Wednesday, March 16, 2016
Merrick Garland
But this is not the real world, it's Bizarro World. As Garland stood with the President and Vice-President in the Rose Garden and got choked up by the honor, he had to know that this may all come to nothing, because the Republican senators are a big bunch of babies.
This has been coming since Scalia's body was still warm, when Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader, said that because it was the last year of Obama's term, the Senate would not even consider a nominee. This is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution. McConnell says let the people decide. Well, they did decide, back in 2012, and until Obama is out of the White House, January 20th, 2016 at noon, he is the president.
The obstruction here is so appalling it makes you want to pull the hair out of your head. That almost all the Republicans are in lockstep on this is maddening, because you know if it was their president they'd say the exact opposite. There have been many Justices nominated in an election year, and they've almost all been confirmed. Some are bringing up the ghost of Robert Bork. Well, Bork had his say, and was grilled for a week in hearings. It appears that most Republicans won't even meet with Garland, as if he had plague.
The talk of this nomination is Obama's decision and how it plays politically. He could have gone two ways--pick a nominee that would have excited the base or an ethnic minority and let that play all summer into the campaign. Ideally, it would have been a black woman or a Mexican-American (the latter would have been really fun to watch). Obama's probable second choice, Sri Srinivisan, is a South-Asian, which really doesn't have a large say in electoral politics nationwide.
But Obama took the second choice--the high road. He picked the guy most qualified, with no "firsts" about him. He is a white man (and Jewish, but there are currently three Jews on the Court). He is also 63, the oldest nominee since Lewis Powell in 1972. What Obama seems to be doing is saying, "Here is a guy who is eminently qualified, that many of you have said nice things about, and he will not be on the court for forty years, more like twenty. I dare you to take a chance that Hillary won't select someone younger and more liberal."
Some on the left are bemoaning that Obama took the second choice, complaining that's trying to placate the Republicans and is again playing chess. I'm not so sure--I think this nomination may be even more difficult to get around. Two of his other rumored choices were Jane Kelly, a woman from Iowa that would have nettled Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley, also from that state, and Kejani Jackson Brown, a black female judge, but a district court judge, who would have been jumping up an extra level and would have been susceptible to cries that she was unqualified. Obama seems to have just said, fuck it, and went with the most qualified guy. And, since Obama is so big on empathy, he might have felt sorry for the guy, who was a bridesmaid in the process of Obama's other two nominations.
So we watch Garland on the occasion of what should be the greatest day of his professional life, and wonder if it will go up in a puff of smoke. Consider Homer Thornberry. He is the last person whose nomination died on the vine (others have been rejected or removed their names from consideration--Harriet Miers and Douglas Ginsburg come to mind). When Earl Warren retired during Lyndon Johnson's term, Johnson attempted to move Abe Fortas to Chief Justice, and then replace Fortas with Thornberry, a congressman from Texas and a crony of Johnson's. But Fortas' nomination had all sorts of problems, such as accusations of impropriety, and by the time it was settled Fortas withdrew and Nixon was president. He named Warren Burger, and Thornberry was relegated to a very minor footnote in Supreme Court history. Will that be Merrick Garland's fate?
Tuesday, March 15, 2016
10 Cloverfield Lane
That film, a found-footage thing about an alien invasion of monsters, was more interesting in its delivery--shot entirely by video, much of it cell phones--than it being a good movie. 10 Cloverfield Lane doesn't have that gimmick, and is a much better movie, the kind that will probably be around when I'm thinking of my favorite films of the year.
The premise is simple: Mary Elizabeth Winstead is a young woman who has left her boyfriend after a fight. She's driving across Louisiana in the middle of the night when someone runs her off the road. She awakens shackled to a wall in a cinder-block basement. Is this another Saw film? No, her abductor/rescuer is John Goodman, who saved her from the wreck and is now protecting her. From what? "An attack."
There is another member of the group, who are in a particularly well-turned out bomb shelter under Goodman's farmhouse. He's John Gallagher Jr. (who I read is a star of Broadway musicals), a hick who believes Goodman and helped him build the bunker. But Winstead, naturally, is suspicious, mainly because of Goodman's great performance. He's rational one minute, then loony. When he mentions the Russians, and then talks about Martians, you know he's not all there, but do you dare go outside? What if he's right?
Most of the film is a three-character drama of paranoia and trust issues. Goodman keeps mentioning a daughter, whom he presumes is dead (he thinks everyone is dead) and is concerned enough about his dinner table that he insists on coasters.Winstead, who is our eyes and ears of the film, is also great as she has to negotiate Goodman's mania.
I won't discuss the ending here, as that would be sacrilege. It leaves itself open for another, and I'm up for it. I will say that the film is not so much a sequel to Cloverfield as just another take on that film. There could be hundreds of films like it, and those who say it's a new kind of franchise are right.
Monday, March 14, 2016
The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Seven
Another story that intrigued me at first but then kind of petered out was It Flows From the Mouth," by Robert Shearman, about a couple that have a customized fountain, complete with water spout through the mouth, in the likeness of their dead child. An old friend visits for the night, and has some very weird experiences, but nothing that pays off. It does have my favorite line of the book, though: "The death of a child is a terrible thing, and I'm not a monster. But if a child was going to die, than I'm glad it was Ian."
A pair of stories had to do with unearthing unimaginable things from far below. "Ymir," by John Langan, has a young woman exploring deep beneath extreme northern Canada, and calls upon Norse mythology (according to it, Odin and his brothers made the universe from the remains of a huge giant named Ymir). Rhoads Brazos "Tread Upon the Brittle Shell" has speleologists discovering something at the bottom of an immense system of caves, but I'm not quite sure what it was. Both of these stories illustrate a problem I sometimes have with these kind of stories--they never quite say just what it is that's unearthed. I understand the idea of leaving something to the imagination, but I end these stories with a furrowed brow.
We get one zombie story, and it's a dandy, "Chapter Six," by Stephen Graham Jones, which has academics traversing the countryside after a zombie apocalypse. "Zombies. Zombies where the main thing that mattered these days." We also learn that the best way to cannibalize is to suck the marrow out of bones. Another creepy story is "The Coat Off His Back," by Keris McDonald, which introduced me to the "Innocent Coat" and British highwayman Dick Turpin. I won't say more than that, other than that the title is very literal.
But the best stories are good old-fashioned tales of murder. "Outside Heavenly," by Rio Youers, features a grisly find by law enforcement. "Wingless Beasts" is a vicious little tale by Lucy Taylor involving the unrelenting nature of the desert, and a man who shouldn't judge by appearances. "Plink" is an extremely interesting story, especially for a teacher. The author is Kurt Dinan, and in my classes I will notice those who nod. "Winter's Children," by Angela Slatter, finds a woman looking for a notorious serial killer in an old-age home.
My favorite story, though, is Caitlin R. Kiernan's "Interstate Love Song (Murder Ballad No. 8)" about traveling twin sisters who murder their way across the countryside. Of all the stories in the book, this is the one that really got under my skin. Beyond being a good horror story, it's an excellent piece of literature, and begins: "The Impala's wheels singing on the black hot asphalt sound like frying steaks, USDA choice-cut T-bones, sirloin sizzling against August blacktop in Nevada or Utah or Nebraska, Alabama or Georgia, or where the fuck ever this one day, this one hour, this one motherfucking minute is going down."
On Datlow's Facebook page she has announced the contents and art for her next volume. Sign me up.
Sunday, March 13, 2016
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
The film is full of whimsy, so if one accepts that, it's rather enjoyable. It's also a strange hybrid of Forrest Gump and an Elmore Leonard novel (those pesky suitcases full of money) and a dash of Up.
The centenarian in question is Allan Karlsson, who, after getting explosive revenge on a fox that killed his cat, finds himself in a retirement home. Although he is not committed, he exits via the window, catches the first bus out of town, and ends up in possession of a suitcase full of cash. Another old codger (but not nearly as old as he is) accompanies him on an adventure that has them pursued by criminals but also gathering lost souls along the way, including a perpetual student and an elephant.
Intertwined with this plot is Allan's story. He is orphaned at an early age, and has a passion for blowing things up. Like Forrest Gump, he wanders through history, meeting famous people like Franco and Stalin and the idiot twin brother of Albert Einstein, working for both the Americans and Russians during the Cold War, and living a life without guile, being refreshingly honest to everyone. He also doesn't have a love life, since a eugenicist decides he must have negro blood because of his penchant for violence and has him neutered.
Directed by Felix Herngren, the movie is kind of a visual representation of the phrase "God looks out for fools." Allan, played by Swedish comedian Robert Gustafsson, gets in and out of scrapes usually through seemingly divine providence, althoug the film is completely secular. At times this gets to be too much, as when one gangster, who sounds exactly like Michael Caine, gets done in at a very opportune moment.
If a viewer doesn't demand too much credibility, this is nice little comedy with a pleasant demeanor.
Saturday, March 12, 2016
Spectre
Like an anthropologist from the future, examining pop culture from the distant past, I took in Spectre bit by bit, through a magnifying glass. The opening strains of Monty Norman's theme, the iris on the screen, soon inhabited by Bond, shooting straight at us, and then the screen covered in blood (I was put off that the iris does not then move around and focus on the pre-credit sequence--when did they stop doing that?) Then the pre-credit sequence, which finds Bond in media res, this time in Mexico City, where he is after an assassin and blows up a whole building, before having hand-to-hand combat in a helicopter.
Then the title song (which just won an Oscar) accompanied by writhing naked woman. It is, as they say, to laugh. Then the scene with M, and Bond getting chewed out (Bond has gotten in trouble so many times I would love to sit in on one of his yearly evaluations). We then get to the crux of things--Bond is up to something on his own, and M (Ralph Fiennes, better than the material) trying to get to the bottom of it. It seems that the higher-ups are combining MI5 and MI6 (one is domestic, one is foreign intelligence) and an unctuous bureaucrat (Andrew Scott) is going to phase out the 00 program and push to unite nine different nations' intelligence services.
Bond ignores orders and is off to Rome to attend the funeral of the man he just killed. He beds the first of his quota of two women per film (Monica Bellucci, still in widow's weeds) and realizes he's on to something big--an international criminal organization called Spectre. He has the dead man's ring, which gains him entry (for a top criminal organization, they should improve security) and learns that he knows the head cheese. He's then off to Austria to interview a former member of Spectre (Mr. White, who appeared in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace). Bond promises to protect his daughter for information. She turns out to be Lea Seydoux, a doctor who wants nothing to do with Bond until thugs try to kidnap her.
But of course she falls in love with Bond after one roll in the hay (he should quit the spy business and write a book on how to pick up women) and they are off to Morocco. Bond has a magnificently-done fist fight with a towering man (Dave Bautista) and then, in another Bond specialty, is made a guest of the villain, who is Christoph Waltz, urbane, witty, and psychotic.
Here is where the script, by four different writers, makes an attempt at something interesting but fail. It seems that Waltz, out of some kind of petulant sibling rivalry, faked his own death, amassed great amounts of wealth (just how we don't know), and is behind Scott's takeover of intelligence. He also has been behind all of the villains in the last three Craig films. This attempt at retro-fitting is really kind of dumb, since the idea obviously came far too late--maybe they should go back and insert Waltz into the shadows of the other three films. Also, in a tribute to older Bond films, they give him the name of Ernst Stavros Blofeld, who was in two Sean Connery films (and the one George Lazenby) and was the main inspiration of Mike Myers' Dr. Evil, complete with white Persian cat.
What I found somewhat interesting about Spectre is that Bond, when asked what he does, does not say spy, or secret agent, he says assassin. And, if you think about it, that's what he is, as whether by intention or not, in every film he dispatches the main baddie (in fact, Blofeld is the only one who survived for more than one film). In some ways Craig is the closest to what Ian Fleming intended--a living weapon.
The problem is that the makers of the film, starting with director Sam Mendes, seem to have been interested in making the ultimate James Bond film according to the template, and not attempting to do anything fresh or original with it. It makes for the cinematic equivalent of comfort food--macaroni and cheese, right from the box, with that disgusting yet tasty yellow powder. Yes, I liked Spectre, but I was laughing in the wrong places.
Though at the end of the film it appears Bond has quit his job we get the requisite title card, "James Bond Will Return." Craig has said he would rather slit his throat than play Bond again, but dollar signs may have changed his mind (Waltz is committed to two more films, but only if Craig returns). My idea, certainly not my own, is that 007 and the name James Bond are passed on to each agent who occupy it, much like M or Q. So maybe kill off Bond in one of these films and have him replaced by an actor who is a lot different--Idris Elba maybe, or a woman--Jane Bond. That would explain why Bond doesn't seem to age. But of course the film Skyfall, giving Bond a back story, ruined that idea.
Friday, March 11, 2016
Sound & Color
I already owned of the winners, Alabama Shakes Sound & Color, which won the Best Alternative Album category. I'm not sure what "alternative" means any more. It used to mean rock music that was not "classic" rock or punk rock or any other definable classification, but then became basically just rock music made after 1980.
But alternative suits Alabama Shakes because there's just no defining this sound. It's bluesy, it's at times jazzy, it's based on roots music, and it's for a more sophisticated ear--there's no "yeah, yeah, yeahs" here. It's rock music for adults--if a kid likes this sign him or her up to be a rock critic.
What Alabama Shakes' sound is most about is the voice of Brittany Howard. She sings lead on all the songs (as well as writing all the lyrics) and if there's anything identifiable about the group, it's her. But, of course, her voice is like a chameleon, sounding different on almost every track. She has an androgynous voice, so at times she's reminiscent of Janis Joplin, other times Smokey Robinson. She has a tattoo of the state of Alabama on her arm and there's more of that in her voice, as it can be gritty and dirty, but also purely beautiful. On "Guess Who" her voice is playful, seductive, while in "The Greatest" she lets rip with a guttural rock snarl.
Musically, the group lays down some nice riffs, such as Howard's guitar work on "Don't Wanna Fight," which also won a Grammy, and a great hook on "Shoegaze" Lyrically, most of the album is full of songs of love, both won and lost, but I think my favorite pair of lines are on "Miss You," when Howard, with a wistful twinkle in her voice, sings "I'm going to miss you, and you Mickey Mouse tattoo, and you'll be leaving in your Honda Accord, is that true?"
Alabama Shakes make rock music for people who thought rock music had ceased to be made anymore. No greasy kid stuff here.
Thursday, March 10, 2016
Athletes in Body Paint
But one thing has me interested. For several years now the magazine has used female athletes as models. This year they have Ronda Rousey, Caroline Wozniacki, and Lindsey Vonn pose in nothing but body paint, reducing the idea of "swimsuit" to new depths. I enjoy this on a purely visceral reaction, but I wonder what this does for other female athletes, both at the top of their games and not--is their are a hierarchy of attractiveness, that is absent in the world of male athletes?
I've been around a while and I don't remember this as being a long-time thing. For one thing, female athletes rarely received the kind of attention they do now. Back in the day Chris Evert and Nancy Lopez were considered attractive, but never posed in bikinis. I think it may have been Anna Kournikova, the beautiful tennis player who never actually won a tournament, that turned things around, and made it possible for mediocre athletes to gain fame as eye candy. Since then, Danica Patrick, Maria Sharipova, Hope Solo, and even Serena Williams have traded in on their looks. Williams, who is the most dominant female tennis player right now and perhaps the best player ever, posed on the cover of Sports Illustrated, having won the Sportswoman of the Year Award, in heels and long, bare legs.
What do female athletes who do not fit the norm for beauty think of all this? Certainly using one's attractiveness for money and fame is nothing new, but it is in the world of athletes. When a woman like Patrick, who is not the only female race car driver, becomes world famous based on her looks and not on her accomplishments on the track, what does this say about society at large? Plain Jane athletes need not apply for for endorsements?
The case of Ronda Rousey is fascinating. If she was just someone walking down the street she might turn a few heads, but given her stardom in MMA she is something of a goddess, despite her defeat some months ago. I admit to be captivated by her. I don't think of her as some kind of imaginary girlfriend--I don't think I'm secure enough to date someone who could beat the tar out of me--but her skill in marketing herself as a great athlete and a sex object is pretty skillful. I note that Holly Holm, who beat her, and Miesha Tate, who beat Holm, are also what most men would find attractive, and in a sport that one might expect to find women who look more like men.
All of this is a reminder of the double standard of gender in our society. No one really cares what Michael Jordan looks like, or Clayton Kershaw, or Peyton Manning, who has a forehead the size of an acre. Male athletes are celebrated for their accomplishments. In fact, pretty boys can be jeered. But women athletes still are judged by their appearance, and those that take the step of appearing in sexist publications, no matter how much lechers might like me might want to see them, are doing their sisterhood no favors. Rousey might want to concentrate on winning her title back, not frolicking on the beach in nothing but paint
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