Xark!

Tropic Thunder's Defensive Politicking

Perhaps some of you have been following the controversy surrounding the film "Tropic Thunder." And it's not as if the cast and film crew were unaware that their work would raise some eyebrows, as their omnipresent media campaigning demonstrates. Robert Downey Jr's role as a white actor who dyes his skin to play a black soldier is discussed in just about every interview and set piece on the film that I've seen, with each focusing on how the point of the film is to mock Hollywood, not offend "real" people. And, given what I've seen of the film's reviews, their strategy seems to have worked. Stiller is given much credit for an entertaining film that turns Hollywood pompousness on its head, and Downey earns raves for following his Iron Man success with an iron-jawed, intentionally self-absorbed caricature. So, why is there so much controversy? Probably because the filmmakers and reviewers all anticipated the wrong controversy, and this error in judgment tells us a lot about the current state of identity politics and cultural politicking today.

The (over-)Thinking Man's Guide to Dr. Horrible

I tried to watch Joss Whedon's buzz-generator Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on its premiere day, but traffic was so heavy I  gave up. Here's the complete three-act musical (42 minutes, with some short commercial breaks), and it's worth a watch.

But how do I feel about it? Not so easily capsulized.

The most obvious observation is this: When you're a cult celebrity with a body of successful work (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Serenity), a relatively small amount of money, plenty of talented friends and too much time on your hands (Dr. Horrible came out of the writer's strike), you can get plenty of publicity and great production values out of a low-rez media form like web video.

Another obvious observation: Neil Patrick Harris is an extremely funny guy.

Yet none of that particularly interests me. Yes, Dr. Horrible likely will be remembered as a historic milestone in the development of web video as an independent medium, but that was almost assured from the moment that news of the project started racing around the Twitterverse.

No, what I want to talk about requires spoilers. So don't read past the jump until after you've watched the final act.

The Dark Knight: In Praise of Non-Origin-ality

I believe that one of the hardest aspects of any superhero mythology to bring to appreciative audiences is the origin story, be that of the hero him- or herself or of any of their various sidekicks, hangers-on, or especially villains. The stakes are always very high -- given our culture's linear psychology, the origin story necessarily provides the keystone for understanding the tempestuous tableau of daring-do that so thrill us fans. The pressure for the storytellers is palpable. Get it right, and the character acquires a depth and complexity that opens up sympathy and story lines; get it wrong, and fanboys and -girls the world over will barrage the blogosphere with boos and cry out curses at Comic Cons. At the heart of it all is the promise of unveiling the mystery -- of learning more. The TV show Lost has been using origin stories brilliantly as a narrative device, and I dare say that there are many fans who find the answers to the question of how everyone got to the island even more compelling than how they are going to finally get off.

Any fan of the superhero genre has their favorite origin story for a character, and by favorite I am of course implying the plural. Part of the fun, I believe, is that there are multiple origin stories to choose from (just how many spiders have bitten poor Peter Parker over his prolonged adolescence?), each competing to provide a better psychology than the one that came before. But originality is hard to perpetuate, particularly when dealing with characters like those from the Batman universe, where so many glimpses under that famous cowl have been provided by so many. And yet, as I joined apparently every other human being on the planet this past week in watching The Dark Knight, I couldn't help but be stunned by the originality of the origin story surrounding the Joker -- or, rather, the lack of an origin story, and how completely satisfying the absence of narrative turned out to be. This is probably a good time to issue a spoiler alert, so if you haven't seen the film, know that I will be discussing plot details after the jump....

Eddie Izzard's Psychological Inner Peace

On Friday night, my Bonnie and I attended Eddie Izzard’s “Stripped” performance at the Ryman Auditorium.  Having been a dedicated fan since actually catching his “Dress to Kill” show on HBO several years back (even given my disappointment with some of the other performances available on DVD), it was with great anticipation that we took our seats. 

Izzard did not disappoint.  Pound for pound, the guy is the funniest man on the planet, and for almost two full hours, my stomach hurt.  When I wasn’t looking at Bonnie to see if she “got the joke,” I was banging my arm on the chair in front of me as a form of physical relief. 

Izzard’s performance worked for any number of reasons.  First, there was something especially delicious and slightly ironic about watching him in this former church and former home of the Grand Ole Opry.  Given his general left of center views, his engaged dismissal of religious based explanations of almost anything, and his occasion forays into transvestism, there is simply something rather non-Rymanesque about Izzard (well, on second glance, the transvestim fits elements of both country music and religion).  I felt it, and the entire audience understood it as well.  This was one of those magical moments when the setting itself made us all feel like we were part of a conspiracy.  With that as a starting point, Izzard had us as soon as the lights went down.  And with his quick pacing, he never let go.

Trumpet of the Living Dead

While I have more than a passing knowledge of most of the jazz canon from the 1950s to the 1980s, I never became much of a Chet Baker fan.  While I listened to his work with Gerry Mulligan, there was something about the . . . well . . . the lyricism of much of his playing that didn’t appeal to me.  Indeed, I always had something of an unearned snotty attitude about west coast jazz.  Nonetheless, it was with some excitement that I went to see the “revival” of Let’s Get Lost, the 1988 Bruce Weber documentary.  Evidently, in anticipation of a new print going to DVD for the first time this year, the film is making its rounds at art film houses, and it arrived in Nashville just this week.

My reactions to the film were wildly different than I had expected.  I had read that the film provided a poignant portrait of Baker, counterposing images of Baker as a young James Dean with a trumpet with contemporary (1987) images of an older Baker, ragged from a lifetime overuse of speedballs and alcohol.  While some question the veracity of the film’s narrative (i.e., the film makes it seem as if Baker’s life was in complete decline while, according to some accounts, his career was on something of a late upswing in the mid 80s), the accuracy of the narrative—hell, Baker himself--was the least of my concerns as I sat in the theater shaken by the awful physical transformation one sees between the young and older versions of him.

BOTLD UPDATE: Crew positions available!

From the Brunch of the Living Dead Cast and Crew Facebook group:

CREW JOBS NOW AVAILABLE!
If you'd like one of these jobs, send me an e-mail. In most cases I'll take the first volunteer and post the name in comments. There's no pay, but you'll be listed by title in the video credits. You'll also be eligible to get a T-Shirt with your crew title across the back (how we'll pay for those T-Shirts depends on how much money we can raise).

Nail Hard Catholicism

For my money, one of the worst aspects of being Catholic is the feeling of drudgery with which ritualized spirituality often appears to be approached.  While I know some of you might think it’s the politics of Catholicism that would be difficult, I’ve always found my struggles with those politics to lead to some of my most important spiritual insights.  So, no, it’s not the politics, and it’s not the ritual itself (which I like); it’s the way every song is sung as an offbeat dirge, the way every prayer is said as if one is communicating the contents of a phone book. 

I’ve always wished something could be done about this aspect of the Catholic “approach;” I’ve often wondered what changes would work, at least for me.   The only “different” approaches I’ve experienced have felt either downright ridiculous (e.g., the folk masses of the early 70s), or too much on that side of “magical” spirituality (e.g., the charismatic Catholic movement) for my comfort.

While acknowledging that spirituality should and can be practiced in multiple ways, and while acknowledging that such practice can be a matter of taste rather than substance, I’ve always wanted to see a Catholicism with a raging sense of excitement and a voluminous muscularity, for lack of a better word.  As I’ve noted before, I’m Catholic because I was born with it, and I like the way it forces me to struggle.  Nonetheless, being a rather loud and boisterous personality, I’ve never seen why I had to struggle with the style as well as the politics.  It is this combination of my commitment to Catholicism with my desire for a different style of worship that made me so interested in the new HBO documentary on the Hard as Nails ministry.

Personal Politics and the Unwritten Future

Julien Temple's documentary, Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten, about the career/life of Clash and Mescaleros’ frontman Joe Strummer is, to be generous, an engaging collection of sometimes rare video clips and new interviews that offers an adequate introduction to the singer and irritatingly dogmatic politico.  To be more frank, it—like The Filth and The Fury, Temple’s Sex Pistols’ documentary—is something of a cobbled together mess of new and vintage clips that leaves someone like me—a Clash fan from jump--fairly bored.  Not that I can’t find a way to talk about it; I can always do that; it’s more that I wouldn’t want to encourage you to go see it. 

About the documentary itself:  while it is no doubt a nice pleasure to watch documentary clips of the Clash throughout their career (nothing warms a middle aged heart more than mass mediated self-absorption), and while it was both informative and charming to learn (and see) Joe’s early life and upbringing as well as his life post-Clash (about which I knew little), the composition of the story telling was baffling. 

Temple tells Strummer’s story by interposing archive footage of Strummer with interview clips of a variety of unnamed friends sitting around campfires in different global locations. When you know the person being interviewed, and understand their connection to Strummer, this is charming.  When you don’t know the person and/or don’t know their connection, this is distracting and irritating (“Who is that bearded guy?” “Why is Johnny Depp being interviewed?”)

Sean Penn and the Better Story

Ten years ago, like a lot of the rest of the country, I found myself intrigued by the story of Chris McCandless as depicted in Jon Krakauer’s “Into the Wild.”  My reactions to it were perhaps predictably conflicted.  On the one hand, I’m one of the large multitude of people who, especially as a young man, was very attracted to the idea of doing something extreme—hiking the AT straight through, walking across the U.S., that sorta thing.  I loved to think about how long I would have lasted had I been one of the guys on Stephen King’s Long Walk, or how far I could have run with Forest Gump. While not attracted to the idea of trying to live “in the wild” for any period of time, there was something about the romance of McCandless’s quest that I did find compelling.

On the other hand, I couldn’t help but picture the guy as being a member of the arrogant- self-righteous-mystical-I-walk-alone-but-want-you-to-know-it tribe.  As one of my friends (who was reading the book at the same time) remarked, “I knew tons of guys like this in high school.  Always so self-righteous, always so full of themselves.  I didn’t like them then, and I don’t want to read about them now.”  I knew what she was talking about.  In a way similar to the old equation I used to hear in the late 1970s--“I like the Doors; I just don’t like the people I have to hang out with to listen to them”--I liked the romance of extreme self-reliance, but I didn’t like the people I had to hang out with to dream about it. 

My primary problem with Krakauer’s account, however, wasn’t with the representation of McCandless so much as with Krakauer’s over romanticism of it.  If you’ve read the book, you’ll probably know what I mean:  Krakauer not only writes an apologia for McCandless by telling a story about his own youthful extremism that makes both their acts seem like reasonable masculine rites of passage, but he also creates elaborate explanations to explain McCandless’s ultimate demise.  Krakauer’s explanations—which now demand a great deal of scrutiny—ultimately work to suggest that McCandless’s journey was a remarkable masculine adventure, one only foiled by a few very unfortunate bad turns.  In my mind, Krakauer’s account went way too far to make McCandless’s “great Alaskan adventure” appear admirable with no inkling that it might have been simultaneously reckless and damaging to others.

Hoping for Redemption

Warning:  Contains minor Michael Clayton and Rosemary’s Baby spoilers, as well as some grossly massive overgeneralizations.

Over the past week, my Bonnie and I went to see the new George Clooney vehicle, Michael Clayton, and—in her ongoing attempt to educate me about movies made before 1985—we watched Rosemary’s Baby at home.  For very different reasons, these were both interesting experiences for me.  In the case of Michael Clayton, we have an intriguing, emotionally heavy, and complexly constructed legal narrative with some career-worthy acting performances (Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton had exceptional turns, and George Clooney keeps getting better, and more subtle; kudos as well to Sydney Pollack).  While Roman Polanski’s direction of Rosemary’s Baby somehow seems dated (or maybe it’s simply Mia Farrow’s “I’m a dumb little girl” acting that bothered me), the story—and the pacing of the story—kept me intrigued.

I’m coupling these films together, however, not because I’m endorsing each of them—which I am—but because I want to talk about the role of redemption, and my reaction to it, in each film.  At the conclusion of Rosemary’s Baby, I turned to Bonnie and observed that I thought it was a gutsy movie because it ended without redemption.  If anything, the only traditionally redemptive character in the film gave in to the particular forces of evil in the narrative.  You cannot leave the film feeling as if the forces of good won out (well, I suppose you could if you’re particularly fond of shouting heavy handed stuff like, “All hail Satan”).  After I made this comment, Bonnie made the claim—and I have no idea about its quantitative truth although it seems right—that classic popular films were always less redemptive than contemporary films.