Vid Game Cinema

Something’s gotta be missing (or lacking) in me, for sure. I just don’t get 300 (Warner, $29.98, 116 minutes), the box office- boffo Zack Synder adaptation of brilliant graphic novelist Frank Miller’s retelling of the ancient Battle of Thermopylae, with the Greeks going extreme mano a mano with the Persians, and the gory hound Spartans leading the way. Am I not fanboy enough to appreciate the virtual look of all it all- even though it’s as arresting and white hot as a videogame? Am I not gay enough to appreciate the thoroughly homoerotic undertone that the film bathes in? Am I not special effectas-friendly enough to go hog wild about the CG-enhanced imagery, enough CG-juice to cause a special effects junkie to OD? Am I not macho enough myself to truly dig the perpetual bloodbath the movie lovingly details? All of it seems (to me) to be empty and mindless, a pure exercise in tone, movement, and color-with nada underneath. I never felt my personal call-to-arms, never felt truly stirred, only vaguely puzzled, occasionally repulsed, and slightly transfixed by the nonsensical strurm and drang on display.

Vid Game Cinema

Something’s gotta be missing (or lacking) in me, for sure. I just don’t get 300 (Warner, $29.98, 116 minutes), the box office- boffo Zack Synder adaptation of brilliant graphic novelist Frank Miller’s retelling of the ancient Battle of Thermopylae, with the Greeks going extreme mano a mano with the Persians, and the gory hound Spartans leading the way. Am I not fanboy enough to appreciate the virtual look of all it all- even though it’s as arresting and white hot as a videogame? Am I not gay enough to appreciate the thoroughly homoerotic undertone that the film bathes in? Am I not special effects-friendly enough to go hog wild about the CG-enhanced imagery, enough CG-juice to cause a special effects junkie to OD? I am not macho enough myself to truly dig the perpetual bloodbath the movie lovingly details? All of it seems (to me) to be empty and mindless, a pure exercise in tone, movement, and color-with nada underneath. I never felt my personal call-to-arms, never felt truly stirred, only vaguely puzzled, occasionally repulsed, and slightly transfixed by the nonsensical strurm and drang on display.

Classic TV-Acceptable Movie

While not the knock-it-outta-the-park TV-into-movie that 1999’s South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut was, Matt Groening, James L. Brooks and their gang of writers (11 credited) have made a Simpsons’ movie that faithfully expands the traditional 20 minutes-plus classic show that most popcult devotees have come to both adore and respect. Without diving into vulgarity or carving out a plot that would be antithetical to the 400 shows already conceived, the movie trots out yet another of Homer’s endless (and admit it- mostly hilarious) boneheaded moves, and Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie, along with the other cool daddy denizens of this cartoon Springfield respond accordingly and amusingly. The movie attempts to plunge a bit deeper into the weirdly earned undercurrent of dysfunctional family emotion that typically spritzes up the sharp, caustic, and seemingly never ending comic pokes and asides the TV Simpsons breezily coasts along on, and the film achieves its desired effect—a lengthier, slightly more profound but equally frivolous Simpsons episode. Start planning for the sequel.

Cake or Death

Singer-songwriter-producer-musical guru Lee Hazlewood passed away this week without much fanfare or noise, befitting the long strange trip that comprised his career and his gone-daddy persona. A DJ—turned budding songwriter he first hooked up with buddy Duane Eddy and co-wrote and produced some of the twang master’s initial hits, including “Rebel Rouser”. His greatest claim to fame came from working with Nancy Sinatra, and producing-writing “These Boots Are Made For Walking” and "Summer Wine", but he also wrote Dean Martin’s “Houston”, made a memorable album as a part of a beauty and the beast duo with Ann Margret, and worked with the Chairman and Kingpin, Frank Sinatra, who got a particular kick out of him. (Hazlewood said the he and Sinatra got along famously, “Frank thought I was two-thirds funny, and I thought he was 90 percent clever.) Despite his glorified credits, Hazlewood’s finest moments may have come on his series of stranger and stranger solo works, dubbed by some “cowboy psychedelia”, a trippy mash of cocktail jazz, the Bakersfield sound, and beatnik tomfoolery with a result that somehow managed to combine elements of Sinatra, Gram Parsons, Leonard Cohen and a wacked-out Phil Spector, Hazlewood was a true space cowboy, best exemplified by his finest creation “Some Velvet Morning.” Hazelwood also chucked it all, and at the height of his commercial success, moved to Sweden in 1970. His last album, Cake or Death, released towards the end of 2006 after he was diagnosed with renal cancer, was a sarcastic meditation about his oncoming death, as unclassifiable as evuh, and per usual equal parts incomprehensible, clever, and funny. A discernible and acknowledged influence for one our finer contempo chameleons, Beck, and an nonpareil character whose work falls somewhere between kitsch, art, and outer space.

Low and Outside

There is absolutely no joy in Mudville (or anywhere outside of San Francisco), the (questionably) mighty Barry has won out. Of course the steroid accusations are more than bothersome, but the very persona of Barry, the sour, joyless, disdainful, artificially enhanced seeker of records, who, don’t forget, was once a sour, joyless, disdainful, legit All-Star and complete tool player, has always been a turn-off, and made it virtually impossible to root for the guy whose Godfather Willie Mays once epitomized as the high-spirited and uncontaminated spirit of the game, and whose contemporary baseball doppelganger Ken Griffey Jr. couldn’t run out between the lines without a grin, a lively step, consciously rejoicing in the plain truth of the pure rapture in playing a kids game as an adult living.

It may be time to push the Red Sox panic button. Never mind that the team is suffering through yet another post-All Star west coast potential death march, it’s those damn can’t-kill-‘em Yanks that have many of us breaking out in a cold sweat. A-Rod is having a stupendous year, everybody has started to hit, Giambi is coming back, and last night’s game had one of those bench clearing call-to-arms incidents, with Senior Citizen Clemens drilling a Toronto batter as a high profile rallying cry for a team that is already doing everything right. Uh-oh.

Open Letter to Nic Cage

Did everyone note with interest last week’s news item that had actor Nicolas Cage buying property in Middletown, RI?

Nic Baby,
It goes without saying that I truly dig you--as an actor, as a celeb, and as a man's man. When you touch down in RI look me up man, I promise to keep it on the QT, on the down low. I'd be the best guide you can find; I'll even buy the drinks, all of 'em. Here's what else beautiful little Rhody and I can provide.

1) Hairstylin’. As much as your are the acknowledged modern cinematic master of the hairpiece, RI, in fact just the cities of Cranston, Johnston, and Providence alone, would provide you with enough hair sights and styles to last you well into the twilight of your movie career. I can show you the hair magic.

2 ) Accentin’. You could just start with mine, still chock full of RhodeIslandese despite my state college education and a wealth of well (and) proper-spoken friends, then we could sit back and watch he the nightly local news (over drinks) which is resplendent with a wonderful array of variations, then we could hit the streets for a true accent cornucopia. Somewhere between the New Yawk tawk, the Connecticut click, and the Boston honk, lies the ugly beauty that is the unvarnished Rhody speak.

3) Imbibing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know you can find drinks and drinkers everywhere, but I can personally turn you onto a world of tongue-twisted daytime revelers, shot-induced serial tawkers, whiskey-soaked philosophers, and the like. Plus, we could either stay put at the same watering hole or hit a different spot (high-end or dive) every night for a month straight. (I'm a heavy drinker too, although much like I suspect you are, highly enlightened and largely coherent. Trust me, I’ve gotta ton of practice.)

4) Eating. Oh yeah, once you get outta Middletown I will guide through an array of eateries, easily on the level with the glorified dogwood that you usually get in and around LA. The best part being that odds are virtually no one will wolf on you as a Hollywood stud; you'd easily pass as one of my fellow labor buddies, or assistant to the Mayor in Cumberland, RI.

5) Cinematic Discourse. Of course I watched yer career unfold, and I’ve noted the furrowed brow, the burn-baby-burn eyes, the steely lips and quivering pout, and the blood and sweaty-sweat that you put into your craft. I watched you channel Elvis (in Wild at Heart and Honeymoon in Vegas), I’ve stared at you chewing bugs (in Vampire’s Kiss), I’ve admired you managing Bugs Bunny choppers (Peggy Sue Got Married), simpering with sensitivity (Valley Girl) , going mucho macho (Con Air and The Rock) selling your artistic soul (National Treasure) tag teaming with Sean “The Magnificent” Penn (Racing with the Moon), playing lonely second fiddle to Richard “Bloodless” Gere (The Cotton Club), donning the ultra-glazed ham (Face/ Off) , and doing it doleful (City of Angels), blue collar (World Trade Center), cartoonish (Raising Arizona), seri-ass (The Weatherman), whimsical (Adaptation), ironic (Lord of War),actorish (Birdy), rabbity (Bringing Out the Dead) and full-tilt boogie (Leaving Las Vegas). I’ll talk the talk about the method, your method, realism vs. exaggeration, Mad Francis Coppola, Marty The Man Scorsese, the Coen boys, Queen Shirley MacLaine, Davey Boy Lynch, Johnny Woo-Woo, big budget vs. no budget, artistic integrity and bold-faced commercialism, anything you want anytime, anywhere in the state of Rhode Island. Nic, you the man, and I’m your boy, you dig homey?

Sincerely,
Scotty D

Big Week for the Big Sleep

Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, dead this week at 89, was unarguably one of the foremost figures in the world of International cinema, post -World War II. Essentially, along with fellow visionaries Welles, Fellini, Truffaut, Kurowsowa, and a perhaps a handful of others, he helped reinvent the basic visual grammar of film, and in the course of doing so became among the most influential and most parodied filmmakers ever. His barren physical and psychological landscapes, his penchant for harrowing close-ups, and long, static camera set-ups made his batch of classics—The Seventh Seal (’57), Wild Strawberries (’57), The Virgin Spring (’60), Persona (’66), Cries and Whispers (73), Scenes From a Marriage (’73) (and that’s just the front line)---instantly memorable, and brain-searingly unforgettable. Bergman utililized the language of film to bring the movies a mix of emotive, intellectual, and psychological charges heretofore-unseen in much of world cinema. While Bergman has passed, obviously his films haven’t, and here’s to further generations of eager, sweaty young film students shaking their heads over the Strindbergian dialogue, scratching their noggins at the dripping symbolism, and poking their own sleeping asses during the long silences and pregnant pauses that mark the standard Bergman film, before they make up their minds to get out there and write a screenplay for Porky’s 5.

How strangely convergent that Italian movie visionary Michelangelo Antonioni passed away on the same day as Bergman. Both were masters (and originators) of the very language of film, both favored landscapes and characters saturated with ennui, both suited up as decidedly highbrow filmmakers, and both help make the very concept of the prestige foreign film as a commercially viable one to American audiences. Antonioni’s series of audacious and bewitching films (including L’Avventura ’60, La Notte ’61, L’Eclisse ’62, The Red Desert ’62, Blowup ’66, Zabraskie Point ‘70) were all visually arresting and hypnotically paced (although many Americans viewers will swear to date that sitting through an Antonioni movie was exactly like watching paint dry), all depicting terrains dominated by a pervading sense of alienation and dissolution, movies that place more import on architecture and spatial relationships than actual ones, movies where the panoramic lens forced viewers to peer beneath the surfaces on display in order to even take a stab at what propelled the enigmatic characters depicted. Antonioni’s finest, and perhaps most accessible film, might be 1975’s The Passenger, a truly poetic treatise about isolation, despair, and contemporary disintegration, with the filmmaker as elegant visual stylist burrowing deep into the heart of darkness as personified by Jack Nicholson in one of his finest roles.

From the highbrow right to the so-called lowbrow, ex-Tomorrow (NBC, 1973-1982) talk shot host and longtime network figurehead Tom Snyder, was the kinda guy who might have had a hard time keeping a straight face when discussing the symbol-laden movies of arty filmmakers like Bergman and Antonioni. Notoriously cantankerous and unabashedly egotistic, Snyder was a breath of fresh air in the late night TV atmosphere, he could and would as easily poke fun at himself at he would engage a guest a spirited Q & A. For late night audiences during his heyday, many of us up late and well fortified by a wide variety of substances, Synder was a pure gas, his show a dynamic little headtrip, and he will always be fondly remembered for engaging the likes of Iggy Pop, the Sex Pistols, Sterling Hayden or Charles Manson. Snyder, and the show, could be a laff riot, theater of the absurd, or actual unvarnished riveting and compelling television. Snyder, who was only 71 when he died this past week, will long be remembered for his colorful rough-around-the-edges style and the indelible tribute/imitation turned in by Dan Ackroyd during Saturday Night Live at its early zenith.