Because I'll basically watch anything

I have spent the last week in front of the heatless glow of an eight-inch screen, catching up on movies I missed earlier in the year. Many of these movies, which I must stipulate I chose to watch, are terrible; this is because I really have no taste. For your mockery, and in no particular order:

• Kung Fu Panda: After the bilious Madagascar, I thought Dreamworks was a lost cause; but I'd heard this described as "surprisingly good." It was fine; not up with Pixar's best, but certainly par with Cars. Interesting cast, though, and Ian McShane turns out to be a great voice actor, like we couldn't have guessed, but still really great.
• Sukiyaki Western Django: Came out last year and I've only now seen it. Strange and interesting; enjoyable. Stagey. Japanese actors speaking phonetic English in A Fistful of Dollars/Henry VI hybrid. Get off the goddamn screen, Quentin. Not sure I get everything about it. Weirdest thing I've watched in weeks.
• The Mummy 3 or maybe 4: Oh balls, now Jet Li is a Chinese mummy: So this franchise has split, I guess? With one line being all about oiled-up bodybuilders and cheap CGI, and the other for Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz Maria Bello being all Nick and Nora but with more roundhouses and firepower? Okay, it doesn't work, but that's actually what I'd probably recommend if I were Fraser's agent, so, um, carry on then.
• Lower Learning: Screw you, I watch shitty comedies. Over the top enough to generate a few laughs. Eva Longoria huffing paint. HA! Seriously, though, this is terrible.
• Step Brothers: At first it's another one for the shitty comedy pile, but it ends up being pretty solid for the Ferrell oeuvre. I think John C. Reilly helps focus Ferrell: They both mine the same flailing idiot man-child material, but JCR seems to have a control that complements Ferrell's inventiveness. Funny premise; ludicrous (but necessary story-wise) third act.
• Hitman: Timothy Olyphant once again plays an emotionally tortured badass killer, but this time with a shaven head and a bar code tattoo. (Question: Is this the most inconspicuous look for a secret group of international assassins?) It's better than a video game movie has a right to be, which only means it's not Uwe Boll-terrible. It takes an odd detour into rom-com territory(!), then mostly comes to its senses. When you see the Russian kids playing the Hitman video game, point out "hey, meta!", because that will be the high point of the movie for you.
• The X Files: I Want to Believe: Better than the first movie, this reads like an early-season episode: lots of heavy-handed religious posturing, some sick fucking Russians, and just enough supernatural to tie it together. People who squee at Scully and Mulder getting together probably squeed like banshees; I did not squee. Some pretty ugly homophobia throughout.
• Son of Rambow: Precious and manipulative, but quite good despite that. The boys' relationship and the social criticism of their environments felt unforced. The metafilmic conceit (basically the only thing that carried Be Kind Rewind and The Amateurs) is here a more integral part of the emotional story: the boys' film is an act of will, by which they shape and remedy the world around them. The French kid is funny.
• Wanted: Killer weavers and panic attacks? Freeman is unctuous; McEvoy is a cipher; would anyone be surprised if Jolie turned out to be from Cygnus B? But the action is unflagging, and there are a couple of witty bullet-time shots. Ignore the mess; grab the popcorn.
• Man on Wire: This is a very good movie about a truly extraordinary act, and I'm not sure it's possible to critique the film without the overwhelming power of the act interfering. The film is (deliberately and explicitly) set up as a heist movie; this is smart, as we immerse ourselves in the criminality of the event before having to confront the guerilla performance art of the sublime. The film cannot capture Petit's act, and I don't think it tries to; it falls most flat during recreations, and it succeeds best for me when witnesses try to come to terms with what they have seen (the arresting policeman at the press conference being my favorite example).
• Burn After Reading: Why no love for the Coens? This got pretty much panned last summer, but I think those critics were spoiled by the perfect delicate grit of No Country... and were not receptive to a comedy of pain. This might be more Fargo-like than Fargo, whose shining moral center of Marge Gunderson has been excised and replaced with malevolent stupidity; it's a choice that works beautifully. Also, most actors playing a raging dick too often seem to miss either the rage or the dickishness. Malkovich, by contrast, brings a tankful of both.
• Eagle Eye: This is unredeemably silly. Around the halfway point in every movie every moviegoer is ready for a Big Plot Twist to carry the action forward; this time, however, that plot twist has been telegraphed so thoroughly that, when the co-stars stand shocked with mouths agape, I can only say How is this a surprise? How is the audience not supposed to know this? How are the characters? Shut your stupid agape mouths already! Michelle Monaghan (had to look her up) is uncompelling, and Shia LeBoeuf is, as in everything else, just unlikable (seriously who decided that this guy got to grab the Hollywood brass ring?). Wrap it all up with some giant plot holes (that computer looks pretty fragile, guys, bet one of you could take it out around the 30-minute mark...) and you've got a recipe for summer action fun!
• The House Bunny: It whitewashes Hef, but so obviously as to be a wink at reality. In fact it whitewashes everything sexual, only occasionally breaking that code for some funny yet PG jokes. I have not seen such a great expected-sexiness to actual-sexiness ratio since Lars and the Real Girl. Anna Faris, as always, is a treasure with a gift for physical comedy, often broad, sometimes balletic. The story--misfit girls learn to look trampy then learn to dial it back--ends up being a subtle, positive, feminist message.
• Hancock: "Okay, this doesn't seem so bad. Smith is coasting on his charm, but not too much. Bateman's been given a ridiculous character, but he's a professional, it'll be all right. Wait, is this what everyone hated? Hancock macking on Charlize WAIT A MINUTE WTF THIS MAKES NO SENSE. And now it's getting goopy and EVEN STUPIDER. Well I've watched this much so I might as well OH YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME THE ENDING IS THE WORST OF ALL."
• Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: Maybe I've seen and read too much about HST already, but this left me cold. The interviewees were interesting, and it was good to hear from/about the collaborators that helped shape his art (Steadman, Acosta, Wenner). But a lot of it was just facile (and the music cues were deadly: really, "Sympathy for the Devil"? "You Sexy Thing"?). There often comes a point with an artist like Thompson where he himself becomes the work of art, one that is dangerous and unpleasant and commodified. I appreciate this effort to reclaim HST's reputation, but I'm afraid it relies on the same commodification, the same naughty glimpse at the public private man.
  

If I actually went to the movies instead of waiting for video, I might have been able to come up with something that hadn't been said far better many months ago.

Absence

My erratic posting schedule is about to get a little more so. Will be back in a week!

UDHR

http://www.amnesty.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights-anniversary

For 60 years now we have recognized our duty to treat other human beings with dignity. On paper anyway.

She had style, she had flair, she was there

What? No. NO. This makes no sense at all.

Even if she was in This Is Spinal Tap.

It's just a flesh wound

I don't have a particularly high tolerance for movie gore, and last night I ended up contemplating one of the most gruesome scenes I've ever viewed (really not saying much at all): the opening of Ghost Ship, where a stray cable neatly bisects nearly everyone on the ship. I don't know what happens in the rest of the movie, 'cause after that I quickly gave up.

One late night I stumbled on Resident Evil on HBO; the laser scene (you know what I'm talking about) squicked me out and I quickly turned off that one too.

So tell me horror fans: are there other movies featuring neatly sliced human beings that I should just remember to avoid? am I missing something great--am I turning off films that go on to become quality cinema after the FX folks have had their fun? My bet is that the answers are Yes and No.

Too many links

• Smith Magazine's "Six Words for Obama": I'm partial to "What the ... that's not a peanut!"
• Blagojevich arrested: Good. This guy and Bill "90G in the freezer" Jefferson are bad news, and I don't want to take any chance that their corruption will taint Democrats and interfere with, you know, fixing all the fuckups. And maybe Blago will take a cue from the last horribly corrupt Illinois governor and try to do something decent to get everyone on his side again. Though I doubt it, 'cause once you try to sell a U.S. Senate seat you've pretty much given up on your reputation.
• Science vs. Norse Mythology: I liked it anyway, and pretty much all of Kreider's work.
  
• How much work can I avoid today, three posts, jeez.

Wish fulfillment 2008

So The Onion has been doing something a little cool lately: a protracted series of deadpan accounts of Bush getting the shit beat out of him:

• Bush's Eyelid Accidentally Nailed to Wall
• Bush Passes Three-Pound Kidney Stone
• Bush Dragged Behind Presidential Motorcade For 26 Blocks
• Crocodile Bites Off Bush's Arm

... and so on (or not; these are the only ones so far I think). I like this joke, for a few reasons. First, it's subtle; having famously ushered him into office, The Onion must feel some comedic pressure to escort him out appropriately, and they've chosen to do that through deadpan news briefs rather than something bigger and more obviously satiric of Bush. Second, it is fantastic satire of domestic violence--a target that tends to resist satiric treatment: It parodies the goofy impossible excuses that both abusers and abused use to explain away the violence, and it serves as a contrapasso (okay we don't know that Bush is guilty of domestic abuse, even though he almost certainly is an asshole date-raping frat-boy fuckwaffle, but it does seem plausible and we know he's done far worse), where abuse-for-the-abuser is both emotionally and dramatically satisfying.

Finally, while the arc of the joke is easy to discern (Bush will suffer more and more mutilations until Jan. 20, presumably at the hands of the Secret Service, aides, and family), its details are open-ended, limited only by the comic inventiveness of the authors; like "The Aristocrats," this is a joke more about the journey than the destination. And the surreality of crocodiles and nail guns already seen enriches the satire: perhaps the abusers are making up stupid excuses because they don't care who knows, perhaps it's abuse at the hands of the author (think "Duck Amuck"), perhaps (ok, certainly) it's a callback to the idiocy of a semi-dry drunk who can injure himself with a pretzel. We don't know exactly what's in store for Onion-Bush, but it is certain to involve much ignominy, humiliation, and pain. Gives me a warm feeling, it does.

Happy Life Day!

The greatest holiday special of all time. Maybe Rudolph or A Charlie Brown Christmas are a little more beloved, a little more canonical. But they lack both the goofy gameness and surreality of The Star Wars Holiday Special. Consider this my present to you:

Maybe it's a little early, but it's never too soon to get into the Life Day spirit!

Plus an excuse to doodle

Because sometimes I don't know whether what I'm seeing is following a nightmare logic or is simply odd:

Now laugh at me for watching movies wrong.

Landslide

Oh this could be good. There are still thousands of challenged ballots to pick through, but apparently the outcome of most of those challenges is easily predicted. But seriously, pins and needles.

Eagerly awaiting the Al Franken Decade.

California Split (1974)

Gambling movies tend toward fable: The Cooler, Intacto, The Cincinnati Kid, even Alfred Hitchcock Presents and the goulash that is Rounders--all tacitly accept that Fate and Chance and Luck are real, primal forces, or agents to be angered, appeased, and bullied. The struggle against fortune (good or bad) is broad and dramatic rolls/parleys/hands mark the plot like a metronome (I have convinced myself that the poker scenes in Casino Royale are acid parody). These films pair the gambler's superstition with the gambler's degeneracy: The willingness to wager everything (the only stakes worth making a film about) is the mark of an action junkie, someone eager to burn his house down if he has a bet on fire department response time. Altman's California Split puts these two parts together in a way that avoids cliche: we settle into an immersive, barely plotted character study of two degenerate gamblers and only very late in the film do we realize that they are in the middle of a gambling fable that cannot end well.

Crossposted from Not That Critical.

You just need to want it bad enough

It is possible to smoke a cigarette with a mouth full of gauze, a face full of -caine, and a head full of Lortab. It is not easy nor advisable, nor dignified, clean, nor even safe, but it is possible.

The glory of the 70s could not be sustained

If you read only one ESPN article all year, make it this one:

My favorite YouTube clip runs 572 magical seconds. It celebrates an impossible-to-fathom era of political incorrectness, egotistical celebs, misguided testosterone and the purest unintentional comedy possible … only it finishes with a Hall of Fame sports moment. That's right—I'm referring to the match race between Robert Conrad and Gabe Kaplan on the 1976 debut of Battle of the Network Stars.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqWU9huMMco

Remodel observation

This shit is expensive.

The Very Best Children's Book

Is Richard Scarry's Busy Busy World, and it's not even close. Where the Wild Things Are is just preening hipsterism, and Goodnight Moon can go fuck itself.

Where else will children learn that a clever thief can hide in a pot of soup, or that if you fuck up a house-painting job for a Greek pig she'll probably still be pretty chill? Or that Italians drive like psychos?

In the picture, all the animals are going to Rio for carnival, but the overcrowded plane splits open before they can leave (thanks Aunty Ant). Not to worry: As you can see, Noah the Boa totally saves the day.

And you know in the real world Noah would just keep squeezing...

Funnyman for Senate

I have been following this race for months, and (as it's basically the only still-newsworthy element of Election 08) still am, and with obsessive enthusiasm formerly reserved for The O himself.

I want this. A lot. Partly because Minnesotans are pretty cool (since they're covered with ice eight months a year HAW HAW GEDDIT) and don't deserve to have a gladhanding corrupt toady like Coleman representing them in the Senate. Okay, that's reason enough.

But we need a professional satirist in the Senate. NEED. Not because of the comedy, snark, and endless Daily Show appearances that it would portend. Rather, a satirist has superior understanding of issues, because satire is one of the best tools of reason: It is a direct comparison between the world as it is and the world as we proclaim it to be; addressing this disjunct has to be one of the goals of the federal government over the next few years. (This understanding is evident in Franken, who is educated, informed, and has been politically active for decades.)

Plus, if I can channel grade-school civics patriotism for a second: The legislative bodies primarily comprise (successful) lawyers and businesspeople, a fair number of (successful) doctors, academics, and engineers, and a handful of political celebrities. This mix is neither representative nor, really, well-suited to understanding the realities of day-to-day existence. Perhaps a millionaire comedian is just as detached from reality as those others, perhaps not; what is certain, however, is that a comedian cannot become a millionaire (or at least can't have a decades-long successful career) while so detached.