Heaven

It's taken me longer to write this up than it should. There have been some good films around town lately. I finally saw The Spirit of the Beehive - not sure how I missed it all these years, but did... It's wonderful. It's not the kind of movie that lends itself to analysis or discussion - it is beautiful, dreamlike, haunting, an evocation of childhood, an elegy to the movies - everything it is said to be. Considered to be one of the great films about childhood, and it is.

Earlier last week, The Brattle was running a series of musicals starring Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. I should have gone to more - I didn't see any of the Kelly films - I especially wanted to see The Pirate, but wimped, since it started at 9:30. I am getting old. Now I must live with the regret. What sorrow! But I did get to a good part of the Fred Astaires: Top Hat, Shall We Dance, The Gay Divorcee and Royal Wedding.

I watched Top Hat and Shall we Dance a few months ago, and wrote about them - I've never seen Royal Wedding before. It's a 1951 film from the MGM Freed unit, written by Alan J. Lerner, directed by Stanley Donen, starring Fred and Jane Powell as a brother and sister act who go to England and find love. It is packed with music (Burton Lane's, with Lerner's words), dance, showstoppers on stage and off (has all three of my pet schemes, outlined back in my Berkeley posts) - but it's pretty dull anyway. It's not the music's fault, though I don't have much use for Jane Powell's singing - the songs are fine, the numbers are entertaining - Fred gets to bring down the house (or turn it upside down, if you prefer - it's the one where he danced on the ceiling) - it's not that. It's the story. There's plenty of plot going around - Fred and Jane fall in love, with other people - and there's an obligatory older couple who've split and are getting back together - but with three love stories, a dozen musical numbers (it gets close to as dozen), and Keenan Wynn apparently playing both Eric Blore and Erik Rhodes, it's still the slowest moving musical film I've seen in ages. It's all filler - all the dialogue scenes are filler - full of references to things happening off screen, that don't come on screen; the jokes fall flat; no one mistakes anyone else for a gigolo - it's hopeless.

The other three, though, are as good as it gets. Seeing them together, I have to admit that Shall We Dance comes off a bit weaker - the music and dancing are as good as the earlier films, but the stories, writing, all the rest are not up to the earlier standards. But those standards are so transcendent, that you can come well short and still have an unqualified masterpiece, which Shall We Dance is.

But the other two... Shameful as it is to parse films like this, which is better and all that, I did it - and would say, in the end, Top Hat comes out the winner. Everything there runs together flawlessly - the formula has been perfected, and everything - words, movements, music, sets, direction, everything - is exactly as it should be. The Gay Divorcee has some rough edges, some awkward transitions and plot points and the like - not Top Hat. On the other hand, The Gay Divorcee - made before Breen came in full force, is sexier, looser, and being less formulaic has its advantages - Edward Everett Horton, in particular, gets to offer a wider array of straight lines, not just one double take after another. Musically - well - they're all working with the best. Shall We Dance probably has the best music over all - all Gershwins, all the way through - that's good. Top Hat also benefits from the Irving Berlin only songs - first rate material, all through. The Gay Divorcee has good music, but not first rank music...

Except, of course, for "Night and Day". Which is not only the best song in any of these films (I mean, it's the best pop song ever, isn't it?), it's the best dance, and the best piece of filmmaking in Astaire's career. It's a seduction, that grows into full fledged romance - in story terms, it mixes the functions of "Isn't this a Lovely Day" and "Cheek to Cheek" - and not only Astaire and Rogers, but Sandrich, make a story of it. The give and take, with Fred following Ginger around, inviting her, pulling her back, anticipating her - they come together, pull apart, come together, explore and finally fall in love - the music and filming complimenting the dance, the music swelling and fading in turns, the camera coming closer, pulling away, spying on them, then nearly joining them - how beautiful it is. As good a reel or so of film ever made, I think.

Friday Music Post

Just your basic random ten here. Movie posts, and there could be a bunch of them, might follow over the next couple days...

1. Mercury Rev - Something for Joey
2. Madvillain - Rainbows
3. Byrds - Sing me back Home
4. The Strokes - Juicebox
5. Carter Family - Something Got a hold on Me
6. Mission of Burma - Wounded World
7. Michael Jackson - Don't Stop til you get Enough
8. Smokey Robinson - The Tears of a Clown
9. Cassandra Wilson - Love is Blindness
10. The Residents - Seasoned Greetings

Is Being a Human Being So Disgusting?

Shohei Imamura has died. One of my favorite directors, very possibly my favorite living director over the last 7-8 years. I saw the retrospective of his films that toured in 1998, and came away more than a fan. Right up to the last thing he did, his section of the 11'09''01 film, itself a mini-masterpiece. He set it at the end of WWII -a returned soldier thinks he is a snake, crawls around, eats rats, and finally crawls off into the jungle... it struck me then as being to Imamura's career what David Lynch's piece in Lumiere and Company was - both for being a stunning short film in the middle of an inconsistent, though interesting, project - and for being a distillation of their work: "is being a human being so disgusting?" Well - no, not when some people make films like he did.

Fr- no, Saturday 10 (plus)

Here I am. Managed to let a whole week go without posting again - good job! It was a strange week - I saw some films - Fred and Ginger on the big screen! Fred sans Ginger, not quite up to those high standards... In between movies, suffered some plumbing troubles - a burst pipe or two - nothing quite so delightful as coming home to find the bathroom full of steam with water spraying out of the walls. Great fun. An excuse to take a day off work and go see Fred Astaire - and do some random shopping on the way. A bunch of new music out - Racanteurs, Gomez, Danielson, Scott Walker, Mission of Burma, even Tool (I am not immune to the occasional bit of prog-metal wanking....) Will any of it show up on the old Random Ten? We shall soon find out! And hopefully, it will not be another week before I post again - I have films from Fred and Ginger, Luc Moullot, Australia! (x2!) to write about, and hope to do so soon.

1 Red Krayola - Stil de Grain Brun
2 Postal Service - Such Great Heights
3 Acid Mother's Temple - Daddy's Bare Meat
4 Decembrists - We Both Go Down Together
5 Tom Verlaine - Shadow Walks Away (that's the closest we're getting to the new stuff)
6 Blind Faith - Presence of the Lord
7 John Cale - You Know More than I Know
8 REM - 9-9
9 Devendra Banhardt - Chinese Children
10 The Clash - Wrong 'em Boyo

Random 10 for Friday

1. Pere Ubu - Busman's Holiday (live, from Apocalypse Now)
2. The Kinks - I'm not like Everybody Else
3. Richard and Linda Thompson - Walking on a Wire
4. Joy Division - The Kill
5. Damon and Naomi - Tanka (live, with Kurihara)
6. Liars - Steam Rose From the Lifeless Cloak
7. Husker Du - Dreams Reoccurring
8. The Kinks - Who'll be the Next in Line (it's a Davies extravaganza!)
9. Can - Halleluhwah (there goes 17 minutes - but as well spent a 17 minutes as you can ask.)
10. Sigur Rus - Untitled 6 (from the () record) (another long, but lovely piece)

There you go.

Art School Confidential

I know this is an odd choice of a film to expand on in its own post, but I've been interested in art lately, so, I might as well write about it.

Ebert's review starts off with one of the foundational lies of western culture: "I am not sure you can learn to be an artist. Artists are born, not made". It's a lie films like this sometimes give some play to, though the confusion may arise somewhere else. Great artists are most certainly not born - art requires skills that you don't pick up without training. One might ask how useful college is to artists, though. But Clowes and Zwigoff are mocking the conceptualism of art school, the theorizing, the emphasis on ideas over skills - that is, they are attacking the results of thinking that you can be an artist by being clever, not by executing certain physical actions particularly well, in a way that moves other people.

It's a disappointing film - which is different than just being bad. It is bad, I have to reiterate that - the stories (Jerome chasing the girl; the serial killer stuff) are dreadful. Cliches wrapped in gimmicks... the whole thing loses momentum, sinks down into tedium and whining and everything interesting disappears.... But the world is full of bad films: the world is less full of bad films that should have been good films, and this one should have. It started well enough - it sets itself up to have a great deal of fun, taking some shots at art school, the art world, probably the comics and film world while you're in there, Clowes and Zwigoff generally being up for self-criticism...

I liked that it didn't make anyone perfect, perfectly good or bad. Almost everyone is a target for the satire - and almost everyone has something to offer, or gets some kind of moment of grace. Take Malkovich - he's cynical, a careerist, bitter, and even his better moments tend to come in the service of his cruising - but he has some connection to the kids, and what he says - particularly his advice to Jerome - "you're 18 years old - what do you want with a style?" - is pretty much dead on. Jerome has skills - he doesn't have much personality - he shouldn't be thinking about what he has to say, he should stick to perfectly his abilities. The rest, if it's going to come, will come. And Malkovich isn't the only one like that - Broadbent, obviously, is not a good person - he's a dark cave of nihilism, a miserable failure indeed - but he's funny; he punctures the pretensions of the other artists; and he isn't half bad as an artist himself. (I pass in silence over the rest of it - I wish the movie had passed in silence as well - he worked quite well as a poisonous Charles Crumb figure - tarting that up was stupid.)

And of course, Jerome. The story betrays him, turns him into a stock figure indeed - but he's an interesting character while it lasts. It is to the film's credit that he is not all that interesting an artist - he's good, he's got skills, I say, maybe more than his classmates - but he doesn't have much personality, his art is nice, but doesn't stand out. He makes it worse by constantly trying to define himself, to please others, and denigrate them for not being him. If he could do his thing, perfect it? or if he took Malkovich's advice, and applied his abilities to every style he could think of, without worrying too much about doing anything unique? he might be all right... This, along with his squabbles with the class, and their personalities, gives the film its kick - an odd, muted kick - but... it is interesting to think about: Jerome takes positions - he's more willing to attack his classmates (which invites them to go after him) - the dynamics are fascinating, and recognizable. It makes it more interesting to think that Jerome might not be all that good - might not really know what he is talking about. He's presented as if he's the voice of reason in the film, but he doesn't seem all that better off than the rest of them - especially as the film goes on, he seems to counter their groupthink with his own unthinking reaction. His judgment isn't all that convincing - and though he's the POV character, I'm not sure how much the film really takes his POV.

All of this leads us around to the other maverick aspiring artist in the film, Jonah. Jonah's big colorful cars and tanks play an interesting role in the film. Jerome invests them with everything he says is wrong with art school, and Zwigoff and Clowes let Jerome get the last word - the rest of the kids sound like the sheep they are talking about Jonah's art. But there are the pictures on the screen - and to be honest, there's nothing else in the film half as good as those paintings. They aren't original, obviously - but they aren't junk, and (despite the clamor of the kids), they aren't really naive either. Unless this is a world without Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein. And they jump off the screen at you - the moment when Jonah's car appears on the screen is the first, and one of the few, moments when art in the film really catches your eye. (Broadbent's art has that too, even without its plot significance.) I don't know how important it is that Jonah's paintings are credited to Dan Clowes - probably not irrelevant.

This also brings us back to Ebert: Jonah is the closest to the demonstration of the great lie - he's untutored, natural, and he does, indeed, make the best art in the class. At least everyone says so - but that's the point, and what might have been very worthwhile in the film: what if everyone in the film was right about Jonah? Yes the film is set up to make Jonah's art seem bad and Jerome's good. But why not? why not make a film that uses narrative conventions - the lead character is right; the lead is the best artist (in a film about artists), his judgments are right; the maverick, the one who goes against the group is right - why not use those conventions, but counter them? The popular kid, the villain in any standard high school film, turns out to be, first, the real outsider - second, the real genius, the one who has real talent - why not? That's the most interesting idea the filmmakers came up with - assuming they actually came up with it. I'd guess the odds are pretty good, actually.

Recent DVD Watching

I suppose I should post this - a pretty flat roundup of DVD's I've watched in the last few weeks. I need to try to write something up - but I'm thinking I want to do it a bit differently. I had been taking a class, and ended up writing about Cindy Sherman - specifically, about her film still series, and how she uses cinematic space (especially, offscreen space) in those stills. That got me looking through my DVDs, looking at specific examples of how films arrange space, and people in space. And then I started reading Bordwell's Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic Staging... (And looking through his new Hollywood book.) So my head is full of staging, composition, activation of off screen space, the play of on and offscreen space (reading Metz and Burch, as context for the Sherman paper), the elements in a shot that draw your attention off screen - all that stuff. It's exciting! And a few of these films, listed below, are particularly excellent objects of examination. The way Altman's camera prowls the room in Secret Honor, creating his own level of affect to the play... or the gorgeous deep spaces and deep focus shots and widescreen compositions and stagings in The Apartment - I watched that a couple years ago, and liked it okay, but didn't feel exactly overwhelmed - but this time, paying close attention to what I could see - good heavens, what a beautiful film. Anyway - I might pursue some of those ideas. We'll see. For now, capsules...

Secret Honor **** - comments above. pretty awe inspiring movie. Altman is superb - and Hall gives a performance of many a lifetime.

Mr. Jealousy *** - nice film; I need to see Kicking and Screaming again - I saw it when it came out, liked it enough, but nothing more - but now, having seen this and the Squid and the Whale - and liked both fo them very much - I need to see K&S again.

The Apartment **** - see above for some of it. Wilder can be deceptive - sometimes his films are so well written they almost erase their appearance; when I was looking at this for the Sherman paper, slowing it down, looking at individual frames, I noticed just how fantastic it looks. Almost as if the words get in the way of the pictures. Take away the words and you see the pictures.

Marie and Julien **1/2 - recent Rivette; gorgeous looking film, all those weightless tracking shots, but a rather hopeless experience, since the DVD was badly fucked up. I don't know why Rivette films are not released theatrically in the United States, just as a matter of course. There should be something written into international law that Rivette, Rohmer, Godard, at least, should have their films shown as a matter of course. I should not have to try to pry something watchable out of Netflix.

Oasis **1/2 - strange but rather interesting Korean film about a dim-witted thug who falls in love with the daughter of a man he killed in a hit and run - who (the girl) happens to have cerebral palsy. This doesn't go all that well, but there you go. Some ill-conceived fantasy bits, but well made...

Forty Guns *** - finally got around to watching this; bought it at Christmas, and let it sit on the shelf since. (I bought 2 copies at Christmas: I was buying cowboy movies for my brother and was thrilled to find this, Winchester 76 and Seven Men From Now on DVD; I was more thrilled to find 2 copies of this - if I hadn't I'd have had to find something else to get him.) Finally righted that wrong a couple weeks ago - was not disappointed. She's a high riding woman with a whip all right.

Broadway Melody ** - another DVD I bought some months ago, and has been sitting on the shelf... very early talky, with intertitles explaining scene transitions - odd. Some okay music, very theatrical staging. Melodrama about 2 sisters, one pretty and talented, the other named Hank. Whatever they thought in 1929, in 2006, Hank is the only character with an ounce of life in her, but she suffers. Men prefer her sister's legs. Anyway, mostly interesting for the history, though a pretty well made film for all that.

Today's Bad News

Updating my last political post - Think that's bad? Look at this! I suppose it's a comfort that it's being talked about - ABC? USA Today? I hope it translates into action - maybe it will. Even my mother, loyal republican through the years, was griping about the spying. Of course, the odds are that George W. Bush will take the rap, in the end - the GOP will survive. Though possibly they will abandon some of their evil ways. Maybe....

Meanwhile, the lesser devil's are sending up trial balloons... "If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn't possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don't speak English and are not integrated into American society" - lovely. This desperate ploy to find enemies - on one hand, the sense that they are flailing, the fact that the public is not really responding, is encouraging - on the other - depends how desperate they get... And whatever happens to the government, the stirrings among the kinds of fools like this Vox Day character can generate violence, intimidation... We live in interesting times.

Recent Film Viewing

It's been a while since I have posted anything about movies - all the way back to when I saw the The Notorious Bettie Page - that was a while ago. (I'll leave you with Stephanie Zacherek's Salon review - maybe more positive than I would give, but no harm in that.) I haven't seen an awful lot of films int hat time - fortunately, I have been able to see a couple good ones... So let's see if we can round things up.

Three Times **** - the new Hou Hsiao Hsien film. Three love stories starring Shu Qi and Zhang Zhen, set in three different eras, 1966, 1911, 2005, shot in different styles, that evoke his earlier films from similar times. The first story has the lovers shooting pool in 1966 - he's just been called into the army; she works as an attendant at pool halls. Hou returns to something like his classic, 80s style - the long, fairly static shots (though the camera tends to float these days) from a limited set of positions, often with doors or windows opening up to the outside world in the back of the shot. The boy comes back on leave, looking for the girl, and when she is not there, goes looking for her, riding around Taiwan trying to find her. All of this to a series of pop songs - "Smoke gets in Your Eyes", "Rain and Tears" - in place of dialogue... Romantic and simple and very affecting... The second part, in 1911, is set in a brothel, like Flowers of Shanghai, and adopts that's film's rich colors and gliding camera, as well as its restrictions - everything occurs within one set, the 2-3 rooms where Shu Qi's courtesan lives. She's in love with a rich married revolutionary who disapproves of concubines, though he's willing to help one of the other girls when she gets pregnant - thus unintentionally crushing "his" girl. This section is also "silent" (no diegetic sound, just music) - it's a strange effect, the silent movie conventions combined with the colors and camera style. But it's effective, conveying the claustrophobia and inevitability of Shu's circumstances, as well (I suppose) as the political hopelessness of the Zhang's Taiwanese patriots.... The third section is set in contemporary Taipei, and looks contemporary - the crowded streets, narrow, dank apartments, noisy clubs, electronic pop music, computers and phones and beepers - shot in long takes, camera skulking around through these spaces, light and sound blurry and encompassing... Hou has used this style for most of his contemporary films - Millennium Mambo, Goodbye South, Goodbye, the modern half of Good Men Good Women, Daughter of the Nile... The three sections, revisiting as they do, different parts of his career, different subject matter in his career - and different filmmaking styles - make an interesting survey. Hou's reputation is immense - but it seems sometimes critics have some difficulty getting their minds around what he has done. He doesn't quite have a recognizable style - or rather, he has 2 or 3 recognizable styles, on display here. And he has been moving between them for the past decade or so, exploring how to tell stories, how to examine the spaces of the stories, how to relate space to story... It's an adventure.

I am a Sex Addict **1/2 - Caveh Zahedi's latest, an amusing sexual autobiography of sorts, concentrating on his addiction to prostitutes and the damage that did to his relationships. It's a neatly constructed film, with its direct address to the camera, slipping in and out of fiction and documentary modes, commenting on the processes of filmmaking, especially no budget filmmaking and the rest - it's funny and smart, but it tends to overstay its welcome. Not that it gets boring exactly, it just stops surprising you at some point.

Art School Confidential * - The reviews have been bad. They were right. It starts out okay, a fairly conventional geek goes to college routine that makes a nice starting point for skewering the art world - unfortunately, after half an hour of amusing comedy about artists and art school, the plots start to kick in. The hero is one of those high school losers who never made it with the ladies - so he worships the symbolic girls, and soon enough manages to meet one, only to suffer fresh humiliations - this is complicated, not in a good way, by a serial killer plot. The hero, Jerome (played by Max Minghella), doesn't get the recognition he wants so steals it - from the wrong person... Whatever. The whole thing sinks into misery and cliche, which is a shame - there was some bite at the beginning - John Malcovich is around to embody a mix of cynicism, self-promotion, self-pity and predation, plus intermittent flashes of sympathy; and Jim Broadbent is on hand as an old, drunk madman, mean and depressed, but still talented - Charles Crumb in the flesh. He's fascinating, and deserves better than the fate he suffers in the film.

Badlands **** & Days of Heaven *** - Should I complain about the weather? It has been raining - a more or less uninterrupted downpour since Friday night. So it is good to spend at least one day in the shelter of a Terence Malick double feature. I hadn't seen these two on a big screen before - video, and Badlands on TV, a few times - though apparently always the very beginning or the end - I had completely forgotten about the interlude in the woods. Badlands really is a great film, justifying Malick's reputation. Malick's an odd case - he can tell a story, though he does it obliquely, getting the story info across, but dwelling on other things. In Badlands, he dwells on the characters and the world they live in - in later films, he starts to dwell more on the look of things. So Days of Heaven, though gorgeous to look at, and efficiently enough told, comes off static, abstract - there's no time in the film - no duration, no spaces - scenes don't develop, there's no dramatic development, no chance for people to emerge as anything more than ideas. I don't want to make too much of that - for one thing, it works a lot better on the big screen than video - seeing it on film once more opens up the spaces of the film. But still - Malick's other problem, on display in Badlands, a little, and The New World a lot, is that the stories he comes up with are just a bit too generic - and because he abstracts them so much, their blandness serves as a kind of void in the images - the beauty becomes weightless because the stories are weightless....

Friday Random Ten

Yes it's that time again... and actually on Friday still! triumph indeed...

1. Butthole Surfers - Jimi
2. Sister Rosetta Tharpe - Beams of Heaven
3. Sonic Youth - Pattern Regonition
4. Van Morrison - Beside You
5. Iron and Wine - Cinder and Smoke
6. Mercury Rev - CLose Encounters of the 3rd Grade
7. Outkast - Last Call
8. Black Sabbath - Lord of this World
9. Tom Verlaine - The Sun Gliding (from the new record)
10. Grant Lee Buffalo - We've only Just Begun (from the Carpenters tribute record...)

Villainy Indeed

On reason I haven't written much about politics since the 2004 elections is the simple point that there is very little to say. Somewhere back in 2003 or 2004, the government passed all limits of what I can accept from an American government - and since then, has just kept repeating the same note over and over again. Note? "Think that's bad? Look at this!" Or, put another way, "Think that's is bad? Look at this!" Over and over again. Here, today - we just have to grind it out and hope that things turn. It's not as if this government was particularly strong - they can't run anything, accomplish anything - anything they do they fail at. So we can hope, can't we, that if We - you and me the voters, the citizens - and our representatives - can take responsibility and hold these incompetent liars and petty wanna be dictators accountable we can, in fact, do it.

We'd better. Though if anything were going to do it, you would think this would be it.

Return of Friday Random Tem

Yes, I've been amiss*. But today - it's early! Here goes - 10 songs, random, off the iPod:

1. Rolling Stones - Yesterday's Papers
2. Leonard Cohen - Suzanne
3. The Cars - Bye, Bye Love
4. Son Volt - Drown
5. Jane's Addiction - Stop
6. Pere Ubu - 30 Seconds Over Tokyo
7. De La Soul - Tread Water
8. Smokey Robinson and the Miracles - Who's Loving You
9. Damon and Naomi - Beautiful Close Double
10. Minutemen - Sell or Be Sold (Hey! the most played song on my iPod! One of the strange effects of the history of the machine - though not an unwelcome one. The Minutemen were very very cool.)

*Update: did I write this? "amiss"? It must be early... "remiss"! Boy!

Midweek Update

I need to get something in here, been a while. I have been remiss in my movie going, if not my movie watching. Finally got around to watching Forty Guns, which I found back before Christmas - 2 copies, actually! bought them both, one as a Christmas gift, one for myself.... But then it sat on the shelf...finally righted that wrong. Wil I review it? Sooner or later, right?

Not now though. Sitting in starbucks: a bit of a zoo, actualy. A host of eager youth being trained in the jargon of coffee making - a "red eye"? how to make 2% milk? how to mark down the more appalling concoctions - non fat mocha chai with raspberry... something. My head. Meanwhile - 2 people sharing a table, having 2 separate conversations on their phones, in 2 different languages - not English! makes you proud to be an American in the 21st century!

I could blog about politics. Look over at Lawyers, Guns and Money, where you can find a cornucopia of bad ideas being swatted down. (With or without wildly inappropriate metaphors.) If only we could invade Saudi Arabia and seize their oil fields! then there'd be no gas crisis! But you damn liberals would call that "imperialism"! (That's Glenn Reynolds, more or less.) Or - if only we had the will to kill everyone who moves in Iraq! then we could win! (That's a good deal of the right blogosphere, Jeff Goldstein being singled out.) It makes you wonder. It makes me wonder - what would actually be a victory in Iraq? Some of the comments at LGM mention this - that no one seems to quite know what winning means. (This is partly because winning in a war means achieving your political goals - but those have never been defined to anyone's satisfaction, have they?) As far as I can see, this is a war that wwe can't win, because the only political goal we can come close to articulating is that we leave it stronger and more secure than we went in - there is no way we could have accomplished that. Iraq never posed a problem for us (not since 1991) - the only way they could hurt us would be if we invaded them, and made their problems ours. Done and done.

It strikes me that there are basically two outcomes that could be, in fact, won or lost. 1) The establishment of a client state, with not regard to its domestic policies; 2) the partition of Iraq into a series of states, without a civil warm, and with some of them, at least, clients of the USA. These are outcomes that could be achieved (or not) - but neither are poltically viable, really. First - either would almost certainly lead to prolonged bloodshed and chaos. It is hard to imagine either outcome appearing without a long period of violence. Second - is either of those better for us by any standards than the pre-invasion status quo? Let alone the main objection: would it be possible to wage this war (at all) for those ends? and would it be possible to achieve those ends without the kind of commitment we don't want to make (that is to say, The Draft, first and formost.)

That reminds me: anyone who talks about "will" or "toughness" and does not start with the necessity to bring back universal conscription is not worth listening to. It is notable how many of these arguments are in fact quite explicitly about how to avoid making any actual sacrifices, or showing any actual will. Calls to nuke Iran are not calls for national will - they are calls for a way to accomplish some end without any risk to ourselves. Start with a draft and the assumption of years of war, gas and oil rationing, etc., and maybe you have a right to be heard. Otherwise - how can you even pretend to take these people as anything more than cowardly sadists? There's not much more dangerous, I have to admit, than people unwilling to run any risks who insist on the importance of willpower and strength.

I am not in the mood to get into too much of this, though having started... I will leave it. Confuse my poor innocent readers, thinking they'll find more Roger Clemens hagiography, or maybe something about Barry Bonds or the Clippers. Sorry! Politics! duck!

20 20 Hindsight - Baseball on TV

So - while rumors start to circulate that the Rog wants to come back to Boston - and the Red Sox take another beating from the Indians - I remember that this is, sort of, a film blog: so - looking at that '86 game - how has baseball on TV changed in the last 20 years? It was on opposite a Cubs-Marlins game on ESPN - and I've watched a couple of the Sox-Indians games since the Clemens replay - so - worth making a couple comparisons.

The first thing to notice is what hasn't changed: the basic template for showing baseball is about the same. Shots of the batter - shots of the pitcher - center-field shot of the pitch - behind the catcher shot of the play - the replays and details have evolved, but the basics are the same. The major changes, in how the game is shot, are:

1) The use of one of the most annoying shots in television: the shot from behind the catcher between pitches, almost always with a little left to right pan. God, that shot drives me crazy! There's no information in it - the pan means nothing whatsoever - maybe it sets the overall scene, but why the camera move? It's ugly, completely automatic, and almost gives me vertigo. NESN (the Red Sox network) doesn't do it as much as ESPN - ESPN does it on every at-bat almost. Horrible.

2) These days, the shots of the pitchers and catchers are a lot tighter - almost all close-shots, sometimes even closeups. In the '86 game, most of the shots of the pitcher were Medium shots. Similar treatment of hitters. This is combined with a lot more camera movement - little zooms in, little movements, reframing the player. The tighter framing requires more camera movement to keep the players in the hsot - though there are also movements (or more often zooms) for dramatic effect. Very little of any of that in the Clemens game - pretty much stable waist up shots of the pitcher and hitters...

3) As far as what is shown - one noticeable difference is how much more we see of the dugouts. Admittedly - the Clemens game was edited, so a lot of filler might have been taken out - but most of the cutting seemed to come between innings, not in the inning. Now - both the ESPN game that was opposite the '86 game and all the Sox games I've seen this year are constantly showing the dugouts. I do not think I saw a single shot of John McNamara in that 86 broadcast; I don't even know who managed the Mariners. But I would recognize Eric Wedge or Joe Madden or even Sam Perlozzo if I saw them on the street, because by god there are three shots of them an inning these days... Crowd shots also seem a lot more common now than 20 years ago - but there were crowd shots in 1986: there were very few dugout shots of any sort, and now they are standard.

4) There are also a lot more interruptions these days - though this could be distorted more by the editing. These days - you get crowd reporters; you get cuts to the studio for game updates; you get clips, at least on ESPN. This makes sense, of course, when you have clips - instead of Bob Montgomery listing off scores around the league, you can cut to a feed from the Yankees or Braves game. But the "sideline reporter" thing (or whatever the baseball equivalent is) - no; that's a dire innovation.

5) Then there are the gimmicks - dirt cams, the "K-zone" (an electronic box purporting to show the strike zone), helmet cams, miked bases, etc. Thankfully, the game on ESPN opposite Clemens-86 was just a run of the mill mid-week game - the gimmicks were at a minimum. K-zone, yes - but no dirt cams, no helmet cams.... NESN doesn't do that stuff now, thank god. I don't think the national games did in 1986 - but to be fair, I'd have to watch a nationally broadcast game, a world series game or something.

Meanwhile, down on the field....

1) Uniforms - a red sox/mariners game in 1986 provided an interesting case study. The Mariners, of course, had ghastly 80s style uniforms - but the Sox didn't look too bad. The Sox and Yankees, and a couple other teams, but especially those two, did not follow unfortunate trends in uniforms - they kept the button up shirts, the basic patterns, letterings, colors - they never got ugly. (The Yankees especially - the Yankees have looked good from day one to the present. They may be the personification of evil on earth, but they sure look good doing it.)

2) Style of play: baseball is baseball, but you can see a few things. Like Mike Moore tossing over the first base over and over with people like Dwight Evans on base - what's with that? These days, even Tim Wakefield only goes to first 2-3 times if there's a good base-runner on there - and Wakefield has to hold runners on! The red sox didn't run - Dwight Evans didn't run - what on earth possessed managers to harass the guy on first like that? This certainly is part of the change in the game - no one runs like they did in the 80s; it's interesting that a lot of teams have deliberately stopped trying to hold runners like that, thinking the batter is more important than the runners - Joe Kerrigan's Red Sox were notorious for ignoring baserunners. The endless throws to first seem a lot rarer these days, even when pitchers are trying to thwort the running game.

3) While I'm talking about style of play - long gone are the days of the Walt Hriniak/Charlie Lau disciples - nobody goes up looking to loop one to the opposite field these days. And so no one is balancing on one leg and pointing their toe out toward the pitcher a la Rich Gedman. Everyone's leaning over the plate and hoping to hit home runs.

4) Meanwhile, off the field: the most shocking thing about the 1986 game was this - empty seats. There may be empty seats in Jacobs field (quite a few actually) - but none in Fenway. Haven't been any for years. But in 86, half the park was empty when Clemens threw those 20 K's. That game - and his 24 wins - and the world series loss - probably changed that. Maybe not all at once - but it started things on the road. It started the marketing of the Red Sox, though that didn't really kick in until the late 90s. But it was going - the curse of the bambino stuff started around the 86 world series...

5) Marketing - this stuff started before the strike, but after the strike, it became pervasive. In 1986, when an outfielder caught the ball to end an inning - he tossed it in to the umpire. In 2006 - when an outfielder catches a ball to end an inning - he turns and throws it into the stands. (Once in a while, when an outfielder didn't get enough sleep the night before, he does this with less than 3 outs. Oddly, I think Trot Nixon has done this more often than Manny Ramirez.) That kind of constant fan friendliness is new. Mascots in Fenway? ball girls on the lines, making plays, chatting with the fans; ballplayers tossing balls into the stands after innings, between innings - it's all new. Meanwhile, so are the ads - on the walls, all around the park - and throughout the broadcast - every stat, every little piece of information, is sponsored by someone. Logos and ads and the linke clutter the screen. Even the announcers are in the game, at least Jerry Remy - did Bob Montgomery have his own hot dog brand? His own line of clothing? I don't think so.

20 20 Hindsight

That title is a a labored pun indeed, for a post that is, in fact, about the 20th anniversary of Roger Clemens' (first) 20 strikeout game. (Coming up April 29.) NESN replayed it the other night - they do from time to time. I have seen parts of it, but this might have been the first time I watched the whole thing. I didn't in 1986. I read about it the next day, in awe, how else can you read about something like that? 20 K - 0 Walks. Watching it, it's clearer - he made about 1 bad pitch all night, to Gorman Thomas, who lost it.... otherwise - I mean.... Looking at this game, watching Clemens on the mound, especially comparing him to his opponent, Mike Moore, who was supposed to be a star himself, but never quite made it (though he had a nice run with Tony LaRussa's A's), you can see why Clemens is Clemens. He exudes confidence. He expects to get people out. Moore? pitched a very good game that night himself (and was a decent pitcher, after all) - but he looked nervous, worried, as if things were weighing heavily upon him. Maybe I shouldn't make too much of that - but one of these pitchers is the greatest pitcher ever, and one is not.

Is Clemens the best? Given his era? It's an interesting fact - there might be, active, now, 3, 4 position players among the best ever to play the game: Bonds; A Rod; and though it's easy to forget lately - Griffey. Pujols is off to that kind of start (better than any of those guys - better, in fact, that just about anyone ever.) (From a positional point of view, a case can be made for Piazza and Pudge Rodriquez, as well.) But on the hill, the pitchers are even better - Clemens, Johnson, Maddux, Pedro - that's 4 of the best right there, with numbers not far off the all time greats - pitching in a notorious hitters era. And, except for the Rog, going strong - and the odds are good Clemens will land somewhere before the season's up. He's due for another 20 K game, after all...

Is he the best? Yeah. He's been better longer than any of those other 3 - outpitched all of them except Martinez (who's 9 years younger) last year... They've all had better seasons - Pedro has the single best pitching season ever (2000) (part of a string, from 97-02 (though hurt in 01) as good as anybody's ever), Johnson in 04, Maddux in the strike years - all better than anything Clemens offered, even '86 - but Clemens has been at it forever, never really hurt, and able to reestablish himself whenever he starts to look a bit long in the tooth. And - he has those 2 games - 20K; 0 walks - twice! Kerry Wood's 20K night might have been even better (1 hit; against a better class of team, the Astros with Biggio and Bagwell and Alou), but Roger did it twice - 10 years apart - as part of a career that lives up to it. That 1986 game - is, basically, when people realized, for sure, what they had. Not just a promising young stud - a guy moving from promising to legit. With that game, he became the best pitcher in the game, and though other people have been better over certain 3-4 year stretches, he's always been around to resume the role. What can you say?

Books, Movies and Weirdness From the Guardian

Via Coffee, coffee and more coffee comes this list, from the Guardian, of the top 50 adaptations of books to movies. It's one of those lists - probably no coincidence that "The chains Waterstones and Borders are also involved and will promote the books in shops." It's pretty close to impossible to discern any criteria used - quality of the film? quality of the book? quality of both? "accuracy" of the adaptation? Who knows. Nellhaus notes one or two further difficulties - no mention of which film version of certain books is meant; only 2 non-English language books, and no non-English language movies - he poked at, but doesn't far pursue the question of the value of the actual choices. The all-English nature of the list is probably understandable, though a bit disappointing - it's harder to come to grips with foreign language adaptations, but it's a rich field. Nellhaus mentions Truffaut, Visconti, and Tanizaki (on the literary front) - we could also ask about Bresson (whose works are almost all adaptations), the many and various adaptations of Dostoevsky (some of which have been quite good), or Kawabata (The Sound of the Mountain), Mishima (The Temple of the Golden Pavillion/Conflagration, at least), etc. Meanwhile - if this is about adaptations - why aren't plays, biblical and other older materials, included? Why no Shakespeare? That wouldn't be related to the involvement of Waterstones and Barnes and Noble, do you think?

And where are Frankenstein and Dracula? The movies might take great liberties with those two texts - but there should be no denying the excellence of both sets of movies and books. Sometimes the excellence of several movies - how many great Dracula adaptations have there been? Not less than three, anyway.

A Random Day random Ten!

I can't seem to manage even this simple a post on a schedule... but what can you say? Here you go anyway:

1. Buzzcocks - ESP
2. Madonna - Justify My Love (good lord! what's that doing on here?) [Um - do you think anyone is fooled there? why wouldn't you have Madonna on the old iPod?]
3. Cranberries - Put Me Down
4. Stereolab - Working Title (pram song) - from the radio 1 session records...
5. Modern Lovers - Hospital
6. Fugazi - Break in
7. Meters - Look-ka py py
8. Bill Frisell - People
9. Melt Banana - Mind Thief - live in studio, from MxBx 1998
10. Butthole Surfers - Perry

Links here, links there

Look at the lack of notes - I'm horrified! I have to come up with something! Links? Of course!

Anthony Kaufman offers a note on Cannes, and on the film Red Road - made according to the latest of Lars Von Trier's projects - this one a scheme to have three different young directors make a film each using the same cast of actors and characters.

Oscar fans can cast their vote for the best best picture ever at Edward Copeland's site. I should have linked to him when he was running a similar poll for worst best picture winners - the results stand here. (Matt Zoller Seitz had the links in his latest roundup. I'm stealing not only the links but the roundup format. Sad, really.)

Meanwhile, for your recaptioned old-timey schoolgirl illustration needs, go see Monkey Fluids.

And that is probably all I've got.

Movie Week

Another weekly roundup...

L'Enfant - ***1/2 - last year's top winner at Cannes, directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. They continue to work familiar ground - the streets of Liege, Belgium, the story of the poor and beaten down - in this case, Bruno, a petty thief and his girlfriend Sonia, who has just had a baby. Bruno, unfortunately, will sell anything - and when he gets an offer for the baby, he takes it. Sonia reacts about as one would expect, and Bruno changes his mind - which sets in motion a chain of events that, perhaps contrary to expectation, prove redemptive. The influence of Bresson and Dostoevsky can be seen. It is a superb film, though the Dardenne brothers have become almost a genre to themselves by now - this seems a bit safe, within that genre. That is not quite a criticism.

Stoned - **1/2 - the last months of Brian Jones, founder of the rolling stones, possessor of one of the finests heads of hair on the 60s, and miserable victim of his success, drowning in his swimming pool. Was he drunk? Was he murdered? See the film and find out! Anyway - the film is mostly set in the last 3 months of Jones' life, when he was being fired from the Rolling Stones, and lounging about his farm, taking the piss out of the builders working for him, banging a Swedish girl, drinking himself to death... from that miserable period, it flashes back on better times with the Stones, with Anita Pallenberg, with Brion Gyson, with better drugs and sex... all of this in a 60s-style montage and covers of Stones covers... The real center fo the film is not Brian Jones (or Leo Gregory, who plays him) - it's Paddy Considine as his builder, Frank Thorogood - alternately tormented, befriended, condescended to by Jones, and loathed by the Stones' management and all the hippies around them... Considine comes off as the new Stephen Rea - something of a sad sack, with a hard streak just under the surface - his role in My Summer of Love felt similar - a guy trying to hold back his demons, one way or the other... not quite managing it. (There are other parallels to that film - the rich, spoiled brat seductively jerking the working class around - with similar results, though Jones fares less well when he goes under than the rich kid in the other film....)

Kelly's Heroes - *** - how many times have I seen this? Actually, a real question. some of it I have seen many times - it's been a fixture on TV through the years. All of it? I don't know if I ever have. But that's changed! found a cheap copy of the DVD, and who can resist? Clint Eastwood! Telly Savalas! Donald Sutherland as a hippy! Anyway - fun as it is - well, Lance Mannion wrote it up a couple months ago - his post says it better than me.

Barbara Stanwyck Double Bill

Stanwyck deserves her own post. Well - something does. More generic movie post below this one - Babs gets her own.

Baby Face - This is the proximate cause of this series. A rediscovered version of the film that was rejected by the censors, leading to some changes - a couple new scenes, a couple shots redubbed, the references to Nietzsche taken out... Stanwyck plays Lily Powers, daughter of the saloon, in Erie. Dad pimps her out to the proletariat, but she's sick of it - then dad's still blows up and Lily and her black maid head off to NYC with 4 dollars in their pocket, but no other disadvantages. In the big city, Lily wastes no time talking her way into a job, then sleeping her way through better jobs. There's no sentiment or moralising - Lily uses what she has. The men are more than happy to take advantage of her - most of them think they are taking advantage of her, but she lets them, and plays them for whatever she can get. Toward the end there is some slight slipping toward melodrama, though it's hardly a problem - Lily deserves to be able to take her some rest.

Night Nurse - good, and interesting, as Baby Face is, it is still just a film. It's nice - fast moving, decent looking, and Stanwyck is spectacularly good... But it's still... But Night Nurse - it's directed by William Wellman, and it shows - Baby Face can be clumsy, and obvious - Night Nurse is smooth and sharp. The cast is better too - Joan Blondell is on hand, taking off most of her clothes (along with Stanwyck - basically, they strip to their skivvies in every reel) and being hard-boiled, sexy and funny; the supporting cast - up to Clark Gable, as an evil chauffeur - is also lively and memorable. The film is split in half - the first half has Stanwyck and Blondell going through nursing school: this is hard bitten fast moving comedy, plus skivvies... The second half is a fast moving, hard bitten melodrama - they've become the day and night nurses for a pair of sickly children, surrounded by Badness: a drunken mother ("You mothuh!" says Babs in their face-off); swarms of nasty houseguests; a twitchy quack doctor; a sinister looking, but rather well meaning housekeeper; and Gable, swaggering through with a smirk and a black uniform, beating up the women, starving the kids, and loving it... Babs discovers the plot - she tries to get help, but no one quite believes her - except her pal the bootlegger! Who proves useful. More pre-code goodness - the bootlegger saves the day, then has Gable taken for a ride.... This is one of the sharpest, best, of those wonderful Warner Brothers working class women's pictures of the thirties - fast, hard edged, funny - even their melodramas and suspense films played like comedies.

And Barbara Stanwyck. If there has ever been a better, sexier, cooler actress, I don't know her. She is magnificent - her beauty, her voice, her presence on screen - that edge she has, the way she moves, the way she looks at things - she is spectacular. She was sexy and fearless - in this period, and even later, she never gave a hint of weakness or vulnerability, that wasn't chosen, deliberate, a choice to accept something outside herself. Baby Face throws Nietzsche quotes around (real or feigned, hard to say) - but Stanwyck herself is a Nietzschean presence in films, in the best sense. She's self-made, self-determined - to a fault, in Baby Face, where at some point, her self-realization takes a back seat to a kind of drive to win over other people. Seen that way, the ending, where she starts to soften, isn't necessarily a betrayal of the character - she simply stops living for an idea of herself, and lives for herself, which may require other people. When the "will to power" becomes too politicized, defined too much in terms of ones image, one's power over other people - it becomes alienating. You start to turn priest... The way out of that is a problem - films solve various ways: Stanley Cavell's comedies of remarriage is one - a union of equals. Like Fred and Ginger... Stanwyck, though, is the perfect vehicle for that kind of film, though Baby Face is too clumsy to pull it off. Some of the Capra films she was in (Miracle Woman, prominantly) come closer, and Stella Dallas (especially Cavell's reading.). And Night Nurse, without the pretense of Capra (or even Baby Face) - where her strength is tied more closely to her sweetness - not softness, never that - but a kind of openness and generosity that runs through her unbending personality...

And finally - with Mulvey in town, one's mind turns to theory - to the male gaze, and the limits of said theory. I don't think these films fit very well within theory, at least not the simplified version.... That is: while Stanwyck is positioned as the object of our gaze - she is also, consistently, the subject of the gaze. She looks as much as she is looked at. She is the protagonist of the story - she acts - chooses - her desire drives the story. She's shown acting - she's shown as a unified person (though there are some fetishizing shots) - she is a character. Some of this might be due to the timing - I don't know for sure if the full effect of the objectification of women in Hollywood came later (I mean, in the full Hitchcock sense) - a lot of it, I think, is a trait at Warner Brothers. It's true even of more conventional early works - 42nd Street say - where Bebe Daniels, though perhaps not the star, is the real center of the plot, and is given the one uninterrupted, un-Berkeleyized musical number...

These two Stanwyck films, meanwhile, are interesting for a number of reasons. The fact that there aren't really male audience surrogates in the films, for instance. We see them looking at her - but we still feel that from her point of view - and it is usually linked to her own presentation of herself as an object to be looked at - through which she manipulates them. In Baby Face, none of the men stay with her long enough to become characters - they are conquests, loved and discarded. The exception is at the end - it is instructive. When George Brent appears, the film changes a bit. In this section, we start to see Stanwyck as he sees her - we start to see him emerging as a character, with interests and thoughts other than getting into her dress. We also start to see more fo the conventional glamour shots of old Hollywood - closeups of Stanwyck, alone, being looked at - by us, at least. It is interesting that in the rest of the film, we consistently see Stanwyck looking at things and people - see her composing herself - see her eprforming. In the final section, though, these shots disappear - she is far less self-conscious, far less in control of her image, and so on. It is an interesting change....

There is nothing like that in Night Nurse. She is the protagonist - again - she looks, she acts, she is seen in the round, as it were (shot as an active character, shown in the middle of a three dimensional space). Closeups and similar shots are there to serve the story and the character - to show heightened emotions, decision points and so on - not to present her as something glamourous to be looked at. She is a subject, even when she and Blondell are stripping. It's remarkably modern, more modern than most contemporary films. She was very lucky to be a star at that point in Hollywood's history.

Movie Round Up

Been a while, hasn't it. Okay - it's been a relatively full few weeks, so - here goes....

Breaking News *** - Johnny To film, opening with what looks deceptively simple - a longish crane shot that just keeps going, as the story takes off and never really stops... It starts in the middle of the story and just keeps going - it's about cops orchestrating a hostage standoff for the media, but it's the structure that is really post-modern - there's no context - no backstory, no sense of the cops or crooks as characters, the bare minumum of connection between one set piece and the next.... Add some extreme stylization of the characters and acting, and the mounting weirdness, especially at the end, which starts to sneak into Takashi Miike territory.... It's a pretty neat film....

Friends With Money **1/2 - 4 friends - Jennifer Aniston, Frances MacDormand, Joan Cusack and Catherine Keener - one has no money (Aniston), one has too much (Cusack), the other two are in the middle. They all have their troubles. Aniston's character sort of organizes it - her story arc brings us in and takes us out - though everyone gets reasonably well resolved on screen. It's funny, smart, maybe a bit too obvious, but solid anyway - a kind of low-key American Naruse film. There are worse things.

Lucky Number Slevin ** - exceedingly clever crime caper picture with Josh Hartnett as a schmoe (if not a shmoo) caught between 2 crime bosses, at the mercy, somehow of Bruce Willis, though he bangs Lucy Liu... much confusion and misdirection, but the promise that it will All Add Up, which it does, effectively enough.

Pitfall *** - Hiroshi Teshigahara film about a sad-sack miner who gets whacked by a gentleman in white gloves - who turns out to be hatching a scheme. As cleverly plotted as Lucky Number Slevin, but without having to Explain It All at the end. It's interesting - it's Techigahara's first film, and while he's already got most of the elements of his extreme stylization here, it's applied to overtly political (and intricately plotted) material - an odd effect. Disruptive, beautiful and strange throughout - with Teshigahara's usual 60s collaborators, written by Kobo Abe and scored by the magnificent Toru Takemitsu.

3 by Laura Mulvey: Amy!; Frida Kahlo & Tina Modetti; Disgraced Monuments - three rare short films by Laura Mulvey, the film theorist.... Amy! is about Amy Johnson, an aviator in the 30s who flew from England to Australia, to great acclaim. Very stylized, pointedly significant, but interesting enough.... The Kahlo and Modetti film was made in conjunction with an exhibition of the two artists' work, and is structured as such: slide shows and voiceover, in a conventional enough analysis of their work. Plus some clips of Modetti's Hollywood film work (she was an actress) - and (color) home movies of Kahlo flirting with Diego Rivera (though in fact - said Mulvey - she was in the process of divorcing him, and having an affair with the man shooting the footage. So things might not be what they seem.) Finally, Disgraced Monuments is a TV documentary about the ruins of Russian monuments after the fall of communism. Interesting stuff, lots of discussion about the political and economic facts of artistic life under communism - the vagaries of Soviet iconology (how Stalin changed Lenin's program of creating monuments to the heroes of ocmmunism and progress into a cult of personality, first for Lenin, then Stalin himself - then, after Stalin died, how all the Stalin statues were taken down and replaced with Lenin's, Lenin Lenin everywhere, as far as the eye can see. Some haunting images - crumbling factories and studios full of Lenin heads; a park with several great communists standing, sitting, plopped on the ground, in a kind of temporary exhibit - haunting - they stand like exhibits in a zoo, out of context, brought down to earth, crammed in together as if they were in a holding cell. Fascinating.... Mulvey herself was present, answered questions, talked about these films mostly... It's kind of a shame she couldn't have gone over to the Brattle and given a talk on Baby Face - Stanley Cavell was in the audience - they could have both gone ot the Brattle, seen Baby Face, said a few words. That would have been a treat. Instead, you're stuck with my thoughs on Babs - in the next post...

Technology Making Life Better

In comments to a neat enough post about film books, Girish, bless his heart, posts a link to a link to Osamu Tezuka's Broken Down Film - very nearly the best animated cartoon ever made. (And a couple other Tezuka films, online.) Finding a thing like that first thing in the morning will make your day.

Things that Turn Up

A couple cool things turned up lately, misplaced for a few thousand, or hundred-million, years:

First - The Gospel of Judas - a gnostic text in which Jesus asks Judas to betray him, since Jesus had to die to save the world, and to die, someone had to betray him to the Romans. This text had been discussed but never found - Irenaeus ("a hunter of heretics, and no friend of the Gnostics") condemned it, the ideas were around... It is the source, for example, of the Borges story "Three Versions of Judas", which describes the works of a theologian, Nils Runeberg, who argued that indeed when God came to earth to save humanity, he did not come as Jesus, he came as Judas - what, after all, could be a greater sacrifice than that? Like so many of Borges' stories, sorting out which parts were real and which were not is harder than it seems. Of course, Borges would have predicted that if you knew to look for something, you would find it eventually. You and I, gentle reader, need not practice the heresies of Tlon to learn more about this extraordinary book - we can look it up on National Geographic's site.

Meanwhile, speaking of what you can find if you seek - the discovery of a real "Missing Link" between sea and land creatures, a fish called Tiktaalik roseae. Scientists had predicted they would find it in the the Canadian arctic, and indeed they did. The beast is a fish, but with rudimentary limbs:

In the fishes' forward fins, the scientists found evidence of limbs in the making. There are the beginnings of digits, proto-wrists, elbows and shoulders. The fish also had a flat skull resembling a crocodile's, a neck, ribs and other parts that were similar to four-legged land animals known as tetrapods.

The technical term for this is "very cool." It is, of course, the source of some angst for creationists - the Times rather wryly quotes one demonstrating the missing link between man and weasel by saying

Duane T. Gish, a retired official of the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego, said, "This alleged transitional fish will have to be evaluated carefully." But he added that he still found evolution "questionable because paleontologists have yet to discover any transitional fossils between complex invertebrates and fish, and this destroys the whole evolutionary story."

P.Z. Myers, happily, has pictures, diagrams - a wealth of information and edification! Not only that, but links to Tiktaalik art. Embrace your inner fish!

Blind Blogger Reviews Movies!

Jason Appuzzo, of course:

There are many Philistines in the world, but only one Goliath: that’s me. I think abstract art is a con game. I think free verse stinks. I think atonal music should be outlawed and experimental novels burned. Whenever an artist declares he’s going to break through the restrictions of his form, I feel he should be treated the same as a chess player who declares he’s going to ignore the rules of his game—like an idiot, a harmless eccentric at best. The rules are the game, the restrictions are the form. Indeed, much of the excitement of art comes from watching the spatial confines of the sonnet, say, or the canvas or the movie screen, give way into emotional infinity.

At that point in the post (which is in fact a review of Inside Man), Appuzzo treats us to a quiz: posts pictures of a DaVinci and a Pollack and asks: "Is this art?" He answers himself: "If you answered 1. Yes and 2. No, you may continue."

That certainly saved me the trouble of reading the rest of it. I wonder what he would think of this?

Anyway - anyone who that misunderstands the rules of making art probably can't be trusted even on the stuff he likes. Certainly can't be trusted to look at anything, cause he's got a damned pretty Pollack up there. Of course, that white text black blog design pretty well proves that he doesn't possess any aesthetic sense - if he isn't blind, he will be soon if he actually tries to read his blog....

Pointer to that entertainment thanx to Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money.

Good Stuff

Let us blog together.

Lance Mannion on right wing blowhards - Hugh Hewitt's tour of duty in New York.

Wiley Wiggins, meanwhile, has some neat stuff up: a cool looking movie; links to Caveh Zahedi's blog for the movie, I am a Sex Addict.

Here's Girish Shambu on the Dardennes Brothers' documentary work.

And from Long Pauses, comes a link to Jason Freeman's iTunes Signature Maker, a program that takes your iTunes collection and makes a sound collage out of it. Nice stuff.

Hey - time to watch basketball. Got a good chance of being a pretty good game - I've seen a couple of the Florida games - they have all the makings of one of those teams that peaks in the tournament and makes their seeding look ridiculous. But UCLA looks pretty good too - so we should have something worth seeing.

Enjoy!

Musical Diversion

Randomly arrayed, blah blah blah.

1. Ghost - Hazy Paradise
2. Butthole Surfers - Pepper
3. Six Organs of Admittance - They fixed the Broken Mirror Today
4. Charlie Parker - Moose the Mooche
5. Rod Stewart - Tomorrow is Such a Long time [when songs from this record come up - I remember how good old Rod could be.]
6. Rocket From the Tombs - Life Stinks [I can't wink, I can't blink... love that cheesy organ...]
7. Tom Waits - Gun Street Girl
8. Adverts - Quickstep (live)
9. Jay Farrar - Damn Shame (live)
10. Velvet Underground - European Son [you spit on those under 21]

Baseball - NL

There was a time I was really more of a national league fan than an American league fan. No DH - more pitching, defense, interesting rosters - all that stuff. These days, not so much. And one reason is - I don't think the NL is as good as the AL. The fact that they haven't won a game in the world series since 2003 provides some evidence there. The fact is, only 2 teams (Cards, Stros) seem really strong here (compared to the AL - Boston, NY. Toronto, Chicago, Cleveland, Oakland, California and possibly Minnesota, all of whom have both potent offenses [not the Twins, maybe] and at least 3 solid starters), and only a couple others even in the Twins range (San Diego, maybe the Brewers, the Braves, Mets, Phils). So - who knows. Anyway, here we are. Make of it what you will.

East:
1. Atlanta - until someone beats them... they should score some runs, they still have Smoltz - the rest is increasingly up on the air though.
2. NY - blah. Pedro's hurt already. The rest? Blah. They have talent but - I think this team inherited the curse of the Bambino. The curse of Bill Buckner - you win like that and you have used up all your karma for the next 86 years.
3. Philadelphia - not a bad team, but nothing to write home about. Lots of promising hitters, but the pitching does not inspire confidence.
4. Washington - with a break or two, they could finish 2nd. Without, they could lose 100. Split the difference. I'm not optimistic.
5. Florida - I don't know if they have any major leaguers left other than Cabrera and Willis, but odds are that's enough to beat the Nats. If Hermidia is ready? who knows.

NL Central:
1. St. Louis - don't look as strong as they've been, but still the best in the league. Especially if Rolen is back.
2. Houston - if Roger re-ups, they'll be back in the series, odds on. Without him they have a nice team - there's risk - Pettitte could get hurt, Ensburg could slip - but I think they will stay pretty strong.
3. Milwaukee - this is not a bad team. Sheets and Davis and a bvunch of more than adaquate fillers in the rotation; some good looking relievers; young guys like Hardy and Weeks and Fielder - they could be hanging around the wild card pretty easily.
4. Chicago - Lee, Zambrano, Ramirez keep them sort of respectable - with Prior and Wood hurt again, they aren't winning anything.
5. Cincinatti - a bunch of okay #4 starters in a bad park; plenty of offense, no defense; no hope.
6. Pittsburgh - might surprise. Doubt it. Jason Bay is a hell of a player, though, isn't he.

West:
1. San Diego - safer bet than Barry's knees.
2. San Francisco - on the other hand... the likes of Cain and Lowry are where they will really rise or fall, and Jason Schmidt's health (almost as much as Bonds').
3. LA - not be all that bad. Gagne is key. Fewer people will care that Grady Little doesn't speak any english on the west coast.
4. Arizona - I don't know why I would pick them ahead of the Rockies. Anyone know? Jose Velverde maybe?
5. Colorado - bet they score a lot of runs, but give up more.

Playoffs - Atlanta - St. Louis - San Diego - Houston
Winner: With Roger? Houston; no Roger? St. Louis.
MVP - Pujols, of course.
Cy Young - since Clemens won't be picthing until May, even if he does pitch - I'll say Oswalt. Have I mentioned how awful last year's 2 cy young winners were? nice pitchers and all, but how can you take Colon over Santana or Carpenter over Clemens or Oswalt - or even Peavy? or Pettitte? Zambrano? hell - over Pedro! terrible choices.
Rookie - they all say Hermidia in Florida. Or Zimmerman in Washington. I'll be perverse and say Cain in San Francisco, for no good reason.

Baseball! Predictions! (AL)

I have to do this. Here goes. Predictions and comments. Who knows what they're worth...

American League East:
1. Boston - I am morally obligated to choose them to win. One of these years the Yankees have to lose - the Sox have had better teams the last couple years, so one of these years they'll win the division. Both teams this year are hard to predict, though. Both have very old pitching staffs that had major problems last year - both have done a nice job stocking up on arms for the pen (which is more important than people think. Seasons, and especially post-seasons, are won, probably, by the third starter and the third guy out of the pen - Derek Lowe and Freddy Garcia, Alan Embree and Neil Cotts - as much as by the stars), but the Sox did a better job of improving the rotation (adding Beckett), and they are getting younger at the same time (with Beckett, Papelbon, Hanson, etc.) In fact, with Crisp and Pena and maybe Youkilis playing, the Sox have gotten younger across the board - not a lot, the core is still old (though not as old as NY) - but they seem to be doing a better job of moving to the next generation - replacing older useful mediocrities like Millar with younger useful mediocrities like Pena and Youkilis. The Yankees just keep getting older and more likely to see every single member of the team (except Alex Rodriguez) go on the DL at the same time.
2. NY - they're still going to win 95, unless every single member of the team (except Alex Rodriguez) goes on the DL at the same time... (or if Alex Rodriguez goes on the DL. Without him, they're toast.)
3. Toronto - and if Father Time arrives in Boston and or New York in fighting trim - Toronto is good enough to step into any openings afforded. But it's probably safer to bet on aged but Proven (that has to be capitalized) folks like Schilling or Johnson than on younger arms who can't stay on the field all year, like Burnett.
4. Tampa Bay - another team that can't stay awful forever. They were hitting the hell out fo the ball by the end of last yearm and could get better, if Baldelli is back, when Young and Upton are ready.... They need some more pitchers to emerge, but Kazmir is a good start.
5. Baltimore - everyone hates this team - with good reason. But - this is where we learn just how good Leo Mazzone is. The arms they have can't be any worse than John Thomsen and Jorge Sosa can they? We'll soon find out.

AL Central:
1. Chicago - I suppose I have to pick them. They are 6 deep at starting pitcher; they have a deep pen; they have a decent offense, with some guys who could get better (Iguchi) and Jim Thome... they were, legitimately, the best team in baseball last year, so they could be this year again.
2. Cleveland - I think they're going to be okay. They lost Millwood, but got Byrd, who is okay; the rest of the rotation is solid - the pen is respectable (though Wickman is scary); they have a ton of offense. So why not? They'd need some breaks, I think, to catch Chicago, or the wild card contenders in the other two divisions.
3. Minnesota - plenty of pitching. No offense. But they catch the ball and play the game right, so they will hang around.
4. Detroit - if the pitching continues to develop, if Bonderman and company can improve, which is very possible - they might be into a modest sort of contention. They have some nice young position players, though I don't think they have enough to push Cleveland. Minnesota? with a couple breaks, why not?
5. Kansas City - no. Going nowhere. Deserve the failure they get - a horrible organization. Take Zach Greinke - they monkeyed with him, screwed him up, gave him no runs, and turned him into a basket case.... I'll lay dollars to donuts in a year or two after they release him or trade him to Atlanta, maybe Baltimore if Mazzone is Mazzone, maybe Oakland or St. Louis, he'll blossom. I'd say Boston or NY, because those organizations know what to do with pitchers - but those are tough tough tough places to play... but somewhere...

AL West:
1. Oakland - the pitching is as good as ever; Swisher and Johnson are a year older; Crosby should be healthy - they came close last year... I suspect they'll be back on top.
2. California - I can't keep track of what they're calling themselves, so screw it - let's go old school! They are a pretty darned good team - plenty of pitching, some nice players coming up, Vlad. I think Oakland's better though - a year older, and that should make a lot of difference with all their youth (Swisher, Johnson, Crosby, Harden, Haren, Blanton, Street, etc.)
3. Texas - ho hum. Outslug everyone but Boston and NY, get out pitched by everyone but KC. added a bunch of innings eaters, but the likes of Adam Eaton in their ballpark doesn't inspire confidence.
4. Seattle - do they still have a team? Can Jamie Moyer collect social security checks? Why don't they just bring in the Japanese national team? Along with Felix Hernandez, of course (who's younger than Jamie Moyer has big league experience.)

Good Lord. I think I may have to break this into multiple posts.

So boring stuff:
Playoffs - Boston - Chicago - Oakland + NY (oh, but don't I hope this is Cleveland, or even Toronto)
Winner: No idea. I'll say Boston, simply because I don't intend to pick against them.
MVP - friggin' A Rod again. (He deserved it last year. Quite handily, much as I hate to say it.)
Cy Young - Santana wins three in a row - or would if the voters were sane.
Rookie of the Year - lord; I haven't thought about this. Francisco Liriano sounds reasonable.

Stanislas Lem

I read this afternoon that Stanislas Lem, one of the world's great writers, not inconceivably it's greatest, has died, at age 84. My science fiction reading has always tended to be rather hit or miss, and to come in bunches - discovering Lem, back in the late 80s, set off a particularly significant strand of reading, as he led me not only to his own work, but to Philip K. Dick as well. Lem was a magisterial presence, writer of philosophical science fiction, of excellent criticism, of brilliant and very funny intellectual games (see Imaginary Magnitude, his book of introductions, to such marvels as Reginald Gulliver's Eruntics, an account of "a philosopher-dilittante and amateur bacteriologist who one day eighteen years ago decided to teach bacteria English", and succeeded so well that they began to predict the future, and the content of yet unwritten books.) He was a giant, and will be missed.

Coupla Movies

...briefly noted. No full reviews here. One final note re the stars: I don't know why I bother, but I do.... I have changed the value again. Consider ** to be a solid, good film - a "B" - an Ebert "***". Consider even one star to be a passing grade, basically. If I see crappy films I will find more eloquent ways to abuse them than merely depriving them of a star or so. I like having more variation among the better than good films, rather than the less than good films.

Thank You for Smoking ** - funny film about tobacco lobbyist who has a kind of crisis of conscience. What makes it good? - a series of great set pieces, the confidence of the acting, the overall solid writing. What keeps it from being great" - it sags in the middle, quite badly - the obligatory down period is completely botched... and the story in general tends to turn into a series of vignettes. But - it's pretty good, amusing, clever, well written in places, generally a reasonably intelligent mainstream satire - an almost extinct breed.

Don't Come Knocking ** - new Wim Wenders film, starring Sam Shepard, with Jessica Lange, Sarah Polley, Tim Roth and more. Shepherd plays an aging cowboy actor named Howard Spence (we are apparently in an alternative universe where people are still making generic cowboy pictures like they are in fact making bad cop thrillers or dumb horror pictures). One day he leaves the set and heads for his mothers place where he hasn't been in 30 years. She tells him after a day or so of odd back and forth that he has a son in Butte so off he goes. Jessica Lange is the kid's mother - Tom Roth is tracking him for the bond company - Sarah Polley is hauling her mother's ashes around... The film wavers between a kind of contemplative handsomeness, a strange, loose, wit, and some forced comedy. There's also some forced emoting, but it actually comes off. The comedy does not. The whimsy - a bit better. Mirrored cadillacs; Shepard's excessive, rather ridiculous, laconicness; his mother's scrapbook of his failures.... It's odd - more appealing than it has reason to be, I guess, but never quite connecting. But likeable enough in the end.

Blogity Blog

Fun day on the blogs. What do these two stories have in common?

1. Britney Spears "Pro-Life" statue.
2. Ben Domenech, erstwhile Washington Post blogger, resigns.

Nothing? Probably. The first is comical - quite a few blogs had links that took it (kind of) seriously - Pandagon, Pharyngula, Digby - though it turned out to be satire. There's a lesson in there somewhere about the right or the left - that someone could hesitate about whether that ridiculous thing was parody or not...

But meanwhile - Ben Domenech. Set up by the Washington Post as a blogger, more or less explicitly to provide a conservative voice - he wasted no time getting hammered by the left - see the Poorman's response to his first post. See Steve Gillard for the more serious issues - Domenech's race baiting. See - anyone you want.

What got him, though, was plagiarism. He swiped jokes from P. J. O'Rourke; he swiped movie reviews, starting in college and still doing it years later, for the NRO. He swiped news stories - he even swiped a top ten records list, though that turned out to be stealing from himself (on Crosswalk). This is very hard to believe - I guess people do it, but how could he not think he was going to get caught? Domenech responds here, whining about the rough and tumble of politics (which he's part and parcel of), then explaining away all those plagiarism accusations. Some of them - like the Crosswalk story - he's obviously right about - but really. Take a look at the Corner's comments again - they aren't out to get him, and they're coming up with stuff all over the place. "Put alongside other pieces that we're looking at and that have been linked to elsewhere in the blogosphere, it's hard not to conclude there was something amiss." There's so damn much - it's too much to believe that he would have dishonest editors at his college newspaper, the New York Press, and the NRO, isn't it? Is there anything more to his defense?

There's not much doubt the left went after him - bloggers go after one another all the time, and his appointment was very suspicious from the start. Domenech of course acts as if this is somehow the other bloggers fault... Meanwhile, some say that this is typical of the right - Oliver Willis, for instance: "This once again proves my point about conservatism being unable to exist outside of its self-created echo chamber" - I don't believe that. I think most of the big bloggers, on either side, could survive this kind of attack. Domenech did bad things - and did things that were bad professionally. I can't imagine that Glen Reynolds or Atrios or Charles Johnson or Ezra Klein would do something like Domenech - most people really do know better.

UPDATE: I do want to add something. First - that the kid (Domenech) probably got this job because of his connections in Washington - his father, his own job as a speech writer for John Cornyn (where he may have provided the culture with one of its great laugh lines - "It does not affect your daily life very much if your neighbor marries a box turtle." It's one of the things this story does have in common with the Britney statue story - if you notice that the artist is from Williamsburg - if you notice that Domenech's father had connections to Jack Abramoff - the rest follows.

I also want to add that plenty of people on the web have suggested - joking or not - that the Post picked this kid knowing he would flame out, knowing he was a clown. And in the end - how would we know the difference? He turned out to be such a perfect disaster...

Friday Randomism

1. Minutemen - Nature Without Man
2. Frank Sinatra - Nice Work if You Can Get It (from A Swingin' Affair)
3. Yo La Tengo - Orange Song
4. Yes - Clap
5. American Movie Club - Goodbye to Love (from I wish I were a Carpenter)
6. Traffic - Light Up or Leave me Alone
7. Sun Ra - Images
8. Neko Case - John Saw That Number
9. Marvin Gaye - What's Goin' On
10. Sonny & Linda Sharrock - Gary's Step

A very nice selection, I must say. Some new stuff, plenty of old stuff, jazz, Frank Sinatra, Carpenters' covers, Yes (though inoffensive, non-wanking Yes, acoustic guitar, a nice piece.) Minutemen... It's got everything.

Weekly Films

Not a lot of films on this, and most of the detail on V For Vendetta will end up in it's own post. It's odd - Innocence is a truly outstanding and important film, much better than V..., but V... has got a bit of buzz in the zeitgeist. Of course, who gets to see Innocence? Anyway....

Innocence **** - vision of girl's school as hell. Starts with a coffin being opened by little girls - out pops another little girl, 6 year old Iris. She is brought into the society - there are 5 houses, 7 girls each, one per year, 6-12, it seems, wearing ribbons denoting their ages. They go to classes (science and dance) - they swim and play - they hang around. They are served by downcast old women and taught by two elegant young women who may have secrets of their own. They can't leave, they have no contact with anyone outside, some of them do mysterious things at night. They pine, they adjust, they are bullied by the teachers and each other and mysterious outsiders. All of this is shot in in long, still takes, with low cameras, odd noises, etc. - the film creates a palpable sense of dread, but dread that isn't quite justified. Terrible things are hinted at, but don't materialize (though sometimes they do).... The tone - the dread, the camera creeping around the old buildings, the hints of something nasty just around the corner - is quite reminiscent of Suspiria, of all things - though without the mayhem. The director was present for the screening - during the Q&A, I was gratified to hear her name Argento as one of her inspirations. The beauty, unease, the dancing... It has a strong specifically female point of view, partly expressed in the emphasis on bodies, dealing with the social construction of their identities - but it's also remarkably effective at getting at what it feels like to be a child. The utter strangeness of things, the strange demands made by adults, their strange pronouncements on life, on how we should act. It's a great film.

V for Vendetta **: it's the future, though it's a lot like today. A fat stupid twit raves on TV (looking and sounding like Christopher Hitchens, with a dose of Rush, Bill O'Reilly, and the usual suspects) - meanwhile, a girl goes out after curfew. She's quickly harrassed by cops - and rescued by a guy in a Guy Fawkes mask. He takes her and shows her the Old Bailey being blown up. The next day, she goes to work at a TV station - he shows up and causes trouble, makes a speech promising to blow up Parliament in a year, then leaves, as she saves him from a cop. He has an underground lair. He watches The Count of Monte Christo and occasionally goes out to kill people who deserve it. The cops look for him. The government rails. Backstory gets filled in - then more backstory - meanwhile Stephen Rea is a cop. The government is incompetent - none of the cops can even spy on each other, the TV station doesn't have the wit to turn off the girl's ID when she's wanted for terrorism, cabinet level (or whatever would pass for a cabinet in this world) people prowl around alleyways looking for clues and lead raids on dissidents. Natalie Portman gets her head shaved. Strange twists occur. Months pass and nothing happens. Things blow up.... When you get right down to it, though, it's nonsense, with some nice visuals and highfalutin' quotes. It isn't that bad, but it's not very good either. It's slow and awkward and plays like a very long trailer, as everything is skimmed through without much time to develop. Portman does her job, Hugo Weaving sounds good and moves well under his mask. Stephen Fry is criminally underused. Stephen Rea acts all decent and stuff, but doesn't have anything to do. For all that, it is packed full of ideas, though scattered around, like piles of books in a nerd's bedroom. And thus, I may have mopre to say about it in coming days - it has engendered a certain amount of controversy, and offers many chances to philosophize.

Happy St. iPodrick's Day!

Now if anyone ever forgives me for that pun, I won't forgive them... anyway, here's to it!

1. Ramones - I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend (live)
2. The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Malela
3. Bishop Allen - Things are what you Make them
4. Nick Cave - Supernaturally
5. The Replacements - Here Comes a Regular
6. Six Organs of Admittance - Harmonice Mundi II
7.Rush - The Camera Eye
8. Fire Theft - Carry You
9. Andrey Kirichentko - Scope of My Perception
10. John Cale - Rollaroll

Well - the iPod did not do it's duty re. the holiday there - an Aussie, canucks, a Welshman - but nothing from the auld sod. We'll have to take matters into our own hands here:

They take away your freedom in the name of liberty... great to see that songs about the troubles can fit so nicely here in 21st century USA.... don't believe them, don't believe them, don't be bitten twice...