My brain thinks bomb-like

That's a line from "Hell's around the Corner," from Tricky's 1995 debut, MAXINQUAYE, one of the "key" albums of the then-emerging genre of trip hop. Buried in the mid-1990s time capsule here in the states (currently "played out" and awaiting retro chick excavation in 2011), it's heard on the TRANSPORTER 3 soundtrack in the love scene between Jason Statham and his package du jour, Natalya Rudikova. My first thought "What!? Didn't Besson get the memo?" Second thought: I fucking LOVE Besson!

T3's director, the hilariously named Olivier Megaton and Luc "Gallic Woo" Besson don't care if it's "outdated" - they like it, so they use it... that's very European. There are lots of other things to love in TRANSPORTER 3 as well, including a daffy kidnapping plot involving toxic waste dumping rights and explosive SPEED-style trick handcuffs. And also some genuine romantic contact (as in "connection") between Rudikova and lead action star Jason Statham.

Statham may have become the self-made laddish Bond of modern action cinema. He carries it like a champ and one wonders if Daniel Craig didn't glean just a little of his Bond's cobra-stillness and wounded dove intensity from Jason. His constant underplaying--which I originally found a burden in films like GHOSTS OF MARS--has become charming, even intoxicating, with age. You start watching the film thinking oh yeah, he's bound to shag this freckled Ukrainian raver somewhere along the journey, but then whammo... somehow it moves from A VIEW TO A KILL back to ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE. Viva la France!

Even without the romantic angle, the film conveys an innate cheerfulness missing from all the clinically depressed, oil slick ennui of US franchises like BATMAN and X-MEN. I mentioned Tricky above because it's indicative of the difference between European and American musical mentality. TRANSFORMER 3 proves that someone still listens to mid-1990s electronica, and isn't afraid to play it at a party... and if they like it enough to still play it after 14 years, they "really" like it and aren't just posing, aren't just using it because some market research report told them it appealed to a wide demographic.

For us, any music we once loved becomes something we're "Sick of" - we overdo it and it has to lie buried until it's exhumed as nostalgia, until it makes us recall the memories we associate with the few months we listened to it all the time. We're sonic vampires, bleeding artists dry in a single top ten hit. Then we bury them, and on the seventh day and ten to twenty years they rise again, hazy with the rose-tinted glow of the rear view mirror, to drink the blood of the living.

The nutty optimism of Europe is enthralling for us left too long in WATCHMEN swamps of national self-loathing. We look up from our concrete cell floors in awe as Rudikova busts moves on our Jason, bullying him into even performing a strip tease. But Luc does the switch and instead we get an actual love affair as she zeroes in on his inability to open up and he's so damn cool he even melts a bit just for her, because he knows a true warrior isn't afraid of anything, even turning weak in the arms of a woman. In lesser hands it might not work, but where MAX PAYNE feared to tread (he threw Olga Kurlyenko right out of bed), Statham gets right up close and human-personal in a way that makes me think, of all people, Kris Kristofferson!

The goofball stunts in TRANSPORTER 3 conjure 1970s Burt Reynolds movies and Jackie Chan acrobatics alike in an even better way than the American Xtreme sports of Vin Diesel and Tyrese. There's not many guns with Burt Reynolds either, it's all good-natured saloon fights, with everyone buying each other drinks later and making up. In other words, for all its lack of frills and funny costumes, TRANSPORTER 3 is the action movie we need now... the antidote to the overcooked depression and operatic self-importance of our current superheroes and video-game stars. See it and remember that adrenalin-pumping action needn't reflect dystopia and despair... Let Jason Statham help you remove your gray-tinted Gotham glasses and see the world as it really is: infinite, sweet at heart, appreciative of fine leather interiors, and loyal to the trip hop core.

Poster Comparison No. 6 - Two-Headed Transplant

Maybe it's just me, but when I first saw this poster -

- I was immediately reminded of this one.

Maybe it's the way the maroon scarf playfully tugged by Ms. Garner in the Ghosts of Girlfriends Past poster performs the same compositional function as the white scarf or white turtleneck or whatever-it-is in The Thing With Two Heads poster, i.e., joining the heads of the two leads. Designers of commercial art love their phallic symbols. Hence, the prominent role of the scarf in Poster A, and the prominent role of the gun in Poster B.

For Asia Argento Lovers

Come on bring it on

Com mon sense / Destroy all that you learned
Do it now / Give me some pleasure
Never heard / A talk like this before
Dan ger ous / You're sure you want some more

Live fast die old
I don't wanna die
I just wanna love

Brain less love / That's all I ever got
Blood roulette / Like Christopher Walken
I don't care / If you can come or not
Say good bye / It's over now - it's over now


MUNK, according to Wikipedia, is an Italian/German electronica band.

Thanks to Jerry Lentz for posting this on Facebook.

Another Brick in the Bro-hood

By now, if you haven’t seen I Love You, Man, you probably aren’t going to. Suffice to say, it’s quite funny—better, in my opinion, than Superbad, and exactly like Superbad in that it ends with two totally hetero dudes, Peter (Paul Rudd) and Sidney (Jason Segal) telling each other, well, “I love you, man.” Once again we’re in Hollywood’s La-La La-La land, where it’s perfectly all right for guys to love each other as long as they’re not gay. And also (of course) it’s perfectly all right to be gay, because Peter’s brother Robbie (Andy Stamberg) is gay and apparently so irresistible that he only sleeps with straight men.

It’s probably a bit churlish to point out that Robbie does not act gay at all, or to note that we never actually see him touching another man, or to note that only character in the film who does act gay is, of course, a figure of fun. But I will point out that the only black person in the film is the minister presiding over the wedding, appearing for about 45 seconds of screen time, and who appears to be about twenty shades lighter than our President. But the kicker came after the flick let out: as a 97 percent white crowd streamed out of I Love You, Man, a 99.9 percent black crowd streamed into Obsessed, hot to see Beyoncé slap the shit out a white girl. Women’s lib? Not a problem. Gay lib? No sweat. Racial integration? We’ll get back to you.

Afterwords
I Love You, Man takes R-rated comedies to a new level of chasteness. There’s plenty of projectile vomiting, but absolutely no sex at all. I kept waiting for someone to rip sexy Denise’s clothes off (surely the film wanted me to) but that never happens. Also, a perfectly good plot point—Peter’s fiancé, Zooey (Rashida Jones) won’t give him head—was wasted. The film could have ended with a close-up of a smiling Pete, followed by a close-up of an equally smiling but obviously full-mouthed Zooey, followed by the topper when Zooey swallows. But would anyone listen to me? Does anyone ever listen to me?

Jack Cardiff, Cinematographer (1914-2009)

So many other bloggers have posted tributes to the late, great, Jack Cardiff that it was difficult to find an image that hadn't already been posted at one of those blogs. However, here is the radiant Audrey Hepburn, radiantly photographed by Cardiff, in one of the finest epics ever made, King Vidor's War and Peace (1956).

Cardiff's collaborations with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, e.g., A Matter of Life and Death, aka Stairway to Heaven (above), were the summit of '40s Technicolor.

We highly recommend you check out the many Cardiff-related links gathered by David Hudson here.

The Branding of THE CHEAT

Kicking off the second pre-code set to come out this year, we've got THE CHEAT (1931, another in the "rich ne'er do well offers to 'help' married woman" genre. This one's good for its kind, with a heavy accent on the exotic. Irving Pichel is the ne'er do well, a nut for "orientalism" who keeps a cabinet of dolls representing his "conquests" (each with his "brand" of ownership burned into their base). He also has dancing girls from Cambodia (below), a giant menacing statue composite of Shiva, Kali and the great God Tao, sitar and Chinese lute players in the perfumed garden. In short, he's got the all the goods that re pre-code manna for the discerning collector. It's always the bachelor-seducers who have the cool pads in these films. The "proper" father (the naive husband's dad or her dad) lives in a world of gaudy flower bouquets and marble. The bachelor is all tapestries, Asian artifacts and for servants usually just one or two very wise and discreet--Leporello-esque even--butlers

What's so sordidly pre-code about it all is that the "cheat" of the title refers not to Tallulah cheating at cards, or cheating on her husband via infidelity, but rather cheating on Pichel--our lonesome bachelor-- by trying to back out of their deal after he's already paid off her gambling debts. In other words this sort of deal was--in the pre-code universe--as valid and holy (pr unholy) as the state of marriage itself. She's just being "gay and modern" to toss a fuck poor Pichel's way, but backing out of the date makes her the titular lady of dishonesty.

(spoiler alert) Bankhead as a sex object is a little hard to buy; she's got the mannishly slumped shoulders of Greta Garbo and the off-kilter stringency of Bette Davis but neither of their humor. But that doesn't excuse her welching! Since the Tallulah doll he'd had made ready for the evening is now useless, Pichel uses the brand, already hot in the fire, on the real Tallulah's alabaster breast!


We can understand he's mad--after all he went through the trouble of bathing, dismissing the servants, hiring the sitar and lute for his garden, uncorking his best champagne; but branding Tallulah Bankhead with a hot iron? Mr. Pichel, such things just aren't done to rich white women! Naturally, there's a shot, a scream, and a courtroom scene. Poor Pichel's sadistic nature is exposed and a horrible scandal will inevitably ensue.

"The Woman's Film" apparently had only two plot outlines to its name: the "Indecent Proposal" (the millionaire playboy usually gets shot and someone takes the rap to protect someone else's honor) and the "gangster moral double-cross" (she shoots her bootlegger ex in order to protect her true love, the D.A.). There's almost always a trial at the end, with a hostile sea of masculine eyes all pulling our heroine one way or another. Can you see her now, your honor? Rapid edits to reporters and judges and jurors, their eyes blazing with hostility? Her crying softly on the witness stand, dragging the tearful confession out unto the last possible second?

The witness stand's ubiquitousness in these films indicates its holy importance in the pre-code universe. It's perhaps the single most unassailable podium a woman can find from which to lash out. She's safe, yet surrounded by attentive males, and allowed to say whatever unseemly truths she wishes without fear of misinterpretation. No condescending boyfriend or father can censor or belittle her once she's been sworn in (unless he's cross-examining) and no one can take twist her words or patronize her contribution to the crime being tried as irrelevant. For better or worse, she makes the whole circus possible through her impulsive behavior; each new outrage, once plainly spoken in front of witnesses, becomes repressed no longer. Viva l'scandale! Nothing perhaps was more rewarding to the depression era women audiences than seeing the phoniness of their anointed marital bars and codes stripped away by the unstoppable juggernaut of sin and sizzle!

Neurotics Rejoice!

Mark Harris at Slate has the word on the Warner Archive Collection. For only $19.95, Warner will burn a DVD just for you, from its “not released on DVD” list. You can see, among other things, Robert Altman’s crappiest film, Countdown (1968), which Mark describes as “a dull moon-landing thriller in which the sets look like they're made out of spray-painted Styrofoam and pressboard.” Also available, Spitfire (1932), featuring Katherine Hepburn cast seriously against type as a hillbilly (really). I’m not sure I’d want to pay $19.95 to hear Kate’s Bryn Mawr cornpone, but if you do, you can.

Afterwords
These films have not been restored for release, and at this point only 165 flicks are available, but Mark is seriously bullish, claiming that ultimately Warner will dump its entire collection of 5,600 not-on-DVD flicks into the mill. So if you’ve got a loose $112 grand on you, you could be sitting pretty.

Now on Twitter

To us, Twitter has always seemed like so much psychotic haiku, so of course we had to join in: http://twitter.com/blfj

J.G. Ballard (November 15, 1930 - April 19, 2009)

A young Christian Bale as “Jamie” Ballard confronts the Japanese military in Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun (1987), based on J.G. Ballard’s autobiographical novel - arguably Spielberg's best film.

James Spader and Elias Koteas in Crash (1996), David Cronenberg’s adaptation of Ballard’s novel of sexual/technological surrealism.

* * *

I wrote about Ballard and some of the SF paperback covers he inspired here.

Kim Morgan writes about the "unnervingly sexy" Crash here.

David Hudson (The Daily) gathers other links and tributes here.

No. 1 ass-kisser this year

So far, by far, Sam Rubin, KTLA TV/Los Angeles, who turned in this blurb for Hannah Montana, The Movie:

“So far, by far, the best movie of the year.”

And, I’m guessing, Sam, you’re not even a 13-year-old girl!

Shock of the New

This weekend, it being lovely and all, why not go to the movies and see OBSERVE AND REPORT? The film needs money. Writer-director Jody Hill is getting a drubbing apparently, and he's one of the true great satirists of America; he is what Terry Zwigoff, Kevin Smith, Todd Solondz and Neil La Bute try to be, but they're all scared to let go of the hand rail. Not Jody Hill. He lets go big time, and that's why when you laugh at OBSERVE AND REPORT the laughter feels different, a little liberating.. you know, subversive, rather than just that poseur brand of subversive, crude.

Seth Rogen's presence in the film shouldn't give expectations that this film's got a heart of gold either; no sudden nice guy quick-change placebo we've been status quaffing for so long that we no longer recognize that it's just the same old trap in a new wrapper. Instead, even with the occasional delusional happy ending, Hill's movies still cut through the crap with a samurai quickness, they say what we're thinking but would never dream of saying, or admitting we even wanted to say: that happy endings are only possible once you abandon all connections with reality. He is conscious, even as his characters aren't. His characters are Americans at both their best (unpretentious, tenacious, oddly nurturing) and worse (depressed, obese, violent, ignorant), we're all guilty of being this ugly and can't admit it. Hill allows us to confront the things about ourselves we're forever trying to bleach out. He makes it possible because it's just too hilarious to resist.

I've written a hell of a lot more on this over at Acidemic, but the real stuff to read is by the fearless Kim Morgan, who praises the film on her Sunset Gun site (here) and also interviews Jody Hill himself (here). Here's what he says about the film's dark tone:

"I like making movies about outsiders. Not like James Dean outsiders, outsiders who are just ... weirdos. I wanted to drive my character crazy. Maybe because I feel like everybody has a part where they think they're a star to their own movie. There's not too much of a voice for people in the middle, characters who are frustrated. I feel like we're living in times where everyone's so f---ing jaded that it's hard to do anything different. Even in the movies, there's not much to get excited about."

Damn right, Mr. Hill. That's why I'm writing this, because I'm finally not jaded after OBSERVE burnt some of the crud off me. "Hopefully, Kim notes, "Observe and Report will be a huge hit, revealing how much we underestimate the intelligence of the masses." Oh if only you were right, Kim, and it's too bad it's not as successful as it should be, as Hill's the real thing and if OBSERVE doesn't make some money (and/or EASTBOUND & DOWN doesn't get renewed for another season), Hollywood will presume that they were very very wrong to deviate from their low opinion of the masses' intelligence.

In other words, if you don't see it, you will have betrayed the cause of art! When you are buried deep in CGI animated puppies and talking babies, don't come crying back to Hill. It will be too late. And P.S. if you do go see it, the best place to see it is at a shopping mall cineplex; let the heavy meta flow!

Read more here

Maxine Cooper Gomberg (May 12, 1924 - April 4, 2009)

Sometimes one role is all it takes - if it's the right role.

Blacklisted Dorothy Comingore didn't have much of a film career, but she will always be remembered for having played Susan Alexander in Orson Welles' Citizen Kane - or if not always, for at least as long as film is revered as an artistic medium.

Similarly, Maxine Cooper (later Maxine Cooper Gomberg) appeared in only a few movies and a handful of television shows (Perry Mason, The Twilight Zone), but for as long as people remember and talk about film noir, Maxine Cooper will be remembered for having played "Velda," secretary and helpmate to conscience-less private eye Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) in "the Holy Grail of apocalyptic noirs," Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly (1955, above).

The L.A. Times obituary is here.

Happy 103rd Birthday, Samuel Beckett (April 13, 1906 – December 22, 1989)

Samuel Beckett’s influence on movies was somewhat oblique, and I think he preferred it that way. The Irish playwright, novelist, and poet, referred to at various times as a modernist, an absurdist, a minimalist, and an existentialist, did, in fact, write one screenplay, the minimally titled, mostly silent Film which provided Buster Keaton one of his final starring roles. (Film, directed by Alan Schneider, is neither great nor terrible. The last shocked close-up of Keaton, contemplating the inescapable fact of his own existence, makes the whole thing worthwhile.)

Regardless, almost of all Beckett’s plays have been filmed at one time or another (PBS featured a series of them directed by Anthony Minghella, Neil Jordan, and David Mamet, among others), and one can see a Beckett-like world view in films as diverse as Roman Polanski’s black comedy Cul-de-Sac and Peter Brook’s King Lear.

Perhaps the most fitting cinematic tribute of all - director David Cronenberg and actor Ralph Fiennes consciously modeled the physical appearance of the schizophrenic protagonist of Spider (2002, above bottom) on the way Samuel Beckett looked and moved.

Max Von Sydow's Good Friday

It's quite fitting that Max Von Sydow, celebrated Swedish actor, should turn 80 on Good Friday, of all days. This is an actor who's both been crucified and stared down the devil (or at least a devil), not to mention the grim, gray specter of Death, with whom he tripped the light fantastic over the eternal hills.

Von Sydow's not an actor I would rank in my personal pantheon, but perusing through his resume on imdb, it's astonishing how many films would simply not have functioned without him. He offers gravity in Ingmar Bergman's dramatic explorations when other characters spin out of control (Through a Glass Darkly, The Passion of Anna). His subtle villains are often the highlight of otherwise banal flicks (Minority Report). The guy can even poke fun at his own phlegmatic, professorial image by taking roles like that of Barbara Hershey's paternal love interest in Hannah and her Sisters (the youtube embed below sounds a lot more like conversations between myself and my wife than I would care to admit, the cantankerous, overeducated misanthrope that I am).

The web is awash with fine Von Sydow tributes, so I'll end by simply noting one of my favorite performances by this highly talented and multi-faceted actor -- Brewmeister Smith in Strange Brew. Forget the devil, or the Grim Reaper: Von Sydow's confronted the McKenzie Brothers with their backbacon and beer sloth! Somehow he manages to be both playful and menacing at the same time. Now that's acting, eh?

The Code and its Perfect Specimens

There's TWO Pre-code sets out for spring: Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 3 and this week comes the Pre-Code Hollywood set from Universal. Even though none of the films quite measure up to the greats (many of which are still missing from DVD, i.e. RED DUST, SHANGHAI EXPRESS, DISHONORED. I've seen THE MURDER OF THE VANITIES (1934) and TORCH SINGER before at the pre-code festivals that used to come to Film Forum, and if it wasn't for the risque shock of it all, they'd be nothing much, which has me worried about the rest of them, but no doubt they're worth it anyway, just for the fact that they are there. God bless those brave decadent souls, soon to be cut down by the machine gun of Charles B. Middleton as Joseph Breen. You can feel the rage on both sides all through these code films, the sly subversion of the moral crusader's every edict. (I wonder just how dirty these films would actually bother to be if not for the moral crusaders telling them not to).
SEARCH FOR BEAUTY is a classic example, a sly send-up of the exercise and fitness set, decked out in quazi-eugenic overtones, with a young Buster Crabbe as an Olympic swimmer and good-natured exercise ubermensch who gets roped into endorsing Robert Armstrong's sleazy "fitness" magazine. Under Crabbe's stern watch, the mag's on the level, but once he's off judging perfect man competitions, Armstrong and his sleazy cohorts turn it into a lurid romance rag, all innocent cheesecake (with pics of men and women who are "perfect specimens" and lurid stories about East Village artists seducing stenographers over their lunch break. Shazam!) but it's all contrary to Buster's vision of perfect health and fitness. It's too decadent. Like an embodiment of the code itself, Buster must use every inch of his American sincerity and love of health to subdue the agents of vice and lethargy!

You can't fault a movie for being a Nazi parable (the gymnastic musical number would be right at home in TRIUMPH OF THE WILL if it came out before the Nazis themselves, but no one's looking to find fault anyway, it's just good fun and also a parable of the code which we can all rally against in good faith. Joseph Breen, like Hitler, was a seething racist and anti-Semite, so the Borscht Belt Runyonesqueness of Armstrong and his cohorts seem designed specifically to enrage him. Buster and his girl (Ida Lupino, unrecognizable in blonde hair and British accent) and their legions of muscular brothers and sisters (From the United States and the United Kingdom!) gleefully employ a barrage of health fad gestapo tactics against their louche business partners who are basically pimps, luring rich sleazeballs out to a country manor $300 a week health spa with the empty promise of late night "personal" training sessions with these perrrrfect specimens. but Buster has other ideas, including enforcing his 6 AM wake-up call for morning calisthenics-- through force if necessary. The sight of these Aryan supermen and women lifting the crooked old swindlers up out of bed and compelling them into the sunlight to do stretches is many things: a) a metaphor of U.S.-British imperialism, b) a semi-funny satire of America's endless see-saw between over-indulgence and prohibition and c) a send-up of the code itself, a copy of which is included in the set.

The code is hilarious to read, and valuable in the hand-typed memo form in which it is included. If you've ever received a thick memo of guidelines from some new job, you know the weird mix of subservience (you're happy to have a job) and outrage (how dare they harness your art to their hypocritical morality) that comes with reading a new set of 'guidelines.' The code existed, after all, prior to June 1934, it was just never strictly enforced. But the moral crusaders were as bad or worse than they are now, and you can feel the passive aggressive rage against them in the story line, while at the same time you don't really come away liking either side. The sleaze merchants are funny but not ha-ha funny, more like you're mentally casting Nathan Lane and imagining the whole thing revived on Broadway ala the Producers funny. And the fitness kids aren't really bland, just personal trainer cheerful and completely mad with power. The body vs. the mind in an endless war is a good idea, but where does it go?

The end result here is not that the shady swindlers get fit and happy, it's that now they can endlessly complain about unfairness, rather than having to motivate themselves to exercise. Fitness = happiness = blandness. It's our misery that makes us interesting; the first words you say as a child are usually negative. Language is built on expressing dissatisfaction. The ego hates the cleansing touch of endorphins. It's the endless war of self-discipline, of being too tired to move after work even as your legs are twitching to go. Happiness is seldom remembered happily, while misery is remembered with happiness. We drag ourselves to therapy and yoga, but go whistling gaily to our doom and decay. But all of it is ultimately transient. The only way you can ever lose a war is to pick a side. The tie game is perfect score, Grasshoppers! Now hit the showers!

(Thanks to Gary Tooze of Dvd Beaver for the groovy photos, read his review of the whole set here)

Link du Jour – The Unofficial Female Film Canon

Go immediately to House of Mirth and Movies to see “The Unofficial Female Film Canon,” an extraordinary annotated list of 101 films featuring female protagonists. Great illustrations, too. (Like the one of Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg’s The Scarlet Empress, above.)

Two Reasons I’m Glad Alain Resnais is Still Alive

1) Because the 86-year-old French maitre is still making movies (such as Les Herbes folles, currently in post-production); and

2) Because he’s around to personally supervise the DVD transfers of his early masterpieces (such as the Region 2 version of Muriel, ou Le temps d’un retour (above, top) reviewed by Glenn Kenny here, and the Criterion special edition of Last Year at Marienbad (bottom), to be released in regular and Blu-ray versions this June, along with two rarely-seen Resnais shorts).

[Thanks for the Muriel screengrab, GK.]

The Tale of 3 Pauls: Coincidence, Confusion & Sex

1. PAUL THOMAS (dir. Bad Housewives, The Masseuse, The New Devil in Mrs. Jones) - A real actor (he played Peter in the film version of Jesus Christ Superstar), Paul Thomas is that rarity in the world of porn, a genuine "human." Whether he's adopting a snarling Southern gym coach accent, or talking deadpan to the camera about the joy of "discovering virgins" Thomas brought real class, droll humor and even warmth to every performance, no matter how caricatured (such as the sexist chief pilot in Coffee, Tea or Me?), and us kids--taking advantage of lenient parental restrictions in the early days of VHS rentals--found in him a man we could look up to and trust as an older brother-ish guide to the world of sex; it somehow wasn't as dirty--but rather beautiful--in Paul's hands. His smooth vocal delivery, dewy eyes, decent height and crazy hair made him both oddly handsome and comforting (especially in comparison with his often sleazy cohorts) in an array of memorable films, many of which are now long banned since they co-starred the then under-age Traci Lords.

2. PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON (dir. Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will Be Blood) - Genius filmmaker whose second feature, Boogie Nights chronicles the world of late 1970s-early 1980s L.A. porn. Read my Andrew Sarris-canon entry for Paul Thomas Anderson, on Acidemic for more info.

PAUL W.S. ANDERSON (dir: Resident Evil Trilogy) - The problem with this guy is, he makes a slick looking product, but the Resident Evil films are almost impossible to love. They're like lengthy fanboy tributes to other movies, made by a team with lots of respect for the classics: Alien, Terminator, Road Warrior, Dawn of the Dead, Blade Runner, The Birds, even The Long Kiss Goodnight--but very few new ideas and almost no warmth or characterization. Somehow this Anderson managed to marry Milla Jovovich, the star of the Resident Evil series. They're a cute couple (above), but she deserves a guy who can make a film around her that holds up, like The Fifth Element.

From here we could go to the guy who directed the similarly sexy but inert Underworld trilogy and married Kate Beckinsale, but he's named Len Wiseman.

The connections? What about, how the Resident Evil films show us an America that has drifted far, far away from the languidly inclusive hedonism of the 1970s and into the cold, sterile implant and AIDS charred landscape of Raccoon City? Is that really a good thing? Would you rather have your teenage kids learning about the birds, bees from healthy, relaxed 1970s California swingers, or learning instead how to kill zombies while growing obese on snack treats? Choose your Paul carefully, oh mom or dad of tomorrow; our future is in your hands.

Meta-Meta-Sketch Comedy?

Post-modern sketch comedy is, by nature, repellent. This is by no means a new phenomenon: Monty Python had cops projectile-vomiting into their caps over crunchy frog when most of today's comedians were in diapers (if that). Still, there was always the feeling that Python posed a challenge that was decidedly comedic: if you can laugh at this, you can laugh at just about anything. Social iconoclasm and biological gross-outs aside, they did always seem to have our best interests (our funny bone, as it were) in mind.

And now for something completely different.

I was a rabid fan of the David Cross/Bob Odenkirk collaboration Mr. Show -- a stream-of-consciousness sketch program with a penchant for pithy, uber-cultural satire -- so when I discovered that Odenkirk was taking a new duo under his wing for Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming, I was intrigued. The two resulting shows, helmed by the belligerently puerile Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim (or simply Tim and Eric) have been among the most maddening, most puzzling, most intellectually discouraging, and most fascinating comedy shows I've even seen. Their first project, Tom Goes to the Mayor, was marred by a desire to organize the duo's lust for chaos in orderly narratives, but the follow-up, Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job -- an 11 minute send-up of public access programs and behind-the-scenes exploits of modern day career comedians -- might be the most creative thing on television right now.

Less inspired by the MO of patron saint Odenkirk and more from the surrealist leanings of Adult Swim fodder such as Sealab 2021, Awesome Show's structure and motifs have few antecedents. Guest stars have included Odenkirk as the occasional shoddy ad man, John C Reilly as a clueless doctor with unintelligible health tips, the haplessly amateur elderly friends of Tim and Eric who deliver lines without any hint of drama, or the incurably Scientologist David Liebe Hart -- a ventriloquist with less skill than Albert Brooks' faux-attempt at the parlor trick, if that's possible, who sings about the pure love he possesses for femanoid aliens and/or why you should stay in school. Endlessly spoofing the video technology of the 80s and 90s, the show features age-old super-imposed title techniques and (gasp) scenes shot on VHS with faulty tracking. Music is often stolen from Garageband loops or hammered out on antiquarian keyboards with buzzy, dated patches. Fairly ordinary skits about nonsensical products such as the B'owl (a stuffed animal hybrid of a bird and an owl) are likely to end with inexplicably slow zoom ins and creepy, casio synth composed music -- no hard cuts, fades, or dissolves for this crew. Even attempts at reoccurring characters, such as the hilariously shrimp, white wine, and lady-obsessed Beaver Boys, fall prey to oddly placed tape looping and jittery editing; rather than emphasizing performance, these guys know that real comedy magic happens in post-production, and they're perhaps the first (American) comedy duo to embrace this with a deconstructionist smirk.

A perfect example of why I both love and can't stand these guys is included in the video below. Ostensibly a spoof on juvenile, filial cliche, it features the duo repetitively screaming "Oh Mama" and destroying a basement while a loving mother looks on with a "boys will be boys" gleam in her eye. But it doesn't halt there. The skit starts to implode: Tim and Eric punch in footage of themselves doing something else (playing table tennis and laughing, it seems? does it matter?), juxtaposed to appear as though they're peering down at their infantile counterparts (the Kuleshov effect at work in reverse quite beautifully to confuse, rather than facilitate, psychological recognition). This has so many layers of potential commentary it's a challenge to navigate -- Hiroshima, Mon Amour eat your ash-speckled heart out. The skit ends with a characteristically bizarre capper courtesy not of some performance flourish, but of Photoshop. This is post-DIY, head-up-your-macbook-ass funny stuff, and as instantly unlikable as it is I have to admit I admire it, and guffaw uncontrollably whenever I see it.

If Python challenged us to laugh at the most disgusting, these guys challenge us not to laugh at the most perplexing. I lose every time.

Oh Mamma

Reagan, Watchmen, and The Architects of Fear

"I couldn't help but say to [Mr. Gorbachev], just think how easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held if suddenly there was a threat to this world from another planet. [We'd] find out once and for all that we really are all human beings here on this earth together."

-- President Ronald Reagan, 1985

Reagan’s idea is one that could have been – and most likely was – borrowed from an episode of The Outer Limits, specifically the episode entitled The Architects of Fear which you can view above. (Thank you, Veidt.com.) Produced by Joseph Stefano, directed by Byron (The War of the Worlds) Haskin from a teleplay by Meyer Dolinsky, and photographed in gloriously noir black & white by the great Conrad Hall, “The Architects of Fear” was first broadcast on September 30, 1963, less than a month before the assassination of JFK.

Which is not entirely coincidental. The Outer Limits was consistently and sharply critical of what Eisenhower had referred to at the end of his term as the military-industrial complex. So was JFK. JFK was taken out in November 1963. The Outer Limits – at least, the Joseph Stefano version of it – was cancelled roughly six months later. The times they were a-changin’.

In “The Architects of Fear” a covert group of American scientists, military personnel, and intelligence agents decide (just as Reagan concluded) that the best way to unite the world would be to simulate an alien threat. They attempt to do so by radically modifying the genetic structure of one of their own (Robert Culp) so that he literally becomes an *alien* (referred to in the show as a “Thetan”). Like so many of the best laid plans of mice and men, this particular bit of social engineering does not pan out as anticipated, world peace is not achieved, and lives are needlessly destroyed.

Readers of Alan Moore’s and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen know that Moore & Gibbons concluded their graphic novel with a similar plot device, an artificially manufactured extraterrestrial threat. Indeed, “The Architects of Fear” is seen playing in one of Moore & Gibbons’ panels. (Apparently, Moore came up with the idea independently, but someone told him that it had previously been used on The Outer Limits, so Moore decided to acknowledge the series.) Zach Snyder’s film version of Watchmen changes the execution of the idea – there is no giant extraterrestrial monster in Snyder’s film – but cleverly preserves the basic concept, a socially engineered threat designed to bring the world together. Like all covert plans, it contains the seeds of its own destruction. What if someone reveals the secret?

This plot device is one of the most controversial – therefore intriguing – aspects of Snyder’s Watchmen, a film that revels in its political ambiguities. Watchmen asks, “Would it be right to deliberately destroy hundreds of thousands – or even millions – of human lives if by doing so, one could achieve a lasting peace?”

Was Harry Truman right to drop atom bombs on the civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Are we having peace yet?