No-No to Juno

I hate to say it, but I am really not feeling Juno. It just didn’t do anything for me. In fact, it kind of irritated me. I didn’t hate it. But let me just say that a certain Mr. Wes Anderson has a whole lot of super-contrived quirk to answer for. All that plinky plonky new folk faux-awkward alterna-music. Yeesh. At least they used Velvet Underground’s “I’m Sticking With You” to show how it was actually done back when it was authentic. (N.B. for a far better use of that song, see Morvern Callar, which is an awesome movie. I fucking love Samantha Moton.) Juno struck me as a bad pastiche of the aforementioned Wes Anderson (the plinky plonky contrived alterna-music), a Daniel Clowes movie (comic book elements in the art direction), those fucking irritating Judd Apatow movies (conservative misogynistic morals dressed up as hip and young and cool – of which the pubic hair views in Knocked Up are the most offensive aspect, as opposed to the monogamy/chastity aspect of 40-Year old Virgin and the Papa Don’t Preach baby-keeping aspect of Knocked Up), and Dawson’s Creek.(sassy smart-talking teenagers – and there was a baby-keeping arc in Dawson’s Creek as well…featuring Heath Ledger’s similarly baby-keeping girlfriend, Michelle Williams…whoah, it’s all tied up with a neat little bow…).

I have no clue why Juno was nominated for Best Picture, nor why Ellen Page was nominated for Best Actress. She is super fucking annoying and from interviews I have seen/read, she wasn’t acting at all – they cast her because she was the exact personality they wanted. Plus, I hate to say it but I am sick of Michael Cera – um, Michael, there’s a call for you – it’s Range, because so far you have none. Yeah, he’s charming and shuffly and nerdy and awkward but he’s still playing George Michael. Sick of it.

I did like certain things about it – I liked Juno’s parents (JK Simmons is so awesome in everything. It’s a testament to his acting ability that I am able to forget Vern Schillinger - the white supremacist psycho Simmons played in Oz – and find him totally believable as a typical suburban dad) and I liked Jason Bateman (as usual) and Jennifer Garner (first time I ever said that). I thought their story arc was very realistic and not something you often see. I liked how I was tricked into thinking Jason’s character was cool and Jennifer’s was an uptight bitch, only to wind up feeling the total opposite (well, not that he became an uptight bitch…you know what I mean though). I felt like the audience was able to totally feel the same emotions Juno was feeling towards them as those emotions changed. I like it when you’re able to realize things simultaneously with the character, as opposed to the filmmakers lazily relying on the suspense created by you knowing something the character doesn’t no – i.e. there is no “No, Juno – he’s a dick!! He’s a dick!! Why can’t you see it??”

I also think that Jason’s character finding nostalgia for his youth through Juno is a good analogy for the film as a whole. I have this theory that all the people from about 30-50 who grew up when a freak was still a freak and a jock was still popular are now feeling like they want to go back and experience the acceptance – if not predominance - of the freak in today’s youth. Latching on to a movie like Juno makes people feel good about themselves, like they have some cool cred they did not get in high school because they were too busy being conformist. Does that make any sense?

RIP Ennis del Mar

So Ennis Del Mar is taking a dirt nap. Sucks. That was one of the best performances I have ever seen by an actor. I still break down in tears when I think of that amazing movie. Heath Bar was robbed of that Oscar (don't even get me started on Best Picture...) - PSH-Balanced was amazing as Capote, but it was an impersonation. When you take on a character who actually existed and whose tics and flourishes and cadence and mannerisms we all know, you may do it well but you're not creating anything. Heath Ledger created an authentically haunted human being from nothing but a few lines of fiction. He reached deep down into the darkest pit of hompohobia that lurks at the heart of every heterosexual man and used it to create an incredibly shattering and unforgettable character. I can think of few actors who have actually made me feel genuine emotional pain, as opoposed to merely sympathy. It actually hurt to watch him.

That said, I reckon he was a big old smackhead, and if you play with fire...I saw a recent interview with him and he was scratching all over his own arms in a manner most familiar. I think heroin is making another comeback. The "coke is it" craze of the past 10 years is over - there is a shortage of coke and it's super expensive and weak. Shitty 8 balls are going for like $175 right now. Meanwhile I keep seeing people with eyes that look like pools of oil, and there was that episode with Ariel Pink and the nodding off on stage, and check out Winehouse (if your eyes don't bleed from looking at her these days - now THERE'S someone it hurts to watch).

I Love This

I was just listening to this song and felt like I should post the clip from the movie because it is so awesome. This is Bing & Frank "acting" drunk (I'm pretty sure they were really plastered) in The "Well Did You Evah" scene from "High Society." They probably trash-talked women (Frank) and Jews (Bing) between takes, but I really don't care because this whole movie is genius and a testament to the perennial awesomeness of Cole Porter.

Way Better than a Romney Bumper Sticker

Yesterday (see below) I was in such a fowl mood and my day was so irritating that a Romney bumper sticker constituted the shockingly low high point of my day. Well, today is looking up. It seems that those lovely people at the Criterion Collection are releasing Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz on DVD today. Berlin Alexanderplatz represents a 15 1/2 hour long hole in my goal of seeing every second every committed to film by my ubermensch R.W. I am fairly obsessed with Fassbinder and readily admit it. Shockingly, I don't think I have really gushed about him much here. I'm going to save that for another time but, in brief, my favorite Fassbinder films (thus far) are Katzelmacher, Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven, Fox and His Friends, and (of course) Ali: Fear Eat Soul (people call this film Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, but the German, "angst essen seele auf", actually translates as "fear eat soul" and is how Ali delivers the line in his poor German). If you have never seen a Fassbinder film, Ali is the holy grail and I recommend you see it. As a tribute to Douglas Sirk's All that Heaven Allows, it is far superior to Todd Haynes's Far from Heaven, and that was a good film but no Ali. Prepare to have your heart taken out and bludgeoned into tiny pieces and then put in a blender and then thrown in your face. But prepare for this feeling to sneak up on you so slowly that at moments you may be quite bored and exasperated with the film's typical self-conscious artificiality. And as with any Fassbinder film, marvel at the fact that he made this pure masterpiece in the span of about five days and was coked, pilled-up, and drunk out of his mind for the duration of the production.

Ok now I am doing what I said I wasn't going to do which is gush. I could write about Fassbinder all day and then all night and then all day again. That's how much I love him. Suffice to say, Fassbinder fans have been waiting a long time for this day. Berlin Alexanderplatz, here I come.

On the Lighter Side...Police Academy Edition

You know it's time for an edition of "On the Lighter Side..." when Pat Robertson says or does ANYTHING and when R2 and I start praying that aliens will abduct us. This is especially indicative of a high stress level for me, since I am absolutely terrified of aliens due to watching way too many alien abduction TV shows as a kid. R2, and everyone else I know, make big time fun of me because I think Signs is the scariest movie ever made. If Bunches makes the clicking sound that the aliens make, I seriously hide under the bed for like a week. You better believe he is ALWAYS making that fucking sound. I found my black cashmere turtleneck under the bed the other day! Just kidding, I wish. I don't know where the hell that thing got to. I think the cats are wearing it while I'm at work.

But I digress (shock!). Lately I have been thinking quite a bit about the Police Academy movies. Oh, who am I kidding - I am always thinking about Police Academy. Mahoney, Lassard, Mauser, Sweetchuck, Hightower, Tackleberry, Jones & Hooks, blonde lady with big boobs in the wet t-shirt who fucks the Japanese dude...I love you all. But my true love is Proctor. Proctor has to be among the all time greatest bumblers in cinema history. Here's one of my favorite scenes featuring Proctor. I'm wondering if the phrase "salad tossing" was in usage when this movie came out, because if it was, the reference to "the best salad bar in town" is devillishly clever. Oh, and by the way, has a sex act ever been as poorly described by its nickname as salad tossing? I mean, there is not even a hint there as to what's going on. I had to google that shit!

On that note, do NOT google "teradactyl" if your grandmother is in the room. For some reason my whole family and I were discussing the word roots in that particular dinosaurs name (yes, we are all raging nerds, apparently, not just me), so I googled it...suffice to say, teradactyl is not just a flying dinosaur anymore. I found two other defnitions, neither of which were grandmother-in-the-room-friendly!

Back to Police Academy. My favorite is #2 (if you were Mahoney, you would make a joke of that). It was the first one I saw. I was 10. I must have seen it 50 times. It is one of many 80s movies to feature wild and crazy punks who have nothing in common with actual punks.

Mahoney story: One time R2 and I were on the beach in Queens (shut up) and retired to the sand dunes to blaze a fatty. Upon returning to Bunches and our potato chip-encrusted bedsheet/makeshift beach blanket, a cop walked by. Being stoned and paranoid, we were all "look cool, be cool, cop, cop!", but he passed on by. Literally one minute later, a cop went by on a bike. We were like, "Huh?" Then, a police helicopter flew by. By now we were laughing. Then Bunches says, look, there's a cop on a horse. We were like, ha ha, very funny, but there really was a cop on a horse! Then one went by in one of those little carts with three wheels. Then a car. There were other modes of transportation involved (I think we counted 10 total - a little help, R2?), but the piece de resistance was a cop on a four wheel ATV - just like Mahoney in the opening scene of Police Academy 2!! Needless to say, we were already almost dying laughing, but this seriously nearly killed us.

There are so many more great things to say about Police Academy. Citizens on Patrol is pretty fucking good, for example. I love that David Spade and Ratner From Fast Times are skate punks (a later variation on the punk theme, and just as poorly rendered in most every case) and a bunch of big time skaters from the 80s are in it (another 80s movie standard - where there are poorly rendered skater characters, there are actual real skaters standing right next to them who apparently had no input at all). There is not enough room in the world to say all that has to be said about Police Academy, and I have work to (very reluctantly) do.

Oh My God Oh My God Oh My God

Okay, I can barely contain my excitement. It is literally like trying to stuff a sleeping bag back into its carrying case (or an umbrella, your choice). I have been quietly freaking out for several months now at the prospect of the adaptaion of "No Country for Old Men", the newest Coeh brothers movie. I knew it was comng, but I had no idea it was coming NEXT WEEKEND!!!!! While I am embarassed to admit that I have neither read this nor any other Cormac McCarthy novel (which I plan to do immediately - I want to read this before the movie comes out), I have seen every single Coen brothers film at least once. Yes, even The Ladykillers, god help me (I think I have written before about how a major fuck-up only further endears those I love to me because it makes me feel better about myself - e.g. I could kiss Martin Amis for writing Night Train). I would estimate that I have seen Raising Arizona well over 100 times. I often get that Barton Fink feeling. My entire vocabulary is littered with Coen-isms. I will never "be right back" - no, I will always "be back directly." Nine times out of ten, when Orangello meows to me, I say "Ju said it mah, don fuck wid da jesus." I have not called a white russian a white russian for some time now. I often implore Bunches to look into his heart. Food is not good, but "pretty darn good." And so on.

The fact that Javier Bardem is starring in this new film only quintuples my excitment. I love, love, love him and think he is not only one of the handsomest men to ever draw breath, but also one of the greatest actors to ever grace the screen. I find it difficult to think of "Before Night Falls" without sobbing uncontrollably.

The sense that he conveys of a free spirit embarking on life with wild-eyed enthusiasm, drinking up experience and just truly living, and the sense of that free spirit being crushed by the man, the way the life and color and expression and joie de vivre drains from his face by the end of the film... it is so fucking heartbreaking that I actually think it made me cry harder than Jack Twist in Brokeback (am I alone in thinking Jake Gyllenhaal really nailed that shit? God he was just so sweet and optimistic and then so horribly, horribly crushed, and the fact that you don't see it, and it's kind of vague..oh man...). Javier made me forgive Julian Schnabel for both Basquiat (Julian, you WISH you looked like Gary Oldman, and, hate to say it, David Bowie's Warhol is a distant third to Crispin Glover's [#2] and Jared Harris's [#1], and please somebody fold Claire Forlani into a paper airplane and throw her into the caves at Tora Bora, post haste!! I can't believe John Favreau called her skanky irritating ass that many times and was actually bummed that she dissed him. Score, I say!) and those fucking broken dishes paintings. Javier was straight-up ROBBED of the Oscar for that role. ROBBED, I tell you! Yeah, Gladiator whupped major ass and made me actually want to sit on Russell Crowe's short obnoxious Australian wanker lap for a minute, but Oscar-worthy? Over BARDEM? NO! His NOSE deserves a fucking Oscar, for god's sake. Best Performance by a Nose in a Real Life Role.

I am not a violent person, but Javier's rugby nose has made me contemplate on more than one occasion hitting Bunches in the face with a shovel in an attempt to recreate it (and he has a nice broken nose already). Growing up, my parents had this really cool black horse's head sculpture that looked really fancy and heavy but was in fact really light like those fake rocks they would stack up all around Adam Curry/Ricky Rachtman on the Headbanger's Ball set. I was always fascinated by the beautiful lines of that horse's face - it didn't look like a real horse, but more like a horse as painted on a Greek vase (a krater or an amphora or whatever - yeah I took Art History 101, so what?). Javier Bardem looks exactly like that horse. I used to sit and run my hand along its smooth flat black nose, sometimes with my eyes closed. If I ever meet Javier, I will ask him if I can do the same thing to him. And I will now resist the urge to talk about running my hand aong other parts of him with my eyes closed. Fuck, I mentioned it!!! Sorry, but me gusta, Me really, really gusta.

In closing, here's hoping that a) No Country for Old Men is the return to form for the Coen brothers that people are saying it is, b) Javier wins an Oscar this time, like people are saying he will, and c) I make it to next weekend without spontaneously combusting out of sheer excitement as I am thinking I might.

The Kingdom (of Dirty, Dirty Ay-Rabs)

To be fair, I have not seen this film and should not be making assumptions about it. However, a) that is no fun, b) I have heard quite a bit about this film from trusted (aka lefty) news outlets, and c) I know enough about Hollywood movies to be able to predict the entire plot arc and sum up all the major characters in most standard Hollywood fare, including this drivel. I mean, seen one, seen 99% of them. And yes, I adore Chris Cooper and Jason Bateman, but that doesn't mean I need to watch either of them take a shit, which I suspect is basically what I would be doing if I saw this movie. Jamie Foxx I could cheerfully slap. Jennifer Garner I could cheerfully...zzzzz...sorry, I fell asleep for a second there. Where was I? Oh, of note: for some bizarre reason, Anne Deavere Smith is in this movie. What the fuck? Is this some kind of joke? The again, she was on The West Wing (never seen it, but thanks to IMDB, I know she was in it). I'm going to chalk this up to research. But it's kind of like Cornel West being in Norbit 2.

Anyway, as you all know I like to say Michael Haneke's name every five seconds or more often, if possible. Conveneintly for me, his genius ass is relevant to this discussion. There was an excellent article about him in the Times magazine last Sunday. (note: I just had a truly harrowing Bad Georgia moment when I saw that Haneke will be personally introducing a screening of Funny Games on October 15 at MoMA. This would never, ever happen here, and I am having one of those "why am I living here?" moments). He said some stuff in this article that seems especially apt in light of the latest entry in propganadistic, jingoistic genre of Ay-rab-bashin, foreign policy-advancing American cinema that is The Kingdom. Here goes:

“Political manipulation is rampant in the American media,” Haneke told me over lunch in downtown Manhattan last winter. “It’s present in the movies too, of course. It’s everywhere. I teach filmmaking in Vienna, and I like to show my students ‘Triumph of the Will,’ by Leni Riefenstahl, then something by Sergei Eisenstein — ‘Battleship Potemkin,’ for example — and then ‘Air Force One,’ the movie in which Harrison Ford plays the U.S. president. Each of these films has a distinct political agenda, but all make use of exactly the same techniques, all have a common goal — the total manipulation of the viewer. What’s terrible about the Harrison Ford film, though, especially terrible, is that it represents itself as simple entertainment. The audience doesn’t realize there’s a message hidden there.” Haneke sat back and shook his head gravely.

(then further on in the article)

Haneke has his own theory for the divergent routes taken by Hollywood and Europe, one in which, perhaps not surprisingly, the darker side of German and Austrian history plays a central role. “At the beginning of the 20th century,” he told me, “when film began in Europe, storytelling of the kind still popular in Hollywood was every bit as popular here. Then the Nazis came, and the intellectuals — a great number of whom were Jewish — were either murdered or managed to escape to America and elsewhere. There were no intellectuals anymore — most of them were dead. Those who escaped to America were able to continue the storytelling approach to film — really a 19th-century tradition — with a clear conscience, since it hadn’t been tainted by fascism. But in the German-speaking world, and in most of the rest of Europe, that type of straightforward storytelling, which the Nazis had made such good use of, came to be viewed with distrust. The danger hidden in storytelling became clear — how easy it was to manipulate the crowd. As a result, film, and especially literature, began to examine itself. Storytelling, with all the tricks and ruses it requires, became gradually suspect. This was not the case in Hollywood.” At this point, Haneke asked politely whether I was following him, and I told him that I was. “I’m glad,” he said, apparently with genuine relief. “For Americans, this can sometimes be hard to accept.”

I love this guy. I really, really love him.

A Cool Twist on a Horrible Cliche

As previously ranted about, I despise unnecessary remakes of movies, and am essentially of the opinion that every remake is unnecessary, with few exceptions. What I hate the most about remakes (aside from the fact that they assume we are all dolts who can't watch stuff in black and white or read subtitles, and aside from the fact that the remake phenomeon is indicative of Hollywood's unwillingness/inability to make anything original other than a morning turd) is that they strip away the original intention of the director and assume that story is everything to a movie. They also seriously alter the original film by replacing actors who are relativley unknown, either by virtue of being foreign or by virtue of being from another era, with stars as familar to us as our own families. Okay, yes, granted, we can of course "know" these old/foreign actors, but the distance of geography or time adds something to a movie, making it easier to truly appreciate the stuff we don't appreciate when we watch a Hollywood blockbuster. As fine of an actor as some big Hollywood star may be (and I can't think of many I think are even particularly good), it is very difficult to tell because we know too much about them and their personas become inseparable from the role they are supposed to be playing. That's why it's called a "star vehicle." And it seems to be in the very nature of the remake that it routinely feature exactly these type of stars. I guess the kind of lazy-ass who wants to remake a movie is the kind of lazy-ass who doesn't want to think too much about casting, just making money.

So imagine my happy surprise today as I discovered that one of my favorite directors, Michael Haneke (previously glorified here), is remaking his own foreign language masterpiece, Funny Games, for an English-language audience. Oh man, this movie is so awesome, and so brutal, and probably wouldn't get remade by an American studio anyway because the brutality of it is so cerebral. It's about a home invasion in which two overprivileged little fuckers take a nice, normal family hostage at their vacation home and (spolier alert!) psychologically and physically torture them before killing all of them. Turns out they did the same with the neighbors, too. The conciet is not altogether unfamiliar, but what makes the movie so great is that Haneke isn't simply entertaining us by showing us a scary story - he's actually torturing the audience too. This is the most common thing you will hear about Haneke and it is spot-on, particularly in the case of Funny Games. It lulls you along with what should be really scary, harrowing fare but which is merely entertaining as you have seen something resembling it a hundred times before in horror movies and thrillers. Then, Haneke pulls the rug out from under you and makes you, the viewer, a part of the action. The killers start manipulating the actual film istelf, not just the story line, and even talk to the audience. All of a sudden you are chillingly aware of how numbed you have become to the horrific. How it's just popcorn to you, and it shouldn't be. It doesn't hurt that it's also a great movie, well acted and fantastically written and paced.

So yes, I am okay with this remake. The cast makes me more than okay with it. Tim Roth (where has he been? i have definitely missed him) plays the patriarch. Naomi Watts plays the matriarch. I didn't think much of her until I saw Mulholland Drive. She does fear and desperation better than most, I think, and she kind of looks like a real person. My favorite piece of casting, though, is Michael Pitt as the far more clever and sadistic of the two killers, the undisupted leader who often seems to be torturing his sidekick as much as his victims, and Brady Corbet as the slow, picked-on sidekick. I really like both of these young actors. Michael Pitt did the heartless privileged youth thing to perfection in Bully (another must-see - the best Larry Clark movie, if you ask me), and Brady Corbet did the easily-led loser sidekick to the ammoral sexy guy equally well in Mysterious Skin (another out of control awesome movie, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is amazing in it...love him...).

Bring it on, Haneke! I would of course rather that you make another amazing original movie, but whatever. This I can live with.

Shout at the Casting Agent!!!

As a youth, I spent what seemed like an eternity but was probably more like one year being obsessed with Motley Crue - in my chronological pantheon they were the bridge between Duran Duran and Guns n' Roses (brief predicatble Poison dalliance before GNR, but we won't count that...can we not count that, please?). I started with Theatre of Pain but loved them enough to actually backtrack and get Shout at the Devil and Too Fast for Love - this was probably the first time I manifested any interest in what a band had done before I discovered them, so I guess it was kind of my first mature fandom experience. I remain a fan to this day, although my favorite has definitely switched from Tommy (idiot!) to Nikki (hot and witty!). I even finally realized my long-lost dream of seeing Crue perform live when they returned to Phillips Arena - Atlanta's answer to Madison Square Garden - to pick up where they had left off a year earlier when Vince Neil had broken his ankle during the 4th song while jumping off a riser. One for Razzle, I guess (in case you don't know, Razzle was the drummer of Finnish glam punk band Hanoi Rocks and was killed in a drunk driving accident one New Years Eve, with Vince behind the wheel. I had a cat named Razzle after him. Razzle the cat didn't fare much better in the end but Vince Neil stayed out of that one.).

A couple of years ago an autobiographical book called The Dirt came out, chronicling the crazy rock n'roll adventures of the Crue in attaempt to settle, for once and for all, the ongoing debate over just who is the world's hardest-partying rock band (claims to the throne have been made for Van Halen, Aerosmith, Zep, the Stones, and G n' R). These adventures include the aforementioned manslaughter, plus a couple of near-death drug overdoses (Nikki was actually declared dead on one occasion, but the paramedic was a huge Crue fan and insistd on giving him further adrenaline shots. Nikki escaped from the hospital, went home, and shot up. Rock n' fucking roll.), firey marriages to various celebrities (usually blonde TV stars, strippers, or mud wrestlers, although Nikki was married to Prince protege Vanity, who is now born-again), Vince'slawsuit of a chemical company after his daughter died of cancer caused by toxic dumping) and much inter-band strife, with various departures and retirns, punches in the face, slamming doors, etc.

Hollywood, in its continuing resistance to developning original story ideas, knew a good thing when it saw it and decided to adapt The Dirt into a major motion picture (what does that mean, exactly? I love that we still use that phrase - it's so old school, very studio system. My other favorite is "the motion picture event of the ___ [insert season]"). Since this adaptation was announced, much speculation has focused on casting. So far, there are no confirmations and scant "official" rumors ("official" meaning it's actually on IMDB) - three, in fact. The word is that Christopher Walken will play Ozzy Osbourne (this idea I like) and Val Kilmer will play David Lee Roth (this idea I do not like - yes, I will be in love with Chris Knight and Nick Rivers, but have you SEEN him lately? He actually makes the David Lee Roth of today look svelte, and I'm guessing they need an earlier incarnation of Dave for this movie). Finally, the Crue will be played by unknowns, but that's no fun as far as specualtion goes.

So the big question is, who will play the Crue??? Who?? I think about this alot. I don't LOVE any of my ideas thus far, but here goes: Vince Neil=Steve Zahn. Seriously, that's all I have. I was thinking Vince Vaughan as Tommy, but just being a tall idiot isn't good enough. Walken would actually make a good Mick Mars - remember how creepy Walken looked with long, greasy black hair in Search and Destroy? (he had just finished filming this and still had that hair when he came into the Whitney on my first day working there and TRIED TO PICK ME UP, succeeding in scaring the hell out of me). Nikki is the hardest because I love him so it really matters. Gina Gershon in drag would actually make a great Nikki, but people would say that's a rip off of Cate Blanchett playing Dylan (snore!).

Help me out here, people. Ideas?? Predictions? How cool would it be if all the wives played themselves?? I guess no-fun Vanity is out, but Larry Cahrles, who directed Borat is directing The Dirt, and he got Pammie for Borat, so who knows?????

Ingmar Bergman's Dukes of Hazzard Episode

This is too clever and hilarious not to post.

Fun fact about Georgia: Ben Jones, aka Cooter, was a Georgia Congressman from 1989-92. He was a Democrat.

Auteur Deathwatch

RIP Bergman!
Arrivederci Antonioni.

Who's next?

Russ bets Bogdanovich or Godard (surely from lung cancer). R2B2 says Bertolucci. They're dropping like flies!

Half-Assed 80's References

Okay, I am about to make a major fool of mysef with this post so let me just get it out of the way. Yes, I have seen every episode of Friends, a good bit of "Will and Grace", and the movies "Thirteen Going on Thirty" and "Music and Lyrics." Shut up.

The point is, beyond the other sins commited by both of those movies and that particular tv show (which I insist had moments of being very, very funny even though it irritated the shit out of me in principal), there is one really, really egregious sin. The ham-fisted 80's reference that does not stand up to scrutiny.

My theory is this: writers, directors and producers in Hollywood know that people just love the early 80's. And they, in turn, love this fact about people. It means that, in lieu of actually writing something clever, funny, or original, they merely need contrive the grounds for a flashback and slap a Flock of Seagulls wig, Members Only jacket, or what have you on one of their characters. Hilarious! Can you BELIEVE we ever dressed/coiffured ourselves like that? I LOVE this show!!! Problem is, the characters who supposedly did just that are always, ALWAYS too young to have been of the age they are supposed to be in said flashback. You see, the aformentioned writers, producers, and directors are as equally aware of the public's desire to see relatively young flesh on screen as they are to see an ironic appearance of an off the shoulder sweatshirt with big flourescent numbers all over it. Fortunately, there is one other thing by which the aformentioned writers, producers, and directors swear: that we, the viewing public, are utter doofuses (I am certainly not arguing with them there). Hence, they merrily disregard the impossible mathematics of a Chandler Bing who is 28 years old in 1997 yet had Flock of Seagulls hair in college.

Let me break it down for you doofuses: It's 1997. Chandler is 28. People go to college from 18-22. At best, Chandler went to college in 1987. "I Ran" was a hit in....1982. By 1987, if you had hair like that at college, you were beaten bloody. Shit, if you had it in 1984, you were beaten bloody. Hair moved fast back then! To put it in perspective, 1987 was the year that Duran Duran released "Notorious," their first of many COMEBACK attempts (and the last successful one). By 1987, George Michael wanted our sex and had stubble all the damn time (turns out he didn't want my sex after all, but I knew that when "Make it Big" came out in '84 and I was 8 or 9). Shit, Bon Jovi were where it was at in 1987. And I ain't talkin' no "Runaway" - I'm talkin' "Livin on A Prayer" (and endin' my gerunds with apostrophe N's accordin'ly)

In other words, Chandler Bing was a dweeb who wore cardigans, but even HE would have been done with Mike Score's hair by 1987. He certainly wouldn't have found anyone to be in his band. And his hair was no anomaly - Ross was wearing a Members Only jacket and playing Axel F on the synth. Fortuntaely for me, I don't recall what incorrrect items the remainder of "the gang" was wearing.

Meanwhile, in Will and Graceland, Grace is seen to be sporting Moon Unit Zappa's hair from "European Vacation" way too late. In "Thirteen Going on 30", Jennifer Garner - 30 in 2004 - charms junior high school sweetheart (and semi-retarded sad sack if you ask me, but I'm just saying that to annoy R2B2 and all my other friends whose panties inexplicbably wad at the sight of this dude, and YES, I saw "You Can Count on Me", R2) Mark Ruffalo....by doing the perfect rendition of the Thriller dance that they once did together. When they were 13. In 1984. Making her not thirty, but a shockingly unappealing old hag of 33.

Now "Music & Lyrics". This is the movie in which Hugh Grant plays a washed up 80's pop star from a band called Pop! which is an amalgamation of early Duran Duran (white shirts with ribbon ties) and "Make it Big"-era Wham! (their hit ballad is clearly "Careless Whisper" and the group consisted of two guys, one of whom rode on to solo glory while the other vanished). So...the movie comes out in 2007, 25 years after early Duran and 23 years after early Wham!. It just doesn't add up.

I am nitpicking here. We are talking a few years. But come on, people. If someone made a movie set in 1963 which featured hippies smoking doob at Haight-Ashbury, people would crab. If someone made a movie set in 1952 with people bombing Japan, there would be complaints. Why this disrespect for the early 80s? I say it's about the stupidity of the audience as well as the condescension, age-ism, and lack of creative spark of those creating today's mainstream entertainment. They are trying to appeal to my coveted generation, and they assume we either don't know the difference or are so thrilled to see a Human League reference that we don't care. They could solve this by letting their characters be a little older, but they think no one wants to watch people over 40. They could make equally fun (and not completely shopworn) late-80's/early 90's references - big hair! stonewahsed jeans! Laura Ashley dresses with choker necklaces! Oh the fun we had back then! But no. Lazy, patronizing, and youth-woshipping, they are probably developing an early 80's episode of "Hannah Montana" as we speak. What could be cuter than an embryo in a "Choose Life" shirt???

It's Virtually the Same Movie

When I was in college, a friend of mine got an A +++++++++++++++ for writing a cinema studies paper about how Cape Fear and What About Bob? are basically the same movie. Think about it, he was totally right on.

Anyway, bizarrely, we watched Aki Kaurismaki's The Man Without a Past the night after we watched Down and Out in Beverly Hills, and the similarities are crazy. Watch them. I'm serious. Man from nowhere with a mysterious past comes into people's lives and changes them for the better. A dog figures heavily in both. Male friendship is a major theme of both, and alcohol is the lubricant that pats that friendship on the bottom and moves it along.

A Red-Letter Day!!! Hurrah!!! Jodorowsky Films on DVD!!!

I have just gone from irrevocably pissed off to beyond ecstatic in about 1.5 seconds. I just found out that one of my greatest desires is soon to be satisfied - I will soon own Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain on DVD. This is possibly my absolute favorite film of all time - the only other contender is Luchino Visconti's The Damned (Russ has a flair for melodrama). For the past 11 years, I have watched a grainy VHS bootleg of this masterpiece with Cantonese subtitles, waiting all the while for the day when it would finally be given its due and committed to DVD. That day is coming, and it is May 1, when those fucking brilliant geniuses at the Criterion Collection will release "The Films of Alejabdro Jodorowsky", a three-movie box set including The Holy Mountain, El Topo, and Fando y Lis. Topo and Fando are both great...but the Holy Mountain...well, it's...holy...

For those who have not heard of Jodorowsky, he is a Chilean-born Ukrainian Jew and quite possibly the most amazing mad genius in the history of cinema. The Holy Mountain is an epic following the quest of the Jesuses of each of the 9 planets to attain immortaility by climbing said holy mountain, with an undercurrent of caustic commentary about colonialization, sexuality, and religion. It is very diffuclt to convey the spectacle of this film and it really must be experienced. For example...how do you convey Jesus waking up in a room full of thousands upon thousands of replicas of himself, discovering they are made of bread, and eating them? A Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes that is the equivalent of shouting "fire" in a crowded theater - the bounty of bread and fish lead only to a greed-fuled pandemonium of violence among the poor. A re-enactment of the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs in which the Aztecs are lizards - dressed as Aztecs - and the Spaniards are frogs - dressed as conquistadores - arriving on mini-ships and invading a min-Aztec landscape? The Christs of the Nine Planets include a designer of religious themed-weapons and a guardian of a holy sanctuary of castrated penises. Jodorowsky himself is an alchemist who turns Christ's poo into gold. An Army parades with crucified skinned lambs. A wealth of physically disabled actors - Jodorwsky was known for his commitment to equal rights for the disabled and cast many disabled actors in his films. An old man who greets a bevvy of child prostitutes by removing his glass eye and lovingly clasping it into the hand of the youngest girl as tears run down his face.

This movie will blow your mind. I promise. See it!!! It is already available to be saved to Netflix for when it is released (May 1).