Have an Existential Christmas (Circa 1965)

(Reprinted from PopKrazy)




Yessir there’s plenty of Christmas pop and rockers, do-wop-a-doers, and soul twisters. They never stop coming, every year brings more remakes and holiday pastiches and original turns, a few good uns too; the rock and pop Christmas tune never going out of sight or out of style. Had a million different favorites myself, liked ‘em serious, solemn, sexy, soulful, antic, blasphemous, tawny, jazzy, woeful, sarcastic, folkifized, solo Beatle, real Beatle, Beatle-like, corny, powerpoppish, reflective, heartfelt, satirical, rebellious, preachy, old school, trad, subversive, and even sweet.

Right now, today, this December, my current absolute fave rave, the one spinning repeatedly on my internal holiday season turntable, the current Tops of the Christmas Pops is The Sonics 1965 “Santa Claus.” It’s a propulsive and molten stomp all over the still ruddy cheeked Santa archetype, a plaintive holiday yelp with a backbeat (signaling “Farmer John”) where the lead vocalist (with a truly glorious garage rock guttural howl) asks Santa for no more than “a brand new car, a twangy guitar and a cute little honey with lots of money.” The cool daddy holiday surprise is that this early 60’s version of Santa lays the shattering truth on the entitled-mondo- boot-wearing-rebel-with-a-bleat–it’s-always-about-me-shaking-my-hair-budding-protest –kid with a stark indifference, as the dumbfounded singer exclaims in the chorus:

“And he just say nothing,

Nothing

Nothing

Nothing

Nothing

Nothing

Nothing

Nothing”

Right after the first delivery of the in-yer-face chorus sputters a pluck and warble guitar solo, engulfed in garage rock bravado, with pure torture-the-chicken fidelity, finally roaring its way into some emblematic Christmas fuzz. Who knew? The Sonics are certifiable sonorous Christmastime carolers, not only just one of the very first of the garage rock pioneers. I never really understood the great American northwest, but The Sonics are among those indigenous discoveries that help make think that that portion of this country is downright mysterious, impenetrable, pure left field baby. Like me, on this just passed-over Christmas, the Sonics fiercely just said nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing …in a Merry Christmas kinda way.

It’s Still a Complex World

The following column is reprinted from the December issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem necessary to leave out):

Eyes Wide Open
By Scott Duhamel



Twenty years ago Providence was abuzz in the wake of the release of Complex World, a sly home grown satire with a dose of rock and roll set at Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel, featuring the songs and acting contributed by the likes of Roomful of Blues, NRBQ, and one time kings of the downtown scene, The Young Adults. Co-written and directed by Jim Wolpaw, who had already managed to grab a vaunted Oscar nomination in 1985 for Best Documentary Short Subject for his droll and insightful Keats and His Nightingale: A Blind Date, the movie and its attendant screenings at the Cable Car sent a whole lotta the downcity (a term that truthfully hadn’t been disseminated yet) artists and hipsters into a temporary collective tizzy. The movie was funny and original, and all signs pointed toward eminent national success. It didn’t exactly go down that way, but Wolpaw survived the experience, completing the equally sharp Loaded Gun: Life and Death and Dickson in 2002, and currently ushering out a newly released DVD Complex World, which has long been unavailable. We recently met and talked at Providence’s Nick-a-Nee’s, wherein (only in La Prov) a stranger, overhearing our conversation, promptly began a long and thoroughly unsolicited recititation of one of H.P. Lovecraft’s works.

SD: What prompted the new DVD release?
JW: I lot of people have asked about the movie and it’s availability over the years, a lot of people quite regularly. It was never really available, although copies floating around here and there, over the years I’ve probably bought about a dozen, so I kept thinking about it. With the 20 year anniversary happening it seemed like the right time. Of course, hopefully it will raise a little money too.


SD: Any major changes, scenes deleted, scenes added?
JW: Did you know there were originally two versions? After showing it at in New York it got a good deal of buzz, but no one knew what to do with it. Eventually the US Film festival, which is now Sundance, called us up and they wanted to screen it even though their entry period was closed. Errol Morris was touting it, and the upshot was that we decided to some reediting and we got involved with Jeff Dowd, whose claim to fame at the time was association with The Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple (and who become the model for the Dude in The Big Lebowski) He and I ended up in this long distance 6 month business relationship where he tried to push me more towards making a so-called traditional film and I think that ultimately, the end result was better in a lot of ways. At the same time there were a lot of good scenes in the original version, and it some ways maybe that version is better. Anyways, both versions are on the DVD. There is one more Young Adults song, one more Stanley Matis song, and a scene set at a biker’s birthday party in the parking lot with an exploding birthday cake.


SD: Tell me about the circumstances of the original release.
JW: Well we showed it at the Cable Car, and at one point we got a call from Warner Brothers and we sent them a print, and of course they didn’t know what to do with it. Then John Daley from Hemdale contacted us, and while it was playing at the Cable Car we were negotiating a deal which we signed probably in early 1991. It took about a year and it was released in a dozen major markets, including New York and LA. You know it open it two strong potential markets, Boston and Austin with very little support. If you looked in the papers that day you couldn’t find where it was playing unless you read the reviews, which were generally positive.


SD: If I remember correctly, more than one reviewer likened it to a purposefully crafted so-called “midnight movie.” How did you feel about that?
JW: They called it a cult film, which I can see, but basically anything that is non-traditional gets labeled as a cult film.


SD: How do you think it fits into the rest of your work?
JW: To me it’s something I do, I try to push the limits of what the genre it is, so I think it fits right in, but it also hold’s it own.


SD: What are your current projects?
JW: I just completed one for PBS, basically about the image of George Washington on the dollar bill, an image created by RI’s own Gilbert Stuart. It really centers around the idea that these two were almost exact opposites, Stuart being a something of a wild man and Washington being a man of extreme control; you know the whole idea of these two men in the same room responsible for this iconic image. I am also working on a film about HP Lovecraft, along with Cat Hainfeld, which is kind of a documentary/fantasy. (Incidentally Mark Cutler is helping to score both films.) I am also working on another film about the history of the Ladd Center.


SD: Are you still basking in the glow of your Academy Award nomination? Seriously did that help with your career at all?
JW: It should have, if I had done the normal things I was supposed to have done. I mean it’s helped me raise money but there were also a lot of opportunities I ignored because I just really wanted to do what I wanted to do.


SD: When you look at Complex World now, twenty years down the line, do you think you filmed what you set out to achieve. Do you consider it a successful film?
JW: (Laughing.) WeIl I’m not sure what I set out to do. I have mixed feelings, there are parts of it I find hard to watch, but there are certain things I’m very proud of. I don’t know, I have a very much of a love-hate relationship with it, part of it being that we had these expectations that it was going to break big, and for a while it really looked like it might.

Postcard from the Edge

Let’s get it right out of the way. As of late I’ve been suffering from strange case of malaise, manifesting itself as a feverishly wicked, temporary case of writer’s block, devoting nearly all of my energy to the always careening trials and tribulations of my real job as a so-called labor leader, letting my blog slip away, and only managing to get the Providence Monthly column I regularly contribute done because there is indeed a deadline and a job at stake.

The day before the holiday I had a reoccurrence of an ongoing medical condition I’ve battling with for over a year and plunged into the all-so-familiar well of sickness. I did my best to man up and get through Thanksgiving, helped along mightily by a perfect group of holiday guests, but my relapse on Friday into Saturday just about put me over the edge. Four days running without shoes, smokes, drinks, or solid food (My kingdom for a piece of cheese!), combined with a totally intermittent sleeping pattern had me actually questioning whether some of the despicable moral choices of my past or the once complete ignorance of my physical well being in the constant pursuit of fun, pleasure and gamesmanship had perhaps come back to haunt me. (Really, me, the guy who used to be so self-justifiably and in-yer-face guilt free.)

The mind plays weird tricks and I was tricked out all weekend, heading into a full blown, ever-deepening, and constantly swirling depression despite the unarguable fact that I have a great wife and a life-sustaining relationship, a good job, strong and lasting friendships, and, in direct contrast to so many Americans barely scraping through the holiday season the unadorned truth is that I am essentially a fat cat middle-class guy who doesn’t even have a dollop of the financial or emotional problems currently commom to the union members I serve; many of them literally poised on the brink of disaster if congress does not get it together to continue the unemployment extension.

Saturday I reached my lowest of lows, unable to make my good friend Mark Cutler’s gig at Nicks-a-Nees (my home away from home, my great good place, my tender bar) where I actually intended to give him give him a sincere holiday hug, an intention I don’t muster up very often. I woke (once again) as some godforsaken hour, enfeebled and infected, and scoured the TV only to find a Ken Burns executive produced series about one of my absolute favorite subjects-The American West- yet I watched through dour eyes, not seeing the examples of American spirit, individualism, and starry-eyed dreaming on display, instead concentrating on the heartbreaks, the broken spirits and disappearing cultures, the heavy foot of US imperialism, and I found myself silently weeping, sad for my woe-is-me self of course, but disheartened by a larger, blacker, feeling of despair and throat-tightening blackness. Dirt sick, poisoned of soul, hopeless in the grayness of the early dawn, I simply let both of my Boston terriers huddle against me, true pals in the disconsolate twilight, and willed myself and my mini-pack back to sleep, sick and damaged in heart, mind and stomach yet stengthened by that wierd unvarnished canine combo of companionship and devotion.

Still, came Sunday morn, cold and clear, the world hadn’t collapsed or imploded, and I at least got it together to bang out the above, and I requested my wife to drive my weakened self so that I might complete one of my most important self-rituals, the morning paper run. Outside the store I saw a proud male townie obliviously strolling through the parking lot in Cranston, RI, sporting shorts and sneakers with no socks pre-eight am with the temperature reading 27 degrees. Ah, a sign of normality I thought, somehow soothed. I went straight back to unwell HQ, where I drank my first cup of tea since childhood. (And it was ginger.)

Quick Cuts

The following column is reprinted from the November issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem necessary to leave out):


Eyes Wide Open
By Scott Duhamel


Conviction

Despite the fact that Hilary Swank suddenly seems to have a bunch of naysayers lying in wait of her next big screen portrait as a jut-jawed epitome of almost saintly decency (thus a guaranteed Oscar nominee), she continually manages to turn in affecting, no frills performances. Conviction, from a script by Pamela Gray, is director Tony Goldwyn’s (A Walk on the Moon) brick-by-brick retelling of the real life tale of RI”s own Betty Anne Waters (who, in the interest of full disclosure, I do happen to know) and her 18-year struggle to free her brother Kenny from a wrongful murder charge. Swank plays Waters, eyes forever verging on moistness, blue collar New England accent front and center, unwavering decency emanating from every pore, yet she avoids the off-putting air of self-righteousness and delivers a stellar, if somewhat predictable, turn.

While Goldwyn’s finished product doesn’t pander or over-sentimentalize, it never quite rises above a certain made-for-television movie feel, and not one of those crafted for cable, which usually push into darker corners or poke beneath frayed edges. Part courtroom drama, part hand-on-the-glass prison fare, part minor league Erin Brockovich, Conviction strives so hard to do the story justice and to impart a final sense of man-vs.-the-machine uplift that the movie gets bogged done with an overall vibe of good intentions, making it admirable enough, but not especially insightful or inspiring.

For those who enjoy exceptional casting, or, even better, scene-stealing; the movie abounds with the dynamic players, especially Melissa Leo as a hardnosed cop, Minnie Driver as Betty Anne’s law school BFF, and the always terrific Juliette Lewis as a townie witness. Of course, secret weapon Sam Rockwell as the volatile and cocky Kenny is a superb as ever, but the film’s by-the-numbers conventions never quite allow him or Swank to reach any sustained heights.

Red

Remember the much bandied about inside Hollywood term, the Concept film? Well, there are both Low Concept and High Concept movies, while Red might be categorized as an Old Concept. Based on a graphic novel by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner, it’s a throwback actioneer and spy-vs.-spy fable, lightly comic and generally torpid, centering around a reforming of a team of over-the-hill ex CIA assassins, all, Retired and Extremely Dangerous. (Red, get it?)

It’s thoroughly disposable, late night cable fodder down the road, and probably only memorable for it’s supposedly humorously incongruous coupling of middle agers Mary Louise Parker (46) and Bruce Willis (55) alongside Morgan Freeman (73), John Malkovich (56), Brian Cox (64), Richard Dreyfuss (62), Helen Mirren (65), and, god bless him, old Marty himself, Ernest Borgnine (93). Parker is excruciatingly over-the-top, Malkovich triple hammed-up, Freeman goes through his by rote the eye-twinkling motions, Willis does his deadpan retro thang, and director Robert Schwentke makes sure we all focus on the venerable Helen Mirren teamed with a gun nearly as big as her, because, well, that’s basically the whole concept.

Tony Curtis RIP 1925-2010

1959’s Some Like it Hot is unarguably among the greatest American movie comedies and as such, it is a cornucopia of hilarious plotting, trenchantly funny dialogue, razor sharp direction (from Billy Wilder) and exceptional comic acting. As enduringly hilarious and pin-pointedly funny as Joe E. Brown’s vaudevillian maliciousness’ is, never mind Marilyn Monroe’s breathtaking timing and cartoonish physicality, topped off by Jack Lemmon’s wildly neurotic and neatly comic over-machinations, it is Tony Curtis and his bravura playing of (simultaneously) an on-the-hustle musician, a Cary Grant-like playboy, and an all-knowing been-around-the-block dame (in heels and stockings) who ultimately absconds with the honors of the most magical farceur in this resoundingly humorous big screen farce.

Curtis, (born in the Bronx as Bernie Schwartz) was ever the strange hybrid of 50’s glamour boy, and John Garfield knock-off, with inexplicable connections to both James Dean and Jerry Lewis, and he proved more than adept in urban dramas, costumed sagas, gritty biopics, romantic comedies, and all-out satires. He will deservedly hold a solid place in Hollywood’s all-time firmament, eschewing endurable performances in Houdini (’53)Trapeze (’56), Mister Cory (’57), The Defiant Ones (’58), Spartacus (’60), Operation Petticoat (’59), The Great Imposter (’60), The Outsider (’61), The Great Race (’65), and most particularly, in The Boston Strangler (’68).

Although Curtis was initially noticed for his almost feminized good looks—-e was decidedly ethnic, with strikingly dark, curly hair piled high, full lips, and manicured eyebrows—-was his highly combustible combination of amped-up masculinity, genuine vulnerability and deep-seated naked ambition that played most fiercely on screen. This was ultimately proved when Curtis was cast opposite Burt Lancaster as hustling pree agent Sidney Falco in 1957’s Sweet Smell of Success, resulting in the one Curtis movie role that equals his all-time acting antics in Some Like it Hot.

Halloween Treat

Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl (2009)
by Mark Duhamel

If you want to feel old and young simultaneously, to stand at the gateway of a parallel dimension you never knew existed, to test the limits of your frames-per-second visual tolerance, you should watch this and share with friends. The Japanese seem to accelerate and synthesize our collective pathology into their own, realizing a hyperdrive pop-culture mix-up that tantalizes, repulses, and ultimately redefines what is cool.

This may be the pinnacle of high school hi-jinks hi-def screw gun penetration exploding carotid artery blood spraying-head electro-video magic. Freaks and Geeks multiplied through Glee by way of Welcome Back Kotter on really bad LSD filled with blood spatter physics.

Imagine that you are a Japanese teenage girl with your legs cut off by a vampire and somehow through the genius of your father the vice-principal, your severed legs are mounted to the vertex of your skull where they spin like helicopter blades to propel you through space over the campus.

I'm not kidding, you'll see this and more in this film, and severed limbs reattaching themselves will seem mundane and ordinary compared to other more amazing and blood-spewing-spraying extravaganza images.(On top of it, the audio is pretty amazing.)


I'm serious, I chose this by random association and the inability to resist the iconic title. I may build a genius multimedia traveling horror roadshow around this. Ha ha he he ho ho ho.

Dirty Old Town

The following column is reprinted from the September issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem necessary to leave out):

Eyes Wide Open
by Scott Duhamel



Making the rounds promoting his new movie, The Town, actor-director-co-writer Ben Affleck has repeatedly said that he might not be quite comfortable forging a reputation as a “Boston” filmmaker. Of course, the Massachusetts born and bred Affleck first established his rep by co-writing (with fellow Mass native and acting buddy Matt Damon) the well-received Boston-based Good Will Hunting, and bagging a screenwriting Oscar in the process. As recently as 2007 Affleck, following a string of mostly bad movies and poor acting choices, won across the board kudos for his directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone, a movie adaptation of author Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Shutter Island), the contempo bard of Beantown badness. The Town, set in insular Boston neighborhood known as Charlestown, is a more than solid (and extremely assured) follow-up, and might suggest, contrary to director’s own publicly uttered uncertainties, that Affleck just might be yet another filmmaker whose most resonant work takes place in their native settings, ala Marty Scorsese or Spike Lee or Sidney Lumet’s respective cinematic New Yorks, all in all a particularly ascendant filmmaking level to aspire to.

In Gone Baby Gone, a tight, no-nonsense, gritty thriller, Affleck directed baby brother Casey, but with The Town he’s upped the ante and stepped back in front of the camera too. He plays Doug Macray, a savvy Irish-American tough guy, a supposedly typical townie with a few toes in the straight world, but largely caught up with his crew of professional thugs, all thieves with a heightened sense of code and a pride in their own viscious professionalism. Of course Doug is mirrored by childhood friend, a dyed-in the-wool native and overtly fervent brother-in arms Jimmy Coughlin (Jeremy Remmer), a hard case who has shed himself of any emotional or moral nuances. Doug’s father (Chris Cooper) is doing a lifetime stretch in the penitentiary and his occasional girl (Blake Lively) is both Jim’s sister and a hard living and round heeled fellow townie.

Doug is sharp but conflicted, torn up with both dislike and curiosity for the so-called “toonies” who are slowly gentrifying his stomping grounds, and all shook up about his dueling senses of long held propriety and increasing distaste for his very roots and his hallowed native ground. As the movie progresses Doug’s growing unrest makes him resolve to pull off the proverbial last job with hopes of getting out of Dodge. After being forced to take a bank employee (Rebecca Hall) hostage during a gone- wrong robbery, Doug ups the ante by falling for that same woman (who is simultaneously also a feminine representative of the ever elusive upper middle class), tipping his own sense of moral ambivalence into the danger zone, and imperiling him and his potentially good intentions.

Obviously, Affleck the director makes excellent use of his locations and evokes a solid and affecting sense of local geography, as well as moving the film along with a terse yet implosive pace. His action scenes play out well, lean and mean and subtlety tactile, none of them over amped or wrenched up like most Hollywood actioneers. The Town largely sustains its purposefully tough and neo-realistic mood, although it never attains the grimy melancholy of Gone Baby Gone. Affleck also sharply injects the standard neighborhood crime story tenants with some flavorful verisimilitude, continually punctuated with a lively chorus of barking, yapping, yowling Boston-based verbal gymnastics.

As with so many actors-turned-directors (Eastwood, Redford, Chaplin), Affleck authoritatively guides his fellow actors through some convincing paces, and the overall performance level just about makes up for some of The Town’s weaker edges. Both Chris Cooper and Pete Postlewhite (as one of the local crime lords) straight out walk away with their scenes, and Rebecca Hall managed to do a lot with a little, while Jeremy Remmer (an actor whose recently scorched the screen in The Hurt Locker, and one that moviegoers ought to really set their eyes on) veers into pure white hot Jimmy Cagney territory, as one of those wrong-side-of-town fireplugs whose palatable on screen volatility makes them audience magnets, despite their obvious (and deadly) wrongheadedness. (Only Jon Hamm as the local FBI man hunter seems unable to bring something extra to his archetypical role.)

The Town has obvious echoes to my own favorite modern American film, Marty Scorsese 1972 Mean Streets, but it never scorches the soul or soars into artfulness the way the latter film does. Still, The Town is well played and better executed, and it exhibits an overall directorial keenness, while easily surpassing the often lowered expectations of its particular genre. It’s both credible and watchable, and it hints that Affleck might go back to the mean streets of his beloved state or its capital city, and etch out another tale from the naked city, pure East Coast style.

Here's the Beef

The following column is reprinted from the September issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem necessary to leave out):

Eyes Wide Open
By Scott Duhamel

Smack dab, three quarters of the way through the 2010 summer movie season, and the current weekend film openings pose the ongoing quandary of the contempo filmgoer. On one side of the movie-movie box, a little high and towards the center is Eat Pray Love, a boutique chick flick based on the Elisabeth Gilbert memoir and cultural phenomenon, featuring the ever radiant Julia Roberts, a must-see post-30 date movie. Over to the left and just above the center is the much buzzed about Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, an off center comic book movie, translated from a series of spiffy comics created by Bryan Lee O’Malley, starring the anti-macho post-teen bundle of nerdiness Michael Cera, an under-20 date movie-must and potential geek fest. Holding down the foggy bottom, poised a few inches from the odoriferous lower regions is the Sylvester Stallone written and directed actioneer The Expendables, spotlighting ol’ Sly himself, plus a bunch of redoubtable manly men. Alas dear readers, despite your continued faith, this nitcrit took the low road, the one less traveled and more trampled upon.

The Expendables offers not Julia Roberts, but older brother Eric, doing one of his patented lip-licking villainous turns, and that should be enough to convey to any wizened film buff what the texture and content of this big screen vehicle will be. Director Stallone has carved himself up a true Meat Movie, of the band-of-outsiders on a mission variety, one that is not concerned with incisive plotting, political messaging, overall meaningfulness, or potentially furthering the iconography of the action film. By the same token don’t expect cutting edge visuals, computer generated imagery, or dizzying editing technique. The Expendables is about body count, bulbous biceps, bashing fists, sharpened knifes, phallic guns, and more body count, all of them in the service of a stolid flow of lumbering mayhem, all of it peppered further by a full corral of on screen meaty men tossing out meaty asides, meaty grimaces, meaty glances, topped off by meaty battle whoops and war cry’s, and a whole lot (unintended?) homoerotic subtext.

Despite the above reference, Stallone the Meat King’s directorial style does not seem particularly influenced by French visionary Jean-Luc Godard, nor action masters like Robert Aldrich (whose The Dirty Dozen remains a men-on-a-mission film template) or Sam Peckinpah (whose The Wild Bunch remains a men-on-a-mission film classic). Instead, this stubbornly old school specimen seems to follow the lead of a journeyman talent like former Stallone main man George Cosmatos , the traffic director behind Cobra or First Blood: Rambo II. The movie also liberally borrows from the not-so-storied playbook of the Cannon films of the 80’s, those grainy, bone-crackling, mug-fests like Missing in Action, Bloodsport, Death Wish II, or Enter the Ninja. Like those fondly recalled destroy-everything-that-moves beef fests, Stallone erects his potboiler with the purposefully throwback tools of hammer, nails, and glue, so much so that the movie ought to contain a warning that none of the legion of stunt men employed were injured in the making, and the explosives budget was somewhere below the cost of those utilized at the Battle of the Bulge.

Sly the Meat King deserves some credit, since his recent efforts, which included a revisited Rocky movie in 2006 and another run at a Rambo romp in 2008, seem to acknowledge that, ala Clint Eastwood, he’s at least contemplating his the inherent ridiculousness of continuing to make a mark as a meaty action guy, and maybe (possibly) sticking a popcult fork into action star ageism. The Expendables meta-nudge (who would have thought one could evoke both Godard and meta-anything when it comes not-always-sly Sly) comes directly from its casting. Glazed ham Eric Roberts gets wrestling kingpin Steve Austen as a fellow baddie, while Stallone’s on-screen dream team consists of his own coadjutant, named Christmas ( Brit beefster Jason Statham), plus other beef patties like Ying Yang (chop- sockey NNW superstar Jet Li), Hale Ceasar (NFL bruiser Terry Crews), Toll Road(UFC brawler Randy Couture) and Gunner (double-wink now, ex-enemy of all things Balboa, Dolph Lundgren). (C’mon, what kinda indie or mumblecore outing is gonna give you character names like that?) Adding a further element of braised beef are the brief appearances of Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger), in a meeting-of-the-meaty-minds between those two action lions and the Meat King himself. (Remember, when dealing with this particular style and model of actioneer, women---in this case Charisma Carpenter and Giselle Itie—never get to register much beyond the bloody blades or the explosion around the next corner, and filmmaker Stallone makes sure to stick to those unwritten guidelines.)

If the vapors emanating from that steamy meat pie aren’t intoxicating enough there is the added sprinkling of wild but spicy game that is Mickey Rourke, weirdly over the top as always. Mickey’s hair (and Mickey’s sartorial choices must always been rolled into his performance choices) is striped boldly black-and-white, plus he smokes a long stemmed pipe, and while never allowed to participate in the action two-step, he gets to portentously muse on, basically expounding a whole cracked meat-cutting philosophy, while director Sly cuts to actor Sly looking on ever-so-sagely. (When’s the last time the newest European art house buzz movie offered anything like that?)

Sly the actor is more leaden than ever, and my lower lip hurt by the end of the movie, as I was sympathetically moving it, somehow hoping that maybe his would move occasionally too. You have to figure that maybe that’s all part of Sly the Meat King’s bigger plan, allowing all of the other meat team member’s group acting to rise at least to his lowered levels. The Expendables is one of those infrequent good bad movies, reaching its own limited expectations, and carving out a notch in the testosterone Hall of Shame. Although the burning question remains—were Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal and (especially) Jean-Claude Van Damme all too busy fondling their royalties to participate?