movies

Recalling a famous scene on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Clinton said to end her presidential campaign now would be as if "Rocky Balboa had gotten halfway up those art museum steps and said, 'Well, I guess that's about far enough.'"

"Let me tell you something, when it comes to finishing a fight, Rocky and I have a lot in common. I never quit. I never give up. And neither do the American people," Clinton said.

In the movie, Rocky lost.

Methinks Peter Schweizer doth protest too much. The Republicans have enjoyed a nice political bubble over the years when it comes to the environment. "Global warming? What global warming?" has been typical of their responses.

That's been changing since Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth (directed by Davis Guggenheim) hit the screens. Since then, the film has enjoyed some remarkable documentary-level box office. As a result, the American public is seeing what the rest of the world has for years: that when it comes to the environment, the Republicans and the Bush Administration have no clothes.

Yet one more area where right-wing fantasies failed to convince the prevailing facts to change themselves. Reality's a bitch. And people realize that Al Gore, whom the wingnuts ridiculed in the 2000 campaign, was right all along.

Those stale old jokes no longer stick. And the Republicans are scared.

Now the right-wing fictioneers who so expertly dismantled Michael Moore's public image with loud and repeated falsehoods, distortions and outright lies of their own are now turning their sights on Gore. Why? Maybe because they are finding the truth just a tad too inconvenient.

In today's USA Today, we get an early shot -- intended to be a barrage, but which comes off more as a bb-gun sniper attempt: right-wing Hoover man and dittohead-industry author Peter Schweizer has a petty little piece nitpicking Gore's life.

Public records reveal that as Gore lectures Americans on excessive consumption, he and his wife Tipper live in two properties: a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, Va. (He also has a third home in Carthage, Tenn.) For someone rallying the planet to pursue a path of extreme personal sacrifice, Gore requires little from himself.

Smell a little envy there? This is a typical smear by the right, attacking Gore based on class. "He's not like you folks," Schweizer is saying to us "peasants" (a popular word used in right-wing power circles to describe us non-special folks born without silver spoons in our mouths). I don't know what Schweizer's lifestyle is like, but his Republican and corporatist allies live much fatter lives. Besides, this is about global warming, not about a real estate crunch.

Schweizer then goes on to talk about the apparent fact that Gore's estates have not yet switched to alternative energy options in their areas, and that Gore owns stock in Occidental Petroleum. Apparently these are to be considered glaring character flaws and indications of some big great hypocrisy. He also goes after the Democrats, who also have not signed up for alternative energy.

Then, in a well-practiced move of non-sequitur pseduo-logic -- a speciality of Schweizer and Coulter and the other writers in the alternate-reality books genre -- he suggests:

Maybe our very existence isn't threatened.

Not exactly stellar reasoning from a defender of the ruling class, is it?

Ironically, Schweizer doesn't acknowledge that us non-ruling-class Americans are already struggling with energy prices. We aren't cashing in on big trade with mass-polluter China, or raking in record profits from oil speculation, or laughing all the way to the bank with 10-figure government checks for no-bid contracts. The men in power are screwing over America big time, and we're supposed to get mad at Al Gore?

The issue here is not simply Gore's hypocrisy; it's a question of credibility. If he genuinely believes the apocalyptic vision he has put forth and calls for radical changes in the way other people live, why hasn't he made any radical change in his life? Giving up the zinc mine or one of his homes is not asking much, given that he wants the rest of us to radically change our lives.

In other words, if you can't refute the scientific evidence, then shoot the messenger. Global warming, according to Schweizer, is not a scientific theory with evidence in our faces every day. No, global warming is just what Al Gore wants. Get it? Our response to global warming should be tempered by the right wing's approval of Al Gore's politics and financial investments.

My own guess is that Schweizer is accusing Gore of simple class betrayal. After all, being rich and powerful, Al Gore should be a Republican, right? How dare he!

Inconvenient indeed.

This is not a movie review, but a general complaint. Is it possible we're living in the 21st century? Not judging by the stories we're telling, which recycle the same staid gender roles. I'm taking about the summer blockbuster movies Superman and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

I was pretty disappointed with the characters written for women in both films. This is not an indictment of either Kate Bosworth or Keira Knightley (Superman and Pirates, respectively). I'm sure both actors were doing the best they could with the material they had. But have you ever seen a worse Lois Lane? I didn't feel she was a crack reporter, driven to nail a story down - she seemed to be there as the damsel in distress. Yes, Margot Kidder fulfilled the same role in the Superman film of 1978, but at least there were gestures towards her career: the balcony scene where she gets out her pad and pencil for the scoop on Superman, and the general indication that she had drives and desires, and led an autonomous life.

In fact, having recently viewed Superman: The Movie, I was stunned by a scene I'd forgotten: there's a long sequence where Superman and Lois Lane fly above Metropolis at night, just after the balcony scene mentioned above. The audience gain access to Lane's thoughts during an unrushed monologue where she muses on what is unfolding before her. This places the whole audience in sympathy with Lane, and places our subjectivity squarely on a female character's shoulders.

I got the sense from the 2006 Superman script that it could've cared less what Kate Boswell's thoughts were, or what drove her, besides the socially sanctioned love for her child. Speaking of child - how boring is it to have her kid be male? For God's sake, at least take a bit of a risk and make the child female - that way we would've had more interesting ideas raised about gender and the whole "superman" mythology. But, no - they had to keep that whole Christian Father/Son thing chugging along.

In Pirates, there's a wonderful moment where Keira Knightly, as Elizabeth Swann, is aiming a gun at some barrels of gunpowder. You think - yes! - they've given her some action, something interesting to do. But the inclusion of her fiance on the barrels, along with a swaying boat which, in her female incompetence, she is unable to contend with, means that the satisfaction of blasting the Kraken's tentacles is left to the ever-shaky Johnny Depp. Yawn, sigh. Well, what was I thinking - they'd let the female character actually do something?

The Pirates script even has a promising set-up where Swann has to disguise herself as a sailor and work on a ship incognito. The writers could've taken this in any number of interesting ways, having fun with the role reversal, undermining gender expectations, etc. But her passing as a male member of crew is left largely unexplored. Disappointing.

Am I too optimistic about gender roles crumbling in this new century? Hollywood seems stuck in reverse with its unexamined assumptions about men and women, endlessly recycling the same old stories…

Blur penned these lyrics in 1995:

This is the next century
Where the universal's free
You can find it anywhere
Yes, the future's been sold

Every night we're gone
And to karaoke songs
How we like to sing along,
Though the words are wrong

It really really really could happen
Yes it really really really could happen
When the days they seem to fall through you
Well just let them go

I share Blur's thinly-veiled skepticism. Chances are, the plum roles will continue to be written with men in mind, until more women move into directing and producing. Then maybe we'll have a fighting chance of having complex, interesting leading ladies: in short, humans, not cardboard characters.

It really really really could happen.

Lyrics: Blur, "The Universal", The Great Escape

...all the insipid music that cut off all the Oscar speeches....

...including the Best Picture award winners....

...and accompanied all the women's speeches and most of the men's....

...and I want to thank the contraints that kept Jon Stewart from really cutting loose and being funny....

...and the cynical Hollywood plugging of the "theatrical movie experience"....

...and [insipid music swells, cut away to the high angle as we bump to commercial]--

(Best part: Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep doing a funny Altman-esque intro of Robert Altman. Let's hope C&L has that for replay.)

[My Blogrolling account has lapsed. A new arts blogroll is to come.]

Never mind that Iraqis are dying all too easily these days. Seeking to combine his pro-militarist political views with the teenage boy-focused popular entertainment centered on blowing the fuck out of things, Bruce Willis is going to make his own alternative vision of how the war on Iraq is going.

On the surface, it doesn't seem to be an ideological tract:

It will be based on the exploits of the heavily decorated members of Deuce Four, the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry, which has spent the past year battling insurgents in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul.

Personally I think any movie that realistically portrays our soldiers' stories is a good thing. How would we understand World War 2 without the hundreds of movies about that conflict and aftermath?

But Willis seems to be coming at this with an agenda.

ANGERED by negative portrayals of the Iraq conflict, actor Bruce Willis is to make a pro-war film in which US soldiers will be depicted as brave fighters for freedom and democracy.

Willis said it would be wrong for Americans to give up on Iraq just as progress was being made.

"The Iraqi people want to live in a world where they can move from their homes to the market and not have to fear being killed," he said. "I mean, doesn't everybody want that?"

The question is how. Can democracy be imposed by generous application of cluster bombs, phosphorous and heavy machine guns? What are our goals in this civil war we've unleashed? Are we doing the Iraqis any favors by making every place we occupy a target?

Willis seems to be upset that the news today does not reflect what he saw in 2003, when he toured Iraq with his rock band. (Yes, he has a rock band.)

Willis visited the war zone with his rock and blues band, the Accelerators, in 2003.

"I am baffled to understand why the things I saw happening in Iraq are not being reported," he told MSNBC, the US news channel.

Of course, 2003 was a long, long time ago.

The movie represents an interesting gambit. The movie seems to be a pro-Bush propaganda piece about a war that's vastly unpopular with Americans. But lots of people are sure to die in graphic detail, with plenty of explosions and humorous one-liners -- a Hollywood recipe for a high chance of success for the past 20-30 years.

So the real question is: If he blows the shit out of people and things, will the audiences come?

One benefit from the holidays for me is having the time to just sit and read. I always skim through The New Yorker, plowing through Talk of the Town and and soaking in one or two articles and/or reviews that catch my interest. But it's usually a semi-distracted affair on my part, so I rarely even notice the ads.

I had time to start into this week's issue with some leisure, though, and that afforded me the pleasure of seeing a multi-page ad for Iconoclasts, a miniseries on Sundance Channel celebrating "innovators, ground shakers and rule breakers."

I couldn't help but notice that, out of the 12 iconoclastic movers and shakers profiled, only two are women -- actress Renée Zellweger and CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour.

Meanwhile, the male Iconoclasts featured are:

• Robert Reford (actor)
• Paul Newman (actor)
• Samuel L. Jackson (actor)
• Bill Russell (sports star)
• Tom Ford (fashion designer)
• Jeff Koons (artist)
• Brian Grazer (film producer)
• Sumner Redstone (CEO)
• Mario Batali (chef)
• Michael Stipe (rock star)

To be sure, many of these people have done much more than what they're known for. But let's face it, they're known for being actors and designers and so on.

So why aren't there more women? Yes, we live in a patriarchy and yes men dominate the arts, fashion and entertainment industries, but women account for 53% of the population and, in the creative arts industries, there certainly is not a dearth of female iconoclasts, is there? (Need I post a list?)

Are women deserving of only 16.67% of the honors? (Are Hispanics and Asians so undeserving of any mention? And what is Sumner Redstone doing in this show at all?)

If this were a Fox or NBC product, this kind of bias would hardly be remarkable -- in fact, it would be expected and insisted upon. But this is Sundance, which supposedly is about empowering disempowered voices and supporting progressive causes. With Iconoclasts, Sundance gets a failing grade.

Yeah, that's right. A million Bruce bucks to bundle up the bomber beneficiary boys. Because 9 billion dollars a day spent on the war on terror isn't enough. Enter your pithy Die Hard quote here.