Eastwood Gets the Hundredth Post...Fitting, No?

"Some reviewers resent it that the films strike a popular chord, and then they go out and find films that don't work and find strange reasons for praising them. "

Clint Eastwood, interview with Roger Ebert.

Louis CK - on being white, on being fat, and on hating American Beauty

Accepted into UVIC. They want a yes/no in two weeks. If I don't hear from UBC by then, it's tempting. It seems to have a better program than SFU, at least course selection - wise. It is isolated, though, and Victoria is tres chere (trop chere, actually).  I'm hoping to go up there before the deadline and scope it out, maybe talk to some of the teachers.  

Anybody who's been there care to weigh in?

[This is an old post which kind of got lost between blogs--I meant to put it up here, but it went on lititandquitit. Then I erased it. Then google reader found it for me. Here goes.]

There are books and movies which I wouldn't call 'favourites' in the Ghostbusters/Godfather sense of the word--not particularly enjoyable or brilliant--which nevertheless occupy a great deal of mental space. They're good to brood on. The Nick Cave-penned The Proposition is the film that comes to mind, although, and everyone's tired of me saying it. it should have ended in a shootout between Ray Winstone and Danny Huston, rather than an almost-rape of Emily Watson. But if it had, I probably wouldn't think about the film much. 

Don DeLillo's White Noise is the book that most comes to mind. The main conceit of the book--that a fear of death builds up behind a wall of repetitive trash-culture bullshit--is so foreboding that it's hard to think about without wincing. In the character of Murray Susskind, it almost seems like DeLillo was parodying people like Chuck Klosterman, people who wouldn't come into cultural power for another twenty years. Murray is the kind of guy who applies postmodern philosophy to seemingly-meaningless social interactions like shopping and tourism--he loves brand names, the supermarket, and Elvis.  He scares the shit out of me.

What's amazing about both of these is how understated their effect is. You can (well, I can) see a plethora of Tarantino and Oliver Stone movies and never engage with them, mostly because they are so stupid. Natural Born Killers is the classic example: on the box it says something like 'Society made them killers, the media made them famous.' Great. You get two hours (three if you see the director's cut) of meaningless and poorly done violence disguised as social critique.  Clockwork Orange is another one--I know that's sacrilege, but 'He may be a murdering rapist but at least he feels' just doesn't do it for me. Ditto the second half of Fight Club. Whatever point they're making feels tacked on, an excuse to show violent spectacle rather than develop character or story. And before you say 'But that's the point, to show the folly of worshipping violent spectacle'--you didn't see Christ chasing the money-lenders from the temple by offering lower interest rates, did you?

I don't love White Noise, but it haunts me a lot more than most of the Hemingway and Chabon books that I do love. I don't even like The Proposition, but I can't remember a movie since Apocalypse Now that's so constantly invaded my thoughts. Of course there are books and films that are both enjoyable and deep, but usually I err on the side of enjoyment. There is value to  art that keeps you up nights.

I'm sorry, but a gay politician who was assassinated is not exactly risky in post 2000 Hollywood, and I don't think Penn won due to his performance. As Marlene Dietrich said, "it is incomprehensible that they [the Academy] can confuse an actor with his or her role."

Octopuscinema.blogspot.com

To me, Sean Penn is one of those guys like Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicholson, Daniel Day-Lewis, Martin Scorsese, etc, who can't get nominated enough. Everything they do is pretty great. But when they win, it always feels like their Oscar is really for last year's film. Penn was amazing in Mystic River, and he's a much better actor than Mickey Rourke, and much more consistent. But this was the year of the Ram. Even Penn seemed to realize the award was for Milk, not for him. If it helps get Prop 8 overturned, great. But everyone knows that Rourke did a better job than Penn of portraying a character who spends all his time hugging other sweaty men.

Lee Marvin talking about his career--nobody played the antihero better than Marvin, because he didn't look like a nice enough guy who, due to regrettable circumstances beyond his control, finds himself on the wrong side of the law. Lee Marvin looks like a guy who gleefully hurts people who fuck with him. 

The Dirty Dozen, Point Blank and The Killers are all required viewing.

  

The most forlorn and comical statements are the ones made by the grateful young who say Now I can be ready in two years and nine months to go out in and earn a living rather than wasting 4 years in college. Education is something that should be apart from the necessities of earning a living, not a tool therefore. It needs contemplation, fallow periods, the measured and guided study of the history of man’s reiteration of the most agonizing question of all: Why? Today the good ones, the ones who want to ask why, find no one around with any interest in answering the question, so they drop out, because theirs is the type of mind which becomes monstrously bored at the trade-school concept. A devoted technician is seldom an educated man. He can be a useful man, a contented man, a busy man. But he has no more sense of the mystery and wonder and paradox of existence than does one of those chickens fattening itself for the mechanical plucking, freezing and packaging.

John D. MacDonald, A Purple Place For Dying

Along with the crap they're making for the new GI Joe movie, Hasbro is also reissuing a bunch of Classic GI Joe stuff. That's either really cool or really lame depending on if you were born in a certain decade. Unlike the new Transformers toys, these actually look how GI Joes are supposed to look, down to the slightly mongoloid heads and  unrealistic crotches. My brother Dan got the original PIT battle station for his birthday one year. That's still probably his 

greatest achievement. Well, some of us just peak early. 

Godfather II at the Vancity theatre this Sunday.

Godfather II at the Vancity theatre this Sunday?

Godfather II at the Vancity theatre this Sunday!

"Los Angeles: Come on Vacation, Go Home on Probation"

James Ellroy on Los Angeles, murdered women, Dragnet and noir.

I don't know if James Ellroy is simply the best author at describing the compulsions, neuroses and sexual obsessions that I feel, or whether he has inscribed them on me. I've been reading his books since grade nine. In that year, 1995 0r 6, I read American Tabloid and L.A. Confidential, then White Jazz. The film version of Confidential came out that year. I was hooked. To describe his writing style would be impossible, but blending Raymond Chandler, Othello, Dante and Hieronymous Bosch would get you in the ballpark. 

Ellroy's new book Blood's A Rover is, for me at least, the most-anticipated release of 2009. A selection from it was published in Playboy two months ago. Publishing Ellroy should earn Playboy another two or three Xs to their rating, at least. Rover is the final installment in the Underworld USA Trilogy, which chronicles American politics and crime from the Kennedy Years through to Nixon. They are hard, ugly books which intertwine fact and fancy, challenging the prevailing myths of the 60s and 70s. What a ride.

Wake Me Up When the Wolves Come Out to Play

When I was a wee tosser my family drove in our VW Westfalia to Disneyland. I believe the year was 1993 0r 4. Music-wise, grunge was playing itself out, to be replaced by the soulless 'alt-rock' of those mid-90s bands that all sounded like Alice in Chains. Page and Plant had reunited, and the Tea Party were breaking through as their opening act. 

Of course, at the time I didn't know or care about any of that. Musically our trip was governed by one album and one album only: Steely Dan co-founder Donald Fagen's solo album Kamakiriad. My dad was so enthralled by the CD that he used his Nakamichi tape deck to dub a tape for our car: Side A was Kamakiriad. Side B was also Kamakiriad. All the way down the fucking western seaboard and back. 

Now, everyone goes through the uncomfortable phase where the albums of their parents that they rebelled against start to sound pretty good. I like Steely Dan, and I say that knowing it makes me a social pariah. They have interesting orchestration and cryptic lyrics, and if they don't rock, well, not everything has to be Pantera. Also, Donald Fagen's first solo album, The Nightfly, is pretty listenable. That was the era of the studio musician, and Fagen knew how to combine the right musicians for his vision. 

None of which can be said for Kamakiriad, which is governed by tepid synthesizer and boring-ass drum machine. It's a fucking awful album, and if you hate Steely Dan, you will hate this album even more. It's a concept album about a kid in the future whose parents buy him a swanky car (the Kamakiriad in question) and the adventures he has as he tools around. 

Funny enough, though, Michel Gondry did the video for "Snowbound," Fagen's first and mercifully only single off the album. The video follows the lyrics of the song to a disturbing degree. I only saw this video today, and what impresses me is that Gondry's video actually makes more sense than any of Gondry's movies. The song's still wretched, but it brings back memories of getting spanked by my dad at a rest stop in the middle of the Redwood Forest.

Watch if you dare...

I realize two controversial political posts in a row is bad blog policy, but I just have to comment on this:

Ledger supporters at new Web site, The Ultimate Joker, launched a petition last week calling for studios to remove The Joker from any future Batman movies. The petition currently has 2431 supporters.

First of all, Heath Ledger was good. Equal to or better than Jack Nicholson. But is his lip-licking, hunchback, pedophile-voiced interpretation the only one? 

"Schlurp schlurp, starting tonite people will die, schlurp schlurp. Tee hee. Lip smack." 

Ignoring the fact that the Joker has already been interpreted a bunch of times, and that the character is essential to the Batman archetype--Wouldn't you like to see someone else have a crack at it? Liev Schrieber, Adrian Brody, Sean Penn, Edward Norton? Isn't is feasible--nay,  certain--that someone out there could do a better job than the kid from the Patriot? 

Seriously, internet. This one you lose. If they can hire Roger Moore to replace Sean Fucking Connery, then there's no way they should retire The Joker. Schlurp schlurp.

The Thomas A. Swift Electric Rifle

A Polish man named Robert Dziekanski was stranded in the Vancouver Airport for a long time. He became agitated and began screaming, throwing chairs, and was brandishing a stapler when the RCMP entered, Tasered him five times and held him down. Dziekanski died as a result. Someone recorded the tail end of Dziekanski's outburst and the police response. Now there's an inquiry.

Policy will be made because of this event.

I don't believe this was police brutality and I don't believe that spectators who only viewed one out of context video have a right to second-guess the RCMP officers. 

The taser falls under the heading of "non-lethal" response tools. The RCMP were not out to kill Dziekanski, but to subdue him. 

Is five Tasers excessive? Was a knee to the back necessary? Perhaps not. But again, these are the techniques available to them. A person on an adrenaline-enhancing drug such as PCP can exert the strength of five normal-tempered people. 

The RCMP followed their training and subdued Dziekanski, not intending to kill him, but to preserve the other civilians (and the officers themselves) from potential harm. The #1 priority of any police officer is to gain control of the situation. 

If I was the RCMP, the next time I was called to subdue a violent, aggravated man at the airport, I'd say fuck it. Because of a confluence of bad judgment on Dziekanski's part and reasonable force, a man lost his life. Sad, yes, avoidable, probably, but criminal, no. Six hours or no, you don't fuck around at airports. 

What I'm saying, kitten, is that sometimes shit happens, someone's gotta deal with it, and who ya gonna call?

You can watch the whole thing here. Poor bastard. 

Now this...is a movie poster. Take note, Bergman.

Poker Tips From My Brother

Me: So do I have tells?

Dan: Yes.

Me: Like what?

Dan: A big shit-eating grin whenever you get a hand.

A ‘n’ E Vibe: How would you describe your style? I have heard The Armada called indie and mainstream.

Jeff Martin: I wouldn’t call it indie. What do you think of when you say indie? I think of indie rock as rock music played badly. Either they can’t play that well, or they think it’s cool to not to play that well. The indie scene can be very pretentious. I see the Armada as very big rock and roll music, there is a very hardcore honesty as far as the poetic is concerned. The Armada is just large rock and roll music in the vein of Led Zeppelin, it’s that type of big music. I wouldn’t say it’s mainstream, it’s certainly not Nickelback.

Interview with Jeff Martin on his new band The Armada, whose CD has some of the best music he's done since the Tea Party--the good Edges of Twilight Tea Party, not the later-period, Bob-Rock-produced,  inexplicably-backing-Scott-Stapp-how-could-you-fucking-do-that-to-me Tea Party. Man, that was a dark chapter in Canadian history. When your record label tells you to lose the sitar and tour with Def Lepperd, that's when it's time to bolt.

Anyway, it's interesting to examine the jargon musicians have to use to sell themselves. "Not indie but not Nickelback." Those are the Scylla and Charybdis of white peoples' music in the 2000s, aren't they? Another couple years and it'll be:

A: "Well we don't suck like Nickelback, but we don't suck like Green Day either. We sure as shit don't suck like Fallout Boy but we also don't suck like Death Cab 4 Cutie. We're actually trying not to suck."

Q: "Not...suck? Oh, you mean play with amazing technical facility like Rush and Mars Volta?"

A: "Well no, we still want to play songs, not technical exercises with lyrics about Arctic Circle deforestation and Ayn Rand."

Q: "Oh, then you're one of those angry metal bands that sings like Cookie Monster."

A: "No, we have a singer...who sings."

Q: "I see. And you're not black?"

A: "Nope."

Q: "...strange..."

Better than an RRSP

I don't come up with very many money-making schemes. It's just not something I'm good at. However, I've come up with a really great idea for toys. Not little kids' toys, but the kind of toys they sell at collectible shoppes and in the front of Chapters. Here's my idea:

Shakespeare action figures.

Not action figures OF Shakespeare--no one wants a figurine of a bald guy with a quill pen. But action figures of Shakespearean characters.

Here's what the first run would entail:

1. Hamlet: A black-clad Danish prince complete with Yoric's Skull (TM) and fencing sword accessories! Ghost (TM) and Horatio (TM) sold separately. Brood-tastic!

2. Macbeth: The Scottish Thane Who Became King by Killing Everyone Else! Battle Armour (TM), longsword and Crown accesories! Detachable head for replaying the decapitation scene! Lady MacBeth, MacDuff and Banquo sold separately! Bloody good fun!

3. Richard III: The Hunch-backed Bastard of Gloucester! Sword, fake Bible and Amorous Looking Glass (TM) accessories! Lady Anne and Richmond sold separately! Now is the winter of our contentment with this toy!

4. Capulet and Montague specialty packs: Choose between Lord and Lady Montague, Mercutio and Brabantio, or Lord and Lady Capulet, Tybalt and the Nurse! Star-crossed families...ready for blood! Romeo and Juliet sold separately.

and for a limited time only:

5. The Boar's Head Tavern Extreme Playset: A Wal-Mart Exclusive! All your favourites are here: Falstaff, Prince Hal, Poins, Bardolph, Peto, Mistress Quickly, three men in Kendall green (TM) and bonus Ancient Pistol! Falstaff and Hal are ready for a good time in Mistress Quickly's brothel, but when the Sheriff (TM) comes around, the tavern morphs into a battle-station, with bed barricades, ale-keg cannons, and a secret hiding place for Falstaff to fall asleep in! Not only witty in itself, but the cause of wit in other men...and children! Ages 12 and older. Warning: contains small parts. 

I would buy every single one of those. And play with them. Isn't that sad?

Now this breaks my heart.... 

Fifteen years ago Bill Hicks, near the end of his life, taped a Letterman segment. It was never aired till now, when Letterman aired it on a special episode with Hicks's mother. Good for you, Letterman.

Yes, the slime even glows in the dark:http://www.geekologie.com/2009/02/i_aint_afraid_of_no_ghostbuste.php