would the scene begin with Bateman watching Page out of his window with a lecherous grin? Why else would he get defensive and ask her why she visits him so often? Because he has assumed that she's sexually attracted to him as well?

I’ve used this “why else?” construction because I know there are possible answers to these questions that I just haven’t thought of. Maybe you weren’t suggesting that Bateman was coming onto Page. Maybe you excluded Bateman from the film’s end because you thought the change in setting would be too jarring.

Maybe. But the pattern remains, and so does my question: Why were you so hostile to this character? Because he realized he didn’t want to adopt a child and have a proper family? Because his version of avoiding normalcy isn’t cute and innocent like Ellen Page and Michael Cera’s? Or, rather, that avoiding normalcy is all fine and well at their age, but a man Bateman’s age needs to settle down and begin acting like a proper man—a father?

Is that really what you're saying?

If I'm just way off base, please let me know. I'd love to hear what you intended with this character, and how you would respond to my questions. I mean no offense; I'm just curious.

Thom Yorke covers Neil Young

2008-08-27T10:18:00.001-07:00

One of my favorite bands covers one of my favorite solo artists.

See the great clip below.

Radiohead :: "Tell Me Why" (neil young cover) from gorilla vs. bear on Vimeo.

Woody's on-set journal

2008-08-26T09:07:00.000-07:00

Last week, the New York Times published snippets from Woody Allen's fake on-set journal for his new film Vicky Christina Barcelona.

It's probably the funniest thing Woody's written this decade.

For me, Allen's comic style is all about absurdism and nihilism. Lately, it's mostly been the latter. Read any new Woody interview, and you'll hardly believe such self-deprecation and cynicism comes from the same man who once acted like this in front of cameras:

In his New York Times piece, Allen is on fire, echoing his Side Effects glory days. The punch lines, as before, are total left-fielders, each with their own strange sense of logic. Mostly, it's nice to see Woody have the confidence to put himself on the line again, like he used to as a stand-up comic. Instead of mumbling about lost opportunities and his own inadequacies, he's actually making an effort to entertain.

Here are some of my favorite bits:

"Barcelona is a marvelous city. Crowds turn out in the streets to watch us work. Mercifully they realize I’ve no time to give autographs, and so they ask only the cast members. Later I handed out some 8-by-10 photos of myself shaking hands with Spiro Agnew and offered to sign them, but by then the crowd had dispersed."

"Filmed at La Sagrada Familia, Gaudi’s masterpiece. Was thinking I have much in common with the great Spanish architect. We both defy convention, he with his breathtaking designs and me by wearing a lobster bib in the shower."

"Once again I had to help Javier with the lovemaking scenes. The sequence requires him to grab Penélope Cruz, tear off her clothes and ravish her in the bedroom. Oscar winner that he is, the man still needs me to show him how to play passion. I grabbed Penélope and with one motion tore her clothes off. As fate would have it she had not yet changed into costume, so it was her own expensive dress I mutilated. Undaunted I flung her down before the fireplace and dove on top of her. Minx that she is, she rolled away a split second before I landed causing me to fracture certain key teeth on the tile floor. Fine day’s work, and I should be able to eat solids by August."

Ben Stiller: Actually funny?

2008-08-20T16:17:00.000-07:00

Ben Stiller is a pretty easy target. Nauseatingly over-exposed with a limited range to boot, Stiller has pounded the same two drums for well over a decade. When he's not stumbling into embarrassing situations, à la Ross from "Friends," he's going bat-shit over-the-top, doing just about anything for a reaction (Heavy Weights, Happy Gilmore, Dodgeball, etc.).

Quantity, not quality, is Stiller's game. His resume boasts titles like Along Came Polly, Night at the Museum, Madagascar, and Starsky & Hutch -- in other words, Stiller's reworked Woody Allen's neurotic Jew for broad, Blockbuster-ready comedies.

Buried under the mediocrity, however, Stiller is actually a smart, talented comedian. A comedian, though, with one pressing flaw: He can't seem to say no. Like his buddy Owen Wilson, Stiller dilutes any effect his stronger projects may have with the likes of Duplex and Meet the Fockers.

Here's my point: Strip away the nonsense and look only at Stiller's output as a writer/director. Without films like The Heartbreak Kid muddying the waters, Stiller's real talent pops into focus. Suddenly he's not Ross from "Friends;" he's an idiosyncratic comedian whose films and TV shows are often too weird for mainstream audiences.

As director, Stiller has made just six major projects:

Tropic Thunder
Zoolander
"Heat Vision and Jack"
The Cable Guy
Reality Bites
"The Ben Stiller Show"

When you distill his filmography of all the garbage, you're left with a canceled-turned-cult-classic sketch comedy show, a Gen-X dramedy, a boldly off-putting dark comedy, an un-aired TV pilot featuring Owen Wilson as a talking motorcycle, a pun-laden and intentionally stupid satire of the fashion industry, and, his latest, a vulgar Hollywood satire that's already managed to piss off a number of special interest groups.

There isn't a single dud in the bunch (I haven't seen Reality Bites, however). "The Ben Stiller Show," which I am familiar with only via YouTube, featured a pool of talented up-and-comers like Judd Apatow and Bob Odenkirk. The show was entirely too strange to sustain an audience, which led Fox to ax it after 12 episodes.

A similar thread runs through much of Stiller's directorial output. At a time when everything Jim Carrey touched turned to gold (in the monetary, box-office sense), The Cable Guy revolted audiences and most critics with its discomforting humor and generally unpleasant tone. Stiller's penchant for the bizarre is on full display, best exemplified by a recurring non sequitur involving the Menendez brothers (Stiller plays both roles).

Most people enjoy Zoolander, but most write it off as some variation of "funny but dumb." As if the film's punishing idiocy isn't intentional. Released in 2001, Zoolander foresaw just how dumb we were becoming as a society, with dialogue featuring now-everywhere turns of phrase like "for serious" and "bra." I'd compare the film to a clever pun: Some chuckle against their will, some groan at the stupidity, and a handful think it's the funniest shit they've ever heard. I tend to fall in that last camp. Perhaps this comes down to a matter of taste, but it seems silly to me that the same people who take the high-brow road on lines like "Are you challenging me to a walk-off... Boo-lander?" find Stiller's mainstream, uninspired comedies so entertaining.

The same arguments go for "Heat Vision and Jack" and Tropic Thunder, two self-aware comedies as clever as they are absurd. Both are fun riffs on existing genres, and both could superficially be described as "stupid." But, as I've tried to argue, Stiller's no idiot. "Heat Vision" is an undebatable cult classic, while Tropic Thunder goes far enough with its satire to actually offend people. Like a good Colbert monologue, the movie apes the offensive, pushes farther than toothless satire, and dares you to fall for its trick.

As for "Heat Vision," it's almost best to go into it blind. It's even campier than Zoolander, thus even more open for simple take-downs like "dumb" or "cheesy." But, like all of Stiller's work that's worth watching, the incessant silliness makes it hard not to give in. The individual moments, when viewed in isolation, often seem stupid and needlessly strange. But Ben Stiller's talent lies in his ability to take 100 moments of lowbrow humor and assemble them into an inventive, intelligent whole. Zoolander is filled with 100s of dumb jokes, sure, but I'd never call it a dumb film.

For someone who leads a cinematic movement called the "Frat Pack," Stiller is a surprisingly gifted comic. Here's hoping it doesn't take him seven years to direct another movie.

The loss of Manny Farber

2008-08-19T22:11:00.000-07:00

With four whole months left to go, 2008 is shaping up to be a particularly devastating year for celebrity deaths.

I'm sure you've heard of the more high-profile public figures who've passed away recently, but here is one for the film nerd circuit: Manny Farber.

You can learn a great deal about his work here and here.

Around this time last year we lost Bergman and Antonioni, two giants of art cinema. Now, we've lost the giant of film criticism.

And just in time for those late-summer blues, no less.

How much "trash" is trash?

2008-08-16T11:31:00.000-07:00

I edited a short video last November on the University of Iowa's waste characterization sorting project, a student-led venture to learn how much of the university's "trash" is actually recyclable.

Their answer: nearly half. That's a lot.

You can watch the five-minute video below.

Anatomy of a dinner table scene

2008-08-14T16:58:00.000-07:00

I'd like to dedicate this post to my favorite cinematic setting:

From 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days to Talladega Nights, the last few years have given us a number of show-stopping sequences set in the nuclear family's most familiar setting: the dinner table.

For a visual stylist, a dinner table is one of the most boring cinematic environments imaginable. Barring some table-flipping theatrics, most dinner table scenes consist of people sitting around eating and talking. Like the dinners you probably have with your family, nothing really happens. Maybe a raised voice or a dismissive look, but nothing in the way of high drama. If you seek escapism from the cinema, you'll probably be disappointed by a film that relies on the dinner table to propel its narrative. It's just too familiar, too routine.

The dinner table scene, I'd argue, is defined by stasis and longing. In a few of the sequences I discuss below, the dinner table forces two or more conflicting individuals to sit in the same room with one another. And they're stuck. The formal dinner is a convention, a social obligation that embodies their domestic shackles. They must sit and partake, though they long to be elsewhere, often anywhere else. They sit put, confronting what they wish to avoid, and it's this forced compliance that creates the tension and humor within the best dinner table scenes.

No film better displays my thesis than 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.

Take a minute and really look at that image. Even if you're not familiar with the film, I bet you can spot our protagonist. And, moreover, I bet you have a pretty good sense of the character's motivations and desires. She's placed smack in the middle of the frame, encircled by an animated group of husbands and wives.

To do the scene and the film justice, I need a brief plot synopsis: Otilia (the girl above) helps her friend Gabita get an illegal abortion in 1980s Romania. During the arduous process, Otilia must leave and attend dinner with her boyfriend and his family.

That brings us to the scene above -- a brutal long take of Otilia sitting and waiting until she can race back to Gabita. In this sequence -- like comparable scenes in other films -- the dinner setting becomes a signifier of domestic life and adulthood. The urge to escape signifies youth, rebellion, anger. In a shot lasting upwards of five minutes, Otilia (and the viewer) must listen to the spirited, asinine banter of her elders. They seem happy, but Otilia knows she could never be happy as one of them. She sits only out of obligation; she "makes an appearance" to appease her boyfriend, all while Gibita (a young woman forced by her government's laws to meet a sleazy, back-alley abortionist) suffers alone in a motel room across town. You can see it all in her face.

In this dramatic example, the dinner table is nothing short of a hellhole. It represents patriarchy and submissiveness to a male significant other, the complacent ways of elders, an obstacle toward one's true desires. It's also horrifyingly evocative, using off-screen sound to reaffirm Otilia's inability to move anywhere outside of the current frame. Gabita's pregnancy carries with it notions of adulthood and domesticity, which terrify Otilia, and make five stagnant minutes with married couples and her boyfriend a taxing, nightmarish experience.

This scene in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is the most effective dinner table sequence I can recall because it does so much with so little. From my personal experience, bad family dinners are all about concealed emotions, forced formality, and placing social obligation over desire. They also have the power to make a half-hour feel like a midnight screening of Gods and Generals. The above scene captures all of these emotions; it's 2007 most memorable cinematic moment.

Storytelling, Todd Solondz's film from 2001, uses the dinner table construct in a similar way:

This film, in a much more obvious manner, uses the dinner table to connote upper-middle class yuppiedom.

As shown in the trailer, Solondz's dinner table is a narrative device to create conflict. As a writer, he forces characters with differing worldviews to interact within close proximity of one another. It's like a warped version of "Big Brother," but it's also undeniably exciting. He brings them together using dinner, the family event that hangs the day together. Scooby cannot leave dinner (nor can he leave the family he despises) until he provokes his father to throw him out after a series of smart-alecky quips concerning Hitler. That, certainly, is not conversation suitable for the dinner table.

In the still image above -- a family of five waiting for the black sheep of the family to come to dinner -- Solondz's high-angle shot and circular blocking give the family a cult-like presence. It's all pretty heavy handed, but the scene still works as a textbook example of how dinner table sequences establish conflict: They create a societal norm (often the family institution), insert an outsider, and use the awkward closeness of the figures to strike tension.

David O. Russell's I Heart Huckabees offers a spectacular example of this construction at work:

In the scene above, two activist liberals somehow find themselves having dinner with a caricature of the American Christian family. The director's use of Altman-like overlapping dialogue makes this one of the funniest dinner table sequences I can recall. Note how baby-faced Jonah Hill and his sister incessantly talk over one another in the first minute, setting a stage of slight discomfort for the shouting match that comes later.

Russell is mainly out to mock suburban America, which isn't a particularly new or intriguing goal, but his attention to detail elevates the scene above broad-stroke parody. Besides the vitriol, I enjoy the mother's tired eyes and drab wardrobe, both of which suggest a long day for a stay-at-home mom; I enjoy the tacky "PASTA" bowl that screams Target or lower; I enjoy lines like "There'll be no Internet tonight" and Jonah Hill's cell-phone game taunts, both of which use contemporary technology as a way of placing the family in the here-and-now and hinting at communication technology's takeover of the suburban family dynamic.

It's a mean-spirited scene brimming with cultural stereotypes, some of them more insightful than others. But, as with other films discussed here, it's the standout scene in the movie because it generates conflict and comedy by plopping volatile individuals in the same room, daring them to follow the social conventions of the dinner table when they'd much rather throw a punch.

American Beauty, another film situated in the suburbs, takes the classic dinner table tropes and ramps them up to 11:

It's all there, just with more shouting. Annette Benning's character is a clear caricature of prim-and-proper suburban formality, while Kevin Spacey plays the outsider role who regresses to a state of teenage anger. The scene is over-the-top, clearly, but it works because of Thora Birch's awkward presence. I get the sense that Spacey and Benning really want to argue, but they also REALLY want to argue their case to a third party. Pay close attention to the first five seconds, in which no words are spoken, but a sense of hostility comes across in the actors' sharp gesturing. They don't want to get into it just yet. One can imagine they've argued on and off for hours, shouting their cases to the point of futility. Now they want someone to act as jury and judge: their teenage daughter. This is why Spacey commands her to sit down with such violent authority. Without her, there are no witnesses, no one for whom to play the victim.

Viewed this way, Benning and Spacey's overacting makes sense -- both characters are straining themselves to convince Birch that the other one is to blame for the family's gradual dysfunction. It's the sort of perverse dynamic that sounds entirely plausible for a family dinner.

For a final example, I turn to The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Skip to the 19-second mark for a snippet of a subtler, more refined approach to the dinner table scene.

The sequence, as you could tell, belongs to Casey Affleck. A more flamboyant actor (i.e. Spacey) would have killed the mounting tension, probably by raising his voice after each listed similarity. Affleck's faux-casual shrugs, raspy voice, and neurotic smiling all suggest that he's thought about these things a lot and wants to avoid showing it.

For me, the dinner table setting heightens Affleck's every word. There is a total sense of domestic silence, which makes his creepy parallels land with a thud. And, more significantly, Pitt's presence at family dinner gives the scene a brotherly undercurrent.

Affleck seems to have mixed feelings about speaking with Pitt -- while he idolizes him, he's also afraid of meeting the man he's worshiped since childhood. Perhaps he doesn't want to shatter the mythical illusion he has of Jesse James by meeting the real person (five minutes with a belligerent Bob Dylan would probably have a similar effect on me). The mandatory family dinner, thus, is the perfect setting: Affleck can recoil into imagination in his bedroom, but he can't escape what's facing him at the table. So he sits mousily, longing to leave before his brothers embarrass him. Once he starts talking, though, the warm, familial setting loosens his lips.

I'm sure I missed many of the all-time great dinner table scenes. These were just a few from this decade that've stuck with me in particular. I'll leave you with another classic in the field:

The Price of Water in the 21st Century

2008-08-10T23:25:00.000-07:00

A few months back, I posted a documentary short on the 2004 tsunami and its devastating aftermath in Sri Lanka. I edited the video -- about which you can learn all you ever wanted to know here -- for my job at CGRER.

The docu-short sprung from a story I wrote for the University of Iowa's International Accents magazine on water privatization, the topic of this book I am currently reading.

Well, after a few delays, the piece is finally available online and in hard-copy form around Iowa. You can read it here.

You can also learn more about water privatization, from an admittedly partisan source, here.

Jeannie Moos strikes again

2008-08-01T12:16:00.000-07:00

CNN correspondent Jeannie Moos specializes in the shockingly inane.

Here she is with her latest opus, a piece on the "Montauk Monster."

Note Moos' Austin Powers jokes, Leno-style man-on-the-street antics, distinctly grating voice, and shameless ability to lunge on camera as much as possible. Such are the trusty tools in Moos' journalistic toolkit.

There may be a time and place for fluff-mongers, but CNN during an election year isn't it. It'd be one thing if she were funny. Even then, there's no justification for CNN wasting its resources on segments in which a woman walks around "the concrete beaches of Manhattan" with a beach ball and pail, showing random people a picture of some gross thing found over 100 miles away.

Entertainment Weekly's classics

2008-07-25T14:03:00.000-07:00

Entertainment Weekly recently published an exhaustive mega-list of the "new classics" of pop culture. The lists, which really aren't all that bad, enumerate the 100 greatest books, TV shows, films, albums, etc. of the last 25 years.

To me, "classic" works of art are 1) of extraordinary quality and 2) of significant cultural/social/political impact. Classics are game-changers -- media events that helped define an era. Psycho, for example, is a classic not just because it's exceptionally made, but because it influenced the horror genre for decades and sits as a rich historical median between the classical and post-classical eras of Hollywood cinema.

So, with that, here are what I consider the new classics of the last 25 years. These aren't my absolute faves; they're a compromise between personal taste and cultural impact.

TV Shows:
1) The Daily Show
2) The Office (UK)
3) The Simpsons
4) Freaks and Geeks
5) Seinfeld

Books:
1) The Satanic Versus by Salman Rushdie (1988)
2) Watchmen Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons (1987)
3) Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1985)
4) The Corrections Jonathan Franzen (2001)
5) White Noise by Don Delillo (1985)

Albums:
1) Daydream Nation (1988) by Sonic Youth
2) OK Computer by (1997) Radiohead
3) Funeral by (2004) Arcade Fire
4) Slanted & Enchanted (1992) by Pavement
5) Grace (1994) by Jeff Buckley

Films:
1) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
2) Mulholland Dr. (2001)
3) Se7en (1995)
4) Toy Story 2 (1999)
5) Pulp Fiction (1994)

McCain Pun Mania

2008-07-23T16:33:00.001-07:00

If you read the Huffington Post, Daily Kos, or any political site that allows users to leave comments, you've no doubt read a sentence featuring the word "McSame."

This is one of many, many nicknames low-level Internet activists have churned out for the Arizona senator. "McSame" is the most popular, but there are countless others. Here are some other gems I've come across:

McBlame (Get it? He's to blame for Iraq 'cause he voted for the war!)
McBush (Get it? Bush's third term!)
McFlame (Get it? He's a hothead!)
McCane (Get it? 'Cause he's so old he needs a cane to walk!)
McThuseluh (OK, that one's actually kind of funny)
InSane
McPain
McSprain
McLame
McShame
McWhiner

As you might tell from that last one, you can make a John McCain pun out of anything, really. I've even seen such clever turns of phrase as "McOld," "McLoser," and "McBombBombBombBombBombIran."

Let me know if I've missed any.

The Green Revolution as Trend Journalism

2008-07-23T12:29:00.000-07:00

Kim Severson published a feature story in the New York Times yesterday on so-called "lazy locavores" -- that is, people who want to eat locally grown produce but don't have the space, time, or energy to garden.

While it's no hack-job, the article frames general "green" activities in trend-journalism terms. This, in my mind, is socially irresponsible.

Save the gee-golly-did-ya-hear-what-those-crazy-kids-are-up-to-now? pieces for cuddle parties, metrosexuals, and, I don't know, dudes who slather their chests with Preparation H to look ripped.

The novelty of "going green" may be nothing more than a fun change-up for some, but Severson paints her subjects as trend-spotting bandwagon-jumpers. This is the inherent framework of a trend piece: Find something a few folks are doing, leech onto it, and hype it up as the next passing fad.

Just look at this example, from my former paper. Note the hint of exhaustion and irritation in the headline, as though whoever wrote it is totally sick of hearing about organic-this and carbon-footprint-that.

Here's my main problem with articles like these: We are in the beginning stages of what is most certainly not a fad or a trend. Our society is fundamentally shifting away from conspicuous consumption and toward sustainability. You've no doubt noticed. To report these seismic changes as standard trend-spotting journalism is counter productive, because it suggests that sustainability's just a fleeting trend. It's not -- and it deserves better than coverage that simply asks "Guess what's gone organic this week??"

The Lincoln Group

2008-07-20T12:38:00.000-07:00

As early thesis reading, I'm breezing through When the Press Fails, a pretty solid account of the American media's lapdog days after 9/11.

One of the more enraging discussions in the book regards the Lincoln Group, a PR firm paid by the Pentagon to place pro-US stories in Iraqi newspapers. It's old news, but it came as news to me.

Read more about it here.

It's a return to the good old days of "grey propaganda," when the CIA planted anti-Mossadegh articles in American and Iranian newspapers, in hopes of framing Iran's progressive prime minister as an unpopular Communist. For those not familiar with the story, major spoiler ahead: It worked.

An interesting read

2008-07-07T16:41:00.001-07:00

Here you'll find a new LA Times article on the fascinating connection between Hollywood and the US Army.

In essence, it's one man's job -- Lt. Col. J. Todd Breasseale -- to decide which major-studio scripts receive Army assistance and which ones do not. Often, with big-budget blockbusters and war films, filmmakers cannot push projects into production without the Army providing access to jets, planes, ships, etc.

Put bluntly, the army can ostensibly kill a film because of something Breasseale finds objectionable in a script.

As a progressive film-lover, I'm immediately off-put by the idea of a military man making ideological judgments on which films merit help and which ones don't. Yet, at the same time, Breasseale comes off as pretty reasonable in the piece. He's no artless ideologue. The writer pits Breasseale against Crash mega-hack Paul Haggis, and it's debatable which figure is more convincing.

To call this censorship would be knee-jerk liberalism, which is what I think Haggis is guilty of here. Still, the situation is troubling. Now, I understand it would be against the Army's greater interest to help Oliver Stone shoot his latest hit-piece on the US government. Clearly the Army can't help every production that needs a tank in scene 12, so it hires someone to act as a filter, to decide which projects get assistance and which ones don't. There is no set of objective criteria used in this process, so there's certainly room for Breasseale to make PR-driven value judgments in the name of "fairness" and "accuracy."

The problem I have is with Breasseale seemingly believing that filmmakers have an obligation to portray the military in a balanced, "nuanced" way. They don't. American filmmakers are artists in a country that values freedom of expression, and as such they have no obligation to any outside entity. It's OK for the the Army to avoid helping a film it doesn't like, just as it's OK for a corporation to not play ball with a film that mocks corporate America. It only makes sense. But Breasseale's goals are clearly propagandistic -- it's his job, essentially, to make it so the Iraq War doesn't become culturally defined by a series of scathing films (i.e. Vietnam = Born on the Fourth of July, Apocalypse Now).

Thus far he's gotten lucky: Every major Iraq-related fiction film has failed commercially and critically. In the article, he disingenuously exploits this fact and claims the films failed because of their one-sidedness. Nice try. The implicit argument here is that people don't like anti-war films, and they'd much rather watch balanced, more neutral accounts of war. I'm not sure too many people saw the trailer for Rendition and thought "Now, I would go see an even-handed film on America's use of torture, but this I'll pass." I'd argue it's not anti-war films that critics and audiences don't like, but rather it's bad anti-war films.

(Brief digression: The flat-out failure of Iraq War films to resonate with critics/audiences has given false ammo to those on the left and right. Liberals say critics pan Iraq films because of the status-quo bias inherent in the corporate media, while conservatives relish every box-office failure as another example of Hollywood's out-of-touch liberalism. Both sides are wrong here: Liberal film critics blasted Rendition, Redacted, Lions for Lambs, etc. because they were poorly made on the level of cinematic craft, not because of any ideological dispute; while audiences rejected the films simply because they were bad and not because of their deep-down support of the Iraq War. Most Americans are against the war, obviously, so it doesn't make any sense to argue that these films' financial failure suggests otherwise).

In Breasseale's view, it seems, the perfect war film makes no polemical claims; rather, it presents a neutral depiction of the US Army at work.

It's no wonder the story's accompanied by a photo of Breasseale holding a framed poster for Black Hawk Down, the Jerry Bruckheimer war-porn fantasy from 2001.

I'd be interested to know what others thought of this story and the Army program it discusses. I'm not outright against it, but, at the very least, I'd be interested in learning how precisely Breasseale determines a "good" film from a "bad" one. Is it just accuracy? What if a filmmaker is accurate in his negative depiction of the Army? Is he required to show a differing viewpoint? Must Iraq War films be made with a bizarre incarnation of the Fairness Doctrine in place?

All questions I'd like to research and answer soon.

Haven't written in a while

2008-07-01T20:39:00.000-07:00

I've been quite busy with my position at the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. I've taken hours of video and hundreds of pictures on the floods that've been going down here. I hope to get some of the good ones up shortly, that is if the DNR doesn't have some copyright qualms with my uploading the photos on a blog.

I saw two films in theaters last weekend and wanted to discuss them very briefly:

Wall*E: Pixar's newest is as good as everyone says. Quelle surprise. The film skewers our culture of convenience without the ham-fisted, Randy-Newman-montage lameness of Cars. It's the best film I've seen thus far this year. The film pays tribute to everything from Chaplin to Kubrick, and does so without completely alienating the kiddies. A number of friends have argued that Wall*E is the best Pixar film to date; I still reserve that spot for Toy Story 2, but this one's undoubtedly a top-tier addition to the cannon. Mark my words: Filmgoers my age will look back on the '90s and 2000s as a golden age of cinematic animation, surpassing the prior untouchable span from the '30-'50s that gave us Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, etc.

The Happening: Now, let's get one thing out of the way: I didn't hate it. In fact, I've pretty much thought all of M. Night's films have ranged from OK to quite good. The Happening is better than Lady in the Water, if for nothing else because the film has a number of genuine scares. The premise -- that some sort of airborne agent causes uncontrollable suicide -- is strong. Shyamalan builds suspense and dread in his money scenes by visualizing a quick succession of events: blank expressions, verbal delirium, backwards pacing, etc. Rather than have his victims quickly bite the bullet, Shyamalan forces us to watch these warning signs first. Essentially, each time you hear someone speak nonsense, you know they'll be dead within a minute, and the terror is in knowing there's nothing anyone can do to stop it. Water's postmodernist jokery was amusing and nothing more, while The Happening displays Night's ability to craft ominous, memorable images. But, in all, the movie's absurd and not particularly worth seeing in theaters. So much of it seems intentionally bad, but, even then, why? Why the awful performances? Why the bombastic score? Why the limp-to-the-finish ending? All in the name of creating the "the best B movie ever made"? More inexcusable than anything else, the film is shoddily made, having been shot in just 44 days. It's poor editing is remarkable, given how even Night's questionable films like The Village are at least well-executed. The film shifts tones wildly, and contains a core melodramatic center that's no different than the likes of Signs and War of the Worlds.

So, one weekend, two films concerning environmental issues. One is a call to arms, another a warning of what's to come. At least they're both better than The Day After Tomorrow.

The Obama-Dylan connection

2008-06-11T10:43:00.000-07:00

Forty-four years after Bob Dylan released liberal America's audio Bible, The Times They Are A-Changin', the 67-year-old is backing change-candidate Barack Obama for the presidency.

This is an exciting time to be alive.

Obama was two years old when Dylan released songs like "Only A Pawn In Their Game." In the context of Obama's perceived problem with "working class whites" and his infamous bitter comment, Dylan's lyrics are startling:

The deputy sheriffs, the soldiers, the governors get paid /
And the marshals and cops get the same /
But the poor white man's used in the hands of them all like a tool /
He's taught in his school /
From the start by the rule /
That the laws are with him /
To protect his white skin /
To keep up his hate /
So he never thinks straight /
'Bout the shape that he's in /
But it ain't him to blame /
He's only a pawn in their game.

This is one of the most insightful deconstructions of American race/class relations I've ever encountered. The words raise the hairs on my arms. Dylan does it right: He still leaves himself open for the elitist label ("Who's this guy telling me I can't think straight??!"), but he can't be accused of being condescending. If anything, he offends political leaders, not those who vote for them.

Imagine Dylan, the man who never stops touring, traveling across Appalachia performing songs like "Pawn" to rural crowds. Imagine this --

-- only in the year 2008. It's taken a man like Barack Obama to awaken Dylan from his decades-long stretch of public political apathy. I can only dream of what a re-energized, socially-charged Dylan could do for Obama in the fall. In my fantasy, he writes and performs new finger-pointing songs, awakening himself from political apathy and those who hear his music, stressing divisions of class over divisions of race (a classic Old Left tactic), reminding young and old that Dylan's ideas from the '60s aren't dead historical objects -- they are alive and more relevant today than in any time in the last 40 years.

Consider another powerhouse track from The Times They Are A Changin', "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Caroll," which uses the true story of a rich white man murdering a poor black woman to discuss class in unbelievably moving ways:

William Zanzinger, who at twenty-four years /
Owns a tobacco farm of six hundred acres /
With rich wealthy parents who provide and protect him /
And high office relations in hte politics of Maryland /
Reacted to his deed with a shrug of his shoulders /
And his swear words and sneering, and his tongue it was a-snarling /
In a matter or minutes on bail went out walking /
[ ... ]
Hattie Carroll was a maid of the kitchen /
She was fifty-one years old and gave birth to ten children /
Who carried the dishes and took out the garbage /
And never sat once at the head of the table /
And didn't even talk to the people at the table /
Who just cleaned up all the food from the table /
And emptied the ashtrays on a whole other level /
Got killed by a blow, lay slain by a cane /
That sailed through the air and came down through the room /
Doomed and determined to destroy all the gentle /
And she never done nothing to William Zanzinger.

Watch Dylan perform the whole song below:

A figure like Dylan is exactly what Obama needs to help win over these mythical working-class white voters. At his old best, Dylan used pathos to help listeners see how they've been "bent out of shape by society's pliers." He didn't condescend; he showed how even reasonable, sharp people (re: not bitter working-class dupes) could unknowingly perpetuate societal divisions of race and class. He also revealed who stood to benefit from such divisions.

Obama is running to unite the country, but, thus far, his attempts at Dylan-esque insight have backfired. People tell him he's running to be the president, not the "sociologist in chief." It isn't surprising that Obama's tried to take a few pages out of the Dylan play book -- the senator, after all, does list Dylan as one of his favorite musicians on his Facebook profile. But, let's face it, Obama will never have the realness, the folksy cred Dylan earned in the early '60s. People will listen to Bob strum on an acoustic guitar and tell them they're being used like tools. They might have a harder time listening to a Harvard grad who bemoans the skyrocketing price of arugala. It's not fair, but it's the unfortunate reality.

Alongside other supporters like The Boss and Neil Young, Dylan could be an excellent pitch-hitter for Obama. Imagine these all-American rock legends -- each of them as real as the day is long -- invigorating older, Americana voters for the Obama cause.

The Boss addresses the working-class, Dylan the disenfranchised, and Young preaches to the anti-war choir.

As far as rocker-surrogates go, you couldn't ask for three stronger voices. Barack should get these guys performing shows in the Rust Belt ASAP. Dylan would take some serious arm-twisting, but I'd bet on Springsteen and Young drawing crowds on the senator's behalf.

Someone make this happen.

Senator Kerry weighs in on Iran issue

2008-05-24T09:32:00.000-07:00

John Kerry gives support to some of my points from yesterday's post on Iran and Strassel. His op-ed appears in today's Washington Post. Here is a choice quote I enjoyed:

...the conversation America's president should be having with the Iranian people. We should seize the chance to tell some of the region's most pro-American people how their own president has isolated them, denying their great culture its place in the world and the region a constructive dialogue.
There's a reason the late Tom Lantos, Congress's only Holocaust survivor and a formidable diplomat, applied for a visa to enter Iran every year for the last decade of his life. What better way to puncture the petty lies of a demagogue than to force him to confront a man who has lived the very history he denies and trivializes?
Some have asserted that meeting with Iran's leaders would legitimize Ahmadinejad, who is neither Iran's supreme leader nor someone whom Obama specifically promised to meet. Curiously, many critics then hype Ahmadinejad as a threat of historic proportions, thereby granting the stature they seek to deny.

Intelligent people like Reza Aslan also agree that "because the president of Iran is basically a powerless figure, the only way he can bring any authority to himself is by using the bully pulpit, and he uses it with enormous sophistication by essentially setting himself up as some kind of pan-Islamist leader."

Aslan gives that quote at about the three-minute mark in this clip:

Too bad those in Strassel's camp -- which apparently includes whoever uploaded the above Youtube video, based on the absurd title of the clip (along with being "insane," "Reza Aslan" is apparently not even Mr. Aslan's real name, given that his name appears in unnecessary quotation marks) -- just don't seem to understand such seemingly simple logic.

Response to Wall Street Journal article

2008-05-23T19:15:00.000-07:00

I've gotten pretty out of hand recently with emailing political pundits with whom I disagree. I was about to type "reporters" instead of "pundits," but then I remembered the pieces that have irked me toward hate mail haven't exactly come from credible journalists (I'm looking in your direction, Rick Santorum).

Tonight, I read this Obama hit piece in the Wall Street Journal by Kimberley A. Strassel. I find her writing consistently despicable, as have others. She makes broad-stroke blasts against the Wall Street Journal editorial board too easy.

After reading her piece, I immediately tried to send her an email detailing why I thought her column was flawed, but the address listed at the end of her op-ed (kim@wsj.com) came back in error twice. Let readers voice their opinions by leaving a faulty email address at the end of your piece -- real classy, Kim.

Well, here is the email I tried to send her. In order to comprehend it, you may have to read her piece first. I apologize for making you do that. I hope she Googles herself sometime soon and reads this.

1) President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not a "dictator," as you claim in your article against Obama. I know a lot of political pundits REALLY want him to be one, but, I'm sorry, he's not. If you knew anything about the Iranian government, you'd know Ahmadinejad actually doesn't possess much power. The country is an Islamic Republic that is led by a supreme leader. "President" is a bit of a misnomer. Those gung ho for a war with Iran, however, have tried their hardest to convince the world that Ahmadinejad has the power to launch nukes at any second. Make no mistake: Ahmadinejad is an idiot, but he's also an incredibly potent propaganda pin-up for a war with Iran. He's just such an easy target, with his history of indefensible statements. But he's not a dictator. Nothing even close. It's very irresponsible to trump up such an idea, unless, of course, you're hoping to scrape up justification for a military strike in Iran.

2) Your dig at the "wonderfully revealing moment" is just dumb. Give me a fucking break. You're actually arguing that Bush was NOT talking about Democrats? You're really going to make that argument? You're free to make it, but don't be surprised if every journalist in the country disagrees with you.

3) Like many like-minded writers on this issue, you abstractly argue that to speak with a rogue leader is to legitimize him. What does that actually mean? New York conservatives had a fit last year when Lee Bollinger "legitimized" Ahmadinejad at Columbia University. But did he really "legitimize" anyone? Here's what I saw happen: Bollinger gave Ahmadinejad a microphone, and the President used the forum to unambiguously embarrass himself. No one legitimized anyone. Remember the play his words about gays in Iran got? How on earth did that legitimize him? If anything, it offered the world another glimpse of a petty president and his ploys to gain international attention.

So, nice try. You'll have many more months, though, to craft new, improved Obama hit pieces. Feel free. We're not buying them, especially when their rooted in jingoistic falsehoods (see point 1), disingenuous arguments (point 2), and anti-speech conservative ideology (point 3).

Do any of my points register or seem reasonable, or are they all brush-off worthy?

A Primitive Society: Dr. Jerry Schnoor discusses climate change

2008-05-20T09:48:00.000-07:00

Jerry Schnoor is one of my two bosses as the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research. He's a pretty big deal. Last year, Iowa's governor Chet Culver hired him to chair the Iowa Climate Change Advisory Council.

In the video above, he speaks at a symposium on climate change and human rights at the University of Iowa back in February. He gives about 50 lectures like this one a year.

He hits all the right notes: He startles you without harping on doom-and-gloom fearmongering and presents tangible solutions to energize his listeners. He also wins points for his a-DOR-able use of the phrase "OMG."

Here's one quote I particularly love:

We have a Spanish company named Acciona Energy in West Branch, Iowa, just to the east of us. If you talk to them, they are very worried about climate change, but they see that as the central mission of their company -- to help mitigate it. And they're excited about it, they're enthusiastic about it, and their facing it with a challenge mentality, like how we say 'Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country.' The challenge of putting a man on the moon. That's how they see it -- in SPAIN. Why can't we see it like that? What is wrong with us? What happened to the can-do American spirit?

This is my final video for CGRER until the job starts again in August. Starting Friday, I begin doing video work for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

Radiohead live: St. Louis

2008-05-16T12:56:00.000-07:00

Two nights ago, on May 14, I saw Radiohead perform the following songs live:

Fake Plastic Trees
My Iron Lung
Airbag
Paranoid Android
Exit Music (For a Film)
Everything in its Right Place
Kid A
Optimistic
Idioteque
Pyramid Song
You and Whose Army?
The Gloaming
There There
Myxomatosis
15 Step
Bodysnatchers
Nude
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
All I Need
Faust Arp
Reckoner
House of Cards
Jigsaw Falling into Place
Videotape
Bangers and Mash

Needless to say, it was a pretty extraordinary night. As a part of the band's carbon-conscious touring regiment, no bottles with (non-recyclable) caps were sold, shirts made out of recycled plastic bottles were for sale, and containers were available (and widely advertised) to collect all plastic cups.

I saw a girl there with a white tee-shirt with the words "plastic bottles blow."

This, as you may know, is a big deal to me. The band also gave carpoolers priority parking spots -- a perfect example of a small incentive to reduce CO2 emissions. You're not going to get everyone to stop profligate use of natural resources for the sheer goodness of mankind; but, give them a good parking spot and a good chance to avoid the post-event traffic clog, and even the most apathetic individuals may find themselves complying.

Oh, and the music was great too. A number of the songs sounded better than they do on the records, honestly. The killer sound quality -- along with Thom Yorke's spastic dance moves -- turned even snoozer tracks like "The Gloaming" into surprise highlights.

This was a hell of a way to jump-start the summer.

I'm Not There: 2007's movie of the year?

2008-05-08T22:17:00.000-07:00

Is this an image from the best movie of 2007, a year as impressive as any in the last decade?

Erudite NYC film critics think so. But this was a year, might I remind you, of No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Once, Ratatouille, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Persepolis, Eastern Promises, The King of Kong, Knocked Up, and The Bourne Ultimatum. That's some serious competition.

I'm Not There just hit DVD this week, and so I finally got a chance to have a much-needed second viewing. When I first saw the film in theaters a few months back, I had two immediate thoughts:

1) That was fucking sweet.
2) What the hell?

I was wrestling with one main question: Would I like this film -- at all -- if every tiny inter-textual reference wasn't about a musician whose work I already loved? If I'm Not There were a Richard Marx biopic, would I have even sat through it? If the director made constant nods to Marx's albums, his interviews, and his love life, could I have actually managed to sit and stare at the screen for 135 minutes? Could I take two dozen music montages set to Marx's adult contempo classics?

Probably not.

So why does I'm Not There work so well? After a second viewing, I think I have the answer: Because it's so damn fun. In the tradition '60s art films, Haynes' movie stretches the limits of narrative cinema but entertains the hell out of you in the process. From its playful opening titles, obviously lip-synched musical numbers, and Brechtian over-the-top acting, I'm Not There screams French New Wave. But who cares? You could write a small book pinpointing the film's references to Godard, Fellini, and, of course, Dylan lyrics. But why? If you get the references, good for you. But you don't need to be in on the joke to appreciate its infectiousness. I'm Not There invites you into its world, rewards the already converted, but goes out of its way to entice those with minimal interest in or experience with Dylan.

To me, this sets the film apart from the postmodern pack. Other postmodern films tend to shove inter-textual references in your face, mocking you for every one you miss. They're like two hours at a hipster party.

Personally, I don't like being mocked. I'm Not There is one of the few postmodern films of the last decade I can really back; it challenges you to view cinema differently, but it's never condescending or self-important. The film deconstructs the Hollywood narrative without assuming the viewer is a passive dupe who needs to be taught a lesson on how movies distort reality.

As I write this post, I'm listening to Time Out Of Mind for the first time. Geez Louise. It seems no film -- not even one of the best films in a year of amazing films -- can compare to the real thing.

Knee jerk liberal arguments: Installment Four

2008-05-05T21:25:00.000-07:00

Welcome back, fine readers. Now, on with it.

Knee jerk liberal argument #4: Romanticism of Europe (aka, "God, they're so relaxed over there...")

Yet another way to bait conservatives to bust out the blame-America-first card, this knee jerk liberal argument backhandedly blasts America by romanticizing Europe.

To once again quote Sean,

"(This might be my favorite, largely due to my personal tendency to fall victim to it) Generalized romanticism of Europe, including ignoring its xenophobic, facist streak, consistent problems with unemployment, slow economic growth, etc. This streak is often magnified by a study abroad experience spent drinking."

As Sean gets at, even though this argument can be obnoxious, it's also really understandable. I've never even been to Europe and I romanticize it. Musicians have made Whole albums pandering to this bail-to-Europe itch American liberals often feel.

My brother-in-law Kaveh and I have had a number of conversations about this topic. One time, after a recent trip to Greece, Kaveh discussed how talking politics was so refreshingly different in Athens than it was in Naperville. As I could imagine. But then, after about 10 minutes of extolling his love of Greece and Europe at large, Kaveh added a buried footnote:

"Of course they have their prejudices there," he explained, shifting tones. "Like antisemitism." I think I saw something on the History Channel about that once.

Kaveh, like Sean and myself, was willing to all-but overlook such glaring shortcomings because the package -- as a whole -- was so appealing. Like my own views of New York City, Europe becomes idealized, utopian. Again like New York City, it becomes a projected liberal fantasy of everything that isn't George W. Bush.

So, this knee jerk liberal argument, as you might agree, is more funny than irritating. Just about everyone's been guilty of it at one point or another. And, let's not forget, the inverse American argument -- constructing Europe as a pin-up of amorality and socialism for conservative political gain -- is infinitely more offensive.

Lastly, Sean mentioned study abroad as a strong reinforcer of Europe romanticization. Let's not forget Amelie. Or Cinema Paradiso. After movies like those, I basically assume the entire continent is bathed in a warm orange glow at all times.

Sean Hannity meets KRS-One

2008-04-20T20:45:00.000-07:00

This is a truly head-exploding example of what's wrong with cable news.

Hannity grills KRS in his usual right-wing fashion, which is perfectly fine, but wait until the clip gets past the one minute mark...

We have an intelligent, activist black man discussing "who has the power to define" racial discourse in one-third of the screen, and the other two-thirds ... "Country Grammar"??!

I've heard apologist arguments before about how the flash-bang visuals on Fox News are over-the-top but essentially apolitical and harmless. I say look at this clip. Dwarfing KRS-One with a Nelly video here works on a number of levels for the channel:

1) For practicality, it sexes up the image, just like the channel's gun-shot transitions. This way the segment's producers can slip in some shots of a few rap videhos.

That's obvious sensationalism, sure. BUT, pre-packaged with the sleaze, we get clear ideological messages:

2) The images tear down KRS as an artist and reduce hip-hop to the lowest common denominator. KRS-One's entire body of work goes against Nelly's antics, yet the channel suggests the two men are one in the same. "My Philosophy," "Hot in Herre," whatever. Same shit, different scary black man. KRS, Nelly, and all those other rappers get balled up into one homogenized mass -- and, consequently, the bullshit we hear on the radio becomes representative of the whole.

3) And, lastly, the images tear down KRS as a left-leaning figure. The visual comparison to Nelly taints everything that comes out of his mouth, given that Nelly would probably be the last person anyone on earth would go to for sociopolitical insight. KRS-One's blunt political views clearly won't jibe with most of Hannity's viewers, and, without having to shout a word, Hannity makes sure he stacks the deck against him from the beginning.

Classic.

Short video on black carbon research

2008-04-14T21:07:00.000-07:00

My boss has gotten a lot of press recently for his breakout black carbon research. He's found that black carbon currently has 60 percent of the climate warming effect of CO2. This ranks black carbon --commonly called soot -- as the second most important player in global warming.

I made a short video on my boss and his black carbon research for work. Check it out below:

Website picks up on Sri Lanka doc

2008-04-11T08:57:00.000-07:00

Iowa Independent published a story today about the Sri Lanka documentary. The feature contains an extended interview with me about the making of the film.

You can read the interview, the story, and see the movie here.

It felt funny (and, I'll admit it, pretty cool) to be on the other side of the journalistic process. I've never had a story written about something I've created. So, if I sound like a posturing windbag, forgive me. It was my first time.

Knee jerk liberal arguements: Installment Three

2008-04-10T09:29:00.000-07:00

Standard knee jerk liberal argument #3: "Not (blank) enough."

In this argument form, a knee jerk liberal denounces a mainstream person or object because it somehow lacks the true essence of a marginalized group or thing.

Brokeback Mountain? Not gay enough.

Barack Obama? Not black enough.

Arguments like this are a symptom of a larger issue: the automatic (dare I say knee-jerk) rejection of the mainstream. They also imply that single persons or works of art must be perfectly indicative of a larger population. Because Barack isn't like most black people on TV, he is therefore "not black enough." Shouldn't he have known to fashion his personality to mirror an entire heterogeneous minority???

Knee jerk liberal arguments: Installment Two

2008-04-08T16:01:00.000-07:00

I asked my friend Sean to help me out with this series because of our mutual hate of knee jerk liberal arguments. This one comes from him:

Knee jerk liberal argument #2: "I hate Democrats AND Republicans."

Here's how Sean put it:

"Both parties are hopelessly corrupt." Ralph Nader just said this phrase on television. Again, quite a common argument amongst failed third party candidates, academic leftists, and the Znet wing of the party. I bought into this logic as a 16 year old in '00, but I outgrew it right around the time bombs began to fall on Baghdad. Holding this belief really requires a willful suspension of disbelief at this point.

Sean hits it right on the head, so there's not much to add. I would say, though, that I find this argument-form particularly irritating for its elitism and condescension. People who use this talking-point obviously think they're very clever. Obviously their piercing insight places them above the political landscape, and obviously you, as the listener, have never stopped to think about the political system in America. Obviously you're too blinded by your partisan loyalty to see that Democrats and Republicans are merely two sides of the same corrupt coin. Obviously you regurgitate partisan orthodoxy like a knee-jerk drone. Obviously.

Sri Lanka 2006: post-tsunami documentary

2008-04-03T14:14:00.000-07:00

This is the latest documentary short I've created for work. It is called "Sri Lanka 2006: Business, Relief, and Water after the Tsunami."

This footage comes courtesy of Swarnavel Eswaranpillai, a cinema doctoral student at the University of Iowa. He traveled with fellow Iowa professors Paul Greenough and Harish Naraindas to Sri Lanka two years after the 2004 tsunami to capture interview and disaster footage. He gave me permission to edit this short documentary using his images. This video will accompany a piece on water privatization I am writing for a university magazine this May.

I've split the 15-minute film into two parts:

To view other environmental-awareness docs I've made this school year, check here and here.

Stephen Malkmus

2008-04-03T10:02:00.000-07:00

Stephen Malkmus gave a great interview with the AV Club the other day. He is the man who inspired the name of this very blog. I admire his humor, insight, and total lack of pretension. He's critical of modern indie rock without sounding like a crotchety old man.

Here are some highlights:

On writing lyrics: I write with a filter of trying to avoid the completely obvious. Trying to avoid Lenny Kravitz-style rhymes.

On the evolution of indie rock: The indie moniker has obviously grown with movies like Juno and The Arcade Fire or whatever. U2 wants to hang around with Arcade Fire. U2 didn't want to hang around with Pavement. It's too different, you know? Maybe they're better or something. Or maybe we were, you know, not a threat. The difference between U2 and Pavement was quite vast. It's grown narrower—closer, I guess. Radiohead being the biggest band in the world.

On indie-ification of genres: Country music has even been [turned indie]—Drive-By Truckers and these bands like that that I read about recently, they're part of it. It doesn't really matter, you know. They're just nervous and don't want the same influences as other people. They want to name-check different things.

On Portland: It used to feel like it was a little off the grid. Not so much now. But if you're in Williamsburg, you feel like there's 40 other bands, and your influences are out getting cosmopolitan, and everyone is trying to be cool or something. And you really don't have to be cool here. I think that's a good thing—that you can feel sort of isolated here. [...] It's a safe, comfortable place. And those kinds of service-economy jobs—like, waitstaff jobs and stuff—they have some pride here. You can be a coffee-slinger and have some pride and be kind of cool here, whereas in New York City, you're going to work on Broadway at Au Bon Pain.

Brother Thelonious

2008-03-29T19:01:00.000-07:00

I love Thelonious Monk. I love robust, heavy, high-alcohol-content beer.

Until recently, these were largely separate obsessions. Then, this came along.

I found this gem, literally, at my doorstep. A few weeks ago, I got a package from a friend of mine in Washington DC. Inside, amidst a few other brews and a copy of the Weekly Standard (we have a strange sense of humor) I found a bottle of Brother Thelonious, a new powerhouse beer from North Coast Brewing Co. Boy did my eyes grow wide. A 9.3%-alcohol ale named after one of my favorite musicians ever, complete with a hugely awesome illustration on the bottle?

Sounds great, right? And here's the real kicker: it's actually damn good beer, too. Not just novelty-good. The beer doesn't really scream "Monk!" when you taste it, but, then again, what would that even taste like? (dissonant? idiosyncratic? staccato?)

Like one of my other favorite beers, Brother Thelonious is a drink to savor. I sipped mine over the course of a two hour movie and that felt just right.

The North Coast Brewing Company really knows how to sell a product. They know that jazz enthusiasts can be punishingly nerdy. Just name any arbitrary product after Bud Powell, Coltrane, or Mingus and we'll be interested. In Minneapolis a while back I stumbled into a coffee house serving only jazz-themed espressos, lattes, and smoothies. You should have seen the look on my face. I got a Monk coffee-drink, an iced, sugary concoction that was basically like anything at Starbucks. But of course I loved it. Seeing the words "Thelonious Monk" on the overhead menu made that drink almost worth the $4 I paid for it. I wasn't just getting a morning dose of caffeine. Those two words made that drink an experience. This is the mind of a jazz listener. Jazz, this thing we love, appears so little in popular culture so, when it does, we pounce. At least I do.

I just noticed a "Merchandise" tab on the beer's website. This is bad news. Posters, hoodies, mugs ... am I gonna be that big of a sucker and buy Brother Thelonious goblet? Almost certainly.

UPDATE: I just called a local beer vendor and learned that North Coast no longer does business in the state of Iowa. Boo-urns. Looks like I might have to cross that creepy threshold and begin buying beer online.

McCain on HIV, sex education

2008-03-29T13:11:00.000-07:00

John McCain, I think it's pretty safe to say, has never sounded dumber than he did in this 2007 interview on HIV and sex education. I'm not a total McCain basher, but, really, this is just absurd. The mix of right-wing pandering and plain-old ignorance is truly cringeworthy.

Reporter: "Should U.S. taxpayer money go to places like Africa to fund contraception to prevent AIDS?"

Mr. McCain: "Well I think it’s a combination. The guy I really respect on this is Dr. Coburn. He believes – and I was just reading the thing he wrote– that you should do what you can to encourage abstinence where there is going to be sexual activity. Where that doesn’t succeed, than he thinks that we should employ contraceptives as well. But I agree with him that the first priority is on abstinence. I look to people like Dr. Coburn. I’m not very wise on it."

(Mr. McCain turns to take a question on Iraq, but a moment later looks back to the reporter who asked him about AIDS.)

Mr. McCain: "I haven’t thought about it. Before I give you an answer, let me think about. Let me think about it a little bit because I never got a question about it before. I don’t know if I would use taxpayers’ money for it."

Q: "What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush’s policy, which is just abstinence?"

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) "Ahhh. I think I support the president’s policy."

Q: "So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?"

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) "You’ve stumped me."

Q: "I mean, I think you’d probably agree it probably does help stop it?"

Mr. McCain: (Laughs) "Are we on the Straight Talk express? I’m not informed enough on it. Let me find out. You know, I’m sure I’ve taken a position on it on the past. I have to find out what my position was. Brian, would you find out what my position is on contraception – I’m sure I’m opposed to government spending on it, I’m sure I support the president’s policies on it."

Q: "But you would agree that condoms do stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Would you say: ‘No, we’re not going to distribute them,’ knowing that?"

Mr. McCain: (Twelve-second pause) "Get me Coburn’s thing, ask Weaver to get me Coburn’s paper that he just gave me in the last couple of days. I’ve never gotten into these issues before.

Knee jerk liberal arguments: Installment One

2008-03-26T10:18:00.000-07:00

Being a graduate student in the humanities, I experience the phenomenon of knee jerk liberalism far too often. I used to think this was funny, but, more and more, I've become irritated, pouncing on those who pass knee jerk liberalism as debate. It's not a good sign when I, of all people, am the most conservative voice in the room.

What exactly is a knee jerk liberal argument? Well, The Free Dictionary defines knee jerk liberal as "a person of strong liberal convictions who reacts predictably and emotionally to certain events." This is an appropriately vague definition because, as we will see over the course of several posts, there are many varieties of knee jerk liberal arguments.

My problem with these arguments isn't exactly that I disagree with the sentiments. Sometimes I do, but other times it comes down to this: "There's nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear." I can probably think of a few things I like less, but I concur totally with the point: There are few things more irritating for a progressive-minded person than hearing brain-dead arguments for your cause. It makes you, and the whole cause, look stupid.

Which brings us to our first knee jerk liberal argument.

Standard knee jerk liberal argument #1: The Crude Comparison. This argument is the most popular and takes on the most forms. In essence, the Crude Comparison model involves interrupting a discussion about a foreign crisis with a variation of the phrase "Really, when you think about it, that's not all that different from what's going on in the United States..." Here are a few examples I've seen over the last year:

Warping a discussion on repressive Middle Eastern politics by suddenly claiming that George W. Bush is like an authoritarian leader.
Claiming the surveillance thriller The Lives of Others shows a government "not all that different" from the Bush administration because both use covert surveillance on their own citizens.
Any and all comparisons between the US government and Nazi Germany.
Language comparing George W. Bush to a king or the Bush family to a monarchy (as much as I love the Arcade Fire, "The king's taken back the throne / the useless seed is sown" is textbook knee jerk liberalism).

I could go on. Like many knee jerk liberal arguments, this form of debate does nothing but further caricature the left as the "blame America first" crowd of the Democratic Party. It makes progressives not only look critical of their government (which is fine), but makes them look like they don't even understand the government they're criticizing. Comparing the Stasi's surveillance tactics to Bush's domestic wiretapping is ludicrous (this goes to all the film critics who hailed The Lives of Other as timely and relevant). Claiming that Bush is an authoritarian leader is a bend-over-backwards attack on someone who's not particularly difficult to criticize in the first place.

A significant subset of the Crude Comparison is the Crude Historical Comparison. In an example of this model, a knee jerk liberal would interrupt a conversation on women's rights in Saudi Arabia by "reminding" us to "remember the way women used to be treated in this country." I'm taking a class on Morocco and Bangladesh right now, and -- without fail -- someone makes this argument every session. Again, it does nothing but brand progressives as simplistic, Blame-America-First reactionaries. It's also oddly ethnocentric; why must conversations on foreign affairs, past or present, always refer back to America and its troubled history?

Not all arguments using this structure are patently offensive, but, more often than not, these arguments rely on a superficial, broad-stroke understanding of the United States. There's much to criticize about the Bush administration, but, in the end, a knee jerk liberal argument only helps their cause.

Starbucks in Iran

2008-03-25T11:13:00.000-07:00

Starbucks, like other American companies, cannot do business in Iran. Star Box, however, serves the best caramel macchiatos this side of the Karun River.

Iranian bloggers

2008-03-23T21:58:00.000-07:00

I'm currently writing two papers on the phenomenon of Iranian bloggers. There's a lot to say about those who've been blogging in Iran since 2003 -- here is a good place to start. Iranian bloggers may very well turn out to be one of the great Internet Age success stories. We'll see.

Mostly, I wanted to share with people one blog in particular. Of the dozens of blogs I've read for these two papers, this one is the one that's really gotten my attention. In order to do this blog justice, you must read it from the beginning, as the diary of bitterly funny, insightful young woman who was born AFTER the Islamic Revolution turned Iran into what it is today. This is enjoyable, painful stuff. I'm floored by the witty, brutally honest way she ridicules her government and her culture. It's almost too far, on occasion. This is the type of derisive, scathing insight I'm talking about:

for me Ramadan means staying hungry for hours and hours, have no energy to work, get headache, and wait impatiently for sunset! it makes no difference if you believe in "fasting" or not, you must be hungry and thirsty because GOD wants so!! this is what living in ISLAMIC REPUBLIC means, this is what stupidity means!

don't need to remind me the old funny story about how Ramadan lets us taste the hunger that hurts poor people!, its just deceiving ourselves! if one of those firm fasting ladies or gentlemen agree to spend even 5% of his/her monthly salary for poor hungry people, then i will beleive they really care for them! but just staying hungry and forcing others fast? has nothing to do with poor people! it is silly!

I'm not even sure I agree, but still -- I'm damn impressed. That's certainly a viewpoint you'd never hear from Iran's traditional media.

Mike Huckabee defends Obama

2008-03-20T11:54:00.000-07:00

You can read all about it here, or watch the full video below (jump to the 3:30 mark for the relevant stuff).

Here are some snippets of what he had to say: "Obama has handled this about as well as anybody could ... [Obama] made the point, and I think it's a valid one, that you can't hold the candidate responsible for everything that people around him may say or do. You just can't. Whether it's me, whether it's Obama ... anybody else. But he did distance himself from the very vitriolic statements ... "

"As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say 'That's a terrible statement!' ... I grew up in a very segregated south. And I think that you have to cut some slack -- and I'm gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who's gonna say something like this, but I'm just tellin' you -- we've gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told 'you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can't sit out there with everyone else. There's a separate waiting room in the doctor's office. Here's where you sit on the bus...' And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me."

A very classy move from Huckabee, I think. He cuts through the hit-job nonsense a gives a non-partisan answer. Let's hope others catch on. Obama does not equal Wright.

March 18, 2008 ... "A More Perfect Union"

2008-03-18T19:26:00.000-07:00

I try hard to avoid hyperbole. I really do. But Barack Obama has made that very difficult, so I'm just going to come out and say it: Today, March 18, 2008, Sen. Obama gave the greatest speech delivered in my lifetime.

If you haven't heard it, sit back, get comfortable, a see below.

I feel like a smarter person after those 38 minutes. To think he wrote this speech. Barack has always talked about how, as president, he wouldn't just tell America what it wants to hear; sometimes he'd tell the country what it needs to hear. For the first time, he gave us a preview of that today, discussing race in a way no has for decades. Not in sound-byte politics, but in a manner both from the heart and academically insightful. I could say a lot more, but I'm trying very hard to not sound like a fanboy. I am not. I am not a slavish Obama supporter -- I think it's stupid, for example, for Obama to criticize Clinton on her Iran vote from last year because, well, he missed the vote.

So, I don't see Barack as a fix-all or a messiah figure. But today, as I watched him give this speech -- a speech filled with nuanced, intelligent views on race, not crowd-pleasing platitudes -- I realized just how close we are to electing a man who could actually challenge us. Even if he doesn't win, this speech, I'm certain of it, will be remembered for a long, long time. For at least one day, we got a taste of an Obama presidency. And it was a good day.

Kristol outright lies in New York Times op-ed

2008-03-17T09:11:00.000-07:00

William Kristol, editor of the unapologetically conservative magazine the Weekly Standard, lied outright in an op-ed blasting Obama in the New York Times today. You can read his column here. Like most trying to exploit Obama's pastor in an effort to take down the Democratic front-runner, Kristol bent over backwards trying to trap Obama in a lie; that is, Kristol scrambled to find any shred of evidence that would place Obama at one of the reverend's vitriolic speeches. Obama claims that he has never heard one of Wright's politically-charged sermons.

Kristol, you can tell, really wanted to prove him wrong. And he did. Or, at least, he wanted to think he did.

As reported here, Kristol relied on an inaccurate source to prove Obama attended a July 22nd sermon that featured some of Wrights greatest hits. Barack, in fact, was here.

Nice try, Kristol. You've either 1) published an all-out lie in the country's preeminent newspaper, or 2) practiced inexcusably lazy journalism by not checking your source's claims before sending them to your editor.

Either way, the only reputation you've tarnished is your own.

Manhattan: The Film, The Town

2008-03-08T21:09:00.001-08:00

About a year ago, a friend of mine posed a theory about Woody Allen's Manhattan: the film's merit hinges a great deal on one's own experiences with the titular town. Essentially, the more you love Manhattan, the more you'll love Manhattan. This was a criticism of the film I disagreed with at the time, mostly because I liked the film and had never visited the city.

In August, I spent my first few days in New York City.

I had an opportunity to see Manhattan on the big screen there -- to really put the above theory to the test -- but it didn't work in my schedule. So, last week, I finally revisited the film, to see if my real-life experiences had tainted my views of the film.

I can say for certain that I get the film more. More so, I think I get all of Woody's NCY films a little better after having spent an afternoon sitting on a park bench listening to a jazz band in Central Park, or an hour getting lost on the subway. Manhattan is all about romanticizing reality, and I've certainly never been to a place that begs to be romanticized more than New York City. Any serious look at Allen's body of work will reveal this as his main thematic concern: not neurotic comedy, not relationship woes, but the dichotomy between fantasy/romanticism (Manhattan) and reality (Manhattan the place). Just the above image -- park bench, jazz band, Central Park -- is so steeped in romantic NYC iconography it's downright silly. But I really did spend an afternoon doing that. Was I trying to live out what Allen had shown me in his movies? Had I been so intoxicated by Allen's idealized image of New York City that I actually made a pilgrimage to the exact spot of the "I lurve you" scene in Annie Hall? (see above photo)

The answer, of course, is yes. By the time I finally reached New York City at the age of 22, I had been so thoroughly primed by Allen's films that the real city was like a punch to the gut. Allen makes movies to divert himself from reality; for me, visiting the city was to take a five-day vacation into one of his films, to escape wholly from real life into a place I had been cultivated to view with the rosiest possible lens. Sure, the disparity between the rich and the poor was despicable, and it would cripple me financially to actually live there...but, damn, there are jazz bands and cinemas everywhere, and I can get around without a car, and there's the best in low- and high-brow cuisine, and you get the idea. The city seemed as if it were designed in a dream -- or, better still, a movie.

So, how did I view Manhattan after spending time in Manhattan? I liked the film more. The city revealed many shades of the film I had missed in previous viewings. But, as with many of his films, Allen's movies have a sense of universality that transcends a specific place. Just as Bill Murray bemoaned"She's my Rushmore" in that Wes Anderson film, I think you can watch a Woody Allen film and connect his passion for NYC with your own individual passion. The film seems to ask "What's your Manhattan?" What's that thing you're drawn to and repelled by at the same time? What's that thing you long to possess and experience, despite knowing it could very well be the end of you?

After three viewings of Manhattan and one trip to Manhattan, I'm discovering my answer to that question: Manhattan or Manhattan, the city or the cinema, reality or fantasy? I'll let you know when I figure that one out.

Guitar-driven rock records

2008-03-07T18:22:00.000-08:00

In the last week, I've purchased these two albums:

I'm not sure what sparked it, but I've been enjoying a lot of guitar-driven records lately. Don't get me wrong, I'm not exactly grooving to Joe Satriani-style banshee-wail solos, but albums like these are beginning to overtake my music collection. Maybe my old love of Pink Floyd -- a love that's been entirely dormant since my junior year of high school -- is returning in a new form. I did bust out The Dark Side of the Moon while making dinner a few weeks ago, but, in my defense, I was fully self-aware of how lame I must have looked.

But yes, these two records are excellent. Keep it Like a Secret makes me feel like I'm in high school again (in a surprisingly good way). I listen to "Time Trap" or "Carry the Zero" and I'm suddenly nostalgic of '90s indie rock, despite having NOT grown up listening to the genre. In 1998, I was spinning Third Eye Blind, not Pavement. But Secret makes me feel like I'm experiencing the formative years of indie rock, when songs meant a lot -- and not just when they were bought.

Marquee Moon is just spectacular. The title track is a mind-blower. The album is somewhere between a punk/classic rock/jam-band record. The tossed-off vocal delivery sounds like the early makings of LCD Soundsystem and other NYC hipster bands, and is complimented by radio-unfriendly guitar solos. It sounds quite unlike anything I've heard before -- which is awesome.

Iowa Wind Power: The Case for Environmental Mandates

2008-03-05T11:58:00.000-08:00

The Iowan magazine just published a story I wrote about wind power in the state of Iowa. You can find the article in the March/April issue of the magazine, or, take a gander at the scanned and PDF'd versions below (click to make legible):

Also, as hinted at in my bio at the end of the piece, I made a short wind power documentary to accompany the article. The video is about 11 minutes long and features footage of former state representative David Osterberg, University of Iowa President Sally Mason, and Iowa Governor Chet Culver. If you wish, take a looksie.

Yay for wind power, I say. It's not THE answer for energy independence, but it can and should play an essential role.

Super 2sday: The Bloodening

2008-03-04T11:12:00.000-08:00

So we probably still won't know who the Democratic nominee for the presidential election will be after tonight. In Clinton's best case scenario, she'll win Texas and Ohio, regaining some momentum to bring things back to a virtual tie with Obama. Obama's best case scenario is the knock-out punch. This seems unlikely on all fronts: even if he wins Texas (still a toss-up), Clinton has all-but vowed to fight on.

I've been supporting Obama's candidacy for well over a year, and I still want him to win. But, between Obama, Clinton, and McCain, here's how I see it: Obama is the best candidate and has a good shot at nabbing more independent voters than McCain in the general; Clinton runs an inept, ugly campaign, but she would make a good president if she could beat McCain (which is extremely questionable); McCain was great in 2000, but has devolved into a pandering tool over the last eight years -- still, as long as he avoids pandering to ultra-conservatives after inauguration, I think he'd also make a good president.

Most general elections come with the standard lesser-of-two-evils cliché. But this one might be a little different. An Obama/McCain race would be one for the ages, featuring two highly popular figures who've proven crossover appeal. There'd be fewer stark differences in a McCain/Clinton battle, with both candidates one-upping each other over who's the most centrist.
I'd pick the first pairing, but the second option would be far from heartbreaking. We'll see.

Classic Tim Russert

2008-03-03T18:07:00.000-08:00

I've always loved the way Tim Russert uses past statements to corner his interview subjects. It's really solid journalism and it's entertaining as hell. This is maybe the funniest example of that I've ever seen.

The Iraq/Somalia comparison isn't exactly airtight, but I'll be damned if it didn't make me laugh.

The King of Kong

2008-03-01T21:23:00.001-08:00

Well, it's been a slow night for me (re: friends out of town/busy, general social laziness) so I decided to watch The King of Kong: A Fist Full of Quarters.

This is a spectacularly tense, well-made documentary that's enjoyable on a number of levels. Most memorably, the film presents two of the weasliest people I've ever seen: Billy Mitchell and Brian Kuh. The former is an American original -- a manipulative egomaniac. The latter, his disciple, is Mitchell with none of the charisma. I loved hating both of them.

As the seeming polar opposite of those two clowns, the directors present Steve Wiebe, an unassuming family man with a passion for Donkey Kong. He's the affable outsider running against the well-established machine (reading election coverage has begun to poison my vocabulary, it seems). Both Wiebe and Mitchell are all-American men in their own ways: Wiebe is a family man looking to go from rags-to-riches in the Donkey Kong world; Mitchell is a businessman (he owns a restaurant with his own brand of hot sauce) married to a trophy wife (I know, it's unfair. I'm sure they love each other. But seriously, to quote one IMDB user, "This guy is a walking, talking 70's graduation photo come to life.").

I was endlessly fascinated by watching how these very different men aim for the same goal. It's a theme that resonates with a lot more than just video games (from sportsmanship to, yes, elections), and it's pretty powerful to watch events unfold in this film, especially because the filmmakers manage to give equal screentime for each opposing figure.

The film's masterstroke was in how subtly it showed Wiebe transform from just a guy playing for fun to a man on a personal quest for vanity and glory. Wiebe's no saint, and he becomes even less of one once he starts to get sucked into Mitchell's world of competitive gaming. Wiebe's the good guy, there's no doubt, but his unassuming innocence certainly seemed less genuine to me as the film progressed. It takes a lot of talent to pull something like that off in any narrative, let alone a documentary.

As I think about the movie, despite all of its structural strengths, I keep coming back to Mitchell and Kuh. If this were a fiction film, I'd knock them for being caricatures. The real joy of The King of Kong, more than anything, is in watching these unreal examples of human ugliness. Competition -- one of the bedrocks of America -- can breed a lot more than just excellence. It can breed Mitchell and Kuh, two slimy men who'll do anything to get -- and stay -- ahead.

Maiden voyage: Be Kind Rewind

2008-03-01T17:28:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my first blog post ever.

Today I wanted to talk about the last movie I saw in theaters, Be Kind Rewind.

Currently, this movie is earning a 67% freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a pretty dismal 52/100 rating on Metacritic. Here's a sampling of the nonsense offered by three prominent critics:

Anthony Lane: "Most of Be Kind Rewind feels as silly and undisciplined as the mini-movies cooked up by its hapless heroes."

Todd McCarthy: "It's a quick trip from whimsy to silliness in Be Kind Rewind, a notably ephemeral work by Michel Gondry, whose flights of fancy can't overcome the egregious illogic of the premise."

Emanuel Levy: "If you didn't read the credits, you would think that Be Kind Rewind was made by a grad of film School or first-time director--it's that raw and amateurish."

If you couldn't tell already, I disagree. To me, Be Kind Rewind is a superb piece of entertainment. Michel Gondry's film felt like a 100-minute vacation from the worst aspects of my generation. A lot of critics want you to think the film is "slight" or "silly." I'll give them the second, but never the first. Be Kind Rewind tackles media conglomeration, cultural homogenization, fan fiction, do-it-yourself media culture, and the notion of folk art vs. corporate art.

I could go on and elaborate here, but I'd probably be doing little more than paraphrasing one of my favorite critics, Keith Phipps from the AV Club. Here's how he put it (read whole review herehttp://www.avclub.com/content/cinema/be_kind_rewind) :

"Hollywood films have become monoliths. They arrive market-tested and as carefully packaged as a new deodorant, made with bankable stars, safe directors, and scripts that had their edges shaved off long before the cameras started rolling. They're products padded for maximum safety and spoken of in careful talking points before being released to theaters. And then they take on lives of their own. What a film does—or fails to do—to a viewer is much more personal.

The question of who controls popular culture is at the heart of Michel Gondry's Be Kind Rewind, and it's hard to imagine anyone else handling it with such a sure, light touch."

Phipps hits it right on the head. Gondry may be a little heavy handed in how he visualizes his themes, but the film is so earnest that it never even borders on pretentious. Take the film's beginning, for example: After the Fats Waller opening, we get a hovering helicopter shot of a 20-lane highway with a line of skyscrapers behind it. I was immediately put off by this blah opening image. But Gondry's camera moves away from the big-city tableaux, and heads underneath a bridge, where we see Jack Black and Mos Def defacing city property with an image of Fats Waller. In one shot, Gondry moves form the impersonal/macro to the personal/micro. The image is reminiscent of Hitchcock's opening of Psycho, a crane shot through a large city into the lascivious affairs of one couple through their window. In both films, we move from the innocuous to the underground and the seedy -- to see things we don't usually see in Hollywood movies (in Psycho we see infidelity and black underwear; in Rewind we see two men who, again and again, challenge the law for the sake of community art).

It may immediately seem pompous to compare a Jack Black movie to Hitchcock, I know. But, I'd argue, that gets at Gondry's incredible skill here: he's made a film about tangible, socially-relevant issues that's goofy, fun, and crowd-pleasing.

Gondry's movie isn't just a utopian vacation away from the real world. Sure, the film makes no claim to realism, and few would argue that the film's plot could actually happen in the real world, but, more than anything, Be Kind Rewind is a fable meant to get you excited about the idea of folk art. And, to me, it succeeds resoundingly. Gondry uses silliness and music montages to mobilize viewers, to make them want to be a part of the do-it-yourself movement, to make them question why art has to be handed down from companies to citizens.

But, lastly, the film has enough nuance to avoid Hollywood-bashing. One scene, for example, shows Black and Def talking about The Lion King in a small restaurant. Workers and patrons overhear their conversation and chime in with their own stories and opinion on the film. It's an oddly beautiful moment that shows how Hollywood movies -- the same movies that grow more homogeneous and innocuous by the year -- also have the power to connect people in ways only mass media can.

This is the first (and most likely last) Jack Black movie that's made me weep.