Retail Resistance

Hollywood Babylon

I haven't weighed in with any of my not very considerable heft on anything Oscar related yet. Odds are I won't. I do, however, like this sentence or two from Dennis Cozzalio, and the sentiment it stands for:

So maybe it’s the fact that, in the dark shadow of the Directors Guild snubs of Clint Eastwood, Guillermo del Toro and Alfonso Cuaron, dear old, dotty Uncle Oscar looks poised to honor yet another contrived, good-for-you ensemble drama about man’s inability to communicate/connect with/tolerate his fellow man—after all, we’re all so much more tightly knit and understanding of each others’ foibles and prejudices as a nation of moviegoers after having been force-fed Crash; why not use the power of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to bring us all closer together as a bruised and battered humanity subject to the chronologically scrambled chaos theory of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Babel? (The models for these post-9/11 behavioral studies—the ensemble narratives of Robert Altman’s films—were never quite so morally tidy or relentlessly showy in their pessimism, and therefore routinely escaped Academy coronation.)

Porn Paradox

All the news that's fit to print...about porn. Leaving no implant unturned in its pursuit of journalistic excellence the New York Times did a ludicrous story, in the business section no less, about pornography's digital leap to High Def in a story headlined, "In the Raw World of Sex Movies, High Definition Could Be a View to Real." Thankfully the NYT is still too high brow to use the word pornography in bold print. They reserve the use of that besmirching word for the less bold print of the article's body. Still, I think the headline, "In Sex World of Raw Movies," would have been better.

Basically, the crux of the story is - the more real the sex, the less real the people. Take Jesse Jane, evidently her breast implants look odd in HD. Solution - "I'm getting my breasts redone because of HD." According to actress, writer, and director Stormy Daniels the problem is more quotidian, "The biggest problem is razor burn." You would think an actress, writer, director could afford electrolysis.

The great thing about pornography, as we all well know, is that it frees the creative processes of those involved. I was beginning to despair that all the problems posed by technology's next great leap forward in verisimilitude were killing what makes the art form great. Despair not, there are still people who don't take synthetic recourse at the first hint of a superficial problem. Savanna Sampson, actor/director of "Any Way You Want Me", is still capable of solving the medium's new problems the real way.

During a scene in which she played a desperate housewife, she ran into a problem: the high-definition camera revealed she had a tiny ill-placed pimple. “We kept stopping and trying to hide it. We put on makeup and powder, but there was no way,” Ms. Samson said. Finally, they tried another approach: “We just changed positions,” she said.

Two of the major companies, Vivid and Digital Playground, have evidently been filming in HD for the last two years to build up their catalog. Very forward thinking, but I'm holding tight to my catalog of Abel Ferrara porn on VHS.

IMDB's Your Daddy

IMDB has become a casuist of the first order.

"Adult titles cannot be located during a casual search. Only registered users can update their registration profile and activate/deactivate the option to include adult titles in searches and displays."

Now, try and look up Shortbus. I dare you.

Neither There nor There

I'm not sure what open letters like this are technically called as literary devices...maybe open letters...but they sometimes make for amusing distractions. And this letter from New York to Hollywood is sometimes amusing.

Dear Hollywood,

It’s time to renew the memorandum of understanding between your town and ours. You remember us—New York, whence the books and plays come? The city with the whole bad-plane-incident thing? (You let Oliver Stone make a heinous movie about it.) The place where you keep Scott Rudin?

I personally enjoy the illustration that accompanies the full letter more than the letter itself. But as long as your expectations of the above device are that it's only to be amusing and not that literary, then you won't be disappointed.

Foxxy Brown Shirts

Looks like someone at The Guardian over there in England has been watching as much Fox News as I have lately.

Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto thinks Happy Feet, this season's blockbuster animation, contains 'far-left' propaganda. 'I half-expected an animated Al Gore to pop up,' he said. Zoe Williams decodes the political subtext of the new film - and 10 other cartoons

I particularly like this snippet about the new film Flushed Away, "There's not much in the way of politics here, unless being anti-French counts for politics these days." Well, it definitely does count for politics at Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.

XOF NEDDIH GNINAEM

I guess I can't get enough of FOX anchors. They're such deep thinkers. Their newest uncovery is that if you watch "Happy Feet" and think backwards you'll hear subliminal eco-terror messages.

Evidently the smear memo went out at FOX News, and in order for the culture warriors to stay on doctrinal message they are to refer to the movie as the "animated Inconvenient Truth." One time film critic Michael Medved went so far as to call it the "darkest, most disturbing feature length animated film ever offered by a major studio."

"Cars" on the other hand, with it's NASCAR tie-in, that's a movie I bet they can ideologically get behind.

Grin Without a Cat

This story made me think immediately of Chris Marker's many metaphorical usages of ceramic cats. Despite Marker having said, "A cat is never on the side of power," I doubt that even he in all his creativity could have conceived of using a cat statue to physically strike a blow for democracy's greater good. Although, I would like to think he would endorse the actions of Michael Young.

Police gave no motive, but a source said Young, a registered Independent, believed Republicans had conspired to win the election by using electronic ballots. This is the first time electronic machines are being widely used in a Pennsylvania general election.

"He smashed it with the cat's ears," said volunteer Jim Govostis, who watched the incident unfold at Raker Center, a nursing home owned by Good Shepherd, around 12:30 p.m.

Volunteer Shirley Rossetti said Young never spoke as he smashed the screen. "He did a job on it, didn't he?" she said. "It's frightening, because in this day and age, you just never know."

Never know? Sounds to me like Young knew exactly what's been going on. It's good to see that our country's traditions of direct action and civil disobedience haven't been killed off completely - despite the best attempts of the Patriot Act-ors

Discipline Nov. 7

Election day is around the corner and I find myself experiencing an optimism I thought squashed forever by Messieurs Gore and Kerry. Electoral politics have become interesting again.

One of my sources of continual enlightenment and amusement is a blog by Vanity Fair contributing editor James Wolcott. The enlightening thing about his blog is it keeps me up to date on all of the right wing nutters trying to pass themselves off as intellectuals, as well as keeping me informed of each and every Republican misdeed (that my be an over-reach - no one can keep the entire record of Republican corruption straight).

But what makes his blog amusing, at least to me, is his use of film and popular culture as metaphor and contextualizing reference. Just look at a sampling of his past two weeks of output. He has used Douglas Sirk to help explain the Republican Mandingo-baiting of Harold Ford in Tennessee, John Water's "Pecker" to talk about this Ted "discipline me if I need to be disciplined" Haggard character's christian evangelical hypocrisy, and the history of punk at CBGB to frame many of the other recent Republican misogynies and assaults.

Mel-t-down

I've never been a fan of Mel Gibson. Yes, I enjoyed a couple of the Leathal Weapon movies - especially the iteration with Patsy Kensit. But even as an adolescent I was never fooled into believing Gibson was cool. Naive as I was I somehow knew where to draw the line.

Christopher Hitchens is another story. I loved to read his articles in The Nation. The way he could fillet a political opponent with printed words was amazing. His literary venom can still be amazing, but these day I seldom find it as enjoyable. After 9/11, the speed with which he turned from Leftist ally to Bush supporting Neo-con and all around administration apologist is matched only by how quickly a Tour de France cyclist tests positive for performance enhancement.

However, if you can't count on Hitchens for much these days, you can still count on enjoying yourself if he is attacking someone you loathe. For instance his newest piece in Slate wherein he points his poisoned pen at Mel Gibson, his family, his family's apologists, and his family's publicists.

Want a taste? How's this on the evaluation of Gibson's true orientation towards Semitic peoples: "One does not abruptly decide, between the first and second vodka, or the ticks of the indicator of velocity, that the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion are valid after all." How do you like them apples, Mel?

Passionate About Anti-Semitism

I don't very much like to traffic in gossip (there's a difference between reading it, enjoying it, and trafficking in it). I will, however, make an exception in the case of one holier than thou Mel Gibson.

You may or may not have heard about Saint Mel being arrested for drunk driving in Malibu; essentially resisting arrest, threatening, and verbally abusing every officer that came within ear-shot. Gibson, bless his heart, issued an apology for being a drunk driver, acting like an ass, and making "despicable" comments. All actions that I'm sure will do nothing to jeopardize his pre-ordained place in heaven and imminent sainthood.

But it wasn't just the police who became the targets of his divine wrath. AOL's gossip site Tmz.com reported that for some irrational reason the ecumenical Gibson decided the Jews were somehow to blame for, well, every war in history. The police report immediately after the arrest says Gibson launched into a barrage of anti-Semitic statements, saying, "F*****g Jews... The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." Gibson then asked the deputy, "Are you a Jew?"

Religion aside, I can't think of anything Gibson would know more about than war. He's made a career of making movies about war (which is what makes him such an expert in the field): Braveheart, the Patriot, Air America, We Were Soldiers, The Year of Living Dangerously, Gallipoli. Scotland, the American civl war, Cambodia, Vietnam, World War 1, all wars the Jews are responsible for. Tell me something I didn't already know.

His newest project - besides finishing his new movie Apacolypto, which judging by the trailer looks insanely racist -is a Holocaust mini-series. Why the hell not? Being an anti-semite shouldn't effect his ability to cash in on the Holocaust, as well as in the process explain how the Jews were responsible for their own genocide.

But what I want to know is, why hasn't he made a movie about the Crusades. I think the world deserves a historically accurate account of how the Jews bear responsibility for that.