April 30, 2007
And speaking of censorship,
the Independendent Film Festival of Boston's Sunday screening of Macky Alston’s’s
disturbing documentary “The Killer Within” might have been your last chance to see it. It’s
been pulled from release in the wake of the Virginia Tech killings. The story
of a mild-mannered septuagenarian psychology professor who suddenly revealed that he not only
murdered a fellow student back in 1955 but had planned a campus massacre that
would have predated Columbine by decades, it even-handedly and candidly
confronts such issues as what causes mass murders and whether such killers are
ever amenable to rehabilitation. A “spokesman” told the "London Times” that the
film was “too close to the knuckle.” Or too close to the point. By all means
don’t let people see something that actually might shed some light on the
tragedy.
April 28, 2007
I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, and I'm sure otherwise he was a great guy,
but I think in the flood of encomias for Jack Valenti someone should mention
that he was instrumental in putting a stranglehold on creativity in American filmmaking
and ensuring the domination of studio mediocrity for
at least 40 years. I’m talking in part about the M.P.A.A. ratings board, which
consolidates the hegemony of the corporations who own the film industry and
guarantees that any movies made outside that system that aspire to originality
and an adult approach to sexuality will rarely be seen by anyone in this
country. But don’t take my word for it. Take a look at Kirby Dick’s “This Film
Is Not Rated,” or, if you want a real eye-opener, read Jon Lewis’s “Hollywood v. Hardcore:
How the Struggle over Censorship Saced the Modern Film Industry.”
April 20, 2007
As expected, someone has figured out a way to blame the movies
for the mass murder at Virginia Tech. No, it wasn’t the fact that someone with
a long record of mental illness, suicidal impulses and stalking women could
walk into any WalMart in Virginia
and buy enough firepower to kill 32 people. It was because the guy was one of
the 200 or so people in America,
mostly critics like myself and others who recognized it as an outstanding film,
who saw the South Korean filmmaker (there’s a connection!) Park Chan-wook’s “Oldboy.”
Here’s how this story got started. As reported in the “New York
Times” blog, a Virginia Tech film professor, after seeing Cho’s repugnant video
manifesto on NBC, spotted similarities between some images in it and some in
the movie. Such as the now infamous hammer scene, and another in which he’s
holding a gun to his head. It didn’t take Sky News long to report (and the
story is still on their website as “updated”) that “the police were studying
the film” because they believe Cho had been watching it over and over again to
prepare for his rampage.
Uh, wrong. As CNN would subsequently report, there is no
reference to “Oldboy” in Cho’s voluminous confessionals. Nor do any of his
fellow students recall him watching that movie, or any movie. As for the hammer
scene, Bob Cesca in the Huffington Post has found that Cho might also have been
inspired by numerous other dark movies, including "Sling Blade," and, most sinister, "Bob the Buiilder."
Meanwhile, there is no doubt that the 225 rounds of ammo from the
two handguns Cho legally bought in Virginia
killed those 32 people.
So, the “Oldboy” story was bullshit. It would have been even if
Cho had seen the movie. Did “Taxi Driver” cause Hinckley
to take a shot at Reagan? Actually, the
gun to the head scene from Cho’s video atually looks more like the scene in
“Taxi Driver”…) Did “The Catcher in the Rye”
drive Chapman to shoot Lennon? Ban those suckers. Actually, maybe it was
Lennon’s music that drove Chapman to kill Lennon. So we should have banned the guy’s
music to prevent someone from shooting him.
But even though the "Oldboy" story is apocryphal, the impulse to scapegoat
the movies for complex, unthinkable tragedies won’t escape the notice of
opportunistic politicians. I’m wondering who will be the first presidential
candidate to state his or her outrage at violent movies. I’m thinking that it
will be Hillary Clinton, given her bold stand on “The Death of the President”
and other movies she hasn’t seen.
But don’t hold your breath waiting for someone to speak up for
gun control. Not with the NRA lobby breathing down their neck. Mitt Romney
won’t be the only claiming to be a hunter; I’m surprised Hillary hasn’t done
her photo op yet with a shot gun and a brace of quail.
April 16, 2007
It didn’t take long for the first presidential candidate to get on the censorship bandwagon, and we can thank Don Imus for that. Or maybe Al
Sharpton.
Republican presidential nobody Mike Huckabee says that if Imus
gets the boot for “offensive comments,” so should everyone else, like Rosie
O’Donnell and Bill Maher.
Huckabee didn’t specify exactly what these two said that deserved
firing, but it was probably something he didn’t agree with. And of course racist
hate speech is the equivalent of someone stating opinions contrary to your own.
This is the hornets nest that Sharpton kicks over when he says
that Imus was just “round one” in this crusade and now we should go on a witch hunt to eradicate all other aspects of “racism and
misogyny” in entertainment, art and the media. Starting, presumably with the Old
Testament. The problem is that once censorship gets legitimized, there’s no
guarantee that you’re going to remain the one who decides what’s acceptable.
As big a pig as Imus
is, canning him ultimately will result in three unintended consequences:
1. He will become a martyr, he has in fact already has, for those
who think the same way. No doubt he will have a venue on Fox TV before long.
2. It will be open season on free expression. Not just movies,
but print, internet, TV, radio will be scrutinized for objectionable material
that any opportunistic politician or group can turn to their advantage by
condemning.
3. We will never learn the truth about 9/11. But don't get me started on that...
Speaking of censorship backfiring, the
Federal Trade Commision
has put pressure on the gaming industry to tighten up on under 17-year-olds
getting access to M-rated games that offer graphic violence that impressionable
minds might want to imitate.
Are they crazy? Do you want the terrorists to win? Don’t they
know that the Army has bought a channel on the Global Gaming League website
where they can allow access their own top ten ranked game “America’s Army”
and others as a means of recruitment. Of course we want impressionable minds to
imitate graphic video game violence; somebody’s got to fight the evildoers in Iraq.
April 09, 2007
Despite successfully keeping the film out of the grasp of
local alternative weekly reviewers, “Grindhouse” still laid an egg over the
Easter weekend. It is a deflation of overhyped expectations on a par with last
year’s (not as overpraised as “Grindhouse,” but nonetheless enthusiastically
received by critics who should have known better) “Snakes on a Plane.”
Some argue
that “Grindhouse” did okay given the fact that its 191 minute length
limited its engagements, but it certainly had enough screens for those so
inclined to see it and length never seemed to limit the grosses of plus-3-hour films like
“Titanic” or Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” films or even the latter’s
critically snubbed “King Kong” remake.
Perhaps opening the film on Good Friday might have proven a
miscalculation. It seems on
such holy days people prefer puerile, unpretentious
comedies like “Blades of Glory” to puerile, pretentious faux exploitation films
like “Grindhouse.” Or if holiday filmgoers have a craving for graphic
sado-masochism, they want it mixed with a heavy dose of piety, as as was the
case back in 2004 when “The Passion of the Christ,” after an Ash Wednesday bow, flogged its way to
the top of the box office four weeks later on the Easter weekend.
April 06, 2007
Since the “Grindhouse” people decided not to screen the film
until Wednesday night, way too late for alternative weeklies, my review
won’t appear in print until next week. If you’re interested in an early look,
however, here’s what I wrote:
GRINDHOUSE
xx
Too bad Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino didn’t make
the “Prevues of Coming Attractions” — Rodriguez’s “Machete” and Rob Zombie’s “Werewolf
Women of the SS” — into their “Feature Presentations” in this “parody” of a 70s
Z-movie twin bill. Both get more laughs than Rodriguez’s “Planet Terror” or “Tarantino’s
Death Proof.” “Terror” draws more on “Dawn of the Dead” and “Toxic Avenger”
than anything by William Castle, with flesh-eating zombies spawned by chemical
weapons terrorizing a Texas
town. It consists mostly of exploding heads, bodies splattered by vehicles and
Rose McGowan with an M-16 for a prosthetic leg. Unexpected flashes of wit and
black humor kept my interest. As for Tarantino, he’s aging badly: he has a role
in both films and looks like a cross between Dan Aykroyd and Bob Hope on a
bender. Nor do his trademark affectations, trivia and fetishism (must a woman’s
foot hog the foreground of every scene?) charm any longer, though a car chase
and a psycho’s (a lovable Kurt Russell) comeuppance end the tedium on a high.
Otherwise, legions of critics have been tripping over
fanboys in the mad rush, motivated perhaps by a feeling they might have missed the boat with "300," to lavish the hippest praise on
the film. For a voice of reason, take a look at Armond White’s intelligent,
insightful, and already derided review
in the "New York Press" or James Verniere's smart take in the "Boston Herald."
April 05, 2007
None of us is getting any younger, and it’s probably just as
well.
Maybe it was the memento mori of an orange Mickey Rourke spotted
recently in Miami
that leads me to that conclusion. At any
rate, some recent movie developments seem to confirm its truth. Like Darren
Aronofsky’s Fountain of Youth folly, “The Fountain,” which earned him withering
reviews and pitiful grosses. Or Sylvester Stallone’s “Rocky Balboa,” in which
he drags his 30-year-old franchise and 60-year-old carcass back into the ring.
True, it got some respectful notices and earned decent money, but Stallone
still got nailed in Australia
for having a sack of human growth hormone in his hotel room.
Some filmmakers, however,
see the dream of eternal for the vain folly it is. Francis Coppola, for
example, returns to the screen after a lay-off of ten years (“The Rainmaker” in
1997) to direct “Youth Without Youth,” an
adaptation of a novel by Mircea Eliade about an elderly professor (Tim Roth)
during World War II who mysteriously starts to grow younger. Sounds like a good deal, you'd think, until those damned Nazis get wind of it and
things get ugly.
Fresh from “Zodiac,” David Fincher has taken on a similar
project, an adaptation of a shaggy dog story by F. Scott Fitzgerald (himself an icon of wasted youth) “The Curious
Case of Benjamin Button,” about a man (Brad
Pitt) who is born a septuagenarian and ages in reverse. That means that by the
age of 60 he should be acting like a twelve-year-old, so maybe Sylvester
Stallone isn’t so far off the mark after all.
April 03, 2007
Only 20 months to the next election, and not a
single presidential
candidate has taken a stand against Hollywood
indecency. But they will, they always do. How can they resist the gift of the
perfect kneejerk campaign canard? One that allows them the maximum of
indignation with the minimum of consequence? They figure no one is going to come to
the defense of pornographers or peddlers of violence on the screen except maybe
awayward ACLU lawyer or film critic and believe the vast majority of Americans will share their outrage at how sex or violence in the
movies or in the media causes problems ranging from juvenile crime to Abu
Ghraib. Yet again, they'll tubthump for votes by scapegoating those bastards instead of
doing something complicated like looking into the real causes of these
problems.
An early sign of this issue becoming a likely political potboiler
was the story
a week or so ago in the “New York Times” about an upcoming Federal Trade
Commission report on the marketing of violent movies, music and video games to
children. Seven years ago they let the film industry off the hook and instead
of regulating their ads for gruesome R-rated fare let them “police” themselves.
Well, apparently the ads for “Saw” and “Hostel” and the recent outrage over
the “Captivity” billboards suggest they might not get off so easy this time.
The article also suggests that the controversy might “kick the issue back into
the political arena ahead of a presidential election.”
No shit. How much easier to blame the graphic images of bondage,
pain, degredation, terror and sadism saturating pop culture than to confront
the realities they reflect. Seven years of an administration motivating people
through fear and revenge, a war against terror that sanctions torture, daily
news reports about suicide bombers and death squad executions -- these aren’t
the problem. Images from trashy slasher movies are. Well, that may be so, but
as a symptom, not a cause of our culture’s ongoing degeneration into pathology
and decadence.