Better Than Raffi

Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back.

Epistemology 101

The Mist. Directed by Frank Darabont. Starring Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, and Laurie Holden.

The Mist is a very taut horror film. Some people might argue that it's a political allegory, but I thought it was a sophisticated look at the problem of induction. The whole film is an examination of the limits of our knowledge, and the best ways of testing our inferences about the world.

Characters are always testing their ideas about the mist and what lies beyond their senses. Biblical literalism looks like a complete washout for dealing with the problems posed by this new environment, but straightforward empiricism doesn't fare so well either.

It's the only way I can explain the ending. The main character makes an incorrect inference and shoots everyone in the car with him. If the director is making a political statement, I wouldn't want to put an "X" next to the party he supports on a ballot.

However, there was one thing that really stood out in the final scene. A woman who left the grocery store at the start of the film to find her children rides away to safety with her children on a flatbed truck. Does random chance leaven the harshness of the finale or does it drive home the cruelty of the protagonists fatal destiny? It's been over twenty-four hours since I've seen the film, and I'm still not sure.

It's the Drama, Stupid

Slate is one thing I read every day. It's replaced newspapers as my main source of information about current events. I like its healthy iconoclasm, but lately, I've noticed that Jessica Winter, a film critic at Slate does not enjoy smashing idols. Winter is more interested in talking about politics than art, and it makes for stilted reviews and commentary. Consider the following from a review of Wall Street:

Money Never Sleeps promises a newly globalized milieu (Pressman has stated that the film's locations include London, the United Arab Emirates, and "an Asian country"), but it may also provide an opportunity for Douglas et al. to provide a corrective to one of the unexpected side effects of Wall Street: the cult of personality attached to Gordon Gekko. Douglas says he's still stunned by the number of people who tell him that his Oscar-winning role was the reason they went to work on Wall Street. "It's so depressing and sad," Douglas says. Perhaps the actor's bemused remorse will result in a Gekko II that's a filthier piece of work, less glamorous, more pathetic. After all, nobody ever went into finance because of Patrick Bateman (or at least, no one would ever admit it), but there's no shame in naming Gekko as one's Bad Father. "I recall looking at that film and saying, 'That's what I want to be,' " recounts the late hedge-fund manager Seth Tobias in one of the Wall Street DVD featurettes. Somehow, an oleaginous villain meant to embody the worst excesses of his era became a folk hero and highly persuasive career counselor. Wall Street was intended as a cautionary tale, but oddly enough, it endures as a possibly timeless model for success.

Two thoughts occurred to me after reading that paragraph. Jessica Winter is obviously unaware of the old saw, "the devil has all the best tunes". I think it explains some, but not all, of Gekko's allure. Just as nobody dreams of being tied up and ravished by a liberal, pace O'Rourke, very few American's dream of working for an hourly wage.

The American "ideal" would be to go into business for yourself or at the very least to work on commission. I think Gekko embodies that ideal better than the young hero of the film, whatshisface, you know, the guy played by Charlie Sheen. I know the airline in Wall Street was "employee owned", but it still reeks of worker's co-operatives, no matter how efficiently it was run. Gekko expresses that entrepeneurial ethic, in his own perverse way, a lot better than his protege, whatshisface.

My second thought, is why is it necessary to criminalize normal behaviour? There are no laws against trading stocks. It's a perfectly legal, socially approved of way to make a living. The only crime I can see Gekko is obviously guilty of (apart from insider trading) is making more money than the people who review movies for Slate. If there was a law on the books for that small failing, however, there would be a lot of useful members of society being marched off to the penitentiary.

Cashmere

Filene's Basement had beautiful cashmere sports jackets in stock. The kind that Euro-trash drug dealers, fading rock stars, and trust fund babies writing their first novel like to wear. Cashmere sports jackets acheived their fashion zenith in the late eighties and early nineties, but an item like that never goes out of style, as long as it's in black. I found one that was a 44 Tall but the sleeves were too short. I left dejected, and my plans to start writing my first novel have been put on hold indefinitely.

Weeds, Season 3, Episode 15, "Go".

The final episode of Weeds would have ended the series on a high note. I'm not complaining that it will be back for a fourth season, but not unlike the conclusion of the fifth season of The Sopranos, I thought this season finale would have ended on a high note.

Things look bad for Nancy, as the DEA has found out about her grow op in the suburbs. Sullivan was brought in for questioning, he ratted out Celia (who in turn gave up Nancy's name) and absconded to Colorado. Nancy returned to her house so she could burn it down.

While I never really cared for the whole "is Shane crazy or brilliant because he talks to his dead father sub-plot", but it was a nice way of setting up the last scene of the episode. It looks like Nancy has finally come to terms with her husbands death. Burning down the house is an extreme way to make a break with the past, but Mary-Louise Parker made it look almost sweet rather than desperate.

With Nancy's new found confidence in her chosen field, and her readiness to turn her back on the past, Weeds would have had a beautiful ending. However, the third season was so good, why would the writer's ever want to quit while they are ahead? In a perverse way, the "cliff hanger" ending proves that it will be quite some time before the people involved with Weeds start spinning their wheels creatively.

The Coolest Movie You've Never Seen

Repo Man. Directed by Alex Cox. Starring Harry Dean Stanton, Emilio Estevez, and Tracey Walter.

Alex Cox, the director of Repo Man, stiffed me on a bar bill in Seoul, South Korea. My co-worker Aoibheann and I had crashed the back stage party at an international film festival, and since everyone was having so much fun, we continued the party in the lounge of some hotel.

Patrons were expected to buy at least one bottle of scotch, and when the bill came around, it was about $200, and we were short $80. I wound up taking the cash off the table and putting the bottle on my credit card.

Repo Man isn't as well structured as Cox's later biopic Sid and Nancy, but it does have a lot of youthful energy that manages to overcome the screenplay's obvious structural problems. I'm still not sure what the final scene with the radioactive flying car meant, but baffling endings don't bug me that much.

Like a lot of cinematic work done during the seventies and early eighties, it's impressive to see how much of our current film vocabulary comes from that period in time. Movies have might move at a faster pace, but there really haven't been any significant advances made in car chase sequences since The French Connection.

Repo Man is similar film, inasmuch as a lot of "indy" films from the nineties and the ought oughts pay homage to it. I was disappointed to find out that the glowing trunk of the 1964 Malibu appeared first in a different movie. However, with all the men in black suits running around, the Mexican standoff that occurs later in the film, and the parallel storylines that eventually intersect, it's easy to see the influence it must have had on Pulp Fiction.

The dialogue also sparkles. Consider the following lines:

Debbi: Duke, let's go do some crimes.
Duke: Yeah. Let's go get sushi and not pay.

It's very clipped dialogue, but it mixes the mundane and the quirky in such a way that as a starting point, it's not all that far from a discussion of nihilism that ends with the punchline, "Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos."

Bell bottoms, disco, acid wash jeans and hair metal suck ass, and I'm not interested in reliving those parts of the seventies or eighties. However, as I've gotten older, I was realized I missed out on a lot of funny stuff because I wasn't quite old enough to appreciate it: books like Modern Manners by P.J. O'Rourke, or films like National Lampoon's Animal House. Repo Man is another film to add to the growing list of movies, music, and books I've seen, listened to, or read that makes the the late seventies and early eighties an artistic period worth re-visiting.

Update: Alex Cox talks about Repo Man here.

The Kids Are All Right

Damn! I have to get in on this:

A recent poll of New York University students found that two-thirds of them would trade their right to vote in the next election for a year’s tuition. And 20 percent said they’d give up their right to vote for the next president in exchange for a new iPod. Half said they’d sell their right to vote — forever — for $1 million.

That sounds about right. I think giving up my right to vote is easily worth an iPod. Hell, I'd probably sit out an election for an iPod nano. I'm not so sure I'd give up my right to vote forever though, because some Republican operative might try to re-animate Hitler's cyrogenically frozen head. Being able to excercise my franchise (it's very big) would come in handy during that election, and hey, even if Hitler did win, Zombie Jimmy Carter would kick Hitler's ass with his awesome powers of malaise and stagflation.

Tom Perrotta at Politics and Prose

Unfortunately, there was a huge traffic accident on Connecticut Avenue, (it shut down a whole block in front of the bookstore) so Perrotta was a little late for the signing. Perrotta was reading from his latest book, The Abstinence Teacher, and the room was full.

Although at times he was a halting speaker, Perrotta brought down the house with a the chapter about the recalcitrant teachers who are forced to take a reeducation seminar with the woman in charge of implementing the abstinence program. I used a snippet from that chapter in the review I wrote here.

Perrotta has an excellent grasp of what goes on behind closed doors in high school classrooms. Given the accuracy (and hilarity) of his portrait of the education profession, I was surprised to find out he had never taught in a high school. Everything Perrotta knows about teaching in a high school comes from his experiences as a student and from friends who are teachers.

Why does he keep going back to school in books like Election, Joe College, and The Abstinence Teacher? Perrotta sees public high school as an excellent metaphor for life in America.

One on one Perrotta is very friendly and pleasant. Christopher Hitchens made minimal eye contact with me when I got my copy of God Is Not Great signed, but Perrotta made effortless conversation with me when it was my turn to get my copy of The Abstinence Teacher autographed.

A well chosen passage, a lively question and answer session, and a writer who is comfortable making small talk made this one book session worth attending. I don't know how long I'll have to wait for the next book signing I really want to attend, but this one should tide me over for awhile.

Wool Overcoats

Lisa and I were looking for winter overcoats this weekend. We checked out the Gap, Filene's Basement, and Men's Wearhouse. I've been a sucker for trenchcoats every since I was a teen reading Maus and watching art house and vintage films on CBC late night television.

Unfortunately, Winnipeg really isn't the place to be running around in a wool overcoat as they aren't terribly warm when it's -40 below. Washington, D.C., on the other hand, is the perfect place to wear wool overcoat, as the weather is relatively mild and well, all those government buildings give this place a nice, noir feel. Calvin Klein makes a coat with really nice lines, but I'll wait until we see what Banana Republic has to offer before I make a decision.

Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue

No Country For Old Men. Directed by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen. Starrying Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, and Josh Brolin.

Anton Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem, sports the coolest helmet hair this side of The Ramones in the Coen brothers latest film, No Country For Old Men. I wonder how much product was used to keep it in place during the shooting of the film. It never really gets mussed up, even when Chigurh's car gets t-boned at the end of the film.

I'm not too sure what the film means exactly, but I enjoyed it. As Peter Griffin said of The Godfather on a Family Guy episode, "It insists upon itself." Obviously, that wasn't meant as a compliment, and while I wouldn't call the film pretentious, the lack of closure at the end weakens an otherwise strong narrative.

Like The Sopranos infamous finale, I guess the viewer is left with enough information to know that Chigurh's days are numbered with that nasty green stick fracture. His eventual demise will be unrelated to the crimes he committed, and there doesn't appear to be any rhyme or reason to it.

If I had to guess, Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), the sheriff out to save Llewlyn Moss (Josh Brolin) and stop Chigurh, represents the past. Moss symbolizes the future, and is the everyman, while Chigurh represents some horrible future.

The film has some good action sequences, and it definitely fits into the crime genre, but it's best viewed as an existential tragedy. Moss reaches to far, Bell is powerless to prevent his death, and Chigurh is nothing more than a force of nature who can only be cancelled out by another equally powerful force, random chance.

I'd be lieing if I said the film wasn't ultimately frustrating, but it is rewarding. I haven't enjoyed watching a film this much since The Ice Harvest. I remember reading the novel of the same name that the film was adapted from and enjoying it immensely.

I can think of no greater compliment for a film adapatation of a novel then to say that No Country For Old Men wants me to race out and read the Cormac McCarthy novel it was based on. And I've never successfully finished a novel written by McCarthy before, although this time I don't think I'll have a problem finishing this one. I'll keep you posted as to my progress on that front.

Update: Puzzled by the ending? Read Matt Zollerseitz's review here.

Living Large

Caddyshack. Directed by Harold Ramis. Starring Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, and Ted Knight.

The first time I saw Caddyshack was when I was fourteen. Unfortunately, while I did appreciate all the bare boobs on display, many of the subtleties of the film went over my head. For example, the first time I saw it, I failed to notice that the actress who played Lacey Underall, Cindy Morgan, was not wearing a bra for most of the first act.

I kid, I kid. I really do believe Harold Ramis should have won the Oscar for best picture that year. Who watches Kramer vs. Kramer anymore? Still waters really do run deep. Chevy Chase, as Ty Webb, the slacker trust fund prep, and Michael O'Keefe, as Danny Noonan, the poor kid trying to make good, do a flawless parody of the Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi light sabre class on the Millenium Falcon.

Parody is an underated form of humor, but what really powers the engine of this comedy is the class conflict angle. It's cutting, but not vicious. The screenwriters, Harold Ramis, Brian Doyle-Murray, and Doug Kenney understand pretension, not wealth is the real wedge between people. It's hard to hate a guy like Rodney Dangerfield when it's painfully obvious he worked hard for his fortune and just wants to enjoy it.

The real assholes are the people like Judge Elihu Smails, played by Ted Knight. Everyone who has ever lived or worked in a relatively small pond will recognize the type. Just rich enough to lord it over the smaller people, but well aware of the fact that their social and economic position is only as secure as their ability to control the pecking order.

Ultimately, what makes Caddyshack successful is its blend of highbrow and lowbrow humor. Whether it's Ramis referencing a Kubrick in a shot, or Bill Murray walking around with an oversized garden hose between his legs, the scatter shot, take no prisoners approach of Caddyshack makes for a timeless comic masterpiece.

Editors at the The New Yorker have a problem finding words that rhyme with "punt".

The copy editors and writers over at The New Yorker really like to push the envelope. Consider the following anecdote as told by business mogul Sam Zell:

"I did all the clues," he said. "For example, the clue was 'no poke folk' and the answer was the Immaculate conception Church."

To hell with the delicate sensibilities of religious people. This is a profile of a world class tycoon! Let's run another choice quote from Chairman Zell:

"After all, those motherfuckers are getting all the money right."

Mothers and people who have moms? Screw them! The New Yorker doesn't have to answer to anyone, oh wait, hold on, it looks like there is one constituency The New Yorker doesn't want to offend:

At a recent dinner party, the mention of Hillary Clinton's name prompted him to use a four-letter obscenity to describe her.

Offend Democrats? The New Yorker couldn't possibly to do that. It would be so...beastly. Everybody else can just go fuck themselves.

Weeds, Season 3, Episode 13, "Risk".

Wicked cool! The shot of Nancy looking at the new tattoo on her backside was smokin' hot! Milf's rule, man!!! The tat is a brilliant visual metaphor. Nancy has - literally and figuratively - become a badass. I won't speculate about future plot threads, but I suspect the tattoo is indicative of a much more assertive and aggressive Nancy Botwin.

Celia unloaded a can of whup ass on Sullivan, and smashed up his office. Later, Sullivan indicates to Tara that he is planning to blow town, like Lyle Lanley in the Simpson's episode, "Marge vs. the Monorail".

It would be disappointing if Sullivan did disappear like, well, the slick con-artist he is. Matthew Modine is an excellent foil for Kevin Nealon, and some of the best comic moments this season have been fueled by their rivalry. The women on Weeds make me smile, but the men on the show can really make me laugh.

Regardless of whether or not Modine stays on or leaves, I've enjoyed the broader comic palette employed by the writers this season. This episode is a fine example of what can happen if you let boys be boys - more genuine guffaws and fewer wry grins from the audience.

Bad Taste Does Not Pay

American Gangster. Directed by Ridley Scott. Starring Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, and Chiwetel Ejiofor.

Scarface and Henry Hill were brought down because they mixed business (cocaine) with pleasure (cocaine). Director Ridley Scott is a brave iconclast. Frank Lucas, played by Denzel Washington, is brought down by bad taste. For the entire film, Lucas is impeccably, tastefully, dressed in suits and ties from Brooks Brothers. A chinchilla coat, and not heroin use, proves to be his downfall.

Richie Roberts, played by Russell Crowe, a narcotics detective, picks Lucas out of a crowd because of that coat, and it is the beginning of the end for Lucas's criminal enterprise. It's a well crafted film, with a strong first and second act that follows the story of Lucas, the heroin dealer-cum-entrepeneur, and Roberts, the man who wants to bring him down.

On the whole, it's a strong film, but a weak third act undermines whatever Scott was hoping to accomplish. I suspect Scott was trying to make the mobster as a metaphor for the corporate executive as explicit as possible. However, Lucas teaming up with Roberts to bring down corrupt NYC cops in the final moments of the film robs the metaphor of a lot of its power.

Corporate America or corrupt cops? I think Scott is trying to shoot at too many targets, and while he has put together a good film, the lack of focus keeps it from being a great one.

Murky Coffee and Eastern Market

The Five Dollar Hot Chocolate at Murky Coffee is probably worth six dollars, but I fucked up the order and ordered a medium hot chocolate. I'd read about the local cafe in GQ, and they take a connoisseur's pride in brewing their coffee, and it really shows in the product.

I bought a medium coffee for myself, the Kenya Single Lot, and it had the full bodied flavor you would expect from Starbucks, but without the grit. I had no idea that premium coffee could be so smooth.

The cafe is located just across from the Eastern Market Station, and has the kind of atmosphere that I associate with IQ's at the University of Manitoba. It has a nice lived in feel, and the staff are hip and collegiate, but in a polite, friendly way. I loved the hardwood floors on the inside of the place, but as much as I love punk, the music was tuned so loud it made me want to take our coffee and hot chocolate outside.

We walked around Eastern Market, and checked out the shops. Lisa bought me a cannoli and some elk jerky, and I got her some white roses. The flea markets are worth checking out. As noted in a previous post, DC has arts and crafts fairs and flea markets that have stuff you actually want to buy if you are a twenty or thirty something.

Getting bored with the neighborhood Starbucks in the suburbs? Try taking the metro into the city and spend a pleasant afternoon reading the New York Times with your sweetie pie at Murky Coffee.

Halloween Horror Post-Mortem

From Beyond. Directed by Stuart Gordon. Starring Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, and Ken Foree.

Re-Animator was an excellent example of independent cinema at it's finest. Stuart Gordon had the quirky vision of an auteur combined with financial savy of P.T. Barnum. Gordon followed up Re-Animator with another adaptation of a Lovecraft story, From Beyond.

From Beyond is an interesting failure. Judging by the phallic looking pineal gland that extends out of Combs forehead for most of the third act, I'd say Cronenberg was a more obvious influence on Gordon than Lovecraft. Gordon almost nails it, but somehow falls short of the mark, despite all the gore and Barbara Crampton flouncing around in a dominatrix outfit.

That's what I love about horror films from the eighties. The better ones, like Evil Dead and Re-Animator mix highbrow aspirations with shameless commercialism, and manage to do it in a way that looks natural.

The technical feats and cinematography are impressive, but Raimi and Gordon also know how to make it entertaining. Great camera work is useless if you can't tell an entertaining story, and both men know how to write a solid three act screenplay.

Subtext? Who needs subtext when you have boobs, buckets of blood, and a fast paced plot? I'd rather be second rate and interesting than first rate and boring any day of the week.