Category Archives: ‘Culture’

'Culture'

Two Comedies

Probably the most over-rated movie last year, in my opinion, was Borat. While the movie had its moments, I simply do not understand the phenomenon, the tendency of people to proclaim it the best comedy ever. It just wasn’t that funny. Not to me, anyway. It was Jackass for pseudo-intellectuals.

And I’m sorry, I have to agree with Hitchens. What struck me on watching the movie was not how racist and intolerant Americans are, but how polite they were to someone who was himself bigoted and obnoxious. In the famous rodeo scene, they become uncomfortable as his boasts become nastier; the obnoxious frat boys drive him across the country, give him free beer and try to talk him out of his Pamela obssession; the Southern hosts put up with his appalling behaviour with more grace than any liberal would. Borat has allowed a lot of obnoxious, self-important writers to sneer at the rest of America. But I think it’s much more illustrative of their own arrogance.

By contrast, I just recently watched Idiocracy, the latest Mike Judge movie to be abandoned by the studio. The movie is no Office Space, but it’s at watchable and at least as good as Borat. Somehow, 20th Century Fox found a way to inflict Garfield II, Deck the Halls, Fantastic Four, Cheaper by the Dozen 2, and Big Momma’s House II on the innocent unsuspecting public while this movie remained on the shelves.

I’m not sure I buy the underlying hypothesis of Idiocracy, for reasons that are too involved to go into now. But as a vicious nasty satire of our anti-intellectual culture and corporate America, the movie is deadly accurate.

I actually have the opposite take of Judge on the Culture of Idiocy. I think the popularity of shows like Jerry Springer and Jackass (and Borat) is more reflective of the increasing intelligence and education of Americans, rather than the opposite. It allows people to look down on their inferiors, a process which used to involve just looking out the window.

On the other hand, the bizarre and frustrating popularity of this guy makes me wonder if Idiocracy is a too optimistic.

'Culture'

Belt Up!

OK, riddle me this: how come spaceships in sci-fi series, no matter how sophisticated, never have seatbelts to keep the cast from being flung all over the place whenever the ship experiences the slightest jolt? For crying out loud, we’re a few laws away from shooting people for not buckling their seat belts when they’re parked, yet Captain Picard gets flung out of his chair every time someone farts in engineering.

'Culture'

Debris

I’m not surprised:

While by no means unique to California, pickup trucks and other vehicles piled high with improperly secured loads are a fact of life here, contributing — thanks to the laws of physics — to an estimated 140,000 cubic yards of road debris a year. That is enough to fill 8,750 garbage trucks, which would extend for 45 miles, said Tamie McGowen, a spokeswoman for Caltrans, the state transportation department. And it is increasingly hazardous, experts say.

In California, 155 people lost their lives in the last two years after accidents involving objects on highways, and states are beginning to address the issue.

A huge part of this is things falling off of trucks. And it’s not just big things. Sue has a nice crack in her windshield from an SUV kicking up gravel on the highway. And I’ve often been pelted with pebbles from trucks. Just the other day, we were driving in SA and a piece of metal flew up behind a truck and smashed Sue’s front light. It was only afterward that I realized an additional foot of elevation might have deposited it through the window and into my chest.

This is yet another example of how inconsiderate the drivers of big vehicle have gotten. Sue and I have been repeatedly cut off, forced into emergency lanes, pelted with unsecured sand or pebbles or forced to open our car door with a can opener because of some asshole in an SUV or pickup. It’s not enough that they are burning up all our fossil fuels and polluting the atmosphere. Now they’re trying to kill us by not securing their damned loads.

'Culture'

Children of Men

I just saw Children of Men and it easily one of my top movies of 2006. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Clive Owen is always good. Chiwetel Ejiofor is one of the best young actors around — he was outstanding in Serenity. And Alfonso Cuaron is amazingly talented. His directing was the standout in the Harry Potter series. (I have yet to see Pan’s Labyrinth; but I’m not sure how this film lost the Cinematography Oscar. And giving the editing Oscar to Departed was a crime).

It’s kind of interesting, the wave of Mexican and Mexican-American directors who are coming to dominate the film scene these days. Cuaron, Inarritu and del Toro have more talent and imagination that most of Hollywood put together. Throw in the genius down the street from me, Robert Rodriguez, and you’ve got a movement. Roger Ebert, in his review of The Cell (a movie that was interesting and imaginative, if nothing else) commented:

Tarsem is an Indian, like M. Night Shyamalan of “The Sixth Sense,” and comes from a culture where ancient imagery and modern technology live side by side. In the 1970s, Pauline Kael wrote that the most interesting directors were Altman, Scorsese and Coppola because they were Catholics whose imaginations were enriched by the church of pre-Vatican II, while most other Americans were growing up on Eisenhower’s bland platitudes. Now our whole culture has been tamed by marketing and branding, and mass entertainment has been dumbed down. Is it possible that the next infusion of creativity will come from cultures like India, still rich in imagination, not yet locked into malls?

I think Ebert was on to something. White America seems very bogged down in the bland. But it’s not just India that’s throwing new life into cinema.

So what’s next, once America has infested Mexico and India with its bland of blah? The Middle East, probably.

'Culture', Sports

An Accident Waiting To Happen

I’m a huge baseball fan and the world was shaken recently by the death of Josh Hancock of the St. Louis Cards. The second I heard about it, I said, “two to one he wasn’t wearing a seat belt.” My dad’s a trauma surgeon and I’ve seen first-hand the difference that a seat belt can make. It is so dramatic that it over-rides my usual Libertarian leaning so that I absolutely support seat belt laws.

(Again, if we lived in a pitiless society that let brain-damaged quads die, opposing seat belt laws would be fine. But we don’t. Thank God we don’t.)

Anyway, now we find out that Josh Hancock was not only not wearing a seat belt, but was drunk, possibly high, speeding and chatting on the cell phone. Under those circumstances, I’m merely grateful he didn’t take anyone else with him.

It’s a horrible tragedy to see anyone under the age of 70 die these days. And I’m not saying, “oh, he deserved it!”. No one does. I just hope that all the mourning baseball players, fans and sports twerps will use this as an example, an inspiration to not drink and drive, to stay off the cell phone, to keep the speed down and, above all else, to realize they are not indestructible and buckle their fucking seat belts!.

Professional athletes, it seems, are particularly vulnerable to thinking themselves invulnerable. How many more stories do we need of promising young athletes destroying themselves with recreational drugs, alcohol, steroids, car racing (Sue and I used to always be able to tell with Ravens practice ended in Owings Mills — fifteen sports cars would race to downtown Baltimore). Yes, the pressures athletes live under are unthinkable. But this has to stop.

As I said in the wake of the VT massacre, the best way to honor the dead is to live for them. Let’s hope a few baseball players start buckling up. Let’s hope everyone does.

'Culture'

Summer Preview

For some reason, I am very unimpressed with the bevy of sequels we will have this summer.

  • Spiderman 3 is unlikely to draw me. I was not terrible impressed with the first two movies. They were good, but I didn’t WOW! over them like everyone else. In general, I’m not that big a fan of superhero movies. Superman Returns left me cold as well. I liked Batman Begins however.
  • Shrek The Third fills me with dread. The first two movies were good. Not $400 million good, but good. But I have a feeling this is going to be where the franchise jumps the shark, especially given the turnover in writing staff. Look at the credits of the writers of Shrek the Third and shudder.
  • The same goes for Pirates of the Caribbean 3, which I think will be where franchise finishes. Like Spiderman and Shrek, I don’t understand why people are so smitten with the franchise. The movies are good, but they’re not Indiana Jones good.
  • Ocean’s Thirteen? I didn’t even bother with Ocean’s Twelve. Hell, Ocean’s 11 was only decent — one of those actor cafe’ clatche movies that critics like a lot more than audiences.
  • Fantastic Four II. I’d sooner watch Fantastic Floor.
  • Evan Almighty. Morgan Freeman can’t be that pressed for work, can he? Still, Steve Carrell could breath some life into this. Or not.
  • Live Free or Die Hard. Every Gen-Xer is going to be dying to see this movie. And I predict that, by the end, every Gen-Xer will wish he were dead. Why must Hollywood resurrect another dead franchise? There have got to be 50 scripts out there languishing in development hell that would be better. Give someone new a chance!!! Anyway, the first movie is an action classic. And they have declined in quality since. I expect that trend to continue. Just the title grates.
  • Ratatouille. I just re-watched The Incredibles and I have every confidence that Brad Bird and Pixar will produce another winner.
  • Transformers. We’re now discovering something worse than Baby Boomer nostalgia: Gen-X nostalgia.
  • Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Since the book was very good, I expect a good movie. So far, the franchise has not disappointed.
  • The Simpsons Movie. Despite myself, I am looking forward to this. I have a feeling they are going to entertain the hell out of us. Shrek will make more money, but either this or Ratatouille will be the better film. After languishing for many years, The Simpsons has been noticeably better of late. I predict this will translate well to the big screen.
  • The Bourne Ultimatum. Who cares. We’ve got Daniel Craig playing the genuine article. I have a theory that the books of Robert Ludlum improve when they are made into movies. I can’t prove this since I’ve never gotten more than twenty pages into one without falling asleep and waking up with Fleming.
  • Rush Hour 3. Hopefully, this cinematic abortion will put the fork in the franchise.

    • Notice something? Only one of the movies I’m optimistic about is a sequel and even that one (Order of the Phoenix) is more of an ongoing saga than a straight sequel. I almost always prefer new stories to sequels. Especially when said sequel is not really necessary in the first place (I’m looking at you, Matrix).

    On a related note, my brother and I were discussing the next Star Trek film, which is rumored to be a prequel. I’m curious. Can anyone think of a prequel that has not sucked? I can think of a handful. Revenge of the Sith. The prequel half of Godfather II. I’m not counting franchise reboots like Batman Begins or Casino Royale. Even with books, it’s hard to think of a prequel that doesn’t suck.

    I think there are a few reasons for this:

  • Narrative restraint. We know where the story has to go. So not only is suspense or mystery blown, but the characters are confined. They become more like historical figures than people with freedom of choice. This is a big reason why the Star Wars prequel struggled – because they had to force Annikan to fall to the Dark Side, rather than letting it naturally develop out of his character.
  • Cute Continuity. The tendency to populate the stories with foolish, stupid and unnecessary connections to the original, e.g., having Chewbacca in Sith for no good reason at all. Fans cheer. The rest snooze.
  • Nothing new. You’re not tramping out new narrative ground. You’re simply telling something in detail that we already know of in general. And often, the general picture is better than the specific one. My friend Robert pointed out that the fundamental problem with the Star War prequel was that we already had a backstory. We didn’t need a second one.

    • Most of the exceptions people come out with will prove the rule. The Horatio Hornblower series is written backward, but there is very little narrative constraint. Hornblower’s backstory is only hinted at in Beat to Quarters. And the Silmarillion has its moments but (a) it’s not a novel in the traditional sense; (b) all the stories in it were at least sketched out in detail before Lord of the Rings was published. But I’m looking over bookshelves right now and the few prequels on it — the Foundation series, the Dune series, don’t work terribly well.

    Anyway, I boldy predict that Star Trek XI will suck like no Trek has sucked before. Now that is a franchise that needs a fork stuck in it. Several.