Sunday, May 31, 2009

The Taming of the Shrew (1967) + Reflections in a Golden Eye

How did this unofficial Liz Taylor film series get started? When will it end?? I've been through all her major adult works now, so all that's left is her early supporting roles (Father of the Bride, Little Women) and kiddie stuff (National Velvet). Perhaps I'll call it a day.

Taylor fascinates me. I wish to do battle with her, to conquer and claim her. She is less an icon — an abstraction — than Marilyn, whom we think of in terms of (fetishized) images and the play of light. Liz is rather more tangible, present in substance and body and heat, and for that reason all the more intoxicating. With Liz you smell her, breathe her in...and it's not perfume, but the tingle of female sweat even when dressed to the nines. The urge toward her is unthinking, primal.

From Giant (1956) through to the above 1967 titles Taylor reigned as Hollywood's leading dramatic actress, despite the limited imagination and range in her choice of roles. It's always either an historical epic or a squirming stage play, preferably with homosexual subtext and progressive social mores. Liz stars as an eminently desirable, probably unstable, woman of means and prestige (possibly by marriage) mated to an emasculated sad sack who, by his impotence in the presence of this carnal goddess, inspires her pleading fits of rage and occasional self-destruction. It is foregone that the sack, whether Montgomery Clift, Richard Burton, Marlon Brando, Eddie Fisher or Rock Hudson, if unable to prove himself worthy, will have his guts torn out by her claws. However, should the man give fight — it will be a ferocious battle of both physical strength and will — and by heroic feats best her, she will thereafter cleave to him as fiercely as once she resisted.

The Taming of the Shrew kind of spoils the fun by staging this dynamic so literally, but there is pleasure in taking the knock-down-drag-out sexfight to its cartoonish extreme, especially since the unlikely cut of Taylor's bodice (more like a dessert tray) permits her breasts to lunge and threaten.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

The O.C.

Saw a few episodes of this canned drama. Spoiler alert: California masturbates about itself.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Kevin Smith, what am I to do with you? You clearly have no ambition. It's possible that, in the history of motion picture directors with successful careers, you are the laziest. Seven films and you still have no idea what to do with a camera. Amazingly, you make comedies without any sense of comic timing. The jokes drop into frame with all the rhythm and discrimination of birdshit. And the 80 minutes of deleted scenes on Zack and Miri, viewed all, could easily substitute for (and even improve upon) the utterly haphazard feature presentation. What gives? Blankfaced indifference to professionalism worked to your advantage exactly once, when it suited the material: Clerks, a great movie*, is our best chronicle of pre-adult wage labor ennui. But since then...for chrissakes are you even trying??

No, you are not. Because your lazy ass doesn't have to, because our nation's community colleges have supplied your Askewniverse with a sizable and devoted fan cult of equally undiscriminating and undereducated dorks.

And the infuriating part is that I'm certain you agree with everything I'm saying. You know you are a half-talented slug, and that you continue to sell DVDs only by some sickening miracle. Such admissions are given freely in the "Evening with Kevin Smith" documentary series, which follows your extensive speaking tours and reveals you to be, in person, a doggedly likeable and fairly masterful raconteur. These informal Q&As are without question the most entertaining work of your post-Clerks career.

The problem is that your jokes are only funny when you tell them. No one else has figured out how to deliver your material; at best your actors all seem to be doing the same impression of you. Woody Allen has the same problem. (In your case it might help to hire a full cast of trained professionals instead of the usual assortment of your doofus chums.) So either you are a writer of tragically difficult genius or else merely awful at directing performers. If the latter, I applaud Rogen and Banks for heroic efforts in the face of your flailing indolence. Either way there is no damn good reason for you to ever helm again. Your talents lie elsewhere, fat boy.


* Far superior to Office Space, a facile and hollow revenge fantasy.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

Santa Monica Pier, 1932. A ballroom at the foot of Route 66, last chance. Dusty sunlight angles in over bleachers and the surf can be heard when the band plays softly. Glowing posters of Jean Harlow and Greta Garbo are tucked in every intimate alcove, decked with strands of lights. Middle-class patrons assemble daily in the bleachers to throw pennies at the ragged and despairing dance marathon contestants. They have been dancing — shuffling, staggering — continuously for over a month, goaded onward by the sulfurous emcee and a dangling cash prize. Their pathetic condition is fine entertainment in troubled times.

Need I emphasize that this is 1932, from a movie made in 1969, and not a reality TV show?

Sunday, May 17, 2009

The Prisoner

I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
Patrick McGoohan storms into his superior's office, literally accompanied by thunderclaps on the soundtrack. He brings his letter of resignation down to the desk like a sledgehammer and blue eyes blazing pounds the desk again, terribly upsetting a nearby teacup. His growls of contempt and indignation are inaudible over the brazen, trumpeting theme music, but everything we need to know is there in the curl of his lip.

Watch the opening titles (Yes, this three minute sequence accompanies every episode) and be initiated into the cult of The Prisoner, the best British postmodern dystopian countercultural sci-fi-espionage-fantasy-horror-mystery-western single-season series of 1967-1968, and now among my favorite television programs ever. By comparison, Twin Peaks is conventional.

It is McGoohan's anger and unbending defiance that draw me so tightly to the spooling delirium of the Village. Like the masterworks of Terry Gilliam — Brazil, Baron Munchausen, 12 Monkeys — McGoohan depicts the world as a clockwork of implacable logic grinding away at his humanity. But whereas Gilliam's mournful heroes ultimately find escape only through fantasy, madness or death, McGoohan fights to win, with a sneer. The lightning in his belly is a fierce instinct for liberty, a love that demands furious reproach to the slightest oppression. I admire it, and hope to share it.

Friday, May 15, 2009

HBC Jersey

That's a wrap. Sharing these films with you all has consistently been the highlight of my week for these four years. Putting this thing together is also my proudest accomplishment in that time. Thank you so much.

Hard Boiled Cinema will continue, in one form or another, as long as you and I continue to enjoy movies together. Keep the dream alive.

The Lady Eve

The most erotic scene I have witnessed in the movies. And the best collection of pratfalls. In the same movie. Preston Sturges, you just made my list of things to do today.

Thursday, May 14, 2009

London Boys, Part III

But wait! Johnny Thunders would not let this aggression stand. The following year, 1978, Thunders released a condescending reply called London Boys. Soaring in on his guitar, Thunders announces, "You best believe I'm from New York City!" Shrugging off the insults, he cuts to the quick:
You been telling me to shut my mouth
If I wasn't kissing you wouldn't be around
Boom! Thunders takes credit for Rotten's fame, having developed the sound and the provocative image that the Pistols latched on to. Then he lets 'em have it:
You talk about faggots, little mama's boy
You sit at home, you got your chaperon
You need an escort to take a piss
He holds your hand and he shakes your dick
This is kryptonite, the assertion that the Sex Pistols — a band predicated upon representing an explosive threat to the monarchy — were, from the first, nothing more than a publicity stunt created, orchestrated and coddled by promoter/handler Malcolm McLaren. And Thunders would know, since the Dolls had briefly employed McLaren as their manager but fired the unscrupulous flimflammer for his meddling. Thunders raises further doubts about the Pistols' efficacy,
You're so pretty, suburban kiddy
You think you're gonna change, re-arrange the city?
playing the canny New Yorker to Rotten's credulous bourgeois would-be revolutionary. And then the smirking singsong chorus, "Little London boys, you're little London boys... You think you're gonna fool me?" Thunders punctuates with a somewhat forced cackle, but is just gearing up for a second round. He doesn't think these kids can hack it on the mean streets,
Little rich kid, what do you know?
You had everything, don't you think it don't show
You're hiding in the closet, just a-facing the wall
Too much too soon, do you recall?
name-checking the Dolls album Too Much Too Soon to remind that he has been-there-done-that, and to forecast the Pistols' impending collapse. Thunders offers his advice to these poseurs in summary, recommending that they "have a holiday in the city", collect some cheeky "dildo souvenirs" from the downtown sex shops and stay away from the hard drugs and stick to their bourgeois LSD. He also assures their safety upon visiting NYC, slyly: "You won't get shot, shot by me."

Thunders takes his time wrapping up, hollering that "I'm talking about the whole lot of ya!" This could mean the entire band, or more likely the broader UK punk scene for being lead by middle-class whelps (see also: The Clash). After making an insinuating remark about the lack of girls at Pistols performances Thunders sashays out, shaking his head:
You poor little puppet...

London Boys, Part II

There are earlier, more primitive instances of the musical tit-for-tat that gangsta rap made its stock in trade. Naturally the Beatles were there first [rolls eyes]: Lennon felt slighted by McCartney's Too Many People and shot back with How Do You Sleep? Neil Young's indictment of Dixie, Southern Man, didn't sit well with Lynyrd Skynyrd, who penned Sweet Home Alabama to let Neil know that they don't need him around, anyhow. But my favorite is the frothy scuffle between the Sex Pistols and the New York Dolls; the first and most notorious UK punks and their neglected American predecessor.

Johnny Rotten picks a fight on the inconspicuous Pistols track, New York. Rotten wastes no time introducing himself and his associates or making preliminary remarks about the verbal thrashing he's about to administer, as would be customary in Bed-Stuy, but instead opens with his primary attack:
An imitation from New York
You're made in Japan from cheese and chalk
You're hippy tarts hero cos you put on a bad show
You put on a bad show, oh don't it show?
Ouch, Rotten goes for the jugular, calling the Dolls a cheap imitation of a rock band and downright poor performers, further suggesting that these shortcomings are apparent to all. Anything made from cheese and chalk sounds hasty and unappealing to me, although I question whether these would be the most readily available materials in Japan, given the low incidence of lactose tolerance among East Asians. But of course, cheese and chalk is the limey equivalent of apples and oranges, so if one translates the slang naively it sounds as if the Dolls are a fruit salad, which is tasty and good. Two people separated by a common language, indeed. Rotten makes much of the association with Japan, where the Dolls were quite popular, going on to say:
You think it's swell playing in Japan
Well everybody knows Japan is a dishpan
He sets up an effective straw man, undermining the Dolls' credibility and diminishing their apparent success by ridiculing the overseas fan base. I presume that "hippy tarts" refers to Japanese youth, who are sometimes said to have astonishingly poor taste. Now comes Rotten's secondary attack. After inquiring whether the boys are "still out on those pills, oh do you remember?" — a jab at the Dolls' penchant for prescription drugs that implies pursuant mental deterioration — Rotten advises,
With nothing in your gut you better keep your mouth shut
You better keep you mouth shut, in a rut
and adds:
Four years on you still look the same
I think it's bout time you changed your brain
This song is the Pistols' effort to kill their idols. As nominal anarchists their mission was to demolish the existing order; thus they paint New York's preeminent protopunks as tired, do-nothing has-beens, all flash and no conviction. A parting blow mocks the Dolls for their glam-drag fashions,
You're just a pile of shit, you're coming to this
You poor little faggot, you're sealed with a kiss
and finally Rotten name-checks the Dolls song Looking For a Kiss, in case there was any doubt as to whom he's referring. The Dolls are sealed and concluded, never mind the bollocks.

London Boys, Part I

You're like a kid, you found a puppy now you're dapper
But tell me where the fuck you found an anorexic rapper?
Talking about who you go squabble with and who you shoot...
You're only sixty pounds when you're wet and wearing boots!
The immortal words of Eazy-E, in which the rap legend expresses his sour feelings toward former partner Dr Dre and Dre's young new protégé, Snoop Dogg, whom Eazy finds to be much too thin. You see, Eazy used his drug dealing profits to start a record label and recruited Dre, among other upcoming artists, to form seminal gangsta rap outfit NWA in 1986. But Dre thought Eazy was stealing money from the group, so he split and made a solo record (feat Snoop) dissing Eazy, as well as a music video depicting Eazy suffering misfortunes and death. So Eazy responded in kind with the classic counterstrike, Real Muthaphuckkin G's, on which he disputes Dre's supposed criminal credentials, dismisses as fraudulent Dre's claim to Compton roots, makes disrespectful comments about Dre's puny sidekick, ridicules Dre for an instance of cross-dressing in the early 80s, insinuates that Dre is being disrespected, cheated and abused by his new management, accuses Dre outright of being a mere studio gangster and, the coup de grâce, mocks Dre's poor business skills. The fact is that Eazy's clever financial dealings had put him in receipt of revenues and publishing rights from all of Dre's future projects, so that sales of new Dre records dissing Eazy were just making Eazy richer.

Coda: Eazy-E died in 1995 from the worst ever case of AIDS, the final and most brilliant demonstration of his superior street cred.

I know this story by heart thanks to the peerless instruction I received in my college dormitory. Initially confounded by why my roommate, a pasty North Shore Jew, would be so enthusiastic about rap and so knowledgeable about the byzantine lore of rap feuds, I came gradually to some appreciation. Being subjected to an endlessly shuffled and looping syllabus, played loudly and without interruption day and night for weeks on end, running automatically whether my dear roommate was present or not, I had little choice. Ask me some time about the Ten Crack Commandments.

What I learned is the art and humor of braggadocio. There is a crazy thrill to rap as a spectator sport, an arena that glorifies outsize personalities for whom absurd pomposity is just warm-up. An outrageous insult is typically countered by an impossible claim, and it's Wrestlemania. Fundamentally the artists are playing with language, trying to impress with clever verbiage and stylized, highly personal delivery. Delights may range from unexpected diction to disarming use of the obvious — such as when, say, Biggie realizes he can rhyme fuck with fuck.

Friday, May 8, 2009

Star Trek

The Star Wars prequels should have been this much fun. Here is the spontaneity of performance, the touch of irreverence, the reckless absurdity and the overall joy of rocketship adventure we've been missing ever since Han became frozen dinner. Here is not the measured social/science fiction of classic Trek, but I guess that's what Battlestar Galactica is now for. I'm perfectly happy to let new Star Trek fill the role of premiere whiz-bang space opera serial, an office Lucas has thoroughly disgraced.

Although, I must report that the drama here is a little thin to qualify as space opera; the whole movie is pitched at the level of Han chasing stormtroopers down the corridor. Great stuff, but it only works if we care about Han first. The writers here rely a little heavily on our pre-existing love of Kirk & crew (Bones in particular feels pasted in), not to mention a pre-existing affinity for the planet Vulcan, which they blow up without quite earning the right to. Afterwards we miss Alderaan more than we miss Vulcan (and we never even saw Alderaan) because Obi-Wan's pronouncement about a great disturbance in the Force is more chilling than Uhura's sympathies.

As one of my associates put it, the movie is "all fanservice, no substance". That's more or less true. Too many scenes are merely excuses for in-references (the broccoli babe, Sulu's swordsmanship, the brain parasite, all of Bones' dialogue) that, while terrifically amusing, add nothing to the story. The current stewards of the franchise are going to have to contribute original material if a new film series is to have any legs.

The writers do throw a few curveballs, the best of which is the budding romance between Uhura and Spock, who actually emerges as a green-blooded hunk; an added layer of depth to his rivalry with Kirk. If there's one thing this script knows it's that Kirk is a cocky bastard and it's funny to see him humiliated. A bit of the clownishness of latter-day Shatner has crept into the character, to a degree that Spock basically upstages Kirk as a protagonist. The dramatic climax comes when the pointy-eared fellow loses his cool and gives Jim a right good drubbing on the bridge.

Normally it's true that time-travel-alternate-universe is a rather cheap plot device for avoiding continuity issues, but at this point, given the suffocating burden of trekkie canon, I say it was an economical solution and called for.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

The Dictators

So there we were. Tompkins Square Park up on Avenue A. The usual rabble was encamped and loitering about. Joe Strummer looks on from the memorial mural, a patron and a brother. He is the only figure I consider to transcend the genre of punk rock. SS and I cross the southeast corner and spot our destination: A well-worn and easy bar called Manitoba's, continuous with the peacefully dirty atmosphere of the street, like a matte painting. A solitary goon sits in the grubby pavement, leather leaning against the brick wall, salami log-wrists resting on knees. He is the size of a buffalo, has furnace stoker skin, a blue bandanna and twinkling eyes. We walk up and try the wrong door. You go in over there he says, like a prophesy. We go in over there, and I love the place. An accidental museum of rock and roll photographs, autographs, relics and artifacts. I slide in under a candid photo of Lou Reed and Wayne Kramer and whisper, I think that guy outside was Handsome Dick Manitoba. The buffalo steps through the door, walks behind the bar and pours us two pints of Brooklyn brew. The place is a little quiet tonight, HD says, because of the Motörhead show. The television, no joke, is running a VHS tape of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! The world's best jukebox. In the basement I find an air hockey table and a Wonder Woman pinball machine. The coin slots have been disabled to allow free play.

The Dictators are the most FUN band of the 1970s. The Stooges were more dangerous, the New York Dolls were sleazier, T. Rex was sexier, the Dead Boys were darker, Johnny Thunders could play better, Cheap Trick had broader appeal, Kiss had better branding, AC/DC rocked harder, the Ramones were more revolutionary and the UK punks had worse hygiene. But gosh darn it, no one wanted to make you laugh more than the Dictators. The kind of grin-stupid belly laughs that erupt when you shoplift a tub of beef jerky and escape in your friend's dad's Oldsmobile while mooning the cops who crash into a manure truck, and then pick up a couple of rollergirls who think you're hot shit but ditch them at the quarry and drive off with their bras. And the thing is, you're a bunch of dorky Jews who never actually do such things, but you pronounce yourselves rock gods, recruit pro-wrestler Handsome Dick Manitoba (probably your cousin) as your roadie-vocalist "secret weapon" mascot, kick out brazenly basic learned-it-today hard rock anthems and somehow seem to show off while performing elementary licks (the way you do when playing Guitar Hero), keep a straight face while making total clowns of yourselves and get totally laid.
Oh, Weekend!
Flashing rock and roll guitars
Cruising in my daddy's car
I'll do my homework in the bar!

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Hymns for the Heathen

We need a purpose in life, a survival guide
We need an explanation for how we arrived
There was this big bang once
Now we're standing on our own two feet

In a world of entropy
Why can't we just simply be?
And don't feed me lies (intelligent design)
There was this big bang once
Why are we back down on our knees?

Cursive has put to music my thoughts on the human invention of religion and whether we can live without it. Their 2006 release, Happy Hollow, is constructed as a hymnal, a collection of parables from a small American town haunted by religious hypocrisy and oppressed by commercial-confessional norms. Once again the songs — Cursive's own jazzy post-hardcore creation somewhere between Bright Eyes and the Blood Brothers — are all in heavy service to the concept, which has expanded in scope over the last three albums. 2000's Domestica seemed to take place entirely in a darkened bedroom abyss, the autopsy of a young marriage lately rent; so searing that I couldn't bear to listen to it for several years. In '03 The Ugly Organ stepped backward into a sinister vaudeville dancehall, revealing the sordid art of exposing your private pain for pay and being expected to perform your misery for a jeering crowd again and again. Happy Hollow steps back further to take in an entire David Lynch town full of darkened bedrooms, as well as darkened taverns, clinics, chapels and confession booths. The anglophonic strings of Ugly Organ are replaced by an alternately infernal/esoteric horn section that suits the American fixation on Old Scratch and the cosmos.

Last week I had occasion to visit a rather impressive and well-to-do suburban church on a sizable and green piece of property. Stunned by the carpeted gymnasium, industrial kitchen, high-end sound boards with thunderous amplifiers and the surplus of game consoles in the Dave & Buster's rec room, I thought, why doesn't the American Legion have this? Or your local VFW? Even nominally faith-based organizations like the YMCA and the Boy Scouts are far wealthier than any similar secular entity. The sad truth is that there is no secular equivalent to the beneficial social structure of a church, the gathering and strengthening of community, of people diverse in appearance but united in purpose and belief. Atheists hold no bake sales. Atheists have no community center, no facilities happily acquired by charity and lovingly maintained by like-minded volunteers. No place to call their own in each and every town. And that fucking sucks, and makes me hate churches even more.

Which is why I so welcome Happy Hollow. A public voice advocating for atheism says to me personally: You are not alone in recognizing that we are all alone.

Newsweek carried a provocative (and satisfying) cover story in April: The End of Christian America. Since 1990 the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has nearly doubled, from 8 to 15 percent. The number identifying as atheist or agnostic increased fourfold in that same period. The number of Christians declined by 10 percent. I am heartened by the approaching reality of a post-Christian America, in which I am not marginalized.

Reverend, sir, I don't wanna seem malevolent
My teenage angst is far behind me
But father certainly it's troubling to see
All these people kneeling instead of dealing
With the fact that we're all we have
So rise up! Rise up!
There's no one to worship
But plenty of life to lose

Please forgive me for questioning divinity
It's an ugly job
But I think I'm up for it