Spoiler Alert

There is a little bit of sublimity in this brief video review of one of my favorite movies by one of my favorite critics. The Verdict is a courtroom drama, of course, and around the literal verdict of the title hangs the metaphorical redemption of our protagonist pilgrim (Our Hero Who Art in Heaven Paul Newman, whose glancing look out of the corner of his left eye, when he mouths the words “I’m her attorney” in the clip is worth more than the entirety, unfortunately, of too many other movies.). So when A.O. shows us the verdict of The Verdict in this little clip review about the movie, it may seem a bit of heresy. But, as he well says, we all really knew it was coming anyway. Rocky’s victory is never really in doubt; what is in doubt is getting the kids to keep coming to see Rocky III, IV, etc. The verdict here is more de rigueur dénouement than climax. The real spoiler in this story to keep secret is a scene earlier in the film, a heart-deflating scene that is one of my favorites in the movies, the great James Mason laying out the facts of life to a enterprising law student with a stiff drink and big check. Welcome back, indeed.

And where the hell is that book on the contemporary American novel, A.O.?

A Disturbing Video

I do not usually post these sorts of political videos, or try to impose my views on my audience - however meager that may be - but after you view this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KswnjMa-MQ

I think you will understand why something needs to be done to stop this sort of water-based torture.

Thanks for your time.

Charlie Wilson's War (2007, Mike Nichols)

Charlie Wilson’s War is a devilishly entertaining, 90 min. political fable that’s sharp satire is, unfortunately, book ended with a prelude and postlude that seek to sanctify its unlikely hero. Based on the book (and Congressman) of the same name, Charlie Wilson’s War is the tale of a philandering, boozing Democratic Congressman from Texas who forms one of those ‘unlikely alliances’ - so popular in both our movies and our politics - with a very leggy and very wealthy member of the radical Republican Christian Right (Julia Roberts), and a rough-around-the-edges rogue CIA agent (Philip Seymour Hoffman) to help arm the Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion during the 1980s. (I hope I am not giving too much away to say that Hanks’ and Roberts’ characters get to be literal strange bedfellows, while Hoffman’s must keep his relationship to the more metaphorical level, despite a humorous attempt late in the film.) As smartly written by Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The American President, The West Wing) Wilson’s War excels at portraying the absurdity of the American excess – of almost everything – at the heart of this story, but the tone founders when we visit the Afghan refugee camps with the congressman, and at the movie’s overly serious opening and ending (It is significant that most of the movie’s portrayal of the Afghan-Soviet conflict is stock footage). It is always tough separating a ‘true story’ from its movie incarnation; but had Charlie Wilson actually won the Cold War almost single-handedly, I think Sean Wilentz would have mentioned him once in his recent history of the period. It is almost slapstick scenes like this one,




where Hoffman’s CIA agent first meets Hank’s Wilson, that epitomize this film’s strengths, rather than, say, the scene where the Afghanis shoot down their first Soviet helicopters which looks like it was shot on a set in southern California left over from M*A*S*H.
Hanks, Hoffman and Roberts all turn in deft, just shy of caricature, performances, and it is real fun to watch them mix it up on screen with each other and, among others, copper-topped Amy Adams with an '80s amount of hair, Emily Blunt half-dressed with half of a joint, John ‘The Balls’ Slattery (not even taking a break from smoking from Mad Men) as a dim-witted CIA exec, and one big orange tabby cat. All in, it’s well worth 90 mins. of your time.

Philip Seymour Hoffman and John Slattery in Charlie Wilson's War

"Clearly there has been a miscommunication between Claire George and somebody"

Writing and Money

"Eventually everything is turned upside down. People no longer write for someone to learn something. Perish the thought, what disrespect! the reading public knows everything already. It isn't the reader that needs the author (as the patient the doctor); no, it's the author that needs the reader. An author is therefore quite simply someone with financial problems. So he writes and this is entering for an exam in the which the reading public, which knows everything, gives the grades. A person who writes but doesnt earn money is not an author..." - Kierkegaard, Journals

Katherine Hepburn reviews Blow-Up

"I saw Blow-Up and thought it an absolute bunch of claptrap...a lot of twaddle that winds up with a lot of poor, wretched, underfed things playing tennis WITHOUT a ball!"

- Katherine Hepburn quoted in Mark Harris, Pictures at a Revolution

Harper (1966)

Without being consciously aware of it, I have immersed myself in the sunny darkness of the City of Angels in the late 1960s. By coincidence it is the backdrop for two books I am reading and one movie I just saw: Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice, Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem, and Harper, a 1966 Technicolor/Panavision private-eye vehicle for Paul Newman.

The Los Angeles of the late 1960s is a place where, according to Didion, “The hot wind blows and the old ways do not seem relevant, where the divorce rate is double the national average and where one person in thirty-eight lives in a trailer.” It is where Double Indemity is an alternate Bible, “..a place where little is bright or graceful, where it is routine to misplace the future and easy to start looking for it in bed.” Pynchon has ‘Bigfoot’ Bjornsen, the jaded LAPD cop in his stoner dectective story, compare post-Helter Skelter L.A. to a pool full of piranhas feeding on each other.

There is a pool at the beginning of Harper (it is L.A. kids), around which our hero does find two piranhas of sorts, the tanned gigolo played by Robert Wagner who lazes about the pool keeping the company of a millionaire’s idle spoiled daughter played by Pamela Tiffin, who can do a mean two-step in a meager two-piece on a diving board. The real piranha is inside though, the millionaire’s wife, the icy Lauren Bacall. She has hired our private eye to find that millionaire who has gone missing, maybe kidnapped baby.

Harper was the first solo screenplay credit for William Goldman, one of the storied Hollywood screenwriters (Marathon Man, The Princess Bride), and the writing, line by line, isn’t so bad; it’s the story that sinks more or less to the bottom of this drowning pool. There is a lot to like here: some sharp acting including Robert Webber as a menacing heavy with a great drawl calling Newman ‘Ol’ Stick’, some great widescreen Panavision camera work from Conrad Hall, and then there’s that Pamela Tiffin in that bikini. But Newman seems to walking through the movie; his best scenes are the ones with his estranged wife, played by Janet Leigh (in particular one great scene where he calls her from a bar bathroom payphone).

In the end, Harper is more an exercise in form than narrative. We will have to wait for Altman’s Long Goodbye and Polanski’s Chinatown for a classic treatment of both.

Point Blank

"What do you really want?"

"I really want my money..."

Thomas Pynchon Character, Reagan Court Appointee, Or Voreblog Contributor?

1. Frank X. Altimari
2. Emory M. Sneeden
3. Flaco the Bad
4. Zigzag Twong
5. Danny Julian Boggs
6. Scooter Thomas
7. Ensenada Slim
8. Carol Los Mansmann
9. Leo Sportello
10. Sauncho Smilax
11. George Gardner Fagg
12. Pasco Bowman II
13. Micheal Z. Wolfmann
14. E. Grady Jolly



(Answers - 3,4,7,9,10, 13: Pynchon characters; 1,2,5,8,11, 12,14: Reagan appointees; 6: Voreblog hack )

The Staycation List

1. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (x)
2. Haircut (x)
3. Shave (x)
4. Saab sideswiped in Kroger's parking lot by a car that was obviously blue. (x)
5. Bell's Two-Hearted Ale (x)
6. Wash scrape mark and blue paint off side door of the Saab.
7. Clean the apartment.
8. Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
9. Harper (1966, Jack Smight)
10. Ricky Gervais Out of England
11. Find area rug that really ties my apartment together.
12. Sweet Smell of Success (1957, Alexander MacKendrick)
13. Arrested Development, Season 2, episodes 15, 16, 17.
14. The Big Heat (1953, Fritz Lang)
15. We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live by Joan Didion
16. Baba India Oakley
17. Pictures at a Revolution by Mark Harris
18. Bonnie & Clyde (1967, Arthur Penn)
19. Point Blank (1967, John Boorman)
20. Write.
21. Ulysses, 'Scylla & Charybdis' (ongoing, cyclical...)
22. True Blood (2008, Alan Ball)
23. Jules & Jim (1962, Francois Truffaut)
24. $9.99 large pizza night at Mio's
25. Klute (1971, Alan J. Pakula)
26. After Dark, My Sweet (1990, James Foley)
27. Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift
28. Don't Look Back (1967, D.A. Pennebaker)
29. Become a year older. Don't look back.

Wandering Rocks

Celebrate Bloomsday by joining the fun over at

Wandering Rocks, an online collective devoted

to the reading of James Joyce's Ulysses!

STATE OF PLAY (2009, Kevin MacDonald)

Somewhere in the middle of the muddled mess that was Joe Carnahan’s “Smokin’ Aces[1],” Jason Bateman showed up for a one-scene movie-stealing moment as a sleazy lawyer, locked up and drugged up, in a hotel room. It was a small bit of measured art in an otherwise liberal and loud, glossy wreck of a movie. Carnahan’s brother Matthew Michael Carnahan co-wrote the screenplay for “State of Play” a fairly by-the-books, conservative and buttoned-downed, sometimes plodding, newspaper thriller where Jason Bateman does not show up to steal the movie as a sleazy PR guy, locked up and drugged up, in a hotel room, until – unfortunately – about three-fourths of the way through.
“State of Play” is decent enough. You know the newspaper thriller m.o. well enough; the investigative reporter as private investigator, the one good apple in a town of phonies, the man condemned to live alone in a grubby apartment because that is the only way his ethical scruples would have it. Until one night his college roommate – U.S. Congressman Ben Affleck! – shows up at his door because he has ‘nowhere else to go,’ when his aide/lover is killed and his affair exposed. There will be more exposing to be done before this newspaper thriller is over, you can bet on that!
Everyone does a competent enough job in the acting area. Helen Mirren and Jeff Daniels add some gravitas and British accenting to the mix. Robin Wright Penn adds some character as Affleck’s wife. Crowe is affective, and sometimes effective, as our nebbish hero with an eye for the truth and belly shaped by chili cheeseburgers and chili cheese fries. Rachel McAdams is good at looking Rachel McAdamsey, high-cheekbones and all, gliding around the newsroom in a nice empire-waisted dress. Affleck is Affleck, what can you do.
You kind of know where these movies always end up going, so the fun part is the trip getting there. All I can say is that after about an hour of viewing I began to wonder when Bateman would eventually turn up, given that I knew him to be billed in the movie. That was probably not the filmmakers’ intent, but he does do his scene-stealing job when he gets there, letting a bit of air into a movie that seems to take itself – and in a way the newspaper business – a little too seriously.


[1] “A Viagra suppository for compulsive action fetishists and a movie that may not only be dumb in itself, but also the cause of dumbness in others. Watching it is like being smacked in the face for a hundred minutes with a raw sirloin steak” – A.O. Scott, NY Times

10. Alfonso Soriano: Cub or Explorer?

EXPLORER Alfonso Soriano (1557-1591), under the patronage of the Infanta Isabella, sailed to the New World to found a colony for Spain. Upon arriving, Soriano renounced the Infanta and founded a utopian community in what is now Virginia. Rendered insane when he was bitten by a rabid rooster, Soriano alienated and drove away all members of his community. In 1591 he was set upon by a small army (4) of French pastry chefs from the north. Soriano was bound in fetters, covered in a thick layer of caramel and nugat, and suffocated to death. But even to this day Virginians honor his memory whenever they have a rich, chocolatey 'Soriano' for dessert.

Chicago Cub? or Elizabethan-Era Spanish Explorer?

1. Francisco Pizarro
2. Angel Guzman
3. Vasco Nunez de Balboa
4. Juan Ponce de Leon
5. Carlos Marmol
6. Aramis Ramirez
7. Luis Vizcaino
8. Geovany Soto
9. Hernando de Soto
10. Alfonso Soriano
11. Cabeza de Vaca
12. Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo
13. Panfilo de Narvaez
14. Carlos Zambrano
15. Amerigo Vespucci
16. Milton Bradley


Answers to be posted soon.

Greek Theatre

Here is a beautiful band, a Swedish duo who sound like The Byrds mated with Fleet Foxes. (Well, among other anxious influences.) The kids at Hallock Hill clued me in with their post here. They have not signed or released yet, but you can check out all their current songs at their MySpace site.

Hallock Hill

I hate to break my streak of inactivity with such a slight post but...here is nice music blog I stumbled across that I recommend:

http://www.hallockhill.net/

Seven Days in the Art World with Roberto Bolano

I took a break from the sometimes surreal demands of navigating my way through Roberto Bolano's 2666, esp. part 2, to pick up something I imagined to be a little easier with its demands on my attention span, Sarah Thornton's Seven Days in the Art World. I was especially curious about the first chapter dealing with the art auction world in New York since I worked at a second-rate auction house in NYC back in the day. But I did not make it through the introduction before coming upon this:

"Eric Banks, a writer-editor, argues that the fervent sociality of the art world has unexpected benefits. 'People really do talk about the art they see,' he said. 'If I'm reading something by, say, Roberto Bolano, I'll find very few people to discuss it with. Reading takes a long time, and it's solitary, whereas art fosters quick-forming imagined communities."

What is Roberto Bolano doing following me around from book-to-book? There seems to be no getting away from this guy these days. Talk about cornering the literary market. So aside from the strange notion that a Bolano novel - or any novel, I guess - is not 'art', I found the idea that you could find very few people to discuss Bolano with somewhat ironic as at least 5 people I know are right now tunneling through 2666, and we frequently compare verbally our mental notes on our progress through it (and whether or not we are reading the one-volume hardcover edition or the three-volume paperback version that were published simultaneously.) I'm sure the Bolano novel that Mr. Banks had in mind was The Savage Detectives, which was published a year and half ago or so, and he probably could not have known that Bolano would turn into a dead Latin-American Joyce Carol Oates, throwing out a new, dense masterwork every year from beyond the grave. But seriously Roberto, give me a little literary breathing room. I just want to be literary 'friends.' If I feel like I really love your work, and want our relationship to enter the next level, I will let you know.

The Auction chapter, incidentally, in Seven Days in the Art World, was not bad, and it did conjure up some fun memories of telephone bidding for clients during my brief sojourn in 'the auction world.'

Possible Names for my Imaginary Indie Rock Band (An Ongoing Series)

.
The Ugly Money

Forgeries of What the Heart Dare Not Surrender: A Christmas Message from Gaddis's The Recognitions

"Holy things and holy places, out of mind under the cauterizing brilliance of the summer sun, reared up now as the winter sun struck from the south, casting shadows coldly up the avenues where the people followed and went in, wearing winter hearts on their sleeves for the plucking. Slightly offended by Bach and Palestrina, short memories reached back, struggling toward Origen, that most extraordinary Father of the Church, whose third-century enthusiasm led him to castrate himself so that he might repeat the hoc est corpus meum, Dominus, without the distracting interference of the rearing shadow of the flesh. They looked; but he was nowhere about, so well had he done his work, and the churches were so crowded that many were forced to suffer the Birth in cocktail lounges, and bars. So well had Origen succeeded, sowing his field without a seed, that the conspiracy, conceived in light, born, bred in darkness, and harassed to maturity in dubious death and rapturous martyrdom, continued. Miserere Nobis, said the mitered lips. Vae Vicitis, the statistical heart.
Tragedy was foresworn, in ritual denial of the ripe knowledge that we are drawing away from one another, that we share only one thing, share the fear of belonging to one another, or to others, or to God; love or money, tender equated in advertising and the world, where only money is currency, and under dead trees and brittle ornaments prehensile hands exchange forgeries of what the heart dare not surrender."

-William Gaddis, The Recognitions.

Pizza in the Line of Fire

An actual exchange I had this evening with someone after being sent this link.

ME: I guess the pizza was wasted.

SHE: Would you throw yourself in front of a bullet to save a pizza?

ME: What would the toppings be on said pizza?

SHE: Does it make a difference?

ME: If it were, say, anchovies and mushrooms, I would let the pizza take the bullet. Sausage and bacon? Ham and pineapple? I would have trouble letting that pie die.