May 29, 2008
Far from being tossed onto the trash heap of history, the
Russian Communist Party has recovered very nicely from the downfall of the Soviet Union by entering another field: film criticism.
After ripping “Armageddon” a few years ago because it impugned the quality
of Russian space hardware, they are
taking to task Steven Spielberg’s International blockbuster “Indiana Jones and
the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.” Says St Petersburg Communist Party chief
Sergei Malinkovich, “It’s rubbish ... In 1957 the communists did not run with
crystal skulls throughout the U.S.
Why should we agree to that sort of lie and let the West trick our youth?” He
called for the film to banned. Another
party member added, “Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett (are) second-rate actors,
serving as the running dogs of the CIA. We need to deprive these people of the
right of entering the country.”
Meanwhile,
some right-leaning critics here in the U.S. have also faulted the film, but rather than finding its politics anti-Communist, they see it as pro-liberal, if not
downright pink. Writes the
blogger “Dirty Harry” on the website “Libertas,” “As far as the film’s politics, act one’s
anti-anti-Communist message serves no story purpose whatsoever. Jones did
not need to be fired [ because the FBI suspects him of being a Red] in order to be sent off on an adventure
and the story-point is never again picked up or resolved — making it
a first for an Indiana Jones’ film: an awkward, ham-fisted political
message shoe-horned in at the expense of story quality.” (for a more
ideologically sound entertainment, he recommends renting “Rambo:” “…an unsparing look at the
evil that exists in our world without any of the politically-correct nonsense
of a European arch-villain. Stallone may be too savvy to say so, but if his use
of Burma
isn’t an allegory for the War on Terror, I don’t know what is. Any
liberals at all interested in what will happen in Iraq should
Obama keep his promise to offer up a surrender date may want to Netflix this”).
So there you
go: touch on politics and nobody’s happy, except maybe the silent but savvy
Sylvester Stallone. Which doesn’t stop Nick Turse on “Alternet” from arguing that Hollywood blockbusters, in particular “Iron Man,” serve to
rewrite recent history exonerating the US from all wrongdoing in the War
against Terror. But according to “New York Post” film critic Kyle Smith’s take
on “Iron Man”, the opposite is
the case:“There are only two scenes (including the one with the first Iron Man
costume) in which Iron Man blows away America’s enemies; he spends about
as much time fighting the U.S. Air Force (destroying an F-22 and nearly killing
a pilot in the process) and US industry.
“You would think that, in 2008,
it wouldn’t be so difficult for a screenplay to imagine some villains for an
American to fight, but according to this movie (really? again?) our deadliest
enemies are domestic.
“Even
assuming that were true (news flash: it isn’t), it weakens Iron Man, and the
movie. The second half of it is guilt trip, and guilt isn’t fun. When Iron Man
goes to rescue some Afghanistan
villagers …his is some sort of prosaic U.N. mission, not an epic clash of good
and evil.”
Who to believe? Says
voice of reason in the “Daily Standard” If you go into ‘Iron
Man’ seeking right-wing imagery, you'll find it: Tony Stark is a patriot,
pro-military, and likes unilateral intervention. If you go into ‘Iron Man’ looking
for left-wing imagery, you’ll find that, too.”
Which kind of answers a question that's been bugging me lately: why haven't any of the presidential candidates tried to score easy points like they do in every election by taking cheap shots at Hollywood “indecency” or
“anti-Americanism?” Now I can see that it’s just too risky: who knows whether
the film is liberal or conserrvative and who you might be offending? (Mind you,
in the case of the films such as the upcoming remake of John Milius’s “Red
Dawn,” there might not be
this uncertainty.)
That doesn’t
stop Sharon Stone from putting in her two cents worth about the Chinese earthquakes,
blaming them on karma from the oppression of Tibet. All it got for her was a ban
of her films in China.
So now a billion people can’t see “Basic Instinct 2.” Mix politics and movies
and everyone loses.
May 27, 2008
Because of his many, memorable appearances on screen, Sydney
Pollack, who just died at the age of 73, might
have the been the most familiar of contemporary directors to the average moviegoer. In
most roles (but not Stanley Kubrick’s "Eyes Wide Shut." Yikes!) he seemed that
hardbitten, savvy guy with a heart of gold whom you wouldn’t mind having a beer
with and whom you could rely on to help you out in a pinch. And so he was,
according to the many tributes in print and
on the internet.
As a filmmaker, Pollack made numerous passable films and the
occasional gem. Some of my favorites include “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?,”
“Three Days of the Condor,” “The Electric Horseman,” “Absence of Malice” and “Tootsie.” “Out of Africa,”
his Oscar winner, not so much. If he had any distinctive stylistic trait it was
coaxing the best performances out of the big name stars -- Robert Redford,
Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise, Dustin Hoffman, Nicole Kidman, Al Pacino -- he
invariably worked with. What a Rolodex the man must have had. That, and the
ineffable generosity of spirit that was part of his character. He was the quintessential
Hollywood filmmaker, and probably better at
that than anyone else.
May 22, 2008
Who needed drugs back in 1970 when there were peyote-powered
brain bogglers like Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell’s Performance, Alejandro
Jodorowsky’s El Topo and Werner Herzog’s Even Dwarfs Started Small on the
screen? Those psychedelic, boundary breaking days might be coming back despite the perpetual complaints about the death of independent cinema.
Well,
Cammell may be dead and Roeg perhaps is still awaiting resuscitation -- his 2007
film “Puffball” lived up to its title
in terms of distribution, though a
remake of his 1973 masterpiece “Don’t Look Now” has been in the works since
2005 and has a 2009 release date.
But more to the point is the collaboration of Jodorowsky and
Herzog -- and David Lynch! It’s a three
headed monster reminiscent of the surreal triptych prowling the desert of “El
Topo.” For their project “King Shot,” described as a “metaphysical gangster
movie…with enough sex and violence to guarantee an NC-17 rating,” this Dream
(or perhaps more accurately, “Nightmare”) Team has cast Nick Nolte, Marilyn
Manson, Asia Argento and Udo Kier. What, no Crispin Glover?
Herzog, meanwhile, has other projects keeping him busy. Another
collaboration with Lynch called “My Son, My Son” is based
on a real story about a man who’s read too much Sophocles and kills his mother
with a sword. And you thought video games caused criminal behavior -- it’s
about time we had a ban on Greek tragedy! Plus he plans a remake of Abel Ferrara’s “Bad
Lieutenant” starring Nicolas Cage. Because Ferrara’s version was just too namby-pamby.
Meanwhile, I also look forward to the possibility that David
Cronenberg might be directing the English language remake of "Timecrimes" -- the original by Spanish dirrector Nacho Vigalondo, shown at the Boston
Independent Film Festival, was already
terrific. And to the adaptation of Philip K.Dick’s “Ubik,” planned by the Celluloid Dreams company. Or another production
company called Halcyon that not only signed up Christian Bale to star in a new
“Terminator” trilogy but also bought up the rest of Dick’s novels for
adaptations. Pass the psilocybin! The next thing you know I’ll be able to take
my canary yellow bell bottoms out of the closet and be in style again.
May 14, 2008
The conventional wisdom says that C.S. Lewis’s Narnia and the movie adaptations of the books offer aproper Christian alternative to the godless moonshine of Philip Pullman’s "The Golden Compass" and the satan worshipping witchcraft of Harry Potter.
But how Christian is it? I’m not referring to the scene in 2005’s “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” in which Father Christmas (that’s Santa Claus, or the Spirit of Rampant Consumerism as he is known to us on this side of the Atlantic) presenting children lethal weapons as holiday presents. Hardly PC, but not really un-Christian, at least not since the reign of the Emperor Constantine (In hoc signo we’ll kick your ass).
Nor does this have anything to do with Lewis’s alleged taste for the lash (he signed some letters “Philomastix,” ie, “whiplover”), suggested in some of the books, which he picked up in his experience in British boarding schools. Especially Wynard, whose sadistic headmaster was later certified as insane.
Or even his non-condemnatory attitude towards homosexuality, which he discusses in his 1955 autobiography “Surprised by Joy,” referring to its practice in his school days as “the only counterpoise to the social struggle; the one oasis (though green only with weeds and moist only with foetid water) in the burning desert of competitive ambition…. pederasty, however great an evil in itself, was, in that time and place, the only foothold or cranny left for certain good things ... A perversion was the only chink left through which something spontaneous and uncalculating could creep in."
No, what really disturbs some Christian fundamentalists is that C.S. Lewis’s lenient, tolerant brand of Christianity might be “a Trojan Horse” for the evils of paganism and black magic. See for example this posting on the website from “Balaam’s Ass Speaks” titled “C.S. Lewis: Satan’s Wisest Fool” which begins:
“John F. Kennedy, C.S. Lewis, and Aldous Huxley all died on the same day.
They all went to the same place.
Kennedy went to hell because he trusted in the Roman Whore.
Huxley went to hell because he trusted in himself alone and his hybrid Eastern mystic notions.
And, Lewis went to hell because he invented a new god, and he ended his life a Taoist.
We will prove it here.”
They are especially outraged by an episode in “Prince Caspian” involving Aslan, the children Lucy and Susan, Bacchus, Silenus and a company of Maenads. In a chapter titled “Dionysus, Bacchus, Silenus and the Maenads No One Under 18 Please,” the posting states “What Lewis is describing here is nothing other than a Bacchanalian orgy!.. Now, if Aslan is 
supposedly the Lord Jesus Christ, as many assure us and as Lewis himself allowed, then what we find here is the grossest blasphemy!! This is then supposedly Jesus Christ leading a Satanic orgy of Bacchus!! This is sick beyond description!!”
Harsh words. Perhaps that is why the makers of the film adaptation, Walden Media, headed by billionaire Christian crusader Philip Anschutz, deleted that scene and replaced it with a battle in which our Christian heroes kill scores of bad guys and which ends in a bloody massacre.
I suspect, however, that the Balaam’s Ass people, and perhaps even those at Walden, might be misreading the text. They might be the perfect audience, then, for “The Complete Idiots Guide to the World of Narnia” by James S. Bell and Cheryl Dunlop.
I asked Ms. Dunlop what she had to say about this Trojan Horse (isn’t that a pagan metaphor?)
theory and she kindly sent the following response:
“I'd say that such a person has probably not read much of Lewis's work, and maybe has spent too much time reading other people who comment on Lewis's work without understanding it. One crucial point is that in Lewis's works, witches and hags and such are never morally good. In other writers (“Harry Potter,” “Wizard of Oz,” and even “Lord of the Rings”) we see good witches and wizards. Lewis's good characters are simply never involved in witchcraft. One might as well 
accuse the Bible of promoting Satan worship because Satan is mentioned in it.
“An interesting point in this regard comes from perhaps the most “pagan” scene in the whole series, Bacchus and his maidens distributing refreshments in “Prince Caspian.” Lucy and Susan agree that they would not want to have met this wild group except in the presence of Aslan--the hint that they are dangerous and must be kept in submission to Aslan (Christ). Lewis simply had no patience with those who said a Christian shouldn't drink (or smoke--he smoked pipes).”
Maybe that will enlighten them. As for me, I have no doubts of Lewis’s Christian credentials after noting the resemblance between Aslan the Lion and Fr. Leo Muldoon, S.J., Dean of Discipline when I attended Boston College High School.