The Found Generation

With Pleasure

2012-02-08T20:20:00.000-05:00

In the 1920s, Charlie Chaplin was the world's most famous man. His films had become so universally popular -- and made so many people rich -- that he was able to establish his own film studio and control every aspect of production. When "talkies" revolutionized the industry in 1927, Chaplin scoffed and continued to make silent films (some of the greatest work in film history) until 1940. He had the clout and the cash to go against the tide of progress. Yet, many stars who seemed invincible during the silent film era suddenly found themselves irrelevant. The Artist tells the story of such a star.

George Valentin is said silent movie star living the life of dreams. He's rich, popular, handsome, and can seemingly do no wrong. At the premiere of his latest film, he inadvertently bumps into Peppy Miller, an adoring fan, and through a series of wildly opportune events (archetypal of silent films), Miller lands a minor role in Valentin's next picture, leading to her rapid ascent in the movie business.

French director Michel Hazanavicius' strongest move was casting Jean Dujardin (Valentin) and Bérénice Bejo (Miller) as the stars of his 21st century silent film. Dujardin, with his million dollar smile, and Bejo, with her lovely doe eyes, breezily seduce the audience much like Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and company seduced the masses almost a century ago.

By their very essence, silent films must convey action in the broadest means possible. Playwright George Bernard Shaw called Chaplin "the only genius to come out of the movie industry..." because Chaplin was a master at communicating powerful emotions with nothing but a small top-hat, baggy pants, and crooked cane. There is no place for subtly or abstraction in silent film; overt symbolism is wielded like a sledgehammer. Invariably, this results in melodrama but it also affects the viewer on much more base level. When we see Miller and Valentin run into each other at studio headquarters, he going down stairs whilst she goes up, the full magnitude of what is about to happen in their lives is obvious and undeniably heartbreaking.

Surely, The Artist is quite predictable (somewhat by design) and simple, but it's also deliciously charming. In a time when louder is better and bigger isn't big enough, it's refreshing to indulge oneself in a contemporary film that honors the birth of the industry while losing yourself in the silkiness of early celluloid.

Love Crazy

2011-11-04T09:00:00.005-04:00

When asked about the existence of a higher power, renowned astrophysicist and cynosure talk show guest, Neil deGrasse Tyson, penetratingly responded: "Every account of a higher power that I've seen described, of all religions that I've seen include many statements with regard to the benevolence of that power. When I look at the universe and all the ways the universe wants to kill us, I find it hard to reconcile that with statements of beneficence." Scaling down to earthly matters, Drake Doremus' film, Like Crazy, suggests the universe cruelly conspires against lasting romance, too.

Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones play Jacob and Anna, two attractive but unassuming college students who fall in love their senior year. Their courtship is sweetly innocent yet admiringly mature; against the backdrop of Los Angeles sprawl, they create a small intimate and idyllic world for themselves. Complications arise when Anna, a British national, can't bear to leave Jacob and overstays her student visa. A seemingly harmless indiscretion that nevertheless sets off a chain of events that eventually leads to their ending up eight time zones apart.

The story is fairly simple and familiar. As anyone who has attempted a long-distance relationship knows all too well, a labour of love rapidly devolves into awkward phone calls, histrionic text messages, crossed schedules, and, inevitably, new paramours. Doremus, who co-wrote and directed the film, based the story on his own experiences battling immigration officials to reunite with his Austrian girlfriend, never allows the script to interfere with the business of storytelling. He relies on his actors to express the characters' emotions via non-verbal cues. To round off the experience of the personal, Doremus injects smartly placed expressionistic cinematography to convey the abstractions of anticipation, loneliness, and nostalgia. The result is a crafted and memorable little film that resists Hollywood convention and strongly speaks to the stubborn perseverance of love, while reminding us how tenuous romance can be.

The Plot Against Americans

2011-10-12T20:26:00.007-04:00

In 2004, Philip Roth wrote The Plot Against America, a harrowing alternate historical novel describing a family's downfall as America is overrun by Nazi-aligned fascism. In light of Hitler's phoenix-like ascension, a noticeable contingent of public figures feared inevitable conflict a mere two decades after the devastation of The Great War. In Europe, this was highlighted by appeasement. In America, isolationism suddenly became the cause du jour, led by none other than by a bona fide American hero, Charles Lindbergh. Roth imagined a nightmare: what if in 1940 -- prior to Pearl Harbor, prior to American military engagement -- Lindbergh ran for President on an anti-war, isolationist platform and roundly defeated Roosevelt?

Within days of his inauguration, Lindbergh signs an "understanding" with Hitler essentially guaranteeing America's non-involvement in the "European War." Japan, in turn, is given free reign in the Pacific theater as long it doesn't attack US interests. Slowly but most assuredly, mirroring its newfound Third Reich cousin, the Lindbergh administration begins to implement anti-Semitic policies which incrementally undermine and marginalize America's Jewish community. Those brave enough to protest against President Lindbergh and his anti-Semitic policies are mocked as paranoid, and if they persist, shamed by epithets like, "Loudmouth Jew!" America is hijacked by fascism.

Roth's conceit is a nightmare, a far-fetched one for sure, but its core elements are grounded in feasible reality. It is precisely these apparatuses of a coup d'état which Roth capitalizes on to craft his frightening tale, and against which the participants of the Occupy Movement are now protesting. I heard an interview last week where one protestor was asked, "Are you here because you believe the American Dream is dead?" The 20-something ingénue with a 20-dollar bill taped over his mouth answered affirmatively. The American Dream is not dead, it has just been hijacked by avarice. If I had to put a name to it, I'd call it financialism.

One of the more fascinating aspects of Plot is that since his first novel Goodbye, Columbus (1959), Roth has cultivated an illustrious career out of ridiculing old-world Jewish paranoia, openly ridiculing mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, grandmothers, and grandfathers who are convinced pogrom-minded goyyim are around every corner. America is the land of opportunity and liberty, of secular egalitarianism. In Plot, however, he proffers a horrifying reality where all those fears are not just hinted upon, but fully realized.

In recent times, the onus of public derision falls upon the government. Condemning the government has become the trendy political move by candidates in a bid to garner support. For many, the government is the enemy of the people. It's true, government acquiescence to big business plays a major role in this crisis. But it's not government using your grandmother's retirement fund to bet against toxic derivatives, it's the greedheads, the captains of the financial industry, characterized by the umbrella term, Wall Street. Wall Street, to borrow one of my favorite Dylan lines, philosophizes disgrace and criticizes our fears. They tell us that without them the whole world economy will fall apart; they tell us they shouldn't be punished for their own success (or their failures either, apparently); they tell us what they do is too complicated and convoluted for us to understand; they tell us to stop whining and get a job; they tell us to trust them.

What Wall Street has done, in actuality, is wage an all-out war on the middle class, directly attacking the principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness this country was founded upon. Instead of sacrificing, they've doubled-down. Instead of compromise, they've inculcated themselves even deeper. Wall Street's utter intransigence to any view but their own belies their antisocial agenda. This generation will be the first generation in American history who will be less affluent than their parents. There is something insidiously repugnant about that: collective financial filicide. For most, the concepts of empathy, acceptance, community, compassion, are virtues to be celebrated, for Wall Street, they are contemptible objects of scorn meant to be ridiculed.

Opponents of the Occupy Movement deride it as a rabble of stoners, losers, lazies, and wannabe hippies nostalgic for an bygone protest era, who have nothing better to do with their time. They criticize the movement for having no stated goals or demands. What those critics fail to understand is the lack of definitive goals is the entire point of the whole thing. This isn't a protest for racial or gender equality, this is a general protest against a corrupt system; financial repression doesn't discriminate. This is a protest against the denigration of American morality, of the subversion of American culture. If this were Shakespeare, the protestors would be Hamlet and Wall Street would be Claudius, the villainous uncle muscling in on the throne. The protesters are protesting not because they are envious of those who are successful, like Herman Cain would have you believe, but because they earned an education (incurring massive debt in the process), they went through all the motions, the believed in the inherent rectitude of the system, and now they're being cruelly shut out from their American Dream. Wall Street has taken the ultimate meritocracy, usurped it, and created the ultimate plutocracy. You can fool some people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

The titans of the financial industry think we're all just as selfish as they are. They think eventually the natural inertia of apathy and complacency will take hold and the Occupy Movement will recede into faded memory. They think we're all extremely stupid. What they don't realize is that they've left us with nothing, and when you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose.

For All Debts - Public and Private

2011-09-22T09:32:00.002-04:00

The Debt is a movie about choices. According to elementary economics, every choice has an associated opportunity cost - or the consequence of choosing one action over another. I can choose to lie on my résumé to get a job, but I'll risk being exposed as a fraud if I'm tasked to perform a duty in which I claimed to be an expert. In The Debt, based on an Israeli movie from 2007 of the same name, each character makes a choice, for varying reasons, and eventually they each have to confront those choices much later in life.

Inhabiting the same secretive and morally charged world of 2005's Munich, The Debt begins in 1997 Israel as an author, being lauded for her new book, describes the heroic actions of a group of Mossad agents thirty years prior. It just so happens that the author's parents, played adeptly by Helen Mirren and Tom Wilkinson, were part of the three person team that captured and killed notorious Nazi doctor, "The Surgeon of Birkenau," (clearly based on Josef Mengele) in early 1960s East Berlin. However, Mirren's scowl whilst her daughter regales her heroic story belies a profound conflict. The film seamlessly takes us back to the tense-filled weeks and months as the team prepares and carries out the dangerous operation.

The Surgeon of Birkenau, or Dieter Vogel, is terrifyingly portrayed by Danish actor, Jesper Christensen, whose scrofulous eyes are surrounded by a malevolent face. A villain in the truest sense, he proves to be a formidable opponent, even after his capture, as he mocks and manipulates the individual members of the team who are desperate to jettison him back to Israel to face trial for his crimes. At one point, the leader of the operation, Stefan (played powerfully by Marton Csokas) reminds his team, "Don't talk to him. Don't listen to him. He's not human."

The suspense is two-fold. First, the cinematography and editing, convey the paranoid claustrophobia of a group of young agents who, driven by tremendous personal loss, steel themselves to carry out the operation against almost impossible odds. Second, and more engaging, is the tension built up by the reality of the future. The operation was by all accounts a great success, and yet none of the "adult" versions act like it was - Mirren's Sarah and Ciarán Hinds' David are particularly perturbed. As we watch the team carry out the capture and abduction, we keep searching for clues as to what went wrong, what event or detail could possibly continue to haunt these characters? It is a deftly played technique by director John Madden which results in a film whose tautness and sudden fits and jolts keeps the audience on edge throughout. It isn't until the final denouement that the debt to which the film refers is fully revealed.

A film about choices invariably veers into a film about dealing with those choices. And like Bob Marley soothingly warned, "you're running away, but you can't run away from yourself."

The Blurry Face of Terrorism

2011-07-26T14:16:00.001-04:00

It was a pristine Indian summer day in October 2002 when I cheerfully entered my apartment, home for the day from classes. A junior English major at the University of Maryland, I had secured part-time employment at a small publishing house in suburban DC the year before. The early Fall day held such promise that I decided to skip work in favour sophomoric adventure. It turned out my boss wasn't even expecting me. To my horror, on that very day, in the very neighborhood - indeed on the very same crossroad - a crazed sniper had mercilessly executed five completely innocent and unsuspecting victims.

For the next three weeks, DC and its surrounding suburbs were gripped in paranoiac panic. Despite the most zealous of law enforcement efforts, the sniper continued picking off people, targeting those performing the most common daily tasks -- motorists refueling, shoppers walking back to their parked cars, kids waiting for the school bus. Suddenly we were all terrifyingly vulnerable. In the immediate aftermath, FBI profilers were called in. There was a consensus: this had to be a white guy, possibly ex-military. It made perfect sense. Hell, even his van was white!

Three weeks and fifteen shootings later, we finally realized how wrong we all were, and how gravely our misconceptions had misdirected us. It wasn't a crazed white guy at all, but a splenetic Black man and his easily influenced Black teenage step-son. Purposefully targeting all races and backgrounds to obscure their true aim, to eventually murder an ex-wife who had denied visitation rights without being suspected. They had turned their blue Chevy Caprice into a perfect killing machine. They used GPS to elude roadblocks. Not they needed to, of course, the focus was squarely obsessed with white box vans.

I rehash this unfortunate period in history in light of the recent attacks in Norway. I found striking that each mention of the perpetrator, Anders Behring Breivik, included a physical description, "blonde-haired, blue-eyed." Although unspoken, the implication bore that the horror of those campers on Utoya Island was compounded by the fact that their killer looked like a "normal" guy. As if being blonde-haired and blue-eyed automatically precluded a person from being a murderous psychopath.

Of course, this notion is absurd. After all, the Nazis would uphold Breivik's physical features as the prototype for an Aryan über race, and serial killer Ted Bundy was renowned for his charming airs. We have this conception of a killer, of a terrorist, of a mass-murderer, and yet these conceptions are proven to be misguided and false time and again. You think extremist Muslims were the first suicide bombers? How about Japanese kamikaze pilots in World War II? Everyone expected al-Qaeda or their ilk to be behind the Norway attacks; bizarrely enough, it turned out to be one of their own, a born and bred Norwegian killing his fellow Norwegians.

No one group holds the rights to murderous maniacal psychopaths. In this unfortunate way, we are all equal. The surprise is we continue to be surprised.

Where Are We Going?

2011-06-15T14:18:00.004-04:00

Woody Allen strives to make us laugh. Yes, he's made a handful of morose films (particularly his Ingmar Bergman phase), but in his soul, he's a comedian. Allen's success rate in evoking risibility is about the same as Dirk Nowitzki's free-throw percentage. Typically, his vehicles are subversive word-play, exposure of personal and institutional hypocrisy, and portrayal of sexual congress whose intimacy is akin to a handshake.

Allen's cinematic greatness, however, lies in his uncanny ability to tap into a subtext whose lessons can be universally applied. They're very basic lessons: just because the grass looks greener on the other side...it isn't, appreciate what you have, read books, take walks after dinner, God doesn't care and/or probably doesn't exist, don't hurt people. Sometimes though, his conceits are better merely as a concept than as a financed film. Case in point, his latest European world-city venture, Midnight In Paris.

In theory, it seems like the perfect Woody Allen film. Place a typical Allen hero into the eternal city of love, and let the city's magic unfurl upon him. After New York, Barcelona, and London, surely the most romantic city in the world, a capital of high culture and art, would inspire Allen to majestic heights. Instead, he delivered a ho-hum Woody Allen version of Back To The Future. In place of Bobby socks, Studebakers, and Rock N Roll, we get Cloche hats, Isotta-Fraschinis, and The Lost Generation.

Having Owen Wilson (as Woody Allen's cinematic avatar) cavort around 1920s Paris with Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Stein, and the rest is fun, but where is it going? The joke of Wilson's character inspiring a young Luis Buñuel's absurdism was funny...when it was done to perfection in Back To The Future and Chuck Berry and Rock N Roll.

Feature films by legendary directors surely must be more than exercises in whimsical wish fulfillment. In Radio Days (1987), Allen similarly looked back to the halcyon days of his youth in 1940s Brooklyn and the vitality of radio culture. It was a whimsical picture, but it was sweet and nostalgic and had heart. Midnight In Paris, I'm afraid, is sweet, but it openly mocks nostalgia and rushes way too quickly past the heart, or the point for that matter.

Yes, Woody Allen wants to make us laugh, unfortunately with Midnight In Paris, he spent all his energies on the elaborate set-up, but left out the most important part of the joke: the punchline.

For You From Me

2011-05-06T09:41:00.002-04:00

Listen:

world aint right-angled
nor neat tidy dichotomous--
witticisms bulged by
obvious lessons dont solve world
world is colour hue & shade
& nothing, beyond its realness

you must Listen:
either/or: immediately forget
black/white too
right/wrong especially!

remember forever
only you exists &
you are holy

dont be afraid

© Valentin Katz, 2008

Lady Day (1933)

2011-04-11T16:58:00.001-04:00

1. Hammond

Music, music, music!
Everything is beautiful

Blown up and distorted
Beneath my Melody Maker

pen. Few have heard
or seen what I have

in that microphone
and spotlight. Oh!

and she is so
beautiful and buxom.

Over 200 lbs.
Glittering as if she

was covered by millions
of refulgent stalactites.

Finally I am Cuvier,
on the brink of exposing

this brown-bosomed
vocal goddess to our

unsuspecting rectangular world.
I’ll take her to Monette’s

where she’ll wow
them with Sarah Baartman

presence. She is the new canary
singing towards heaven,

and I’ll be the toast of the town.
Big things in this world are mine.

2.

There is unexpected sun today
in London, and the crowds that
most days I see upon this stage
where I am working have dispersed.
I am a black cutout against
a captive white light, singing
the blues so the audience
can stare at my naked sex.

I am called “Lady Day.”
I left Baltimore with a promise
of revenue: quarter the profits
and freedom for us working girls;
because I wasn’t gonna be nobody’s
goddamn maid no more. Mr. Hammond
says I’m going to be the biggest hit since Josephine
and he is writing an article on me right now.

I am the family entrepreneur!
Putting on my shining dress
I take the smoky stage, and
you should see how they
stare at me. Like Susanna,
I am a strange fruit they
dare not embrace, but will
never turn away from.

In the coming years, my strange fruit
will ripen into a public animal of excess
and sex. So I like men, a lot, and
women too. I’m an artist, damnit!
And I like to smoke, drink, and feel
good. What do these people know of feeling
good? Ain’t nobody’s business if I do.

I refuse to forget Eleanora Fagan
and the misery she was born into.
I refuse to apologize for not wanting
to remain there, in Baltimore, turning
tricks. My flexible tongue and
healthy mouth bewilder these
people with their rotting teeth.

If they would just listen to
my song without being forced
to undress me with their eyes, maybe,
I could convince them to come up
on stage and have the light expose
their dullness and fetidness, so
the whole world audience could see
them as shriveled and hard,
geometric, deformed, and unnatural.

A Life Unexamined

2011-03-10T20:33:00.002-05:00

Don't let the pedestrian title of Richard J. Lewis' film adaptation of Mordecai Richler's irascible novel of the same name fool you. Barney's Version is a haggis of angst, romance, betrayal, comedy, and tragedy. Paul Giamatti inhabits the eponymous role with usual dejected brilliance. Playing an overweight, balding yet hirsute drunk with few redeeming qualities, Giamatti still makes himself likable enough to root for. No wonder he won a Golden Globe for best actor. I mean, it'd be hard to like Barney Panofsky even if he was played by a butterfly.

The throbbing question I had upon exiting the theater is "what the hell did everyone see in this guy?" Not only do gorgeous and brilliant (to be fair, one is certifiably insane too) women want to sleep with him, they want to marry him too. We meet him as he lives a bohemian lifestyle with writers, painters, and musicians in 1970s Rome. Doesn't get much cooler than that. And yet, by all accounts, Barney has no discernible talents, rarely works, lacks a sense of humour, and his sole skill may be the inherent ability to aggravate and enrage all those around him, a skill which his Jewishness betrothed upon him.

The real charmer in this tale is Dustin Hoffman as Giamatti's blue-collar widower father, Izzy. Hoffman brings a warm Jewish patriarchy to the proceedings but elides cliché by being the kind of father who comes over and sleeps with the maid whenever his son and daughter-in-law leave the house, or, when Barney comes to him with his plans to leave his heiress wife for another woman, he reminds him of a few facts to maintain perspective, like her infinite riches and that his son is "married to a woman (Minnie Driver) who has a fantastic rack!"

The problem with Barney, though, is he's vindictive, petty, rude, careless, and he has absolutely no reason to be! Women love him, and in the case of his third wife, played with subtle angelic sexiness by former Bond girl Rosamund Pike, is a downright saint whose patience and adoration of this Falstaffian figure is inexplicable. He's also got wonderfully interesting friends, and tons of money, even though based on the glimpses of him working leads one to believe all a TV producer does is sit in the director's chair with his forehead in one hand and a whiskey neat in the other.

Oscar Wilde famously said, "There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it." Barney Parnofsky's tragedy is that he didn't know what he wanted, and only realized he had everything any man could ever wish for -- and threw it all away -- by which time it was all too late to make good. Throughout his life, he disavowed any introspection, he never learned from his mistakes, and in the end, he lost perhaps the most precious possession of all, the magical ability to remember. It may as well have been as if he had not lived at all.

Arbouretum / Secret Mountains @ Ottobar 02/13/11

2011-02-14T21:00:00.000-05:00

On a night when a pneumatic music industry celebrated itself, to the sole delight of the disengaged pre-adolescent genus, it was with more than just a bit of irony that I found myself as the aggressively self-assured Arbouretum decided to eschew the Grammys and celebrate the release of their new record, "The Gathering," by dominating the stage at the Ottobar. For here is a band that matters; a band that makes you care.

With a foundation of David Heumann, Corey Allender, and Buck Carey, the group lays the classic power-trio bedrock, constructing heavy dark space jams with strong manic 60s psychedelia undertones. They depart, however, from those ancestral giants, with the inclusion of Matthew Pierce on keys and percussion, who provides a swirling apocalyptic undercurrent to the proceedings.

Be not deceived by the darkness and the gloom, Arbouretum doesn't forsake you wallowing in misery -- at a precise moment they unveil pulsing positivity, and the virtuosity of lead guitarist David Heumann jettisons the hirsute foursome to moments of genuine catharsis. It is quite appropriate, then, that "doom/ecstatic" is listed next to genre on their facebook page.

Here is a low-fi clip from the show:

Preceeding Arbouretum, Secret Mountains took the stage with a simple greeting, "Hi. We're a band." Said with David Byrne-like unironic innocence, the six-member band unfurled exquisitely formed dream-pop that has become a unique feature of Baltimore's music scene. Chanteuse Kelly Laughlin shows her amazing range in the band's most affecting tune, "Rejoice."

Vive La Meritocracy!

2011-02-04T09:21:00.007-05:00

We've all seen them, growing up, in college, around town. They've been blessed with everything: personality, physique, and most vital to the equation, rich wealthy parents. They win all the races, they get all the girls. The hottest girl of them all, Lady Luck, is always on their side. Individually, they are the embodiment of Shakespeare's Man of All Hues. And then comes along an unassuming computer nerd, a son of a Jewish dentist, from Dobbs Ferry, New York. A scrawny kid with kinky hair, he's a bit of an asshole. He also happens to be a once-in-a-century super-genius. The nerd invents Facebook. And for the first time in his life, Hue, or in the case of David Fincher's The Social Network, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, comes in second, a very very distant second. This is not the way it's supposed to happen.

The Social Network is not -- as so many will have you believe -- about the lawsuits, the partying, the girls, the envy, the backstabbing, the money, all of which are indeed part of the Facebook foundation myth. No, those are just the MacGuffins, the narrative tools employed by highly-skilled writer Aaron Sorkin to hook his audience. This is about our wonderful, all-equalizing, supreme meritocracy. This is about how a computer-geek with slight anti-social tendencies revolutionized interpersonal relationships in the 21st century. The underdog not only won, he pulverized those standing in his way with such ferocity that their only recourse was to litigate, and as Mark Zuckerberg (played with menacing authority by Jesse Eisenberg) sneers to his attorney, "They aren't suing me for intellectual property theft. They're suing me because for the first time in their lives, things didn't go exactly the way they were supposed to for them." Even Daddy's millions can't get their pleas to not fall on deaf ears when they go whining to the Harvard President.

It's a credit to Fincher, director of other such explorations of masculinity as Se7en, Fight Club, and Zodiac, for keeping the tension maddeningly taut throughout the film even though almost everyone already knows the story. There was a massive piece on Zuckberberg in the New Yorker which outlines the entire story, and with greater detail. We all know how this tale ends, or rather, where it stands today, and yet we're still kept on the edge of our seats. Frequent Fincher collaborator, Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor, along with seasoned English music producer Atticus Ross, ratchet up the immediacy of the action with a score that can only be described as militantly ambient. The aggression in the music and direction mirror the intellectual and creative aggression onscreen. Zuckerberg is a wunderkind tour-de-force. He's not just the smartest kid in the room, he's the smartest guy in any room, even all the elite rooms in Harvard.

The reviews and commentary surrounding The Social Network focus on how unflattering and unseemly Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is depicted. This is simply a ruse to stir up controversy. The portrayal is honest and unrelenting. People are rarely kind and loving and fair and nurturing, especially when those same people are inventing billion dollar enterprises. Is he insecure? Sure, but since when is insecurity a character flaw? If anything, insecurity is pitiable. Did he box out possible early cohorts? Of course, but since when is an abstract formative idea patentable?

Come to think of it, with the exception of Zuckerberg's condescension to his girlfriend (Rooney Mara) in the opening scene, and the marginalization of his best friend, and initial financier (Andrew Garfield), when Facebook begins to legitimately explode, there is little that points to Zuckerberg being anything other than the guy who is 100 times smarter and talented than everyone else around him, with an uncanny ability to continually innovate and drive his creative vision to new heights.

Success stories like Mark Zuckerberg, and many others, show that in the face of true genius, the entitled class will cling to their last, and only, vestige of retribution, they'll sue.

The Frostly Pen

2011-01-21T18:33:00.000-05:00

once more, for the right

climb up and reach that penned

soon it will be night

---youve a dagger to send

into the heart of

my master's mistress

she requires yr phallic kiss

to diffuse her beastly sex

carve her skin into sonnets lest---

be destroyed by that vile hex

I struck a match to help yr way

but it faltered in its blueness

---my mistress has sent me away

I am without home and spoonless

the carving word has

betrayed us both

my guilt arose in curdly white froth

at the deed which I fatigued

I took my match with scorning scoff

and came straight to yr mistress' bed

intrigued

When I came to her she sat

in cower

so I graced her with my

golden shower

11/05/02

Swan Lake of Fire

2010-12-25T12:02:00.001-05:00

There's a moment in Godard's Breathless when Jean Seberg's Patricia asks the famous novelist Parvulesco (played by the seminal Nouvelle Vague director Jean-Pierre Melville), "What is your ambition in life?" Methodically turning his gaze towards her, Parvulesco triumphantly replies, "To become immortal....and then die!" Fifty years later, Natalie Portman's ballerina, Nina, in Darren Aronofsky's exhilarating Black Swan must chant this mantra in her head at every pirouette.

Aronofsky's cinematic bitches brew begins with heavy doses of The Red Shoes, All About Eve, and Sunset Blvd., adds a corporeal helping of Kubrick's The Shining, and finishes off with Kafka's The Metamorphosis. Claustrophobia, paranoia, and general creepiness ensue. For a film staged within the uber-refined confines of the supposedly quietly classy world of dance, there is not a single moment of peace or general pleasantry. Even Nina's hyper-pinked bedroom glutted with girlish knickknacks and stuffed animals has a pinch of psychosis to it.

At its heart, Black Swan deals with the obsessive convulsions in the pursuit of perfection. In her innocence and vulnerability, Nina is the ideal virginal White Swan, but the ballet calls for the same dancer to dance both roles, and the Black Swan is a seductive force, using her sex like a flyswatter -- something the technically perfect but timid Nina is incapable of. Under increasing pressure, Nina immerses herself so deeply into the dual roles of Swan Lake that she completely and abruptly loses grip on reality. She suffers grisly hallucinations, simultaneously haunted by an evil twin (paralleling the ballet's plotline) intent on destruction and an ambitious incipient rival, Lilly (Mila Kunis), who is everything Nina isn't: carefree, reckless, promiscuous, and enjoys exploring feminine nether regions, both her own and Nina's. As if the pressures of the role of a lifetime weren't enough for poor Nina, she shares a domicile with her bizarrely controlling and envious mother played ominously by Barbara Hershey, in an inspired piece of casting.

With Black Swan, Aronofksy achieves what today's gross-out horror moviemakers would sell their souls to replicate, namely, produce a film whose every move, every scene, every word, is shuddersome. The camerawork and sound editing will make your palms sweat, the scene-cutting will make you cringe. The thing is, you'll love it, and you'll want much more. The transcendentally exhilarating climax will give life to Parvulesco's romantic proclamation.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine and I were discussing which contemporary filmmakers we found most intriguing; whose films, when they come out, would make us raise an eyebrow and take notice? Darren Aronofsky came up in the conversation as someone -- for me -- who fell into this category. The sheer fact that all his films were so utterly uncompromising and dark earned him that status. The complete dread evoked by Requiem For a Dream begins and ends any Aronofsky debate. Yet, with this recent achievement, let me add, along with uncompromising and dark, Aronofsky has become breathtaking.

You Will Meet a Short Ginger Cynic

2010-10-25T09:14:00.001-04:00

“We are slaves to our desires,” is a recurrent theme in the work of Woody Allen, but with his latest effort, an accurate evaluation of this axiom begs adding the scornful, “and to our satisfaction.” Or dissatisfaction.

In the world of “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger,” just about every character wants something beyond their reach, a something (mysterious woman, literary success, reclaimed youth, illicit affair) they really have no inherent or moral right to have. They covet wildly. Besieged by dissatisfaction and ingratitude, they act out with shameless ambition. The fear of being caught or found out doesn’t even warrant a pause – guilt and shame are nonexistent qualities. As typical for most Allen characters, they are all hopelessly cultivated, wealthy, attractive, sexually adventurous and utterly insecure.

Roy (Josh Brolin) finished medical school only to spurn the doctorly life for the bohemian romanticism of a literary one. Trouble is he apparently has only one good book in him – and three really bad ones. The anxiety of his imminent doom is tempered only by the beautiful woman in red (Freida Pinto) he peeps through his window. Roy’s father-in-law, Alfie (Anthony Hopkins), abruptly leaves his devoted wife of 40 years because “she was getting old and I refused to accept that.” Impulsively marrying a rent-girl initially provides Alfie the robust rejuvenation he coveted, but quickly his life descends into bankruptcy and cuckoldry.

The women show no better. Roy’s wife, Sally (well played by Naomi Watts) at first comes off as a supportive and caring daughter and wife. But those illusions fade when her boss chooses to have an affair with her artist friend instead of her, and her mother is told by a charlatan fortune teller that she shouldn’t give Sally the loan she desperately needs to open her own art gallery. Avarice is rampant, pride a disease. Everyone's miserable. Not even the doe-eyed innocence of Dia (the mysterious woman in red) belies her faultlessness. She is given to the same irrational dissatisfaction (and desire) as everyone else.

The problem is, even when they get what they want, they end up even more discontent than before. Lives fall apart, relationships crumble, bank accounts collapse, frauds risk uncovering. Woody Allen has always leaned cynical, but with ‘Stranger’ he’s promoted cynicism from bemusing leitmotif to central thematic element. He doesn't even bother much to developing the characters save the minimum exposition necessary to parade their selfishness.

Most of us don’t know what we want, those of us who do figure it out are usually driven by wrongheaded and ungrateful motivations, and then when – always when, never if in Allen films – we do get what we want, we are punished heavily for it, usually by fate. In the end, only the most delusional have a chance at approaching happiness.

The Stupid Love Affair with Hyperbole

2010-09-27T18:50:00.010-04:00

Dangerously inappropriate analogies have gained a sickening acceptance in this current cultural moment. Obama proposes a 3% tax increase for the richest Americans and he's likened to Hitler. A football "star" who in the span of 13 months has had $32 million deposited into his greedy coffers by the Washington Redskins likened his petulant reluctance to play in a 3-4 defense to a disavowal of enslavement.

These disgustingly hyperbolic analogies are disgraceful. Even more criminal is the audacity of those perpetrating these shameful comparisons. Stephen Schwarzman, chairman and co-founder of the Blackstone Group, a private equity and financial advisory firm -- whose net worth is $4.7 billion -- commiserated with his fellow plutocrats that a tax increase would be "like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939." Albert Haynesworth, said football star, a symbol of our generation's "me-only" attitude, explained his displeasure in playing within the defensive scheme his coaches have implemented with inspired uncouth eloquence:

"I guess in this world we don't have a lot of people with, like, backbones. Just because somebody pay you money don't mean they'll make you do whatever they want or whatever. I mean, does that mean everything is for sale? I mean, I'm not for sale. Yeah, I signed the contract and got paid a lot of money, but ... that don't mean I'm for sale or a slave or whatever."

Now that's class. Worse still, Mr. Schwarzman, a Jew, and Mr. Haynesworth, an African-American, chose to dishonor the very ancestors (their own) whose endurance through unspeakable horrors made it possible for these two ungrateful villains to occupy the highly enviable positions they are in today.

The Holocaust and Slavery, without too much debate, represent just about the most despicable mass crimes in all of Human history. Crimes that are so unimaginably horrific, they defy any comparisons short of mass genocide and human rights abuses on an extreme scale.

Even the Soviet propaganda machine, which filled the pages of Pravda (Truth) and other Iron Curtain publications with endless recriminations of The West's bourgeois depravity never dared to compare Churchill or Eisenhower to Der Führer. How ridiculous that we find ourselves less sensible than the Main Administration for the Protection of State Secrets in the Press under the USSR Council of Ministers.

Ostensibly, this regrettably spotlights our stupid infatuation with hyperbole. If something brings a modicum of pleasure, it's instantly loved, and inversely, a small inconvenience warrants hatred. It's linguistic laziness, intellectual extremism really -- the rejection of thinking through how to appropriately describe what you feel and/or think about a certain subject, instead settling for the most abominable representation imaginable, simultaneously appealing to the most abhorrent denominator.

Clearly -- and thankfully -- I'm not the only person who has noticed and has been similarly disgusted by this odiously cynical behavior. As The Daily Show's Jon Stewart smartly chose as a slogan for his upcoming Return to Sanity Rally, "I disagree with you, but I'm pretty sure you're not Hitler."

Macbeth

2010-09-24T10:45:00.000-04:00

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

--Macbeth V, v

Home In Israel

2010-08-24T14:35:00.001-04:00

Reminiscing about my Birthright Israel experience more than two years later, my thoughts are flooded with memories of joyful laughter, stunning vistas, inspirational stories, and lifetime friendships. Atop the flood of unforgettable memories, three moments in particular stand out.

I was born in a country, the former Soviet Union, where anti-Semitism was a matter of public policy. Being a Jew automatically disqualified you from many occupations, as well as matriculation to the best schools. Practicing Judaism or learning Hebrew was categorically illegal. In the face of such repression, my parents bestowed upon my brother and I the singular Jewish tradition they knew: pride.

Due to my upbringing, even as a child I embraced my Jewish roots with fervor unusual for other children my age. I was six or seven years old when I first became aware of a place called the State of Israel, the Jewish homeland. And despite my young age, I instantly vowed to myself that my first act upon arrival to this special place would be to kiss its hallowed ground. My youthful precociousness surprises me now, almost 20 years later. But the very idea of Israel, of everything it represents to Jews and Judaism, has always resonated with me. So my first act upon exiting the main terminal of Ben-Gurion International Airport was to cross the street, find the first decent piece of soil I saw, bend down, and plant a passionate kiss on the face of the Holy Land. This was the first moment.

The next moment occurred a week into the trip. We were awakened at 4 a.m. by a loud knocking on the door. It was time for the most anticipated part of the trip: sunrise atop Masada! The pre-dawn air in Arad was warm but dry. Being up so early made it difficult to spark excitement, but the 40-minute ride to Masada was an experience in itself. Although shrouded in darkness, the surrounding terrain outside the bus window resembled the surface of the moon — a fitting setting for a truly otherworldly place.

At the base of the mountain, the excitement that had eluded me earlier finally set in as I raced a pair of IDF soldiers, who had joined us on our trip, up the mountain. Watching the sunrise atop this ancient mountain fortress redefined the phrase "awe-inspiring." The first rays peeked over the Jordanian mountaintops in a scene uncannily similar to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. It did not escape me that this was the very panorama the Sicarii, the ancient Jewish insurgents, witnessed every morning during their yearlong siege by the Romans.

What happened next ranks as the most spectacular moment of my life: Armed with my indispensable iPod, I plugged in my earphones and instinctively turned on the first track from Jimi Hendrix's Live at the Fillmore: "Stone Free." Maybe it was the rocky formations surrounding me, or the thematic elements of the song ("I'm stone free to do what I please"), but the track matched the moment sublimely. As Hendrix's guitar seared, adrenaline burst into my arteries and I began to run down the descending path of the mountain, my increasing speed forcing me to jump from rock to rock.

As I approached, the other descending hikers turned with foreboding concern. The sound of my frenetic trek must have resembled the rumbling of a rock-fall. I felt superhuman. When I reached the bottom, in what must have been record time, I was overcome with emotion at the profundity of the moment.

The siege at Masada may have ended tragically with the mass suicide of a thousand insurgents, but the story represents the best part of the Jewish character, of our perseverance, our traditions, and our community. It was two centuries later, and here I was standing atop the mountain at sunrise with my Israeli brothers, and then recklessly running down the mountain as if I owned it. The Romans had won the day back in 73 C.E., but history has proven that despite the efforts of countless nations, the Jewish people could never be fully pushed aside, nor the fire of our Jewish spirit ever extinguished.

If that magical morning at Masada was the most exhilarating experience of my Birthright Israel trip, then the afternoon at Independence Hall in Tel Aviv was the most poignant. Here the curator narrated the story of the tenuous beginnings of the modern State of Israel. The part of his narrative detailing what happened just after the start of the War of Independence particularly pushed my emotions over the edge.

The funds of the foundling state were alarmingly low. With nowhere to turn, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion sent then-ambassador Golda Meir on an emergency diplomatic mission to the United States. She was charged with raising one million dollars to pay for arms, munitions, foodstuffs, and other essential supplies. In just two weeks, stopping only in the East Coast cities of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, Meir returned triumphantly to Israel with more than $50 million in donations.

There were tales of families devoting their entire savings in support of the Jewish homeland. Tears streamed down my face as I recognized that it was this spirit of communal philanthropy that made Birthright Israel possible for me and countless other Jewish youths. I wish I could personally shake the hand of every benefactor.

My hope is that I can thank them through this piece, my love letter to Israel. Because of their generosity I fulfilled a lifelong dream, forged new dreams, and felt truly, for the first time in my life, that I was home -- home in Israel.

Ode on a Rebecca Hall

2010-08-05T09:45:00.000-04:00

YOU unravished bride of quietness
      You child of Midsummer's Titania
You overwrought Iseult of Hibernia
Our elusive untrodden love
intensifying mutual rapture
Haunting my mind's eye before
I was ever aware of yr existence
Perhaps -- my earth mother -- you bore
me in the hazel warmth of Elysian Spring
Mesmerising in yr parching allure
Bold lover, uncloying, as you sing

Why must you subsist in the flesh?
Tormenting me with blissful celluloid clarity
Why mustn't the specter of yr forever remain
in the smoky rings of my mind's charity?
I search yr taciturn gaze, yr burning forehead,
in every lass I meet
Fooling myself, but really bitter & indignant
at cruel Nature for failing to deliver you
into my enfolding heat

As a boy I ran to you
      to share in triumphs
      to console personal offenses
      in my desolation
As a man I engaged in foolish -- eviscerating --
      affairs with marbled doppelgängers
whose insouciant rejection, this nighttime thief
unwearied by betrayal, left me
in despondent grief

I weeped when you hanged yrself in Victorian England
      loved & unloved, by twins of magical pursuits
Lamented as you denied the passion within you
      for a philistine suit
      in tragically melodist Barcelona
Stared at yr pastel sun dresses in the pious
      headiness of Nixonian California

The slight curls willow around yr
      creamery face -- punctuated
      by bitten lips of mysterious uncertainty
The sun highlights the freckles
      under yr innocent eyes
around yr garland cheeks
Portending an epic innocence of which
      I desperately long to confederate
A naïve dreamland devoid of shame
      of deceit,
      of avarice, of conceit
All breathing human passion above

When all yr lovers go to waste
      I shall remain in my woe
And speak this truth with immortal taste
'Rebecca is truth, truth Rebecca -- that is all
     I know on earth, and all I need to know.'

08/05/10

Restive Pain

2010-07-31T12:09:00.001-04:00

frivoling unanesthetised
    soapy afternites
ameliorate jerk-off boredom
                                          metasthetised

postal stink on
                      bedroom walls
rounding callers on
                   downtown falls

regal voyeural games
   twisting scorn into release
paintings hang
   unsubstantiated fame

       I empathise scared to be
feasting freedom delights
    thinking on C lights

07/15/06

Imperial Boredom

2010-07-21T16:19:00.004-04:00

Before I commence with my review of Bret Easton Ellis' latest novel, Imperial Bedrooms, I want to take a moment to expound on my views on Criticism -- and Critics, in general. Philosophically, I am against the whole enterprise. I've never understood the compulsion to write about a work of art that wasn't any good. I'd much rather write about a work of art that inspired, enlightened, enthralled, or empowered me. As is true with people, I would rather prefer not to engage with someone or something that does not interest me. Clearly, my views are my own; they're highly flawed, and my position wide open to numerous attacks. The real reasoning here is to act as a segue to my review of Imperial Bedrooms.

As a rule, I love Bret Easton Ellis' writing. At his best, he's the preeminent satiric voice of our generation (being the hyper-materalistic mass communication savvy proud philistinism of the past 30 years). He is savage, unrelenting, infinitely self-reflexive, and horrifically hilarious. From my very first reading of American Psycho at the tender age of nineteen, I have been an absolute Easton Ellis devotee. I instantly devoured (pun intended) every piece of his writing, enthralled by the totality of the literary universe he had created. Like so many great writers before him (I'm thinking Faulkner), he engendered his own creations into an already familiar world of celebrities, socialites, and the uber-rich. Collective apathy strikes a central chord. Confusion is rampant. Substance exists only as a worthless commodity to be scorned and ridiculed. As Victor Ward, the male model "protagonist" of Glamorama, dismisses whenever challenged about the minutia of his shallowness: "Spare me."

And then something disheartening happened. As brilliantly relayed in Lunar Park, Easton Ellis, the man (as opposed to the character), had always been part of the world he so viciously skewered. Like Fitzgerald before him, his work has so much bite because it's filled with intense self-loathing, a self-loathing borne out of a desperate desire to be accepted and inculcated into a world they both inherently despised, but were nonetheless inescapably addicted to. What set them apart, however, was that they remained ever the hawkish observers, and consummate craftsmen. In Fitzgerald's case, if his work suffered, it wasn't out of laziness or complacency, but deepening depression and almost unthinkable alcohol abuse. With Easton Ellis, it seems he's finally caved into the world he'd battled against since his shockingly precocious first novel, Less Than Zero, and peaked out with American Psycho.

Imperial Bedrooms, meant as a sequel to Zero, feels like half an effort, a middling cash-out, like a final semester paper that was begun the night before and completed just before dawn, barely reaching the exact minimum required word count. Gone is the forceful condemning satire, the insanely labyrinthian self-reflexivity, the endless burrowing into the nothingness that is possible in our postmodern American souls. Instead, we get a rehashing of the same themes: paranoia, drugs, voyeurism, sexual manipulation, and perfect looking chicks.

At a mere 164 pages, it flies by so fast you forgot you were reading anything cohesive at all, just some stupid vignettes about even stupider amoral people. Not only did I not care about the characters, I didn't even care about not caring about them.

As I mentioned before, I loathe to write about something I dislike. And truth be told, Bedrooms does contain a few redeeming qualities. The ever-present sharp wit is still there, and no one can roast the inherent absurdism of a current fad like Easton Ellis. But from an author whom I love, whom I've personally witnessed achieve momentously transcending literary greatness, to just fade away the way he has is saddening. Like a star quarterback who keeps on coming back even though the only play he really has mastery over is the screen pass. Does he really need the money? Hasn't his ego been thoroughly stroked with the meteoric success he achieved over twenty-five years ago?

Easton Ellis likes to epigram his books with song lyrics, often adopting David Byrne's Talking Heads' repetoire...so allow me to follow in suit, from 'Psycho Killer' (apt choice I'd say!) although instead as an epitaph to his writing career:

"When I have nothing to say
my lips are sealed
Say something once
Why say it again?"

Annus Mirabilis

2010-06-14T10:01:00.000-04:00

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

Up to then there'd only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for the ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.

Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.

So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

Philip Larkin

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

2010-06-04T16:07:00.001-04:00

It used to be that trucks that were carrying gasoline said that they were inflammable, and as it happened a lot of people, even people who worked around these trucks, would be found lighting up cigarettes and unfortunately blowing up the trucks. Why would they possibly do that? A pair of linguists discovered that there was this unconscious association with this word inflammable, which they thought meant not flammable. So now all gasoline trucks say “flammable,” which wasn’t even a word beforehand.

human becoming

2010-06-01T09:28:00.000-04:00

become a victim of yr own
imagination
be drunk and sad-sad so maybe
then you'll understand why yr
so unhappy
be rowdy and cause ruckus
holler at cute skirt as it passes
puke, smoke a cigarette, and write
for the masses
that will only
hassle you when all you need is a
friend
when depressed, turn to conformity
it will ease yr pain and yr
family's lingering embarrassment
when meditative and contemplative, turn
to TV to kill off all individual
inspiration
drink triple espressos and use
condoms when being intimate
remember to stay under control at
all times and never let yr conclusions
be too drastic
when fucking, talk dirty and call
her a slut
be happy

For You, My Dear

2010-05-31T11:48:00.000-04:00

When you walk

you float

If you trip

everyone stops

You only care to win; so,

like your father,

you can gloat

I saw it all but yr nasty flattery

destabilized me

You blew yr affection out before we

even started

Anything goes

as long as

in the end

you get to play

victim

you say I care too much

about trifling people

you don't concern about

the one who adores you

you pretend

you don't know

a dvd bootlegger at the metro stop

disapproves of you

I met you more

than halfway

but

you just kept

walking

Kinky Destroy

2010-05-31T10:21:00.000-04:00

Elisabeth with an S
she protests

miscommunication wires
       laid
uncontained by Oceans death
decisive derisions jog
    emasculatory gamut

Eunuch in Tunic!
Guard the Harem!
Disco! Crisco!
Feed the seraph

lusty eggs mature
    staid
stench narrows into
    salt
Answers? ephemeral

Boy Scout! Cub Scout!
kamp kommando
Liar! Fire!
Blow my candle

Rosé

2010-04-14T11:12:00.002-04:00

In third grade I read
aloud the name José
   and pronounced it "joes"
the teacher's restrained giggle was
      like a clarion
    reddening my cheeks
    lowering my eyes

Last week I ordered a bottle
         of Rosé wine
     in the company of a woman
the menu neglected the accent
while the waiter haughtily
      corrected my "rows"

White Shame in 3-D -- Film Review: Avatar

2010-01-02T15:04:00.002-05:00

I'm no expert on science fiction films, and although I don't consider myself an ardent aficionado whatsoever, there exist a handful of films for which I have a great affection. It has occurred to me that reduced to core principles, the genre of science fiction consists of two basic archetypes: a. advanced human society engenders inanimate objects (i.e. robots) with artificial intelligence to improve their lives only for the sentient computers to spiral diabolically out of control and attempt to enslave or exterminate humans; or b. advanced human society encountering advanced alien lifeforms, whether they come to us or we go to them is left to the descretion of the filmmaker, but a semi-apocalyptic battle for superiority is inevitable. Naturally, there are many instances of these archetypes overlapping and the preeminent science fiction film of them all, the one that really defined the genre, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey synthesizes them with such profoundly bizarre virtuosity that all subsequent forays into science fiction are relegated to its shadow.

There is also the fantasy subcategory, where the filmmaker creates an entirely original world that is only faintly recognizable to our own. With Avatar, writer and director James Cameron embraces archetype B, heavily imbuing it with CGI phantasmagoria, simultaneously adapting colonialist excursions Dances With Wolves and Pocahontas.

First let me address the highly touted technological aspects of the film, and then I'll deconstruct its themes. Effects wise, Avatar has no equal. Cameron's vision of an alternate Earthlike planet, Pandora, complete with incandescent plantlife, hexapod animalia, and 10 feet tall humanoids is impressive not only in its conception but more so in the execution. Imagine the Amazon rainforest on steroids and then imagine explaining that vision to graphic artists so that it'll actually look cool.

The version I saw claimed to be 3-D IMAX, however, it seemed to me to simply be a converted theatre with a slightly larger screen hauled in a week before. I would think that seeing Avatar at a screen solely dedicated to IMAX would have made the visual experience even more satisfying. I am skeptical regarding the 3-D part as well. Certainly there were moments in the film where objects felt like they were coming out of the screen, and perhaps in a 164 minute film the 3-D novelty wears off quickly, but it seemed like 3-D IMAX in reality means Super High Definition. (Quick note to James Cameron: 3 hours of wearing uncomfortable and unsightly glasses is too much)

As I state in my opening remarks, the plotting is nothing new. In the year 2154, a human mercenary is recruited by a corporate mining company to the planet Pandora, in the Alpha Centauri star system, to inhabit the bluish 10 foot tall body of the genetically engineered native Pandoran humanoid lifeforms, the Na'vi -- hence the title Avatar. His mission is to infiltrate their society, learn their ways, and convince them to abandon their home, a collossal tree called appropriately, HomeTree, so that the corporation can mirthfully mine the element "unobtainium" which goes for $20 million per kilo on the Earthly market. A middle schooler can see where this is going.

The allegory is so thinly veiled that it hardly qualifies being called an allegory. Besides being blue and accessorizing tails, the Na'vi conspicuously resemble the American Indian, and their manner of social interaction is a goofy synthesis of Apaches on the warpath in old Westerns and tribalist histrionics of the animated Pocahontas. The heavy-handed subtext is clearer than the 3-D resolution: the white man perpetuating imperialism upon an unsuspecting and defenseless native population for the purpose of exploiting natural resources. Pandora could have just as easily been called Iraq, or Vietnam, or Dakota. It is no coincidence that all the antagonists reek WASPish, and in fact I didn't notice a minority on the mercenary (bad guys) side until the final 15 minutes.

James Cameron is the modern day Cecil B. DeMille, a pure epic storyteller. Like most epic storytellers, the draw is in the spectacle, not the narrative. No one went to see The Ten Commandments to be ecumenically educated, and thirteen year old girls didn't return to the cinemas six weekends in a row to follow the labyrinthian plot twists of Titanic. Avatar is a good movie, a servicable movie, with above-average action sequences and superior CGI effects, unfortunately it disavows the audience's inherent sophistication, or rather, discredits it in favour of iridiscent 10 foot tall perkiness.

The Denial Twist

2009-12-15T19:25:00.000-05:00

You should know that the doctors weren't kidding
that she was singing it all along

but you were hearing a different song

Upon every unveiling of public scandal, particularly ones in which the general public feels betrayed by an institution or individual, I get to thinking whether the shock expressed is truly warranted. I'm referring of course to Tiger Woods and his now infamously daily growing harem.

Let me put the Tiger aside for a moment and quickly peruse a few other high-profile scandals. There's the grandaddy of them all: Watergate. Dick Nixon glumly told the American people on national TV that he wasn't a crook, but his public service record, in spite of his apparent success, had leaks of unethical, self-serving behavior throughout. He witchhunted Alger Hiss into prison for being a Soviet spy and his own Vice-President was the first VP to be convicted of bribery and forced to resign office. Nixon existed in a nucleus whose orbit nurtured ethical breaches and illegality.

A few decades later, another President got caught up in a different kind of public shame. The masses were appalled that Slick Willy had shot his load on the June Cleaver dress of a White House intern. But before this affair, his purported indiscretions were widely known. Where to start? Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, the list goes on and on. The only real shocking part of the whole thing was the universal unattractiveness of all the women involved.

On to the Tiger. Sure he expertly marketed himself as the ultimate human being, a Nietzschean Übermensch if you will, a man with no flaws, seemingly capable of any feat. But we really knew nothing about Tiger save for what he chose to show us, and that was limited to the golf course. He inculcated himself around an army of PR men who maniacally controlled all access their prize client. But if you looked closely there were cracks in the Portrait of Tiger Woods. His petulance on the golf course, going beyond mere cursing to throwing his driver so hard recently that it richoted and struck a bystander. At the British Open, he relinquished a last day lead, something that he'd never done before. Perhaps his tumultuous inner life had finally caught up to his incandescent public one. I noticed all these things and I didn't look too closely. I don't even like golf.

The signs were there all along. No one knows anybody, not that well, and anyone is capable of anything at anytime. Betrayal is always around the corner. And remember, what people think is true is often shaped by the context in which information is presented to them and their willingness to be deceived -- even by themselves.

La Mariée était en noir

2009-11-15T10:43:00.001-05:00

"Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal."
--T.S. Eliot, 1920

Perhaps the loudest - and most recurring - criticism of the work of Quentin Tarantino indicts the master auteur with cinematic plagiarism. He simply usurps set-ups from classic films, known and unknown, polishes them wish modern luster, and voilà, is proclaimed a genius, so they say. To his loudest critics, Tarantino isn't so much a master originator as he is a master thief.

From a purely technical perspective, this view is highly flawed. Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, and Inglourious Basterds surely borrow elements from both film and literature, but the shocking novelty of their central conceits is undeniable. It must be this reality that boils the skin of all the haters; it seems to me these philistines must be of the same crowd that denies Shakespeare to be the sole author of his plays and sonnets, and who are convinced our President was born in Indonesia, or worse, Kenya.

Not a single of Shakespeare's plays exhibited original plotting. The comedies, the tragedies, the histories, can trace their antecedents to Aristophanes, Sophocles, Plutarch, Petrarch, Boccaccio, just to name a few. What Shakespeare did - what all great artists do - is take an established good idea and present it in a refreshing and revealing way. Through this method, Shakespeare elevated himself to the greatest contributor of world literature in history!

The French New Wave is widely considered to be one of the greatest eras in filmmaking. Beginning in 1959 with Les Quatre Cents Coups, by the end of the 60s, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Jean-Pierre Léaud became household names. The French New Wavers were obsessed with American film noirs of the 30s and 40s - and they translated that aesthetic into a wholly new French form. Looking back, arguably the first true New Wave film came in 1956 with Jean-Pierre Melville's Bob le flambeur. Melville was so in love with American culture that he changed his surname to reflect his favourite author. Here is the trailer to Bob:

The homage to American ganster/heist films is crystal. Nowhere is the adulation of American cinema more obvious in the French New Wave than Truffaut's often overlooked 1968 revenge film, La Mariée était en noir. Truffaut adored Hitchcock. So he essentially set out to make a French version of a Hitchcock thriller. Truffaut employs Hitchcock's favourite cinematic device, the macguffin, by misleading the audience into investing itself into who/what caused Julie Kohler's (Jeanne Moreau) husband's murder, he raises the suspense ten-fold as we watch the inconsolable bride take revenge in increasingly manipulatively inventive ways. To top it all off, Truffaut brought on Hitchcock's composer, Bernard Herrmann, to compose the score:

Sacred Feminine - Film Review: Coco avant Chanel

2009-10-20T22:08:00.001-04:00

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single celebrity in possession of a good legend, must be in want of a biopic.

Another a truth that may not be so universally acknowledged is that a successful biopic must dedicate itself to not so much showing the protaganist doing what made him famous, but rather showing why the protaganist arrived at the destination that made him famous. One of the more fascinating biopics of the last decade -- albeit one whose subject is fictional -- is Christopher Nolan's 2005 Batman Begins. Nolan grasped what separates the Batman origin myth from other comic heroes -- he's not an alien from another planet, he hasn't been exposed to massive radiation doses, nor is he the disgruntled victim of an ultra-secret government experiment. No, he's just a child of privilege who suffers an unimaginable tragedy who then projects the pain borne of that trauma into devoting his life (and wealth) to the cause of striking fear into the hearts of predators who prey on the weak and defenseless. Batman's superpower is his mortality; underneath the mask he is but Bruce Wayne. Ergo, every scene of sequel The Dark Knight sans Heath Ledger descends into fuggy cartoonishness.

The filmmakers behind Coco avant Chanel, director Anne Fontaine co-wrote the script with her sister Camille, masterfully unfurl the why of Coco Chanel with muted detachment. We don't see gamine Audrey Tautou performing the quintessential Coco Chanel posture -- overseeing her own fashion show with detailed intensity -- until the closing moments of the film. Instead the film focuses on Chanel's early life adventures while quietly stitching the identity garment she would ultimately slip into.

After the prerequisite opening sequences of a miserable childhood (is it a coincidence that seemingly every great man and woman in history began life as an orphan, an abuse victim, a friendless loner, or hopelessly destitute?) we're introduced to Gabrielle Chanel busking in a seedy early-20th century French version of a nightclub/brothel. After an uber-wealthy sexual suitor nicknames her Coco for the ditty she performs, Chanel instantly establishes herself as a headstrong individualist who spits at convention (and the men who perpetrate them).

Tautou scowls, glares, and snaps at everyone around her, in this case conformist hedonistic Parisian bluebloods while criticizing their dresses, their hats, and their mores. Shrewdly maneuvering herself into a high-class world doggedly devoted to exclusion, the film slowly consecrates Chanel as not simply the first fashion superstar, but the first woman of the 20th century. From her refutation of corsets to her simple and dark livery, Chanel's philosophy was to accentuate femininity through adoption of masculine style.

Fontaine did such a wonderful job of establishing Chanel's revolutionary spirit that the second half of the film takes a most disturbing turn. Suddenly, this beacon of feminist strength succumbs to a weakness that undoes all the goodwill she had earned. Let's just say the nickname of the man she falls in love with is Boy. Yea...

Coco avant Chanel is a very likable film. It draws you in, it makes you care about the characters, and it's technically proficient, but I suspect the lasting sourness I felt is the result of philistine studio bosses diluting a perfectly artistic film for the purpose of American marketability, for a French-speaking film this new world encroachment is surely an unpleasant surprise. Sacrebleu!

unKindle: An Argument Against Digital Reading Devices

2009-10-06T19:12:00.001-04:00

I love my fifth-generation iPod. It's 30-gigs, black, named Othello. I take it practically everywhere, often to the chagrin of my companions. But their groans of protest matter little to me. Othello has improved my quality of life dramatically. Since it's acquisition, my bench-press weight has increased fantastically, no more suffering through Hall & Oates in the supermarket, and in the evenings, Al Green is a scroll away. Of course there is a downside: my driving record has endured a precipitous blow.

My point being that I'm decidedly not an anti-technology guy. I dig my 21st century toys, and as I make clear above, I fetishise my digital music player. That said, I am impassionedly against digital readers of any kind (at least for those with better than 20/200 eyesight). Devices such as Amazon Kindle represent the dark side of technological advance. Eviscerating the romance from the loins of literature is something I will never quietly let slide. Amazon Kindle is an abomination.

A quick story. I attended a book festival recently. Forget the "featured author readings" or the gratuitous literary wares; I go for the rare/used book flea market. There are few more satisfying experiences than digging through the sandpit of Emeril Lagasse cookbooks, Tony Robbins motivational tomes, and twenty editions of The Devil Wears Prada to find buried underneath a true pearl. In this particular case, it was a hardcover edition Elbert Hubbard's Little Journeys to the Homes of English Authors: Robert Burns.

The pages are as thick as impecunious wedding invitations, the binding smells of the 19th century. It contains no publication date but research revealed that Hubbard perished on the Lusitania. At the latest, this book's origins coincide with my late grandmother's birth. Who knows whose hands this book has passed through, what history it's seen. The imagination trembles. And now, in 2009, the book is mine (for an outrageous $2) to possess into posterity. How can Amazon Kindle ever stand up to that? It doesn't, it can't, it won't. Thank goodness!

I leave with you with the first page of Little Journeys: Robert Burns:

The business of Robert Burns was love-making.

All love is good, but some kinds of love are better than others. Through Burns' penchant for falling in love we have his songs. A Burns bibliography is simply a record of love affairs, and the spasms of repentance that followed his lapses are made manifest in religious verse.

Poetry is the very earliest form of literature, and is the natural expression of a person in love; and I suppose we might as well admit the fact at once, that without love there would be no poetry.

Poetry is the bill and coo of sex. All poets are lovers, and all lovers, either actual or potential, are poets. Potential poets are the people who read poetry; and so without lovers the poet would never have a market for his wares.

Obscure Writer Series: Sergei Dovlatov

2009-09-22T20:57:00.001-04:00

A feature of this blog I'm introducing today may at first glance seem self-serving. A title such as "Obscure (Anything) Series" denotes a certain kind of intellectual arrogance, namely, patronization. But let me assure you that my aim here is completely innocuous, and based solely on my desire to share artistic wonders typically hidden from public view. And yes, I'm fully aware that this introduction only further reinforces that which I'm trying to avoid. On with the show:

Sergei Dovlatov was born to a Jewish father and an Armenian mother just two months after Hitler broke his Non-Aggression Pact with Stalin. His parents, foreseeing the hardships a young man with a Jewish last name would endure in an increasingly anti-Semitic nation, gave him his mother's maiden name - a common tactic employed in mixed marriages during the Soviet regime. Clearly, being Armenian was slightly better than being Jewish.

In spite of his parents best efforts, Dovlatov had an especially nasty anti-authoritarian streak in him, and had tremendous difficulty getting published throughout his life in the Soviet Union. Due to his unyielding nature, he was relegated to menial jobs just to get by. Eventually, he immigrated to New York in 1979 after some of his stories had been published in Western magazines causing his expulsion from the USSR. Upon arrival, he quickly made a name for himself by publishing in The New Yorker.

In The Compromise, Dovlatov's "bite my thumb at the man" quality is in full display. It relays a series of eleven miniscule articles he wrote for the party newspaper in Tallinn, Soviet Estonia. Beginning each chapter with a reprint of these articles, Dovlatov follows with a balladeer's voice the tale behind how that particular article came to be, and how he was forced to compromise his original vision - hence the title.

His writing is jumpy and jocular, melodic yet scathing. In one instance, he's sent by his editor to a Tallinn hospital to commemorate the impending birth of the city's 400,000th resident. Given strict instructions to choose a proper baby (married parents, Party member father, etc.), Dovlatov first chooses a baby of half-African extraction (the father is a student from Ethiopia, and a Party member!), then a Jewish baby, all to the extreme consternation of his long-suffering fully interpellated editor, Turonok, who berates him over the phone, "Dovlatov, [he] says in a voice choked with torment, 'Dovlatov, I'll fire you...for attempting to discredit the very best...Leave me in peace with your rotten Ethiopian! Wait for a normal - do you hear me? - normal human baby!"

The book is surfeited with such comic moments, usually beginning and ending with Turonok's accusation, "Are you crazy? What are you drunk?" Usually he was.

Dovlatov's writing delivers great pleasure on a personal level, laughs abound, and his style, simultaneously elusive and embracing, is wholly original. But the geopolitical implications of such work is inexorable. While the Soviet Union, and Communism in general, provoked paranoid nightmares in the West of nuclear war, foreign invasion, and even flouridation, the view from inside the juggernaut exposed a nation whose core foundation was gnarled rotten.

The "Brezhnev Stagnation" wasn't just a cute term used in lecture halls during political science courses in the West, it was a real phenomenon. Repression was rampant, beauracracy dominated over society, and defeatism became a virtue worn on one's sleeve like a merit badge. While the powers that be inside the Pentagon, the State Department, and the White House fetishistically focused on the USSR's bulging surplus of nuclear arms, they failed to recognize that the guy manning the fort, so to speak, barely had enough in his coffers for a bottle of vodka per week, was forced to share a bathroom with three of his slovenly neighbours and their equally slovenly families, and, most distressingly, saw nothing in the works to think his son's or daughter's life would be any better.

"Are you crazy? Have you been drinking?"

Maryland-Pennsylvania Tomato Challenge 2009

2009-09-07T04:28:00.002-04:00

In most American workplaces, "the office," as it is so reverentially called is where most American residents of legal working age spend the majority of their lifetime energy. A minimum eight hours per day, 5 days a week, 40 hours per week, with a staggeringly low two weeks of paid vacation per year. And here we all thought middle school was painful. And so, a workplace culture, replete with its own customs, traditions, mores, came into being.

I come into the office and am offered the honour of being the inaugural taste-tester in the Maryland-Pennsylvania Tomato Challenge. Pennsylvania's moderate real estate market has attracted half of my office's workforce to make their home there. Two tomatoes, two neighboring states, one passionate rivalry.

Each side claims their tomatoes are the best...and so I was picked to blindly point out which one I preferred. I examined them, palmed them, smelled them, and then cut them. At first I sprinkled salt on them but it made both taste so delicious I couldn't tell the difference. And then I ate them straight up, chewed them, savoured them, analysed my own taste buds, and finally was ready with my decision.

I point to the one I like (its color is a darker shade of red, and the taste is richer)....Maryland's rich soil prevails!

The victor raises her arms in exultation: victory is sweet! sweeter than the tomato even! The defeated drops his head away in disappointment...tomato is a cruel mistress. Bitter is the taste of defeat.

In an unprecedented show of her gratitude, the triumphant offers up her best tomatoes for me to choose from as a reward for my favourable palate. The vanquished returns to his desk, vowing to challenge another day, with another vegetable.

Inglourious Basterds Redux - The Grace Paley Connection

2009-08-31T10:08:00.003-04:00

I return briefly to Inglourious Basterds to illustrate further the genius that permeates even the smallest details of Tarantino's work.

There's an insignificant scene showcasing Tarantino's literary prowess:

Brigdet Von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger): There have been two recent developments regarding Operation Kino. One, the venue has been changed from the Ritz to a much smaller venue.

Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt): Enormous changes at the last minute? That's not very "Germatic."

It's a malapropism line played for laughs, but buried within is a reference to Jewish-American short story writer Grace Paley (who recently died) and her famous book, Enormous Changes At The Last Minute, hence the added meaning of not being very "Germatic." Ha-ha!

Brilliant stuff, Quentin.

Review of Inglourious Basterds

2009-08-29T14:57:00.001-04:00

Fans of Quentin Tarantino have come to expect one thing from his films: the unexpected. The ear-slashing, the Gimp, a raged Robert De Niro, all of Kill Bill, have become staples of the Tarantino ouevre, and of current cinema as we know it, and as future generations will remember it.

Inglourious Basterds delivers the unexpected in droves. The film's marketing suggested a Kill Bill-esque 'Jewish-Americans mercilessly slaughtering Nazis' bloodbath, instead, Tarantino gave us a deeply cerebral picture smattered with bursts of relatively mild violence.

With his wordy script and the eye-opening performance of "Jew-Hunter" Christoph Waltz, Tarantino shrewdly captured the true terror of the Nazis. It wasn't the cattle-car deportation to death camps -- horrible as they were -- but rather the corruptibility of otherwise good people, of the ever-present fear of being found out, whether you were hiding Jews, sympathetic to Jews, a partisan, a spy, or a Jew. The Jew-Hunter's subtle innuendos, probing questions, suspicious gestures, and discomforting good humour would drive even the stoutest resistance fighter to his breaking point wondering, "How much does he know?" and "How do I escape this man?"

Inglourious Basterds is a fantasy. In a reality where the majority of the literature, fiction and nonfiction, portrays the Jewish people, helpless and crippled, enduring unimaginable horror from the hyper-aggressive Juggernaut of the Third Reich, Tarantino imagines an alternative where the victims not only have a voice, but a baseball bat as it were, as a vehicle of vengence.

It has become marvelously clear that Tarantino's capacity for innovative storytelling has eclipsed the standard 2-3 hour feature film format (ahem, Kill Bill). Basterds clocked in at 153 minutes, and yet the film felt like it breezed by, with multiple plotlines and asides that begged for proper exposition. Tarantino has entered the realm of eminent Polish auteur, Krzysztof Kieślowski, who required multiple films (10 to be exact for the appropriately titled Dekalog) to fully express his vision.

With Tarantino you never know what to expect, except this: he'll keep on keeping on with films that make our palms sweat, our heads shake, and our mouths go, "Oh!"

Patron Saint of Cinema - St. Quentin Tarantino

2009-08-15T09:40:00.002-04:00

The evening was moving along swimmingly: South American wine, richly prepared surf-and-turf cuisine, surfeit of bon mots. Just settling into our respective digestifs, the dinner party suddenly careened off a cliff hovering above the River Hades.

Someone had unwittingly committed the grievous garrulous sin that will certainly ruin any social gathering wherein participants aren't intimately acquainted: initiating a discussion on the merits of Quentin Tarantino. It matters little if that first remark is favourable, the mere mention of his Latinate name will spark a wildfire in a docile conversational stream.

I had to straddle the index finger and thumb of my right hand upon my forehead and cheekbone as I anticipated the tremendous headache I would momentarily suffer in my eye. When the requisite irrationally reasoned criticism was inadvisedly and recklessly announced, my eyes were already closed in full-throttled paroxysm.

"Can we talk about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?" I groused, "Or maybe the pros and cons of abortion if you prefer?" This was not my attempt at inappropriate humour. This was my plea to maintain some semblance of sanity. I'd rather delve into the fiery quicksand of those aforementioned issues than writhe in the indignity of having to defend the merits of this generation's greatest cineaste, the current patron saint of cinema.

Coming Attraction: The Found Generation will elucidate why St. Quentin Tarantino is a monstre sacré. Also, a review of Inglourious Basterds, which looks to be the ultimate Jewish revenge fantasy film.

The Power of Erotica

2009-08-04T20:08:00.006-04:00

The school bus ride home serves as the modern day watering hole for adolescent children in America, the fertile ground where rumour, tall tales, and urban mythology are excitedly dispensed and skeptically believed. Here, a particular kind of teenage subversive wisdom converges from an an equal balance of naïveté and precociousness. The ride to school is too depressed, the schoolyard is an unsafe panopticon, and friendships in time become too inculcated. Only on the bus ride home can an outsider looking for troubled attention find a ready audience.

I must admit at first my interest in erotica was purely prurient. The hormonal 13 year old raged on unapologetically. Upon hearing that such a thing existed, from the resident troublemaker on my 8th grade bus, I became obsessed with experiencing it for myself. Jeff had a strong weaselly quality about him, so I scoffed when he told me about a salacious story involving a brother and a sister he had downloaded off an IRC the night before. When he promised he'd bring me, and three other skeptics, copies the next day we prepared ourselves to cut him down when he wouldn't deliver, but deep down, I think we all wanted for Jeff's lurid claim to be true.

Amazingly, the old boy came through. And the next day he had four fresh copies of the filthiest 10 pages I'd ever read. The shock to my system was substantial. Of course I was aware of pornography, I'd even stolen a few peeks here and there, but I had never imagined that someone would be perverted enough to verbalise carnal knowledge. In many ways, it was a revelation.

I began to insatiably scour endless networks, IRCs, and BBSs, for my own special kind of contraband. And indeed it was contraband. When some of my hidden stories were unearthed underneath my mattress, a confrontation ended with a stern warning for such a mutually embarrassing discovery to never repeat itself. This slight deterrence was just a speed bump in my burgeoning sexual education. In just a few weeks, I learned more about the physical enaction of love from these lust filled tales than any porno or health class.

In my post-adolescence my fascination gradually waned. I had essentially abandoned erotica for the last decade until recently when I decided to read Delta of Venus: Erotica by Anaïs Nin. Thinking my sordid history precluded me from any sort of affectation, I was shocked to find myself blushing at Nin's graphic yet beautiful descriptions. I couldn't understand the source of my uneasiness. After all, we are bombarded by sexual imagery on a daily basis to the point of complete desensitisation. Yet here I was needing to turn up the AC whilst reading a book!

What had happened to me? Had I grown soft in my dotage? Was I pulling a Wordsworth and turning - gasp - conservative? Impossible, an explanation simply required some intensive pondering. Slowly I realized the strength of Nin's writing was her poetic characterisations. She forces you to invest in the narrative and care about its outcome, and when the more kinky elements are introduced it results in a visceral reaction.

Nin's work reminded me of the cosmic joys of emotional and physical attraction, of the awesome potential of the libido, and of the humbling power women and men exert over each other.

One final impression: sure glad I wasn't part of a carpool growing up.

Notes on a Scandal

2009-07-27T19:23:00.004-04:00

The pendulum of social outrage is a peculiar thing. It swings with unerring prejudice to one side and just as quickly swings back, constantly resisting the calming equilibrium between the two extremes. Unsurprisingly, when the most important and influential black intellectual in the world is arrested in his own home for disorderly conduct, the resulting amplitude of the pendulum swing is enormous. And unlike the flying trapeze artist who disembarks at the top of the period, this pendulum just seems to entrap more players, and accelerates momentum.

The details of the arrest trickled out slowly. What we do know, that is, the facts undisputed by both sides, go like this: Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., an African-American was arrested by a Caucasian cop investigating neighborly reports of an attempted robbery on what turned out to be Dr. Gates' home in Cambridge, MA.

A tenured professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, Dr. Gates is the academic equivalent of a rock star. His work in the Academy is so widely known and universally respected that in my first week of grad school his The Signifying Monkey was required reading, and his name continued to pop up on almost every syllabus, in spite of the fact that my focus was Early Modern Literature. This is a great man.

So when the story first broke, my instinct deferred to the narrative Dr. Gates presented, namely, that the cop refused to identify himself and then goaded Dr. Gates onto his porch where he could be subsequently arrested. Clearly, the charges had no teeth, and when the police department realized who they had arrested, they issued a contrite apology. Dr. Gates, traumatized and angered, vowed to throw his weight into the issue of racial injustice in law enforcement.

Things got a lot more complicated, however, when President Obama -- in a news conference meant to sell the nation on his new health care plan -- was asked about his views on the incident. His now (in)famous response, and the reaction to it, has subsumed the notoriety of the original controversy. How dare the President weigh in and presumably take a seemingly antagonistic side against law enforcement?

What has become clear to me is that this issue is not so much about race as about our constitutional rights as American citizens. I'm willing to go out on a limb and express my belief that Sgt. James Crowley is not a racist, perhaps a bit prejudiced, assuming the worst in people is part of the job description. The real crime committed by Dr. Gates is that he refused to be totally subservient to Sgt. Crowley, that he didn't kiss his ass. Dr. Gates felt that being suspected of breaking into his own home was an indignity too great to bear without due repercussion.

It's hard to be unsympathetic to Dr. Gates, although, like the President, I do carry an admitted bias. But the clear fact of the matter is that in practically any situation where there is police-citizen interaction, the citizen must show complete and total subordination to the police officer, and if he doesn't, the police officer can and many times will haul you to jail -- just because he can.

Working law enforcement is a difficult job, no argument there. And we should be grateful to the honest men and women whose occupation involves legitimate life-threatening risk. The problem is accountability. Have you been to traffic court lately? In all my experience, there has never been an instance where the judge took the defendant's side, or even minutely doubted every last detail of the cop's testimony. It just doesn't happen.

Let's put aside race for a moment and try to agree on this one national tenet: no person should ever be arrested in his own home when he has committed no crime. Was Dr. Gates being a sanctimonious jerk? Probably. Could this whole unfortunate business have been avoided? Absolutely. Since when is being a jerk an arrestable crime, hell, being a jerk in your own home is a fucking human right as far I'm concerned. Take away Dr. Gates' public visibility and this would have been just another case of abuse of police authority.

It's an awfully heavy pendulum for a society to support when arrest awaits those who refuse to indulge the adolescent ego trips of those in a position of power. In police states, it's a weight upheld with vigor.

Music Review - The Dead Weather

2009-07-21T19:22:00.007-04:00

In the interest of full disclosure, I unabashedly consider myself a Jack White fanatic -- in my eyes this guy is the rock artist ideal: inscrutable, devilish, elusive, uncompromising, impassioned, dark. The White Stripes singlehandedly reawakened my interest in contemporary music. Just you wait, the forces of posterity will elevate White Blood Cells and Elephant into the pantheon of all-time classic records. Jack White, as guitarist, songwriter, producer, and over-all presence has proved he can hang with the big boys.

He looms so large, that it seems whenever he starts a new band, the music press defaults to the term supergroup, even though I've never heard of vocalist Allison Mosshart or guitarist Dean Fertita. And bassist Jack Lawrence rings a bell only because he's part of Jack White's first supergroup, The Raconteurs. Supergroup used to mean a group of previously established musicians each of whom is widely acknowledged as being one of the top at their respective instruments who get together to blow our minds, like Cream or The Traveling Wilburys. The age of exaggeration demands bloated accolades -- but let's face it, perhaps Jack deserves the plaudits.

Horehound is loud as hell, rawer than a rare steak, and dirty enough to make you have a go at your ears with sanitary wipe covered Q-tips afterwards. It's ripped with fuzzily screeching guitars and evil over-exposed synthesizers. With titles like "I Cut Like a Buffalo," "So Far From Your Weapon," "Treat Me Like Your Mother," "Bone House" the tracks ooze an ominous naughty goo, and although aren't outrightly rude per se, surely seem non grata in wholesome company.

Horehound's (not exactly chaste either) best (and loudest) track is "Treat Me Like Your Mother," an all-out assault on the senses replete with amusing wordplay. My other favourite track is the broody instrumental, "3 Birds" which sounds like it could easily have been lifted from the soundtrack to David Lynch's weirdfest Lost Highway. Check out the wicked video directed by Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast) no less. Turn the volume up:

It seems like Jack White's penchant for side projects lies in his illimitable creative potency, and in his desire to unbound himself from the aesthetic tethers of the White Stripes. When The Raconteurs first came out, you could barely recognize him unadorned in his customary red, white, and black leitmotif. Broken Boy Soldier disappointed me a little in its poppiness. I liked it, but it felt compromised, disingenuous to the hard man I had come to love. And it's like ol' Mr. Jack White heard me, because this is one bad-ass record -- completely authentic. Jack tries to recede into the background by listing himself as drummer, and Mosshart as vocalist, but every track has his brilliant fingers all over it, and either Mosshart's delivery sounds EXACTLY like Jack's, or it's all him with her backing him up.

Horehound may not exactly be a classic, but it is great, and gets better with every spin.

Paparazzo

2009-07-15T19:31:00.004-04:00

In what has now become one of the more infamous instances of life imitating art, the etymology of the now ubiquitous term paparazzi looks to the startling imaginative mind of the Maestro, Federico Fellini, and his masterpiece, La Dolce Vita. Portending the surrealist fantasies of his later work, La Dolce Vita is an explosion of images and storytelling, ideas and emotions, form and content. Deconstructing with a coy eye the hedonistic tendencies of the Italian elite, he named the insatiable gossip photographer Paparazzo, who like a mosquito was always buzzing around, annoyingly invading the privacy of his evasive subjects.

I heard on the NPR the other day a startling statistic. Despite the macabre toll the economy and the internet have exacted upon the print media, gossip magazines such as OK!, People, and countless other worthless rags have all increased readership and advertising revenue. This is astounding to me, but I really shouldn't be so naïve. Who reads the New Yorker, The New York Times, Washington Post, National Geographic or The Economist anyhow? Curious educated people? How boring.

Who are these poor souls who lust for every minor detail of the sordid lives of celebrities? Don't let me disabuse, I don't want to come off as some elitist ponce taking a piss from my ivory tower, when the Starr Report came out I greedily read every disgusting detail with vigor. And I'm well aware Amy Winehouse has some serious issues with crack, but I can't ever imagine spending more than a minute's thought on this nonsense. It is a stray hair on the page of today. Isn't life complicated enough? I'm no celebrity and my life isn't very glamourous, but I find fascinating, frustrating, fulfilling moments in my personal life on a daily basis -- I'm not strong enough to deal with the issues of people I'll never even meet.

Celebrities have become the modern equivalent of mythological gods and goddesses of ancient Greek & Roman civilizations. Who's fucking who? who's fucking over who? Who's snorting what? Isn't it just too much? I don't know what Jon and Kate is, and I'm damn proud of that.

The Passion of Ingmar

2009-07-07T18:49:00.003-04:00

"Listen to the cry of a woman in labor -- look at the dying man's last struggle, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment."
--Søren Kierkegaard

It would seem that master Swedish auteur Ingmar Bergman ingrained this above censure into every reel of film he ever cut. Bergman's worldview is one of despair, loneliness, betrayal, suffering, and insanity. Surely his films had their odd moments of levity. Smiles of Summer Night (1955), first showcasing his immense talents beyond the borders of his Scandinavian homeland, was a full-fledged comedy in the tradition of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. But even this lighthearted gem drew its humour from duplicitous lovers, unloving family members, and all-around disloyalty.

Matching the arctic climate of his difficult youth, Bergman's films deal with the cold reality we are faced with in the absence of God. Bergman's characters find life dreadful, unfair, and cruel: Antonious Block (Max Von Sydow) grappling with this ecunemical vacuum while grappling for his life with Death personified, Tomas Ericsson (Gunnar Björnstrand) unfairly projecting his own godless desolation onto his increasingly vulnerable children.

Watch as Antonious explains why he plays chess with Death:

It is clear that Bergman's strict Lutheran upbringing ignited a viciously deep hatred for organized religion's dependence on blind faith. The idea of an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent higher power plays like a cruel joke, like something an older sibling will force the younger to engage in for his own sick amusement. There is no reprieve, no justice, no fairness.

But it is absurd to maintain anger and resentment at something that doesn't exist. You call to God, and there is no answer. At first you think he is ignoring you. Pretty soon you get angry, and finally you resign yourself to the fact the absense of any answer is due to the complete void of presence. The anger will remain, but must directed somewhere else: humanity.

By the late 60s, Bergman's films had strayed from the existential crises of individuals to the emotional breakdowns of entire relationships, and it is here that I feel the real tragedy of the human condition unfurls itself. As he notes regarding The Passion of Anna, Bergman realized that the evil lies not in God, or lack thereof, but inside all of us:

My philosophy (even today) is that there exists an evil that cannot be explained -- a virulent, terrifying evil -- and humans are the only animals to possess it. An evil that is irrational and not bound by law. Cosmic. Causeless. Nothing frightens people more than incomprehensible, unexplainable evil.
--Ingmar Bergman, Images: My Life in Film, 1994.

Can't You Hear Me Knocking? Continued

2009-06-30T16:53:00.001-04:00

Can't You Hear Me Knocking?

2009-06-29T16:28:00.005-04:00

I had just finished packing my bags in a tiny room on Charlotte Street when news came through that soul singer Barry White had died. It was a hot day, for London, and there were many people milling about outside, determinedly competing with each other over whose outfit and accessories conveyed the maximum enjoyment of the sun. Lugging my baggage, I steamed into a café for a cooling respite. I was taken aback at the buzz over Barry White’s death, he seemed to be more popular in the UK than in the States – maybe it was the result of an unaccustomed English reaction to summer heat. The television was tuned to an interview of the bass-toned modern-day Lothario.

Naturally, the conversation turned to love, and music. How was he able to make so many women swoon over the years? Where did all that passion come from? How did he know so much about love? “I don’t know of any artist who’s made a record that doesn’t deal with love, in one form or another,” he retorted with an indignation that belied his embarrassment at the ridiculous insinuation that he was the preeminent musical purveyor of love. It got me thinking if I could come up with one. Go ahead and try. Google won’t help here.

The closing moments of that British summer came back to me this past Thursday as the international zeitgeist went ballistic over the King of Pop’s death. I was reminded of Barry White’s challenge, and my mind skipped forward, what inspires great music?

Let me catalog what I have been listening to. What moves me? Which music makes me smile? Lately, practically every time I sidle into my car (where my music-listening is most intense), I instinctively put on The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers (1971). The record splays out the bad boys of rock ‘n roll at their hedonistic zenith, displaying the kind of decadence best indulged in vicariously. This is a record not so much about love as it is about, well, lust – primordial and profound. Listen to ”Can’t You Hear Me Knocking?” Mick Taylor’s and Keith Richards’ intertwining guitar riffs alone will do to your libido what the sun does to an orchidaceae bud. And Mick Jagger’s barked pleas hearken back to the coyly veiled naughtiness of Slim Harpo’s “(I’m a) King Bee.”

So I’ll have to challenge Mr. White’s lofty assertion by amending it a little, perhaps sex (wanting it, having it, losing it, wishing you had more of it, being good at it, insecurity over whether you’re good or bad at it, thinking about it) is the more common thread in memorable music, particularly rock n’ roll, than love. Too often, love songs are rooted in too much pain and misery, and quite difficult to pull off with aplomb unless you’re Al Green. No, coitus is a much safer emotional mine. Even the Man himself, Bob Dylan, composed eternal classics about the variety of Persephones he’d shagged (Edie Sedgwick) or tried to (Nico).

At rock’s inception in the 50s, rock ‘n roll god Jerry Lee Lewis’ cousin Jimmy Swaggart famously labeled the new musical art form the “New Pornography.” The Killer just chuckled in his throaty joie de vivre way. To him it was an inadvertently fitting, albeit extreme, compliment.

The Found Generation - Inaugural Post

2009-06-25T17:09:00.004-04:00

Welcome to my blog, or web journal, whichever you prefer. I've named it The Found Generation for a variety of reasons. The most obvious is a call-back to my favourite literary movement, The Lost Generation. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, all giants in field of letters, whose merits deserve inexhaustible praise. I beg the pardon of any visitors to the pretension of being some kind of "literary heir" to these behemoths, but my reference to this generation of lost souls is layered. My hope being the rationale for such a moniker seems less self-indulgent with due time.

Today we are The Found Generation. The world is a much better place to live in than 80 years ago. Our great literary heroes were called the Lost Generation as a way to describe their return from the Great War, disillusioned by humanity, shellshocked by the unimaginable horrors of total war, left to fend for themselves in an world they could hardly recognize. They quickly realised they never knew it in the first place. Never had humankind turned upon itself with such unrestrained savagery, and sadly, it would do so again, with even more devastating results.

We know who we are now, maybe. We are blessed with infinite access to knowledge and information, and there is no world war to speak of. Of what global or national tragedy will future generations will study in us? I can't think of one. The one civic duty our social contract demands is avid consumerism. Social injustice has waned. We are free to pursue happiness and revel in prosperity. Comparatively speaking, for the average human there is no greater time to be alive than right here, right now.

So we're Found, but not really...not at all actually. We should be Found, we have every advantage to achieve it, but we aren't. In many ways, we're more confused, disaffected, and disjointed than ever. This space is dedicating itself to exploring this phenomenon through the lens of literature, cinema, music, sport, and social commentary.

As is customary of this medium, interaction is strongly encouraged. Ideally, the Found Generation will act as a beacon to all those restless souls who tirelessly strive for something greater than themselves.