Have you heard the new Killers album, Day and Age? Because, seriously, stop reading now and go out and buy it and then listen to it all the way through, and then listen to it again because it’s AWESOME. Seriously, AWESOME, with a capital A (or, in the case of a blog post where the HTML has gotten slack enough for me to hold down the shift key instead of italicizing, AWESOME is in ALL CAPS). Really, go buy it and upload it to iTunes and go to the gym with it or listen to it in bed as you’re drifting to sleep or brushing your teeth or something. I’ll wait.
Still waiting.
Okay, by now I assume you’ve listened to it nine or ten times like I have since getting it for Christmas. (Here I am also assuming that you are hyped up on Red Bulls and Bawls and eggnog chai from Starbucks, because this is how everyone wakes up, right? Right?)
Let’s start with the first single, “Human,” which I purchased from iTunes after I saw The Killers on Saturday Night Live a few months back and which I have since done a near-pitch-perfect version of at karaoke. (Seriously, I know when I’ve fucked up at the karaoke. Note: Alanis’s “Thank U” is not my song.) The song’s chorus has stirred some controversy – not from religious groups or from concerned parents, as most rock and roll does, but from staunch grammarians. The verbal disagreement in the line, “Are we human / or are we dancer?” has caused what can only be deemed a hilarious uproar. According to singer Brandon Flowers, the line is a paraphrase from Hunter S. Thompson … which makes the whole thing a little bit more understandable.
Regardless of all that, the song is full-textured KICK, with a side of RAWK and BITCHIN. Does it make any real sense? Of course it doesn’t. It’s The Killers, the band who made famous the line, “I’ve got soul / but I’m not a soldier.” But there’s an earnestness to Flowers’ singing, especially when he asks, “Will your system be all right / when you dream of home tonight?” As on the genius album Sam’s Town, The Killers make mythic the themes of home and youth and lost love. Nostalgia isn’t passive; it’s vibrant and sometimes violent.
That’s not to say the album is dire. After their glam-pop debut of Hot Fuss and their bid for epic Americana on Sam’s Town, they have figured out how to merge the two sounds on “Day and Age.” (This reminds me of how U2 found a way to merge the electronica of Pop and Zooropa with the soaring, ambitious rock and roll of their early albums on “All That You Can’t Leave Behind.” Except Day and Age is just a little bit better than that.) Their obsession with Bruce Springsteen – an obsession I fully endorse – is on full display here (especially on the absolutely perfect “A Dustland Fairytale,” which seems like a New Wave take on something from the Boss’s “The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle,” and “Losing Touch,” which could have been on Springsteen’s newest effort, “Magic.”) But there’s also some Elton John and David Bowie on “Spaceman,” early Blondie on “This is Your Life,” and “Joy Ride” is the most Duran Duran the Killers can possibly be without becoming a straight-up cover band. It’s eclectic all the way through, in ways that neither Hot Fuss nor Sam’s Town were, and that’s this album’s greatest strength.
The album isn’t without flaws. It’s a little unfortunate that the album’s final two songs – “The World We Live In” and “Goodnight, Travel Well,” are its weakest. It’s not for lack of trying, though: the former has a full string section and its lyrics strive for depth, and the latter is a brooding, spooky closer that weirdly recalls Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight.” By the end, when the drums and synths kick in big time and try to bring the song (and album) to a rousing close, they fall just a little short. Flowers tries to sound mournful but often comes across a little bored. It’s a terrific title, though.
But focusing on the shortfalls is a disservice to Day and Age, which is a really fantastic record. I honestly can’t get over how amazing “A Dustland Fairytale” is – especially some of Flowers’ more interesting vocal inflections, which manage to break out of his “bombast AND NOW MORE BOMBAST!” mode more than ever. And I’d be remiss in my duties if I didn’t mention the fantastic “Neon Tiger,” which seems to be told from the point of view of a, um, neon tiger, looking out over the Killers’ beloved/hated Las Vegas. Lyrics you don’t expect keep popping up, keeping us all on our toes. It’s exciting and fun, which are words that can be used to describe most of Day and Age. This is the perfect third album for The Killers, and I can’t wait to see what they do next.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
The "Bad Romance" Exegesis
Lady GaGa's "Bad Romance" starts off wordlessly, and the opening “oh-oh-oh-oh-OH” soars, seemingly hopeful. But at once, words contradict the good feeling being generated: “caught in a bad romance” brings in stark reality, even as the music thumps electronically to life behind it. We’re less than fifteen seconds into the song, and the boomeranging isn’t done yet. Suddenly, Lady GaGa launches into a recitation of sounds that almost make sense – rah-rah, Roma, GaGa, oo-la-la – which seem at first to exist solely for purposes of rhyming, but on closer examination seem almost willfully self-aggrandizing. She’s cheering herself on, rah-rah, oo-la-la: look at me, I’m Lady GaGa. She’s apparently also in Rome, but that might be beside the point. This rhythmic quartet opens the song proper, repeated twice, and crops up throughout as a way of dividing “Bad Romance” into distinct chapters, and introducing each.
At first glance, the verses themselves seem like standard pop-dance fare, repeating “I want your love (love, love, love, I want your love)”. But the real story is darker, as she insists what she wants is mostly negative: ugly, disease, drama, horror. There’s a flirtation with S&M as she admits she craves “your leather-studded kiss in the sand,” conflating the positive aspects of kink-play with the larger “bad romance.” The bridge – in tone, music, and lyrics reminiscent of the Divynals’ “I Touch Myself,” perhaps ironically featuring a far more positive look at self-love – uses the words “want” and “need” in regards to romance, reinforcing the negative connotations of the verses.
The chorus, then, is a bit of a surprise; for the first time, we sense perhaps a different meaning in the phrase “bad romance.” Even as she sings the line, “I want your love and I want your revenge,” she follows it up by suggesting, “you and me could write a bad romance.” Here, the listener gets the sense that she means something along the lines of a trashy romance novel, one with a lot of softcore erotica and a happy ending. Her inflections support this thought, but that word “revenge” keeps appearing, contradicting the more positive readings. Illuminating the chorus is a revival of the first verse in the song: “caught in a bad romance.” The use of the past tense – in a song otherwise in the present-tense – is interesting, indicating that the things she craved were the wrong things, and now she’s stuck in something she only thought she wanted. It’s a bizarre reality check, even as that “oh-oh-oh-oh-OH” continues to paint verbal hopefulness in the background.
The second verse recalls a qualification of the first: earlier, she’d stated that she “want(s) your everything as long as it’s free”; now she warns that “you’re a criminal as long as you’re mine.” It’s as if she’s giving outs to her object of desire, subtly indicating that she’s willing to throw herself into a fantasy as long as it remains a fantasy. Dark desires have a way of turning into dark realities. To underscore this, GaGa name-checks three Alfred Hitchcock films – Psycho, Rear Window, and Vertigo (applying the appellation –stick to this latter title, recalling the disco-stick of her earlier hit “Love Games”; it’s still nonsensical, but at least its conjunction with Vertigo makes a bit more sense. In addition, the line “while you’re in my rear window, baby it’s sick” begs for a more lurid reading than mere allusion; the longer the song continues, the more pornographic and naked her desires become, even as she tries to repudiate them.)
Following another doubling of the “rah-rah” bridge, we enter into a bizarre subplot, which seems to feature GaGa onstage at a fashion show (could this be what she meant by “Roma”?) The vocal grows a bit more diffuse, standing in for a crowd watching her strut. Amid the standard “walk, walk fashion baby,” we get “work it, move, that bitch crazy.” The shift to second person (with GaGa looking in at herself) is fascinating, as if she knows that other people know something about her that she doesn’t; perhaps she is afraid of her “sick” intentions being brought to light, even as she wants them to. A defensive, “I’m a freak bitch, baby!” tries to sound like she’s owning it, but fails to convince. This dichotomy continues to define the song.
Something revealing happens by the next chorus: after the repetition that she wants both love and revenge, she states, “I don’t want to be friends.” It’s the first time in the song she nakedly states something she doesn’t want. It’s a brief moment of naked honesty, and GaGa immediately fears it. At once, she dives into French, as if backing off from this statement, baffling the listener away from truth.
Soon enough, though, she comes back to it, seeming to need to get it out. She repeats the line three times, and on the third repetition, she finally evinces emotion. Most of the song has been sung in an almost-monotone (with the exception of the chorus, whose vocal ranges from come-on to slight desperation). On the final, “I don’t want to be friends,” she actually shouts, underlining her entire intention of the song. She wants destructive love, but she doesn’t want to actually like this person. The whole song has led up to this moment, finally revealing GaGa’s true colors – she wants a theory of love tainted with versions of hate and pain. Real love, which requires you to be friends with the person you are in love with, is messier than her initial concepts of what makes romance “bad.” Immediately following this revelation, she falls back to her default position: “I want your bad romance.”
“Bad Romance” is a complicated, complex song, bursting with pop concepts that could have been the basis for four or five lesser songs. More, it’s deeper than it pretends to be; even flourishes like the way she slurs the word “hand” and the grunting sigh in the middle of the second verse are more interesting than they have any right to be. After the mediocre “Just Dance,” the trying-too-hard “Poker Face,” and the absolutely horrible “Love Games,” “Paparazzi” was a breath of fresh air. “Bad Romance” happily continues this trend. It’s not only Lady GaGa’s best single so far, it is also one of the best songs of the year.
At first glance, the verses themselves seem like standard pop-dance fare, repeating “I want your love (love, love, love, I want your love)”. But the real story is darker, as she insists what she wants is mostly negative: ugly, disease, drama, horror. There’s a flirtation with S&M as she admits she craves “your leather-studded kiss in the sand,” conflating the positive aspects of kink-play with the larger “bad romance.” The bridge – in tone, music, and lyrics reminiscent of the Divynals’ “I Touch Myself,” perhaps ironically featuring a far more positive look at self-love – uses the words “want” and “need” in regards to romance, reinforcing the negative connotations of the verses.
The chorus, then, is a bit of a surprise; for the first time, we sense perhaps a different meaning in the phrase “bad romance.” Even as she sings the line, “I want your love and I want your revenge,” she follows it up by suggesting, “you and me could write a bad romance.” Here, the listener gets the sense that she means something along the lines of a trashy romance novel, one with a lot of softcore erotica and a happy ending. Her inflections support this thought, but that word “revenge” keeps appearing, contradicting the more positive readings. Illuminating the chorus is a revival of the first verse in the song: “caught in a bad romance.” The use of the past tense – in a song otherwise in the present-tense – is interesting, indicating that the things she craved were the wrong things, and now she’s stuck in something she only thought she wanted. It’s a bizarre reality check, even as that “oh-oh-oh-oh-OH” continues to paint verbal hopefulness in the background.
The second verse recalls a qualification of the first: earlier, she’d stated that she “want(s) your everything as long as it’s free”; now she warns that “you’re a criminal as long as you’re mine.” It’s as if she’s giving outs to her object of desire, subtly indicating that she’s willing to throw herself into a fantasy as long as it remains a fantasy. Dark desires have a way of turning into dark realities. To underscore this, GaGa name-checks three Alfred Hitchcock films – Psycho, Rear Window, and Vertigo (applying the appellation –stick to this latter title, recalling the disco-stick of her earlier hit “Love Games”; it’s still nonsensical, but at least its conjunction with Vertigo makes a bit more sense. In addition, the line “while you’re in my rear window, baby it’s sick” begs for a more lurid reading than mere allusion; the longer the song continues, the more pornographic and naked her desires become, even as she tries to repudiate them.)
Following another doubling of the “rah-rah” bridge, we enter into a bizarre subplot, which seems to feature GaGa onstage at a fashion show (could this be what she meant by “Roma”?) The vocal grows a bit more diffuse, standing in for a crowd watching her strut. Amid the standard “walk, walk fashion baby,” we get “work it, move, that bitch crazy.” The shift to second person (with GaGa looking in at herself) is fascinating, as if she knows that other people know something about her that she doesn’t; perhaps she is afraid of her “sick” intentions being brought to light, even as she wants them to. A defensive, “I’m a freak bitch, baby!” tries to sound like she’s owning it, but fails to convince. This dichotomy continues to define the song.
Something revealing happens by the next chorus: after the repetition that she wants both love and revenge, she states, “I don’t want to be friends.” It’s the first time in the song she nakedly states something she doesn’t want. It’s a brief moment of naked honesty, and GaGa immediately fears it. At once, she dives into French, as if backing off from this statement, baffling the listener away from truth.
Soon enough, though, she comes back to it, seeming to need to get it out. She repeats the line three times, and on the third repetition, she finally evinces emotion. Most of the song has been sung in an almost-monotone (with the exception of the chorus, whose vocal ranges from come-on to slight desperation). On the final, “I don’t want to be friends,” she actually shouts, underlining her entire intention of the song. She wants destructive love, but she doesn’t want to actually like this person. The whole song has led up to this moment, finally revealing GaGa’s true colors – she wants a theory of love tainted with versions of hate and pain. Real love, which requires you to be friends with the person you are in love with, is messier than her initial concepts of what makes romance “bad.” Immediately following this revelation, she falls back to her default position: “I want your bad romance.”
“Bad Romance” is a complicated, complex song, bursting with pop concepts that could have been the basis for four or five lesser songs. More, it’s deeper than it pretends to be; even flourishes like the way she slurs the word “hand” and the grunting sigh in the middle of the second verse are more interesting than they have any right to be. After the mediocre “Just Dance,” the trying-too-hard “Poker Face,” and the absolutely horrible “Love Games,” “Paparazzi” was a breath of fresh air. “Bad Romance” happily continues this trend. It’s not only Lady GaGa’s best single so far, it is also one of the best songs of the year.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Whatchamacallit!
In 1978, the Hershey’s company released the Whatchamacallit candy bar to the masses. The Whatchamacallit bar was made of peanut butter flavored “crispies” and featured a coating of rich milk chocolate. Eager to play on its silly, memorable name, Hershey’s produced this early commercial, a Little League take on the classic Abbot & Costello bit, “Who’s On First.”
In 1987, nine years after its inception, Hershey’s made the controversial decision to add a layer of caramel to the candy bar. Debates still rage to this day whether the decision was a good one. In an effort to take on problems that are truly important, several online petitions have sprung up to get Hershey’s to remove the caramel layer. None of these efforts have been successful.
While the Whatchamacallit bar never had an amazing movie tie-in opportunity like Reese’s Pieces did with E.T. – or, to a lesser extent, Baby Ruth in The Goonies or Zagnut in Beetlejuice – Whatchamacallit did have an amazing mind-bender of a commercial in 1989. Again, though it’s not as revered as, say, that one for the Tootsie Pop (probably the best candy commercial of all time), it’s weird and merges retro and future-retro styles to create something truly memorable.
Whatchamacallit’s brand graphics changed in 2002, with more dynamic package imagery (the name of the bar jumps out against a chocolate “splash” field). In 2006, the Whatchamacallit – along with several other candy bars, including the inconceivably popular Take 5 – underwent a far more radical change than the addition of caramel. Due to the rising cost of cocoa, Hershey’s began replacing the cocoa butter coating with a new coating consisting mainly of vegetable oils. While it still contains some chocolate, Hershey’s is no longer allowed to legally state that the Whatchamacallit contains milk chocolate. As a result, the packaging of the Whatchamacallit changed once again, and advertising that it is “Made with chocolate, peanut flavored crisps, and caramel.”
In 2009, following the trend of candy bars receiving spinoff treatment, the Whatchamacallit introduced a limited edition candy bar called the Thingamajig. The Thingamajig is slightly smaller than the Whatchamacallit, featuring cocoa crisps with a layer of peanut butter substituted for caramel. Like the Whatchamacallit, it is enrobed in a coating of Hershey’s imitation milk chocolate, but because the whole bar is suffused with chocolate essence, one can detect the lack of cocoa butter less.
The Whatchamacallit has never gotten the recognition or praise it deserves (which makes the existence of the Thingamajig it a little puzzling … if delicious), but even with the caramel layer and the change to mocklate, I think the Whatchamacallit is one of the best candy bars out there. Crisp, wide, and a surprising chocolate/peanut butter combination flavor that is at once unusual and inviting, the Whatchamacallit deserves its due.
In 1987, nine years after its inception, Hershey’s made the controversial decision to add a layer of caramel to the candy bar. Debates still rage to this day whether the decision was a good one. In an effort to take on problems that are truly important, several online petitions have sprung up to get Hershey’s to remove the caramel layer. None of these efforts have been successful.
While the Whatchamacallit bar never had an amazing movie tie-in opportunity like Reese’s Pieces did with E.T. – or, to a lesser extent, Baby Ruth in The Goonies or Zagnut in Beetlejuice – Whatchamacallit did have an amazing mind-bender of a commercial in 1989. Again, though it’s not as revered as, say, that one for the Tootsie Pop (probably the best candy commercial of all time), it’s weird and merges retro and future-retro styles to create something truly memorable.
Whatchamacallit’s brand graphics changed in 2002, with more dynamic package imagery (the name of the bar jumps out against a chocolate “splash” field). In 2006, the Whatchamacallit – along with several other candy bars, including the inconceivably popular Take 5 – underwent a far more radical change than the addition of caramel. Due to the rising cost of cocoa, Hershey’s began replacing the cocoa butter coating with a new coating consisting mainly of vegetable oils. While it still contains some chocolate, Hershey’s is no longer allowed to legally state that the Whatchamacallit contains milk chocolate. As a result, the packaging of the Whatchamacallit changed once again, and advertising that it is “Made with chocolate, peanut flavored crisps, and caramel.”
In 2009, following the trend of candy bars receiving spinoff treatment, the Whatchamacallit introduced a limited edition candy bar called the Thingamajig. The Thingamajig is slightly smaller than the Whatchamacallit, featuring cocoa crisps with a layer of peanut butter substituted for caramel. Like the Whatchamacallit, it is enrobed in a coating of Hershey’s imitation milk chocolate, but because the whole bar is suffused with chocolate essence, one can detect the lack of cocoa butter less.
The Whatchamacallit has never gotten the recognition or praise it deserves (which makes the existence of the Thingamajig it a little puzzling … if delicious), but even with the caramel layer and the change to mocklate, I think the Whatchamacallit is one of the best candy bars out there. Crisp, wide, and a surprising chocolate/peanut butter combination flavor that is at once unusual and inviting, the Whatchamacallit deserves its due.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Foot Loose and Fancy-Free: Quentin Tarantino's Curious Fondness
On the set of her eponymous show, Tyra Banks abruptly leans back, throws her legs in the air, and promptly drops her feet in Quentin Tarantino’s lap. She explains that when she’d heard the director was going to be on her show, she had a pedicure done at once. “I was actually going to say,” Tarantino laughs, “is this on my account?” But when she tells him that she’s going to utilize his foot obsession to help her judge a model contest, Tarantino defends himself: “You don’t have to say obsession … I have a fondness.”
But what a fondness! Infamous screenwriter Joe Eszterhaus felt it interesting enough to mention in his memoir, Hollywood Animal. A recent New York article, commenting on a photo shoot in which Tarantino is photographed fondling Diane Kruger’s feet, shouted, “Okay, Okay, Quentin Tarantino Has a Foot Fetish, We Get it!” But is that all it is? A prurient preoccupation with feet, a kink Tarantino is helpless to throw onscreen in a combination of titillation, explanation, and popularization? Perhaps not. The Village Voice, eschewing the shock and exasperation that generally comes bundled with a discussion of Tarantino’s quirk, explored it a little more deeply: “It's not just that he's a foot fetishist, but that he takes what he cares about—personal, quirky stuff—and transforms it into art.”
Directors are famous for their motifs, and Tarantino is no exception. His fascinations – genre films, off-kilter sequencing, and 70s culture among them – define and occasionally pigeonhole him. Just as each of these directorial choices come to shape the movies he makes, so too does his fondness for feet. No mere fetish writ large, Tarantino’s examination of the toes and soles of his actresses is far more interesting.
Pulp Fiction launches right into things, as gangsters Vincent and Jules famously discuss whether giving a man’s wife a foot rub is cause for defenestration. The message is clear right off: whether throwing Tony Rocky Horror out of a window for touching Marcellus Wallace’s wife Mia’s feet was justified is not really the issue; the issue is whether touching a woman’s feet equals sex. Later, the film does its best to convince us that it is: when Mia Wallace first appears, we see her dancing barefoot to Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man”. The finale of this sequence lingers on a close-up of Mia’s toes sunk seductively into a deep-pile carpet. Mia is beautiful and her dance is seductive, but it is this image that underlines the scene – the job of the audience is to understand that the soles of her feet are meant to be as erotic as seeing her naked.
Later, in what is arguably Pulp Fiction’s most famous sequence, Mia bullies Vincent into entering (and winning) the Jack Rabbit Slim’s twist contest. It’s no mistake that while Vincent remains in socks, Mia – now aggressive – dances barefoot once again. It is here that we first get a glimpse of feet symbolizing something more than sex for Tarantino. Mia stripping her shoes off is an act of power here – seductive, yes, but in the service of winning her the trophy she wants. During the twist contest, we are allowed only one close-up of her gyrating feet. Any more, Tarantino seems to say, would be to rob the sequence of its power, degenerating it to something like pornography.
Of course, pornography is very much on the roster in From Dusk Till Dawn. Though not directed by Tarantino, it was written by him and stars him, and offers and intriguing evolutionary step in this aspect of Tarantino’s development. In one scene, Salma Hayek, as erotic dancer Satanico Pandemonium, moves seductively across a table toward Tarantino’s Richie Gecko. Bikini-clad and wearing a writhing snake around her shoulders, Pandemonium lifts her foot to Gecko’s face, pouring alcohol down her thigh and inviting Gecko to lap it off her toes. That Pandemonium is revealed to be a vampire recontextualizes this scene, echoing Jonathan Harker’s seduction by Dracula’s concubines. The theme of consumption mixed with sexuality is key in vampire stories, and it is no mistake that later, Pandemonium drinks more literally from Richie Gecko, transforming him into a vampire. This classic horror movie trope of sex (in this case, toe-sucking instead of intercourse) leading to death will be explored in far more detail in Tarantino’s later Death Proof.
The image of alcohol and feet re-emerges in Jackie Brown, a movie concerned above all things with age. When Bridget Fonda’s Melanie first appears, several shots focus on the soles of her bare feet, prettied up with toe rings; as it is later suggested that she is “past her prime,” the toe rings – along with her skimpy outfits and garish fake tan – serve to accentuate her desire to cling to her youth. The first close-ups of her feet frame them next to a glass of alcohol sipped intermittently by Robert DeNiro’s Louis Gara – seen here grizzled and old. The proximity of girlish feet next to this man’s alcohol underlines their drab Lolita relationship, and serves as foreshadowing to its violent conclusion. Whereas Salma Hayek’s bare foot – dripping with alcohol – symbolized her power over Tarantino’s character, here the power dynamic is reversed. Following a brief and blunt sex scene (recalling – and perhaps exploiting – DeNiro’s boudoir scene with Jodie Foster’s child prostitute in Taxi Driver) DeNiro’s character shoots Fonda in broad daylight.
In these early Tarantino films, his focus on feet is almost purely sexual, though suggesting themes of more symbolic importance. Sex is either presaged or entirely subverted by the fetishization of feet. However, by the time of Kill Bill, the focus shifts. Early on, Uma Thurman’s Bride character awakens from a coma partially paralyzed. Before she can embark on her “roaring rampage of revenge,” she first has to get her feet moving. A close-up of Thurman’s bare feet fill the screen as she commands herself to “wiggle her big toe.” Epic importance is attached to this moment; this is the Bride’s first major act of independence since being shot in the head by Bill years prior. In this context, a woman’s feet are as much symbolic of her power and strength as her swordplay; it is important that Lucy Liu’s character removes her shoes before her climactic battle with the Bride.
In Kill Bill, Volume 2, we again see The Bride’s feet in flashback, before her later violent retribution. During her talk with David Carradine’s Bill – before his attempt on her life – we see her in sandals, the tops and sides of her feet exposed. Bill appears in loafers, and there are several shots of both pairs of feet approaching one another. The dynamic here is clear: Bill has caught The Bride unaware, putting him in control … though his control is not total. Though he shoots her, she lives; it may not be that much of a stretch to suggest that her covered soles are a symbol of things even Bill is not allowed to see.
Death Proof, Tarantino’s half of the Grindhouse experiment, pushes all of the director’s interests to the extreme. Here, his love of dialogue that has no bearing on the plot or story of the film at times detracts from the momentum, and his interest in subplots as epic as his plots can be trying. His interest in feet, too, is explored to unprecedented degrees. Tarantino has described Death Proof as a slasher film, and in slasher films, the killer tends to target teenagers who have dared to have premarital sex. Death Proof follows that logic with a Tarantino twist: instead of sex, we are privy to long, sensual shots of young women’s feet.
The film opens with a bright shot of feet crossed at the ankle resting on a dashboard; this is meant to be as sexual (and iconic) an image as a scantily-clad woman writhing on the hood of a car. Our first glimpse of one of the film’s sexy leads, Sydney Poitier, is of her walking barefoot through her apartment, with many shots tracking her at foot level. Later, she appears with her feet dangling off a porch during a rainstorm, the water sluicing sensually between her toes, bringing to mind similar scenes of skinny-dipping in earlier slasher movies. Immediately before she is murdered, we see Poitier’s foot dangling out of the window of a car: bare feet equal sex, and sex equals death.
In the second segment of Death Proof, a sleeping Rosario Dawson is spotted by the slasher-killer Stuntman Mike; her feet, too, are dangling out a car’s window. While she dozes, Stuntman Mike runs a finger over the heels of her feet. This act is the height of repugnance, meant to imply attempted rape. Stuntman Mike’s twisted mentality sees this accidental sensuality as reason to murder. It is no accident that, later, Dawson and her friends take their revenge on Stuntman Mike by stomping him to death. The shoe, truly, is on the other foot.
Inglourious Basterds is a tricky, intricately plotted foreign film hiding inside a brash Tarantino genre-bender. Over the course of the film, we learn that Diane Kruger’s actress Bridget von Hammersmark is working as a double agent for the Americans within the Nazi ranks. During a climactic scene, she is nearly killed and just manages to escape with her life. Christopher Waltz’s Hans Landa, a brutal Nazi officer who has uncovered her high-heel shoe amidst the wreckage she escaped, tracks her down, and in an unbearably tense perversion of the Cinderella story, matches the shoe to her foot. One foot is already broken, symbolic of her sudden diminished usefulness; her other, exposed by Landa, literally and figuratively explicates where her loyalties lie. Far from being a sexual symbol – though there is an element to dark sexuality in this scene, as there was in the similar scene in Death Proof – here, Diane Kruger’s bare foot reveals her secrets and makes her vulnerable. Her feet broken and exposed, von Hammersmark is powerless.
However Tarantino’s “quirky, personal stuff” first emerged onscreen, it is obvious that his passion for feet has become far more interesting than kink or fetish. As symbols of sexuality, of power, of vulnerability, his actresses’ feet are as versatile as any other signature at Tarantino’s disposal. One can’t but be intrigued as to what his next step will be.
But what a fondness! Infamous screenwriter Joe Eszterhaus felt it interesting enough to mention in his memoir, Hollywood Animal. A recent New York article, commenting on a photo shoot in which Tarantino is photographed fondling Diane Kruger’s feet, shouted, “Okay, Okay, Quentin Tarantino Has a Foot Fetish, We Get it!” But is that all it is? A prurient preoccupation with feet, a kink Tarantino is helpless to throw onscreen in a combination of titillation, explanation, and popularization? Perhaps not. The Village Voice, eschewing the shock and exasperation that generally comes bundled with a discussion of Tarantino’s quirk, explored it a little more deeply: “It's not just that he's a foot fetishist, but that he takes what he cares about—personal, quirky stuff—and transforms it into art.”
Directors are famous for their motifs, and Tarantino is no exception. His fascinations – genre films, off-kilter sequencing, and 70s culture among them – define and occasionally pigeonhole him. Just as each of these directorial choices come to shape the movies he makes, so too does his fondness for feet. No mere fetish writ large, Tarantino’s examination of the toes and soles of his actresses is far more interesting.
Pulp Fiction launches right into things, as gangsters Vincent and Jules famously discuss whether giving a man’s wife a foot rub is cause for defenestration. The message is clear right off: whether throwing Tony Rocky Horror out of a window for touching Marcellus Wallace’s wife Mia’s feet was justified is not really the issue; the issue is whether touching a woman’s feet equals sex. Later, the film does its best to convince us that it is: when Mia Wallace first appears, we see her dancing barefoot to Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man”. The finale of this sequence lingers on a close-up of Mia’s toes sunk seductively into a deep-pile carpet. Mia is beautiful and her dance is seductive, but it is this image that underlines the scene – the job of the audience is to understand that the soles of her feet are meant to be as erotic as seeing her naked.
Later, in what is arguably Pulp Fiction’s most famous sequence, Mia bullies Vincent into entering (and winning) the Jack Rabbit Slim’s twist contest. It’s no mistake that while Vincent remains in socks, Mia – now aggressive – dances barefoot once again. It is here that we first get a glimpse of feet symbolizing something more than sex for Tarantino. Mia stripping her shoes off is an act of power here – seductive, yes, but in the service of winning her the trophy she wants. During the twist contest, we are allowed only one close-up of her gyrating feet. Any more, Tarantino seems to say, would be to rob the sequence of its power, degenerating it to something like pornography.
Of course, pornography is very much on the roster in From Dusk Till Dawn. Though not directed by Tarantino, it was written by him and stars him, and offers and intriguing evolutionary step in this aspect of Tarantino’s development. In one scene, Salma Hayek, as erotic dancer Satanico Pandemonium, moves seductively across a table toward Tarantino’s Richie Gecko. Bikini-clad and wearing a writhing snake around her shoulders, Pandemonium lifts her foot to Gecko’s face, pouring alcohol down her thigh and inviting Gecko to lap it off her toes. That Pandemonium is revealed to be a vampire recontextualizes this scene, echoing Jonathan Harker’s seduction by Dracula’s concubines. The theme of consumption mixed with sexuality is key in vampire stories, and it is no mistake that later, Pandemonium drinks more literally from Richie Gecko, transforming him into a vampire. This classic horror movie trope of sex (in this case, toe-sucking instead of intercourse) leading to death will be explored in far more detail in Tarantino’s later Death Proof.
The image of alcohol and feet re-emerges in Jackie Brown, a movie concerned above all things with age. When Bridget Fonda’s Melanie first appears, several shots focus on the soles of her bare feet, prettied up with toe rings; as it is later suggested that she is “past her prime,” the toe rings – along with her skimpy outfits and garish fake tan – serve to accentuate her desire to cling to her youth. The first close-ups of her feet frame them next to a glass of alcohol sipped intermittently by Robert DeNiro’s Louis Gara – seen here grizzled and old. The proximity of girlish feet next to this man’s alcohol underlines their drab Lolita relationship, and serves as foreshadowing to its violent conclusion. Whereas Salma Hayek’s bare foot – dripping with alcohol – symbolized her power over Tarantino’s character, here the power dynamic is reversed. Following a brief and blunt sex scene (recalling – and perhaps exploiting – DeNiro’s boudoir scene with Jodie Foster’s child prostitute in Taxi Driver) DeNiro’s character shoots Fonda in broad daylight.
In these early Tarantino films, his focus on feet is almost purely sexual, though suggesting themes of more symbolic importance. Sex is either presaged or entirely subverted by the fetishization of feet. However, by the time of Kill Bill, the focus shifts. Early on, Uma Thurman’s Bride character awakens from a coma partially paralyzed. Before she can embark on her “roaring rampage of revenge,” she first has to get her feet moving. A close-up of Thurman’s bare feet fill the screen as she commands herself to “wiggle her big toe.” Epic importance is attached to this moment; this is the Bride’s first major act of independence since being shot in the head by Bill years prior. In this context, a woman’s feet are as much symbolic of her power and strength as her swordplay; it is important that Lucy Liu’s character removes her shoes before her climactic battle with the Bride.
In Kill Bill, Volume 2, we again see The Bride’s feet in flashback, before her later violent retribution. During her talk with David Carradine’s Bill – before his attempt on her life – we see her in sandals, the tops and sides of her feet exposed. Bill appears in loafers, and there are several shots of both pairs of feet approaching one another. The dynamic here is clear: Bill has caught The Bride unaware, putting him in control … though his control is not total. Though he shoots her, she lives; it may not be that much of a stretch to suggest that her covered soles are a symbol of things even Bill is not allowed to see.
Death Proof, Tarantino’s half of the Grindhouse experiment, pushes all of the director’s interests to the extreme. Here, his love of dialogue that has no bearing on the plot or story of the film at times detracts from the momentum, and his interest in subplots as epic as his plots can be trying. His interest in feet, too, is explored to unprecedented degrees. Tarantino has described Death Proof as a slasher film, and in slasher films, the killer tends to target teenagers who have dared to have premarital sex. Death Proof follows that logic with a Tarantino twist: instead of sex, we are privy to long, sensual shots of young women’s feet.
The film opens with a bright shot of feet crossed at the ankle resting on a dashboard; this is meant to be as sexual (and iconic) an image as a scantily-clad woman writhing on the hood of a car. Our first glimpse of one of the film’s sexy leads, Sydney Poitier, is of her walking barefoot through her apartment, with many shots tracking her at foot level. Later, she appears with her feet dangling off a porch during a rainstorm, the water sluicing sensually between her toes, bringing to mind similar scenes of skinny-dipping in earlier slasher movies. Immediately before she is murdered, we see Poitier’s foot dangling out of the window of a car: bare feet equal sex, and sex equals death.
In the second segment of Death Proof, a sleeping Rosario Dawson is spotted by the slasher-killer Stuntman Mike; her feet, too, are dangling out a car’s window. While she dozes, Stuntman Mike runs a finger over the heels of her feet. This act is the height of repugnance, meant to imply attempted rape. Stuntman Mike’s twisted mentality sees this accidental sensuality as reason to murder. It is no accident that, later, Dawson and her friends take their revenge on Stuntman Mike by stomping him to death. The shoe, truly, is on the other foot.
Inglourious Basterds is a tricky, intricately plotted foreign film hiding inside a brash Tarantino genre-bender. Over the course of the film, we learn that Diane Kruger’s actress Bridget von Hammersmark is working as a double agent for the Americans within the Nazi ranks. During a climactic scene, she is nearly killed and just manages to escape with her life. Christopher Waltz’s Hans Landa, a brutal Nazi officer who has uncovered her high-heel shoe amidst the wreckage she escaped, tracks her down, and in an unbearably tense perversion of the Cinderella story, matches the shoe to her foot. One foot is already broken, symbolic of her sudden diminished usefulness; her other, exposed by Landa, literally and figuratively explicates where her loyalties lie. Far from being a sexual symbol – though there is an element to dark sexuality in this scene, as there was in the similar scene in Death Proof – here, Diane Kruger’s bare foot reveals her secrets and makes her vulnerable. Her feet broken and exposed, von Hammersmark is powerless.
However Tarantino’s “quirky, personal stuff” first emerged onscreen, it is obvious that his passion for feet has become far more interesting than kink or fetish. As symbols of sexuality, of power, of vulnerability, his actresses’ feet are as versatile as any other signature at Tarantino’s disposal. One can’t but be intrigued as to what his next step will be.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Be a Pepper!
Of course we all know that Dr Pepper is delicious, but did you know that it is the oldest major manufacturer of soft drink concentrates and syrups in the United States? That’s right! It beats Coca-Cola by a year and Pepsi-Cola, which came about in 1898, is like Dr Pepper’s upstart little brother. I thought it would be fun to take a little look at not only how “the most misunderstood soft drink” came about, but also how it’s remained so popular all these years.
Charles Alderton, a young pharmacist working at Morrison’s Old Corner Drug Store in Waco, Texas in 1885, liked the way the drug store smelled – an intoxicating aroma of fruit syrups wafting through the air, mixing and merging together. In his spare time, he set about experimenting with capturing that wonderful aroma in a taste, and serving it in a beverage.
After a successful taste-test by his boss, Alderton began serving the beverage in the store, and soon patrons began demanding a “Waco.” Unfortunately, how the moniker “Dr. Pepper” came about is lost to the sands of time, although it is generally agreed that Morrison – Alderton’s boss – came up with the name.
In 1904, at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition – more commonly known as the St. Louis World’s Fair – Dr. Pepper was unleashed on the world (with some heavy consumption competition; at the same World’s Fair, hot dogs and hamburgers were served on buns for the first time, and ice cream cones were popularized! Talk about a junk food explosion!) Over twenty million people sampled the beverage, and Dr. Pepper was officially a hit!
Old Doc!
The popular slogan, “King of Beverages” is thought to have originated in a newspaper advertisement as early as 1906. A mascot, a country doctor with a top hat and a monocle named Old Doc, emerged in advertising in the 1920s and 1930s, and became Dr. Pepper’s trademark. During that era, research determined that the average person experiences fatigue at 10:30, 2:30, and 4:30. Capitalizing on this, the Dr Pepper company promoted an ad contest that would incorporate this new information into their marketing. The winning slogan was “Drink a bite to eat at 10, 2, and 4!”
Drink a bite to eat!
During World War II, a radio program titled The 10-2-4 Ranch (and later 10-2-4 Time for broader appeal) aired, with Dr. Pepper advertising spots. Over five hundred episodes were produced! Two other variety programs – The Dr. Pepper Parade and Dr. Pepper’s Treasure – were also sponsored by the company.
Changes were afoot in the 1950s. A new slogan, “The Friendly Pepper-Upper,” began appearing in advertisements, and the familiar logo was redesigned. This new logo was slanted, and due to legibility and stylistic reasons, the period at the end of “Dr.” was dropped, making the brand name officially Dr Pepper.
OMG RUN!!!
In the 1960s, it became a major sponsor of the television show American Bandstand, linking the beverage intrinsically with rock and roll music. A new version of the drink, “Dietetic Dr Pepper” was released, although sales were sluggish due to people thinking it was for diabetics. In 1966, the product name was changed to “Diet Dr Pepper.”
Why? Because it's awesome.
Around this time, the slogans, “The most misunderstood soft drink” and “so misunderstood” also appealed to the teen market, as did the early 70s slogan, “the most original soft drink ever.” However, no one could have guessed how popular the Dr Pepper marketing campaign of 1977 would be. With a catchy jingle and commercials featuring David Naughton and campy choreography, Dr Pepper was arguably more popular than it had ever been:
I drink Dr. Pepper and I'm proud / I used to feel alone in a crowd / Now if you look around these days / There seems to be a Dr. Pepper craze!
Oh I'm a pepper / He's a pepper/ She's a pepper / We're a pepper / Wouldn't you like to be a pepper too!
Sort of a change from the theme of individuality just a few years before!
In the 1980s, Coca-Cola tried unsuccessfully to purchase Dr Pepper, but the Federal Trade Commission blocked them at every turn, due to concerns about Coke creating a monopoly on “Pepper”-flavored beverages. However, for a time, Coke and Pepsi distributed Dr Pepper, until it merged with Snapple. Currently, Dr Pepper Snapple bottles and distributes most of its own product.
In 1991, aspartame was introduced to Diet Dr Pepper, along with the successful marketing campaign that it “Tastes more like Regular Dr Pepper.” An upswing in sales ensued. In 2002, for the first time in 122 years, Dr Pepper began experimenting with flavor extensions. First came Dr Pepper Red Fusion, which tasted nothing at all like regular Dr Pepper. Its production ceased within a year.
Other flavors followed: Dr Pepper Berries & Crème, Cherry Chocolate Dr Pepper, and Dr Pepper Cherry, but the most popular was Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper, which remained on the market from 2004 until 2009. In 2009, a new advertising campaign featuring famous pop-culture “doctors,” like Kelsey Grammar of Frasier and Dr. Dre, began appearing in commercials with the tagline, “Trust me, I’m a doctor.”
A Dr Pepper Museum located in Waco, Texas bottled Dr Pepper from 1906 until the 1960s, and was opened to the public in 1991. It features three floors of exhibits, an old-fashioned soda fountain, and a terrific store of Dr Pepper memorablilia.
For nearly 125 years, Dr Pepper has been making people smile. It’s a beverage with real appeal, a fascinating history, and twenty-three delicious flavors. Wouldn’t you like to be a pepper, too?
Charles Alderton, a young pharmacist working at Morrison’s Old Corner Drug Store in Waco, Texas in 1885, liked the way the drug store smelled – an intoxicating aroma of fruit syrups wafting through the air, mixing and merging together. In his spare time, he set about experimenting with capturing that wonderful aroma in a taste, and serving it in a beverage.
After a successful taste-test by his boss, Alderton began serving the beverage in the store, and soon patrons began demanding a “Waco.” Unfortunately, how the moniker “Dr. Pepper” came about is lost to the sands of time, although it is generally agreed that Morrison – Alderton’s boss – came up with the name.
In 1904, at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition – more commonly known as the St. Louis World’s Fair – Dr. Pepper was unleashed on the world (with some heavy consumption competition; at the same World’s Fair, hot dogs and hamburgers were served on buns for the first time, and ice cream cones were popularized! Talk about a junk food explosion!) Over twenty million people sampled the beverage, and Dr. Pepper was officially a hit!
Old Doc!
The popular slogan, “King of Beverages” is thought to have originated in a newspaper advertisement as early as 1906. A mascot, a country doctor with a top hat and a monocle named Old Doc, emerged in advertising in the 1920s and 1930s, and became Dr. Pepper’s trademark. During that era, research determined that the average person experiences fatigue at 10:30, 2:30, and 4:30. Capitalizing on this, the Dr Pepper company promoted an ad contest that would incorporate this new information into their marketing. The winning slogan was “Drink a bite to eat at 10, 2, and 4!”
Drink a bite to eat!
During World War II, a radio program titled The 10-2-4 Ranch (and later 10-2-4 Time for broader appeal) aired, with Dr. Pepper advertising spots. Over five hundred episodes were produced! Two other variety programs – The Dr. Pepper Parade and Dr. Pepper’s Treasure – were also sponsored by the company.
Changes were afoot in the 1950s. A new slogan, “The Friendly Pepper-Upper,” began appearing in advertisements, and the familiar logo was redesigned. This new logo was slanted, and due to legibility and stylistic reasons, the period at the end of “Dr.” was dropped, making the brand name officially Dr Pepper.
OMG RUN!!!
In the 1960s, it became a major sponsor of the television show American Bandstand, linking the beverage intrinsically with rock and roll music. A new version of the drink, “Dietetic Dr Pepper” was released, although sales were sluggish due to people thinking it was for diabetics. In 1966, the product name was changed to “Diet Dr Pepper.”
Why? Because it's awesome.
Around this time, the slogans, “The most misunderstood soft drink” and “so misunderstood” also appealed to the teen market, as did the early 70s slogan, “the most original soft drink ever.” However, no one could have guessed how popular the Dr Pepper marketing campaign of 1977 would be. With a catchy jingle and commercials featuring David Naughton and campy choreography, Dr Pepper was arguably more popular than it had ever been:
I drink Dr. Pepper and I'm proud / I used to feel alone in a crowd / Now if you look around these days / There seems to be a Dr. Pepper craze!
Oh I'm a pepper / He's a pepper/ She's a pepper / We're a pepper / Wouldn't you like to be a pepper too!
Sort of a change from the theme of individuality just a few years before!
In the 1980s, Coca-Cola tried unsuccessfully to purchase Dr Pepper, but the Federal Trade Commission blocked them at every turn, due to concerns about Coke creating a monopoly on “Pepper”-flavored beverages. However, for a time, Coke and Pepsi distributed Dr Pepper, until it merged with Snapple. Currently, Dr Pepper Snapple bottles and distributes most of its own product.
In 1991, aspartame was introduced to Diet Dr Pepper, along with the successful marketing campaign that it “Tastes more like Regular Dr Pepper.” An upswing in sales ensued. In 2002, for the first time in 122 years, Dr Pepper began experimenting with flavor extensions. First came Dr Pepper Red Fusion, which tasted nothing at all like regular Dr Pepper. Its production ceased within a year.
Other flavors followed: Dr Pepper Berries & Crème, Cherry Chocolate Dr Pepper, and Dr Pepper Cherry, but the most popular was Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper, which remained on the market from 2004 until 2009. In 2009, a new advertising campaign featuring famous pop-culture “doctors,” like Kelsey Grammar of Frasier and Dr. Dre, began appearing in commercials with the tagline, “Trust me, I’m a doctor.”
A Dr Pepper Museum located in Waco, Texas bottled Dr Pepper from 1906 until the 1960s, and was opened to the public in 1991. It features three floors of exhibits, an old-fashioned soda fountain, and a terrific store of Dr Pepper memorablilia.
For nearly 125 years, Dr Pepper has been making people smile. It’s a beverage with real appeal, a fascinating history, and twenty-three delicious flavors. Wouldn’t you like to be a pepper, too?
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
The Puzzling Quagmire of Bobby Brown's "On Our Own"
So I’m outside Starbucks today, heading to the T and for once not listening to music. My ears needed a break from headphones and, because I apparently have attained logic today, I decided to give it to them. Anyhow, I started thinking about that Bobby Brown song from Ghostbusters II, “On Our Own,” a song which has very, very little to do with the Ghostbusters except for a little rap bit in the bridge (“too hot to handle / too cold to hold / call the Ghostbusters and they’re in control”; no, I don’t understand it, either) and then a talking section. Here’s what the esteemed Mr. Brown says there:
“Found out about Vigo / the master of evil / try to battle my boys? / that’s not legal!”
Aside from this bit coming from the Steve Miller School of Rhyming (I don’t care how badly you want it: “taxes,” “Texas,” and “facts is” do not rhyme; a passing nod at assonance doesn’t count as songcraft!), let’s examine this just a tad. All right, (1), I’m not sure Vigo is anyone’s idea of a “master of evil.” I mean, even Zuul wasn’t really a master of evil, despite the possession and the giant Marshmallow Man. Vigo’s big plan seems to be escaping from a painting and then causing slime – which now has musical taste – to animate the Statue of Liberty. I think. I don’t know, maybe it’s a nuisance? Certainly not as tasty as, say, coating New York in Fluff, but I’m not sure anything Vigo does is really all that evil.
But I want to get to the last line the most, because seriously? Of course it’s not legal! Vigo’s a malevolent spirit with at least pretentions of evil. I’m not sure ghosts – at least the ones in the Ghostbusters universe – care one whit about the potential legality of their spooky actions. Isn’t that pretty much understood? And yet Bobby Brown seems incensed about it.
Plus, okay, beyond Vigo’s outrageously unlawful presence in the municipality of New York, Bobby seems especially furious at the fact that that Vigo is attempting to “battle [his] boys,” the Ghostbusters. Now wait a minute: isn’t the point of the Ghostbusters … I don’t know, busting ghosts? Arbitrary legality aside, isn’t it sort of the point for the Ghostbusters to battle Vigo? It may not be legal in the strictest sense, but that’s like saying, “Oh, a criminal went against what the police wanted! That’s not legal!” The whole reason for police officers is to catch criminals, and the whole reason for the Ghostbusters is to bust ghosts. What Bobby seems to be saying is that, sure, it’s okay to fill the sewers with slime and cause general PG-13 havoc, but don’t go directly against the Ghostbusters, because that, sir, is crossing the line.
In conclusion: Bobby Brown doesn’t seem to understand the whole Ghostbusters philosophy (he even references them “grabbing the proton packs off their back,” which not only features sloppy plural agreements but also a poor preposition choice) as well as Ray Parker, Jr. He might have inadvertently stolen his riff from Huey Lewis and created extra verses no one at karaoke ever remembers (“What’s this part about an invisible man? I … think he likes the girls?”), but at least he gave the whole world a catchphrase for the ages, and reminded us that bustin’ is supposed to make us feel good.
Kev
“Found out about Vigo / the master of evil / try to battle my boys? / that’s not legal!”
Aside from this bit coming from the Steve Miller School of Rhyming (I don’t care how badly you want it: “taxes,” “Texas,” and “facts is” do not rhyme; a passing nod at assonance doesn’t count as songcraft!), let’s examine this just a tad. All right, (1), I’m not sure Vigo is anyone’s idea of a “master of evil.” I mean, even Zuul wasn’t really a master of evil, despite the possession and the giant Marshmallow Man. Vigo’s big plan seems to be escaping from a painting and then causing slime – which now has musical taste – to animate the Statue of Liberty. I think. I don’t know, maybe it’s a nuisance? Certainly not as tasty as, say, coating New York in Fluff, but I’m not sure anything Vigo does is really all that evil.
But I want to get to the last line the most, because seriously? Of course it’s not legal! Vigo’s a malevolent spirit with at least pretentions of evil. I’m not sure ghosts – at least the ones in the Ghostbusters universe – care one whit about the potential legality of their spooky actions. Isn’t that pretty much understood? And yet Bobby Brown seems incensed about it.
Plus, okay, beyond Vigo’s outrageously unlawful presence in the municipality of New York, Bobby seems especially furious at the fact that that Vigo is attempting to “battle [his] boys,” the Ghostbusters. Now wait a minute: isn’t the point of the Ghostbusters … I don’t know, busting ghosts? Arbitrary legality aside, isn’t it sort of the point for the Ghostbusters to battle Vigo? It may not be legal in the strictest sense, but that’s like saying, “Oh, a criminal went against what the police wanted! That’s not legal!” The whole reason for police officers is to catch criminals, and the whole reason for the Ghostbusters is to bust ghosts. What Bobby seems to be saying is that, sure, it’s okay to fill the sewers with slime and cause general PG-13 havoc, but don’t go directly against the Ghostbusters, because that, sir, is crossing the line.
In conclusion: Bobby Brown doesn’t seem to understand the whole Ghostbusters philosophy (he even references them “grabbing the proton packs off their back,” which not only features sloppy plural agreements but also a poor preposition choice) as well as Ray Parker, Jr. He might have inadvertently stolen his riff from Huey Lewis and created extra verses no one at karaoke ever remembers (“What’s this part about an invisible man? I … think he likes the girls?”), but at least he gave the whole world a catchphrase for the ages, and reminded us that bustin’ is supposed to make us feel good.
Kev
Monday, February 16, 2009
Tender At the Bone: A Review
I didn’t make New Year’s Resolutions this year, and here’s why: there are so many good intentions followed by such little follow-through. If everything I promised I would do over the years had come to fruition, I would not only be competing in Strongman challenges and be rich beyond my wildest dreams, I would also have a series of twenty published novels to my credit before I turned thirty-five. Instead, I’m tubby and lower-middle-class and writing weekly columns for this place. Hooray!
If I had made a resolution this year, it likely would have been learning to cook. Had I done so, I would have probably failed miserably and gone back to eating Frosted Flakes for dinner. But because I didn’t promise myself I would take on a new skill, I’ve been cooking three to four nights a week, and baking on the weekends, and attempting stuff like mushroom bisque on special occasions. Ah, the many ways my own self-interest works against me.
When I stumble across a new interest, what solidifies it in my mind is the peripheral stuff. I love Star Trek, but review sites and message boards are what keep the interest perpetuating. I make it to Disney World as often as I can, but I’ve got website and podcasts during the in-between times. So when I got into cooking, I went casting about for interesting people talking about cooking. What I found was Ruth Reichl.
Funny but true: Reichl’s name was not unfamiliar to me. I used to work in a bookstore, and I’d often shelve Reichl’s stuff. I loved the titles – Tender at the Bone, Comfort Me With Apples, Garlic and Sapphires – all of which very evocative. So when I stepped into a bookstore this time with the intention of casting about for food writing, the very clear thought in my brain was, I need to find someone like Ruth Reichl to read.
I searched for a good fifteen minutes – fifteen minutes! – before I literally stopped myself and thought, Oh, guess who writes EXACTLY like Ruth Reichl who you haven’t read yet, Kev? Ruth fucking REICHL! My brain, I swear to God.
I purchased the book and dove in immediately. Sometimes there’s a barrier between me and new writers, one I have to dissemble bit by bit in order to start falling under their spell. It’s that self-interest thing again: I always want something new to read, but I have psychological blocks that prevent me from enjoying new stuff, at least at first. At all events, that didn’t quite happen with Reichl. Instead, her writing acted like a Space Invader, one of the really nasty ones that blast your forcefield away far quicker than you can shoot them back. Reichl didn’t just break down my silly reading barriers; she obliterated them:
“Most mornings I got out of bed and went to the refrigerator to see how my mother was feeling. You could tell instantly just by opening the door.”
She had me hooked by the first paragraph.
I had expected something like a cookbook with anecdotes about how these recipes came to her. What I got instead was a memoir of a fascinating, schizophrenic childhood and adolescence, and how food and cooking served as one of the very few constants in Reichl’s life. It might not have worked so effectively if Reichl’s life weren’t fascinating – or if she had allowed herself to get lost in the fascination – but just as food is Reichl’s anchor throughout her weird journeys, she is ours. We relate to her because she seems like an ordinary person thrust into extraordinary situations.
The best portion of the book – and it’s hard to choose, really, because almost everything in here is “best” – is her recounting her first excursion to France. The excursion had not been her idea, but rather that of her bipolar mother. For a time, Ruth resents the trip … until a friend of hers invites her home for dinner. The description of Reichl’s first fine French meal is worth the cover price alone – you can almost taste the soup sliding down your throat. It’s moments like these – high points among the high points – that make Reichl’s writing so extraordinary.
As the recipes become more complicated – and there are plenty of recipes, despite my insistence that it’s not a cookbook – so, too, does Ruth’s life, and we as readers are richer for it. Tender at the Bone hurtles toward its anxious cliffhanger finale (yes, anxious cliffhanger finale; if you didn’t think a cooking memoir could have one of those, you’re wrong), and we hurtle with it, identifying not only with Reichl’s ability to find solace within chaos, but also with her sheer storytelling genius. Anyone can write a cookbook or a memoir; it takes a special sort of writer to combine them into something greater than either.
If I had made a resolution this year, it likely would have been learning to cook. Had I done so, I would have probably failed miserably and gone back to eating Frosted Flakes for dinner. But because I didn’t promise myself I would take on a new skill, I’ve been cooking three to four nights a week, and baking on the weekends, and attempting stuff like mushroom bisque on special occasions. Ah, the many ways my own self-interest works against me.
When I stumble across a new interest, what solidifies it in my mind is the peripheral stuff. I love Star Trek, but review sites and message boards are what keep the interest perpetuating. I make it to Disney World as often as I can, but I’ve got website and podcasts during the in-between times. So when I got into cooking, I went casting about for interesting people talking about cooking. What I found was Ruth Reichl.
Funny but true: Reichl’s name was not unfamiliar to me. I used to work in a bookstore, and I’d often shelve Reichl’s stuff. I loved the titles – Tender at the Bone, Comfort Me With Apples, Garlic and Sapphires – all of which very evocative. So when I stepped into a bookstore this time with the intention of casting about for food writing, the very clear thought in my brain was, I need to find someone like Ruth Reichl to read.
I searched for a good fifteen minutes – fifteen minutes! – before I literally stopped myself and thought, Oh, guess who writes EXACTLY like Ruth Reichl who you haven’t read yet, Kev? Ruth fucking REICHL! My brain, I swear to God.
I purchased the book and dove in immediately. Sometimes there’s a barrier between me and new writers, one I have to dissemble bit by bit in order to start falling under their spell. It’s that self-interest thing again: I always want something new to read, but I have psychological blocks that prevent me from enjoying new stuff, at least at first. At all events, that didn’t quite happen with Reichl. Instead, her writing acted like a Space Invader, one of the really nasty ones that blast your forcefield away far quicker than you can shoot them back. Reichl didn’t just break down my silly reading barriers; she obliterated them:
“Most mornings I got out of bed and went to the refrigerator to see how my mother was feeling. You could tell instantly just by opening the door.”
She had me hooked by the first paragraph.
I had expected something like a cookbook with anecdotes about how these recipes came to her. What I got instead was a memoir of a fascinating, schizophrenic childhood and adolescence, and how food and cooking served as one of the very few constants in Reichl’s life. It might not have worked so effectively if Reichl’s life weren’t fascinating – or if she had allowed herself to get lost in the fascination – but just as food is Reichl’s anchor throughout her weird journeys, she is ours. We relate to her because she seems like an ordinary person thrust into extraordinary situations.
The best portion of the book – and it’s hard to choose, really, because almost everything in here is “best” – is her recounting her first excursion to France. The excursion had not been her idea, but rather that of her bipolar mother. For a time, Ruth resents the trip … until a friend of hers invites her home for dinner. The description of Reichl’s first fine French meal is worth the cover price alone – you can almost taste the soup sliding down your throat. It’s moments like these – high points among the high points – that make Reichl’s writing so extraordinary.
As the recipes become more complicated – and there are plenty of recipes, despite my insistence that it’s not a cookbook – so, too, does Ruth’s life, and we as readers are richer for it. Tender at the Bone hurtles toward its anxious cliffhanger finale (yes, anxious cliffhanger finale; if you didn’t think a cooking memoir could have one of those, you’re wrong), and we hurtle with it, identifying not only with Reichl’s ability to find solace within chaos, but also with her sheer storytelling genius. Anyone can write a cookbook or a memoir; it takes a special sort of writer to combine them into something greater than either.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Stephen King Goes To the Movies: A Review
At current, Stephen King has released seven collections of shorter works, give or take. That “give or take” addendum has to be in there because of the nature of King’s writing. The Gunslinger, the first of the Dark Tower books, can technically be considered a short story collection – after all, the tales came out one at a time in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. But are they stories or are they chapters? The verdict remains foggy. Same goes for The Green Mile, whose chapters were released in chap-book format over a period of six months. The collection is absolutely a novel … but there are some who would disagree.
Then there’s the curious conundrum of Hearts in Atlantis, whose cover categorizes it as “new fiction,” thereby avoiding the question of its nature. It’s a volume of five interlocked works, most of which can be taken alone (with the exception of “Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling”), but gain a certain resonance when taken together. Personally? I think the thing’s a novel.
Ah, but then there are even wackier cases. The Bachman Books? Those were five individually-released novels before collected into an omnibus edition. And what of the Octopus Press collection that includes Carrie, ‘Salem’s Lot, Night Shift, and The Shining? There’s no way anyone’s going to sit back and tell me that The Shining is a short story.
So: conundrums, and plenty of them, but at least we can agree on some definites. Night Shift, Skeleton Crew, Nightmares & Dreamscapes, Everything’s Eventual, and the new Just After Sunset are definitely short-story collections. Different Seasons and Four Past Midnight are King’s two novella collections … forgiving the fact that every piece in Four Past Midnight is longer than Carrie, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, and Dolores Claiborne.
But now in marches Stephen King Goes to the Movies, and I have to tell you, I have no idea what to make of it. It’s comprised of five stories, and taken in this context, I suppose we must refer to them as stories: “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” (made into the film The Shawshank Redemption), “Low Men In Yellow Coats” (made into the film Hearts In Atlantis, which continues to strike me as odd, since there is a story called “Hearts In Atlantis,” and it has nothing to do with the movie), “Children of the Corn,” “The Mangler,” and “1408.” Two of these come from Night Shift, and one each from Hearts In Atlantis, Different Seasons, and Everything’s Eventual.
So I reiterate: I have no idea what to make of this.
Each story is preceded by a short introductory note – a page or two, in general – regarding King’s feelings on the stories and the movies that eventually sprung from them. The Amazon.com product description raves: “This collection features new commentary and introductions to all of these stories in a treasure-trove of movie trivia!” I need to make this point quite clear: there is no movie trivia in this book. At all. The closest the book comes to insider gossip is that King alludes to the fact that one of the movies needed a reshoot. Maybe.
There is some fiction trivia here, though, and it’s pretty good. King talks a little – and I do mean a little – bit about where the genesis of his stories come from, along with some writing-process tidbits (I liked his assertion that, despite “Shawshank” pointing to the contrary, he’s usually very good with titles.) There’s also a very, very exciting mention of the fact that Hearts In Atlantis, as a collection, is not quite finished. Here, sir, there are always more tales.
But what else? Unfortunately, not much … and I can’t seem to figure out who this collection is for. New readers who like King’s movies and want to try out the fiction? It might just be easier to hand them Different Seasons and tell them two amazing films and one pretty good one came out of it. Maybe it’s for completists like me who need to own everything by King that’s been put between two covers? Could be, and for a paperback at $7.99, it’s not really a huge investment (although if you’re a lunatic collector, like I was in the mid-90s, you can always pick up the Subterranean Press hardcover for $75. But … really?)
As a book, Stephen King Goes To the Movies just doesn’t make any sense. There are three outright horror stories, one Dark Tower story, and then “Shawshank,” which is neither. It’s a hodgepodge of ideas spread across an entire career. It can’t even rightly be called a “greatest hits” collection, because while most of these stories are terrific, “The Mangler” is merely very good. Among these giants, it can only look small in comparison.
For a collection like this to work, you would need (a) longer, more in-depth introductions to the tales, and/or (b) a different line-up. How about “The Lawnmower Man,” and a discussion about the controversy surrounding that? “The Woman In the Room,” maybe, which was Frank Darabont’s first King adaptation. Maybe a look into why Different Seasons has yielded pretty terrific results, but Four Past Midnight hasn’t given us any films that rise above mediocrity. Or what about “Trucks,” from which King’s own Maximum Overdrive sprang, or some of the more interesting “dollar babies,” like “Paranoid: A Chant,” or “The Last Rung On the Ladder.”
I love Stephen King, I really do. I am looking forward to Under the Dome with a palpable fervor. But putting out a collection of recycled stories without much in the way of new material (a Top 10 list of King’s favorite movies based on his work is the best of the new stuff) just isn’t something I can recommend. The new stuff in Stephen King Goes To the Movies took me all of fifteen minutes to read, and for eight bucks, that’s just not enough.
Then there’s the curious conundrum of Hearts in Atlantis, whose cover categorizes it as “new fiction,” thereby avoiding the question of its nature. It’s a volume of five interlocked works, most of which can be taken alone (with the exception of “Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling”), but gain a certain resonance when taken together. Personally? I think the thing’s a novel.
Ah, but then there are even wackier cases. The Bachman Books? Those were five individually-released novels before collected into an omnibus edition. And what of the Octopus Press collection that includes Carrie, ‘Salem’s Lot, Night Shift, and The Shining? There’s no way anyone’s going to sit back and tell me that The Shining is a short story.
So: conundrums, and plenty of them, but at least we can agree on some definites. Night Shift, Skeleton Crew, Nightmares & Dreamscapes, Everything’s Eventual, and the new Just After Sunset are definitely short-story collections. Different Seasons and Four Past Midnight are King’s two novella collections … forgiving the fact that every piece in Four Past Midnight is longer than Carrie, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, and Dolores Claiborne.
But now in marches Stephen King Goes to the Movies, and I have to tell you, I have no idea what to make of it. It’s comprised of five stories, and taken in this context, I suppose we must refer to them as stories: “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” (made into the film The Shawshank Redemption), “Low Men In Yellow Coats” (made into the film Hearts In Atlantis, which continues to strike me as odd, since there is a story called “Hearts In Atlantis,” and it has nothing to do with the movie), “Children of the Corn,” “The Mangler,” and “1408.” Two of these come from Night Shift, and one each from Hearts In Atlantis, Different Seasons, and Everything’s Eventual.
So I reiterate: I have no idea what to make of this.
Each story is preceded by a short introductory note – a page or two, in general – regarding King’s feelings on the stories and the movies that eventually sprung from them. The Amazon.com product description raves: “This collection features new commentary and introductions to all of these stories in a treasure-trove of movie trivia!” I need to make this point quite clear: there is no movie trivia in this book. At all. The closest the book comes to insider gossip is that King alludes to the fact that one of the movies needed a reshoot. Maybe.
There is some fiction trivia here, though, and it’s pretty good. King talks a little – and I do mean a little – bit about where the genesis of his stories come from, along with some writing-process tidbits (I liked his assertion that, despite “Shawshank” pointing to the contrary, he’s usually very good with titles.) There’s also a very, very exciting mention of the fact that Hearts In Atlantis, as a collection, is not quite finished. Here, sir, there are always more tales.
But what else? Unfortunately, not much … and I can’t seem to figure out who this collection is for. New readers who like King’s movies and want to try out the fiction? It might just be easier to hand them Different Seasons and tell them two amazing films and one pretty good one came out of it. Maybe it’s for completists like me who need to own everything by King that’s been put between two covers? Could be, and for a paperback at $7.99, it’s not really a huge investment (although if you’re a lunatic collector, like I was in the mid-90s, you can always pick up the Subterranean Press hardcover for $75. But … really?)
As a book, Stephen King Goes To the Movies just doesn’t make any sense. There are three outright horror stories, one Dark Tower story, and then “Shawshank,” which is neither. It’s a hodgepodge of ideas spread across an entire career. It can’t even rightly be called a “greatest hits” collection, because while most of these stories are terrific, “The Mangler” is merely very good. Among these giants, it can only look small in comparison.
For a collection like this to work, you would need (a) longer, more in-depth introductions to the tales, and/or (b) a different line-up. How about “The Lawnmower Man,” and a discussion about the controversy surrounding that? “The Woman In the Room,” maybe, which was Frank Darabont’s first King adaptation. Maybe a look into why Different Seasons has yielded pretty terrific results, but Four Past Midnight hasn’t given us any films that rise above mediocrity. Or what about “Trucks,” from which King’s own Maximum Overdrive sprang, or some of the more interesting “dollar babies,” like “Paranoid: A Chant,” or “The Last Rung On the Ladder.”
I love Stephen King, I really do. I am looking forward to Under the Dome with a palpable fervor. But putting out a collection of recycled stories without much in the way of new material (a Top 10 list of King’s favorite movies based on his work is the best of the new stuff) just isn’t something I can recommend. The new stuff in Stephen King Goes To the Movies took me all of fifteen minutes to read, and for eight bucks, that’s just not enough.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Surviving the Unthinkable: Robert Kirkman's "The Walking Dead"
The rule has always, ALWAYS been this: no zombie comics before bed. By “zombie comics,” I of course mean Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard’s ongoing tale of zombie apocalypse, “The Walking Dead.” By “before bed,” I generally mean not right before bed, moments before you turn off the lights and lie awake in the dark, trying and failing to stave off the general dread that comes creeping in from the shadows like stealthy, implacable hands, until you can’t take it anymore, you just can’t TAKE it, and finally you grab your robe and a warm cup of milk with some nutmeg in it and dash to the room in the house with the most light and turn on reruns of “Friends” until your happy thoughts return. At least that’s my experience.
“The Walking Dead” is one of those conundrums you find sometimes in horror fiction: the story that makes you feel not just scared but actually UPSET, and yet you are compelled to keep reading. The difference between “The Walking Dead,” and, say, “The Shining” (another masterpiece of unsettling fear) is that “Walking Dead” is ongoing. Its journey had a beginning and a middle. And a middle. And a middle. The fact that there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight … well, I’ll be honest. It delights me and worries me at the same time.
Unlike many other zombie stories, where the focus is either on plot or situation, “The Walking Dead” takes the time to focus on characters. The problem here is that the more we care about them, the more vulnerable we are to their plight. And, man, do they have plight. We have watched our hero Rick Grimes – along with his family and his friends – try to make uneasy peace with the situation as it is, and end up failing each time. Along the way, we have watched the people we care about suffer horribly: some are decapitated. Some endure horrific sexual assault. Some are beaten within an inch of their lives. And these are just at the hands of survivors. The genius of Kirkman’s writing is that, just when you start to forget why these people are in such a desperate situation, the zombies encroach, and they kill you. Hard.
Kirkman’s canny genius is in crafting a bleak, unrelenting story that somehow remains utterly compulsive reading. Every month I wait in giddy anticipation for my slim monthly chapter, and every month I am left with a general malaise, unable to stop ruminating on what I’d just read. It’s not a feeling I’d seek out from any other source, but from this, it not only seems warranted but necessary. There’s nothing like a fictional zombie apocalypse to show you how silly it looks to complain you don’t have enough for that third Starbucks beverage.
This past issue – number 57 – almost hurt to read. After a surprisingly blasé beginning dealing mainly with the best road to take toward Washington, D.C. (where one of the survivors thinks there may exist a way to end the apocalypse), things take a startling turn as Rick Grimes, his son Carl, and new character Abraham Ford get captured by a group of rogue survivors. The group isn’t interested in killing them; they are after eight-year-old Carl for more … carnal reasons. Rick, absolutely unwilling to let his son be taken in this way (or any way), rips his captor’s throat open with his teeth. Even after letting the boy go, the marauders are not spared Rick’s wrath. What follows verges on inhuman, and it is both disturbing and fascinating to watch Rick remain mostly unaffected by what he feels he was forced to do. After losing his hand, most of the people he loves, and – at least temporarily – his mind to this bleak new world, he seems to have come to grips that he will do whatever it takes to hold onto his one small sliver of sanity in an insane world.
Watching Rick kill someone in much the way a zombie would is unsettling on a number of levels, not the least of which is our ability to accept him doing it. We’ve been following Rick for years now, and have seen what has driven him to this point. We’ve lived this life with him, and watched his world crumble out from under his feet. By this point in the narrative, we are forced to ask ourselves if we’d do the same were we in Rick’s shoes. I think the answer might disturb us. One begins to wonder how prescient Kirkman was in titling his comic as it is: who, truly, are the walking dead: the zombies, or the people who are trying to survive them?
The solicitations for the next issue feature only two words of copy: THE UNTHINKABLE. After all “The Walking Dead” has put us through, “unthinkable” is a bold word choice. I have every confidence that Kirkman will deliver. From his book “Invincible,” I get a great, almost lighthearted superhero story every month; from his “Astounding Wolf-Man,” I get more playful horror – gothic mixed with the superhero genre. But here I can count on the unthinkable, because this book has conditioned me to. I am scared, and a little nervous to even pick the book up. But of course I will, despite all my reservations. Because there’s something even more powerful than my unyielding sense of dread:
I just gotta know what happens.
“The Walking Dead” is one of those conundrums you find sometimes in horror fiction: the story that makes you feel not just scared but actually UPSET, and yet you are compelled to keep reading. The difference between “The Walking Dead,” and, say, “The Shining” (another masterpiece of unsettling fear) is that “Walking Dead” is ongoing. Its journey had a beginning and a middle. And a middle. And a middle. The fact that there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight … well, I’ll be honest. It delights me and worries me at the same time.
Unlike many other zombie stories, where the focus is either on plot or situation, “The Walking Dead” takes the time to focus on characters. The problem here is that the more we care about them, the more vulnerable we are to their plight. And, man, do they have plight. We have watched our hero Rick Grimes – along with his family and his friends – try to make uneasy peace with the situation as it is, and end up failing each time. Along the way, we have watched the people we care about suffer horribly: some are decapitated. Some endure horrific sexual assault. Some are beaten within an inch of their lives. And these are just at the hands of survivors. The genius of Kirkman’s writing is that, just when you start to forget why these people are in such a desperate situation, the zombies encroach, and they kill you. Hard.
Kirkman’s canny genius is in crafting a bleak, unrelenting story that somehow remains utterly compulsive reading. Every month I wait in giddy anticipation for my slim monthly chapter, and every month I am left with a general malaise, unable to stop ruminating on what I’d just read. It’s not a feeling I’d seek out from any other source, but from this, it not only seems warranted but necessary. There’s nothing like a fictional zombie apocalypse to show you how silly it looks to complain you don’t have enough for that third Starbucks beverage.
This past issue – number 57 – almost hurt to read. After a surprisingly blasé beginning dealing mainly with the best road to take toward Washington, D.C. (where one of the survivors thinks there may exist a way to end the apocalypse), things take a startling turn as Rick Grimes, his son Carl, and new character Abraham Ford get captured by a group of rogue survivors. The group isn’t interested in killing them; they are after eight-year-old Carl for more … carnal reasons. Rick, absolutely unwilling to let his son be taken in this way (or any way), rips his captor’s throat open with his teeth. Even after letting the boy go, the marauders are not spared Rick’s wrath. What follows verges on inhuman, and it is both disturbing and fascinating to watch Rick remain mostly unaffected by what he feels he was forced to do. After losing his hand, most of the people he loves, and – at least temporarily – his mind to this bleak new world, he seems to have come to grips that he will do whatever it takes to hold onto his one small sliver of sanity in an insane world.
Watching Rick kill someone in much the way a zombie would is unsettling on a number of levels, not the least of which is our ability to accept him doing it. We’ve been following Rick for years now, and have seen what has driven him to this point. We’ve lived this life with him, and watched his world crumble out from under his feet. By this point in the narrative, we are forced to ask ourselves if we’d do the same were we in Rick’s shoes. I think the answer might disturb us. One begins to wonder how prescient Kirkman was in titling his comic as it is: who, truly, are the walking dead: the zombies, or the people who are trying to survive them?
The solicitations for the next issue feature only two words of copy: THE UNTHINKABLE. After all “The Walking Dead” has put us through, “unthinkable” is a bold word choice. I have every confidence that Kirkman will deliver. From his book “Invincible,” I get a great, almost lighthearted superhero story every month; from his “Astounding Wolf-Man,” I get more playful horror – gothic mixed with the superhero genre. But here I can count on the unthinkable, because this book has conditioned me to. I am scared, and a little nervous to even pick the book up. But of course I will, despite all my reservations. Because there’s something even more powerful than my unyielding sense of dread:
I just gotta know what happens.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Milk & Doubt
My obsession with Philip Seymour Hoffman knows no depths. Not only is he one of the greatest actors ever, he’s also stone-cold sexy. That strawberry-blond hair. Those searching, blazing eyes. The fact that he frequently appears in his underwear…
Okay, wait. I’ll get back to the point in a second. Hold on.
The POINT is that when I first saw ads for the upcoming film “Doubt,” I was all over it. A morally complex movie with religious overtones that may or may not have a gay subtext starring Meryl Streep and the sexiest man on the planet? I’m there!
Except then it was Christmas Day, and I realized (quite rationally, I think), that maybe “Doubt” wasn’t the best kind of film for that particular day off. We all remember last year’s “Sweeny Todd” debacle and how depressing that was. No, for this holiday, I would leave the choosing of the film up to my friend Mark, upon whom I forced the throat-slicing barber last Christmas. I knew he wouldn’t want to sit through a depressing period film that dealt, at least in part, with gay persecution.
He called me Christmas Day: “Let’s go see ‘Milk’!” So much for my theory.
Mark, his boyfriend Ben, and I all settled down in the back row of the theater to take in the story of Harvey Milk, the true story of California’s first openly gay elected official. I knew three things about the movie going into it: 1. I knew Harvey Milk was assassinated. 2. His killer used something called The Twinkie Defense – blaming his violent tendencies on junk food – to try to get off, and 3. That Sean Penn was likely to irritate me. I have liked Penn in the past, but my bafflement as to why people enjoyed “Mystic River” in general, and Penn’s hammy overacting in particular, has left a stain on my moviegoing psyche.
As such, I really had no interest in seeing this movie. It struck me as Important, and Necessary, and I usually delve into those waters when it’s Oscar season. As the credits began to roll, I wished for the relatively simple year when I went to go see the “King Kong” remake on Christmas.
And then … something changed. I was unprepared for the movie to explicate right at the beginning that Milk was shot. Having that information right up front should have bogged the film down, but instead it renders Milk’s assassination as a fact that we understand and absorb, so that we can better focus on the story.
It’s a terrific story, too, one with which I have only had a passing familiarity. I’ve never been a particularly political fellow, and growing up in the 90s with Barney Frank in Congress, it never really sunk in to me how important and revolutionary Harvey Milk was to gay rights. There’s a point early in the film when a gay man is killed and the cops, who seem to care, refer to the dead man’s companion as his “trick.” (Because cops know the lingo, see.) Milk explains that no, that was his lover of many years, not a trick. And the cops sort of shrug that off.
That resonated with me, as did the way Harvey Milk sort of stumbled into politics. He did it because to not do it was intolerable. Sometimes I forget what a damn struggle it has been – even in my lifetime – to simply be who you are if you happen to be gay. The movie takes on these issues but never gets lost in them. The story remains about the man more than the message, and as such never gets the chance to be preachy. Sean Penn, to my amazement and delight, disappears into his role. He’s so effective that at points it’s easy to forget his tragic end; the film is so oddly uplifting that the assassination seems almost beside the point. (The fact that it’s not comes crashing down in the final violent minutes of the movie, and by that point, you’re conditioned enough to be actually shocked.)
My friend Alonso has commanded that I now see the documentary, “The Life and Times of Harvey Milk,” which is now on my forefront of Things To Watch. I’ve never been all that into gay politics, but given the current state of political homophobia, maybe I should be.
Along the same lines of things you’re not supposed to discuss at dinner parties, we move from politics to religion. The Saturday after Christmas, I journeyed downtown, bought popcorn and a sodapop, and treated myself to “Doubt.” Based on the trailers, I was expecting a movie entirely centered around Philip Seymour Hoffman’s priest character and his inappropriate dealings with an altar boy under his tutelage. Instead, what I got was a morally complex story that may or may not have to do with the priest and the boy at all.
At the heart of the movie is Meryl Streep as the Mother Superior of a school she rules with an uncompromising hand. She is used to being right, or at least she is used to being considered right. Her students and the teachers under her watch follow her rule unquestioningly, which she likes just fine. She might never admit that – she would explain that she is simply following her faith – but being right is at the core of her character. She is unused to being wrong, and unfamiliar with changing her stance once she takes one.
This proves dangerous for Philip Seymour Hoffman’s priest character, whose entire being represents change. She doesn’t like him from the start, and as the film progresses, we wonder more and more whether Streep’s character is actually holding true to her convictions, or whether she simply cannot stand to be wrong.
The movie is full of strong performances. Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman are at the top of their game – I would be stunned if both didn’t garner Oscar nominations. But maybe it’s because the movie is based on a play that they seem to KNOW they’re at the top of their game. The performances are never over the top or Oscar-grubbing, but it often seemed to me that these were Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman delivering knockout performances. Whereas Amy Adams (in the role of a young nun who looks up to Streep’s character) and Viola Davis (playing the mother of the young boy in question, whose role is contained in a single, brilliant scene) never seem to be performing. They steal the movie with acting that never seems like acting, raising the movie up from An Oscar-Worthy Triumph to a watchable, engaging film that is still lingering with me. There’s some obvious stuff in it – light bulbs break and winds gust in at important moments, and the film’s final line seems awkward and too Broadway for a movie – but on a whole, “Doubt” impressed me almost as much as “Milk.”
If you’re a fan of quality films – or just seeing stuff before the Oscars are nominated so you can brag about being a Serious Film Buff – go see both of these movies. You won’t regret it.
Now, when’s that new “Wolverine” movie coming out?
Okay, wait. I’ll get back to the point in a second. Hold on.
The POINT is that when I first saw ads for the upcoming film “Doubt,” I was all over it. A morally complex movie with religious overtones that may or may not have a gay subtext starring Meryl Streep and the sexiest man on the planet? I’m there!
Except then it was Christmas Day, and I realized (quite rationally, I think), that maybe “Doubt” wasn’t the best kind of film for that particular day off. We all remember last year’s “Sweeny Todd” debacle and how depressing that was. No, for this holiday, I would leave the choosing of the film up to my friend Mark, upon whom I forced the throat-slicing barber last Christmas. I knew he wouldn’t want to sit through a depressing period film that dealt, at least in part, with gay persecution.
He called me Christmas Day: “Let’s go see ‘Milk’!” So much for my theory.
Mark, his boyfriend Ben, and I all settled down in the back row of the theater to take in the story of Harvey Milk, the true story of California’s first openly gay elected official. I knew three things about the movie going into it: 1. I knew Harvey Milk was assassinated. 2. His killer used something called The Twinkie Defense – blaming his violent tendencies on junk food – to try to get off, and 3. That Sean Penn was likely to irritate me. I have liked Penn in the past, but my bafflement as to why people enjoyed “Mystic River” in general, and Penn’s hammy overacting in particular, has left a stain on my moviegoing psyche.
As such, I really had no interest in seeing this movie. It struck me as Important, and Necessary, and I usually delve into those waters when it’s Oscar season. As the credits began to roll, I wished for the relatively simple year when I went to go see the “King Kong” remake on Christmas.
And then … something changed. I was unprepared for the movie to explicate right at the beginning that Milk was shot. Having that information right up front should have bogged the film down, but instead it renders Milk’s assassination as a fact that we understand and absorb, so that we can better focus on the story.
It’s a terrific story, too, one with which I have only had a passing familiarity. I’ve never been a particularly political fellow, and growing up in the 90s with Barney Frank in Congress, it never really sunk in to me how important and revolutionary Harvey Milk was to gay rights. There’s a point early in the film when a gay man is killed and the cops, who seem to care, refer to the dead man’s companion as his “trick.” (Because cops know the lingo, see.) Milk explains that no, that was his lover of many years, not a trick. And the cops sort of shrug that off.
That resonated with me, as did the way Harvey Milk sort of stumbled into politics. He did it because to not do it was intolerable. Sometimes I forget what a damn struggle it has been – even in my lifetime – to simply be who you are if you happen to be gay. The movie takes on these issues but never gets lost in them. The story remains about the man more than the message, and as such never gets the chance to be preachy. Sean Penn, to my amazement and delight, disappears into his role. He’s so effective that at points it’s easy to forget his tragic end; the film is so oddly uplifting that the assassination seems almost beside the point. (The fact that it’s not comes crashing down in the final violent minutes of the movie, and by that point, you’re conditioned enough to be actually shocked.)
My friend Alonso has commanded that I now see the documentary, “The Life and Times of Harvey Milk,” which is now on my forefront of Things To Watch. I’ve never been all that into gay politics, but given the current state of political homophobia, maybe I should be.
Along the same lines of things you’re not supposed to discuss at dinner parties, we move from politics to religion. The Saturday after Christmas, I journeyed downtown, bought popcorn and a sodapop, and treated myself to “Doubt.” Based on the trailers, I was expecting a movie entirely centered around Philip Seymour Hoffman’s priest character and his inappropriate dealings with an altar boy under his tutelage. Instead, what I got was a morally complex story that may or may not have to do with the priest and the boy at all.
At the heart of the movie is Meryl Streep as the Mother Superior of a school she rules with an uncompromising hand. She is used to being right, or at least she is used to being considered right. Her students and the teachers under her watch follow her rule unquestioningly, which she likes just fine. She might never admit that – she would explain that she is simply following her faith – but being right is at the core of her character. She is unused to being wrong, and unfamiliar with changing her stance once she takes one.
This proves dangerous for Philip Seymour Hoffman’s priest character, whose entire being represents change. She doesn’t like him from the start, and as the film progresses, we wonder more and more whether Streep’s character is actually holding true to her convictions, or whether she simply cannot stand to be wrong.
The movie is full of strong performances. Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman are at the top of their game – I would be stunned if both didn’t garner Oscar nominations. But maybe it’s because the movie is based on a play that they seem to KNOW they’re at the top of their game. The performances are never over the top or Oscar-grubbing, but it often seemed to me that these were Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman delivering knockout performances. Whereas Amy Adams (in the role of a young nun who looks up to Streep’s character) and Viola Davis (playing the mother of the young boy in question, whose role is contained in a single, brilliant scene) never seem to be performing. They steal the movie with acting that never seems like acting, raising the movie up from An Oscar-Worthy Triumph to a watchable, engaging film that is still lingering with me. There’s some obvious stuff in it – light bulbs break and winds gust in at important moments, and the film’s final line seems awkward and too Broadway for a movie – but on a whole, “Doubt” impressed me almost as much as “Milk.”
If you’re a fan of quality films – or just seeing stuff before the Oscars are nominated so you can brag about being a Serious Film Buff – go see both of these movies. You won’t regret it.
Now, when’s that new “Wolverine” movie coming out?
Friday, January 2, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)