Why I hated Babel

Everyone expects PL to win Best Foreign Film on Sunday, and it may actually deserve it. Setting aside all the mass culture American reasons(highest grossing Spanish film ever, most well known nominee), it is an amazing film and a beautiful achievement. As the Oscars approached I've seen a lot of second guesses about the "future" quality of Pan's Labyrinth. There seems to be a lot of speculation about whether the blend of fantasy and political horror story will stand the test of time. Guillermo del Toro clearly doesn't want to be Hayao Miyazaki or Isao Takahata, so that criticism doesn't necessarily hold any water.

The more important thing to look at is that del Toro was the far superior Mexican director of the praised films this year. Babel, to put it succinctly, SUCKED. The 2.5 hours you might spend in the theater could be summed up by the following: "life sucks and it hurts, but if you have to choose a color to suck in, don't choose brown. White and yellow are way better. Hell, in the 21st century, red is probably better, but no one really knows because no one tells those stories except David Treuer." Seriously, don't waste your time with that convoluted shit. When it takes the gold on Sunday, it'll be another blow for real cinema fans.

Babel displayed none of the maturity that Pan's Labyrinth showed at every turn. There were no surprises, no moments where people behaved in anything other than the most mechanistic, deterministic way. A truly affecting movie about "fate" or "god" or "connection" involves surprises, moments where, beyond all reason and cynicism, goodness is actually rewarded, evil actually punished. It doesn't hurt when the good are uniformly punished on film; it only feels manipulative and schematic.

The reason the Japanese story resonates is because it is so tangential; the young girl hurts even without her father's complicity in minor international incidents. She would act out and self-destruct even if her father were an arms dealer who shot Cate Blanchett himself. Her hatred, anger, and despair was the only part of the film that made sense. When you compare this to Naomi Watts in 21 Grams and the "model and the dog" segment of Amorres Perros, it telescopes what Gonzales Inarritu does well and magnifies what he does very very poorly.

Stay Tuned for More...

A celebration

Happy Birthday David Bowie! I can't believe you're 60. You're really far too cool to be that old. I mean, of course Mick Jagger and Macca and Johnny Rotten are old farts, and even Iggy Pop and David Byrne and the Roxy Music Brians are starting to seem up there(Eno less than Ferry though, probably because of the fashion baldness), but you? I never dreamt it would come. Are you going to release a children's album of epic terribleness? Or will you merely continue to bless us with inspired cameos like your Nikola Tesla in The Prestige?

Actually, if you recorded an album of children's stories in character as Nikola Tesla I'd be okay with it. Please just keep being weird, that's all I ask.

Sincerely,
M

A defense of Roberto Benigni

This is not a typical "Johnny Stechanno" was an amazing movie post(I can't even spell the title) type of post. All I am trying to say is, back in the 80s, when Jarmusch made Down By Law, Mr. Roberto was brilliant. His creative input was nil, and all he was required to do was be crazy and silly while John Lurie and Tom Waits bad-assed it in the background in the bayou. I feel bad for the man, after getting destroyed in the Times for his Iraq movie, but in the end, I can't feel too bad for the man who made the foreign language Oscar winning dreck Life is Beautiful. He does suck, but let'sSave as Draft let him suck for what he deserves to suck for. He wasn't always awful.

i suck

no posts till NYC

Sorry, that's how it will be

The rhyming is bad

Lack of blog is sad

MPLS won't do it for me.

Hello New Friend

I am currently looking at the "Do not disconnect" circle on the beautiful screen of my black, beautiful, brand new 80 GB iPod. Christmas came a little early in my house. I just wish it would finish charging so I could start playing with it.

?

The Scissor Sisters are going to guest star on Passions? I hope they play "I can't decide."

While we're on the subject...

You can watcht the entire Rainbow Brite movie on YouTube as well.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9

Is it even possible to rent this anymore?

Koala-wala Land

In anticipation of next week's Ask the AV Club, I want to talk about the only series that ever dealt with interplanetary koalas, the Noozles. Shown on Nickelodeon in the late 80s and early 90s, The Noozles, Blinky and Pinky, helped their friend Sandy find her missing father. They could help because they came to life when she nuzzled their noses(they spent part of their time as koala teddy bears) and were residents of the very parallel dimension in which Sandy's father was trapped. This saga so enraptured my sister and I that we tried to make our mom change our swimming lessons to later in the afternoon.

It was on at 12:30, and was preceded by another totally inappropriate "children's" animated series, Grimm Masterpiece Theater. Watching three princesses run for their lives from evil alien bug monsters who dropped their disguises just before the princesses gave up their will to return to the real world and submit as slaves to the bugs was...interesting. Very Sailor Moon, but more fairy tale and less obviously messed up. I think that program is why I wasn't surprised or shocked by hentai. Even at 6 I wondered when the tentacle porn was going to start.

God bless You Tube. And Nickelodeon for not having enough American kids programming to show poor children during the day. Although David the Gnome was totally lame.

John Carpenter Extravaganza

Is it ever possible to explain why you suddenly crave something? Popcorn, chocolate, a hamburger, or in my case, one of the early 80s John Carpenter-Kurt Russell flicks. Last weekend it was Escape from New York, this weekend, The Thing. I should have reversed the two since tonight is the night I'm spending by myself, but I solved the problem by renting an even scarier movie-Shattered Glass. That's pretty much the ultimate horror show for a non-fiction writer.

Back to sci-fi for a minute. The specific sci-fi/horror genre of The Thing, Alien, and the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers always have a handy computer or tool that projects humanity's doom. It's always a lot of fun to watch the evolution of technology in scary movies, especially when they're not the main show.

Sad.

Me: Don't worry, there's plenty of orange juice left.

Ethan: I would hate to run out of orange juice while you're on your climb to the plateau of hopelessness.

Gloating

My brain has finally recovered from the haze of victory and way too much to drink. And we're still winners! My analysis? The Republicans have inferior potassium.

A Modest Proposal for Medicaid

It fits with their "life begins at conception" beliefs, so I don't know why I was surprised to see that the Republicans have managed to weasel their way out of guaranteeing babies - BABIES - born in the U.S. to illegal immigrant parents free care under Medicaid. After all, if they were simply pre-born when they were smuggled across the border with their parents, they're not really citizens and we shouldn't feel bad.

Babies - BABIES - those pink little lumps of flesh that gurgle and cry and can't do anything for themselves, babies born in the United States, citizens of this country, don't have the right to care that can save them a lifetime of illness, or worse, shorten their lifetimes dramatically, don't have the right to vaccines and preventive care that eradicated horrible diseases in the developed world.

But then again, if they die, we don't have to worry about our beloved America becoming Mexicanized. Or maybe their parents, wherever in the world they come from, will stop trying to immigrate when they realize they can get more complete, better care from their local witch doctor than from hospitals in the United States.

Really classy Leslie Norwalk, really classy. Deficit Reduction Act my eye.

Babies! Why be mean to them? What did they ever do to you?

PUT ON SOME G*DD#^M PANTS!!!!!!!!!!

You are not, in fact, "playing with proportion," living on the cutting edge, winterizing your summer look, or finding a different "way of showing your shape in winter." You are WITHOUT PANTS. You LACK TROUSERS. There is a DEARTH OF FABRIC in the region of your private parts.

Sorry, it was a moment, and the Times was right, I did have it. A truer column title has never been written.

That time of Year

The leaves a practically all gone, the days start cloudy and end with flurries, and the prospect of 6 long months of winter chills the soul and makes everything a bit more wrought, edging towards the "over." Which means it's either time to start reading that dusty copy of the Unnameable or to restart my subscription to Netflix. Can you guess which one I'll do? A free copy of Beckett's Collected Shorter Plays to the first correct answer(seriously, we have an extra copy)!

Also, as a way to inject levity into the next five days' political conversations, I am going to punctuate all serious ideological statements with "sha na na na," like at the end of the "Family Ties" theme song(that was at the end of Family Ties, right? I suppose I could go back to Jake and find out) to emphasize the importance of voting for candidates who support stem cell research. I haven't found appropriate theme songs for the SD abortion ban or the WI gay marriage/civil union ban yet.

Boo!

Happy Birthday to Whitman, the world's most badass three year old. May you rule Madison as well as your father one day.

Halloween

As I listened to Ethan talk to his brother about their Halloween memories, and about their shared dislike of pumpkin carving, I thought of a year that takes on a whole new meaning now that I'm an adult.

My sister and I each got pumpkins to carve every year. There are tons of pictures of us at the pumpkin patches. One year we carved Bert and Ernie pumpkins, and each of us picked our pumpkins based on our favorite of those two characters. My pumpkin was short and round and was Ernie, and Dana's was tall and oval and was Bert. It only hit me now that our personalities match those choices as well.

The pumpkins looked really cool, too.

My Sister is the Greatest Volume III:

Wherein obscure 90's C-list celebs who later married 80s C-list celebs are referenced while mocking the genetic lot of a newly omnipresent celebutot,

Corngirl521: you know what is hilarious? apparently after singing a few songs at a concert, he totally started ripping on jessica simpsonm
meredithlynnec: nick?
Corngirl521: yeah
meredithlynnec: man that's good stuff
meredithlynnec: did you see how she said that she knew it was over when he didn't go to africa with her for her stupid charity?
meredithlynnec: also, WTF with Rumer Willis' chin?
Corngirl521: yeah. what a bitch-ass charity to be associated with
Corngirl521: what about her chin? did she get it done?
meredithlynnec: no, it's just so damn huge
Corngirl521: oh yeah
Corngirl521: she and casper van dien would have horribly freakish children

PS: The Oxenbergs were a great gravy train to hitch to. How Grace Kelly of you.

Ills and their cure

So I'm laid out with a terrible cold/flu/plague thing, with Arrested Development Season 1 and my knitting as my only entertainment. Also, the therapeutic benefits of a hot shower are being denied me because the hot water has not worked since Maintenance turned on our heat yesterday.

On the plus side, my dear friend Eric is in the Twin Cities and I will get to see him and catch up after a long period of radio silence. I can't wait to go get boozed up with him.

Wanted

A friend in Minneapolis who has cable and will let me watch Battlestar Galactica at their house on Friday nights.

California Bitches

(Directed in particular to a woman in Davis whose name I don't know): You are not on The Real World. In the non-MTV "real world," people do not sit their roommates down for a talk about cleaning styles and then spring on them a well thought out manifesto on why you can't stand them. That, in case you are confused, is what normal adults tend to call "cunt-ass bitch" behavior. There is no excuse for cruelty one month into any relationship, romantic, cohabitational, academic, or work-related. If I hear any more about it I am coming out there to kick your butt across the International Date Line. The swim in the Pacific should give my dear tormented friend some much needed peace.