800 Words: Assad Remains

The death toll of the Syrian uprising has now well exceeded 14,000. There’s no sense pretending otherwise, the Syrian government will get away with it, and the death toll will grow much, much higher before these massacres end. If we’re not going to flinch from the truth, it looks for the moment as though Bashar al-Assad will mow down the entire Arab Spring movement in Syria and unless there is an unforeseen solution, he will imprison, exile, or kill anyone in his country who shows the any sympathy with it. And no one in the entire world is in a position to stop him.

To be even blunter, the only option that would remove Assad is military intervention. No amount of arming rebels will bring Assad down – arming Saddam against Iran did not bring down the Ayatollah, and sanctions brought down neither Saddam nor Milosevic, it merely starved the people they didn’t kill themselves. Nor would diplomatic overtures to Iran solve anything. Syria is far too important to Iran for Iran to demand anything of Assad.

No, no diplomatic measure will stop the coming disaster, only military intervention could. But military intervention will not happen at any point in the next ten years. Assad is now the only steadfast ally of Russia and China in the Arab world, and for them to allow him to fall make despots around the world would question the health of any of their alliances with these two 'superpowers.' America is overcommitted to Afghanistan and must still be considered ‘on call’ in case a true Iraqi civil war breaks out. England and France are still entangled in Libya and Germany won’t even bail out Southern Europe. Turkey has already made an enemy out of Iraq on their border and can’t afford a second neighboring enemy. Ironically, the only country in the world with the economic, military, and nation-building strength whose interests might be served by an intervention is Israel; but nothing would give Assad more credibility in the eyes of his countrymen than to have the Syrian government fight yet another war against those ‘Zionist pigs.’  

It would appear that Bashar al-Assad, once the ‘idiot son’ whom everyone thought was too weak to even last a decade, held firmly onto power while every one of his ‘more competent’ colleagues fell. And he did it by being firmer, more ruthless, and ‘stronger’ than any of his peers. Like George W. Bush, he was ‘misunderestimated’ by everyone, and the world pays the price for thinking he didn’t have what it takes to rule with an iron hand.

Along with Abdulaziz Bouteflika of Algeria, Assad is one of only two Arab Nationalist dictators remaining – the rest of them, Saddam, Ben Ali, Mubarak, Qaddafi, and Saleh are all gone. Each of them ended their career ignominiously as a dinosaur-like remnant from the age of pan-Arab nationalism – in which newly liberated Arab states thought they could stand up to their former colonial conquerors. Among the major Middle East powers, every military dictator has fallen but Assad.  

Ironically, while the model of the pan-Arabist ‘strongman’ seems extremely passé and 20^th century, the Kings and Sultans of the Middle East seem to have all the staying power they had in the Middle Ages. The reason for this isn’t hard to figure out: while Middle East dictators traditionally looked to Communist countries as allies, the monarchies looked to the West. The West bequeathed their ancestors with the thrones they currently occupy, and so long as their pipelines stay flowing, the West will protect these ‘sympathetic’ rulers by any means necessary.

The liberals of the Middle East look to America and Western Europe for support, however begrudgingly. They ultimately realize that the only these countries will support their cause with an eye for the liberals to prevail in the inevitable conflict that will arise against religious extremists. The only alternative is to look for support from the autocrats of Russian and Chinese governments, with whom the Islamists share a common loathing of liberal causes like free elections and due process.

So long as Russia answers to Vladimir Putin, Russia in particular will never be convinced to abandon Assad, and it’s lunacy to pretend any diplomatic overture would result otherwise. From the moment that the British and French abandoned their colonies in the Middle East, Russia (and before it the Soviet Union) looked upon the entire Middle East as its colony in all but name. Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, and Libya have all overthrown their Russian ‘proxy’ governments. In Vladimir Putin’s mind, this is a cataclysmic loss in prestige. If Putin can’t guarantee the safety of his allies in as firm a Russian stronghold as the Middle East, what chance does he have of building long-term alliances with sympathetic autocrats in Eastern Europe and Central Asia? If Assad goes, Russia’s protection is meaningless.

Turkey may seem to have a vested interest in Assad’s fall, and no doubt, Erdogan would like to see it happen. But whatever the Turkish governments’ defects, Turkey is seen as the world’s sole functioning democracy in the Islamic world and the Middle East’s sole center of stability. To invite open warfare with Syria, to even be seen as supporting the rebels too strongly, is to jeopardize all the influence which Turkey won over the course of the Arab Spring. If conflict with Assad becomes too open, Turkey stands to lose all its stability, and all its reputation for humanitarianism – war is murder, and when waging open warfare against their neighbor, Turkish soldiers could ill-afford to show more mercy than their Syrian counterparts.

For many years, the Iranian government needed Assad far more than Assad needed them. Iran needs safe passage through Syria to wage holy war against Israel. Iran, like Turkey, still harbors dreams of leading the entire Islamic world. To enable Syria to have an Islamic regime would firstly mean to cede Syria to the Sunnis. Assad is Allawite Shia, which is a 12% minority-within-a-minority sect in a mostly Sunni country. But it would secondly rob Iran of the ‘coming glory’ which masterminding the destruction of Israel would endow them – and yes, even if Iran doesn’t use the bomb against Israel, the destruction of Israel is still the centerpiece in their plans to come to the vanguard of the Islamic world. People who say that Iran would abandon Assad because he’s not religious enough have the issue entirely backwards – if Iranian government policy were not so grounded in religious dogma, they’d have long since abandoned Assad. Without Assad, neither Hamas nor Hezbollah would have any rocket supply, and Israel would long since have dismantled the Iranian nuclear program. Now more than ever, the Iranian government has reason to support Assad.

That the Arab Spring happened at all is its own kind of miracle – it only happened because pan-Arabism seems dead, at least for the moment. No matter how effective they once seemed, no military dictator in the Middle East since Ataturk brought anything like the eminence, the wealth, or the progress he promised. The vast majority of the Middle East has long since put its faith in either liberalism or political Islam. But miracles do not happen twice. In every country where a military dictatorship fell, there is an inevitable conflict brewing between liberalism and Islamism – and between all the factions within them both. Every outside country with a vested interest in the Middle East used up its political capital before the Arab Spring reached Damascus. Assad’s held onto power by doing what any good dictator does – suspending rule of law, imprisoning agitators and killing his enemies. He knows that if he can hold onto power for just long enough, the world will forget about Syria. Sadly, the coming violence in the Middle East may well make what’s currently happening in Syria seem rather small scale and insignificant. Assad is banking on that, and the worst part is that he may well be exactly right.   

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Quote of the Day

The Harris: Upon my grave: Here lies ------ Harris, in death as in life,  a little stiff.

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800 Words: Why Mad Men Matters

He sits blankly at his desk against the wall in his cathedral of an office, with a cloud of smoke as thick as incense permeating the room's every corner; his face as illegible as an icon, the blankness of his visage absorbing every emotion simultaneously. His eminence is adorned by apparel as central to his image as birds to Francis and lambs to Agnes; a suit tailored so immaculately as to look like organic tissue, hair gelled to seem at one with a face sculpted out of marble, and a nicotine bass that seems to emit minerals. He does not tailor his appearance, he is his appearance. It is a figure as familiar to us as our parents, welcoming us to our dreams and haunting us in our nightmares. He is the very image of America, repelling us with every gesture even as we're seduced – not a man who wants to be liked, but a vengeful god to be worshiped. 

This is Don Draper, creative director of the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce Advertising Agency of the 1960's - a man paid to convince people that their dreams exist; a man without qualities or quality, his two definable characteristics being his ability to understand what we desire, and to make us believe it attainable. He is more paradigm than character, everything Americans are told to aspire to from birth, yet unknowable either to other characters or to his audience. 

Don Draper is not a person, he is America itself – precisely the image all America wants to present to each other: self-made, independent, competent in everything he touches, and tough as iron. Don Draper, the bastard son of a dead whore and an abusive farmer, became the King of Madison Avenue. Like everyone else in our country, he aspired to the American Dream. Unlike everybody else, he had the willpower it took to achieve it, and can't understand why other people don't have the same. Like all Americans from Jay Gatsby down to Willy Loman, Don is first and foremost a salesman – and we believe everything he sells us because we want to believe it’s possible, and he is his own best evidence. But few if any of us are as tough as Don, and if Don is America, then Mad Men is the story of how the world came to reject Don Draper’s sales pitch.

The beguiling layers of echoes and enigmas which surround Don Draper are only possible because the world around him is so immaculately recreated exactly as it should be - perhaps not as it was, but precisely as we remember it - a world created by advertising, full of the promise of the 'American Pastoral' in which cigarettes, alcohol, misogyny and high cholesterol were mere venal sins. It was a world which ran on the Faustian bargain of being a White Male: who accepted the world on a plate in exchange for the anonymity which conformity brings, and who surrounded himself with an invisible underclass of all who are unable to be a part of the same pact. 

Indeed, the seduction of this show comes from the almost imperceptibly slow realization of each of its major characters that their lives are changing, inexorably and forever. But it is not a metamorphosis that happens in the twinkling of an eye, it happens so slowly that only we know what will happen. With our 50 years of hindsight, we know exactly what people like the cast of this show turned into, but what makes the show so watchable is that they have no idea. 

It never ceases to amaze that Mad Men's detractors claim there is nothing behind the show's immaculately conceived veneer. Time and again, people hear and read the same contradictory views: 

To half Mad Men's critics the show is pornographic nostalgia - presenting a past bereft of half-a-century's liberal guilt during which America was free to be its truest self: an era in which American superiority had no reason to be questioned and the 'American Way' was the world's. To these critics, Mad Men presents to us nothing but our innate longing to recapture a paradise lost, an era that can never again be and perhaps never was. These critics allege that the show looks upon the suppression of the rest of the world to a tiny coterie of white males with nostalgia, perhaps even approval. 

To the other half of its critics, perhaps the more vocal half, the show is a nightmare vision of the past - presenting an era so backward in its view of the world that we from the present can bask in a cozy blanket of self-congratulation. To these critics, Mad Men presents to us nothing but our innate arrogance in assuming that we of the Obama era are far superior in our enlightenment to those who preceded us. These critics allege that the show looks upon the vices of the sixties with such holier-than-thou self-satisfaction that it turns a blind eye to to the virtues of that era, and even moreso to the vices of our own.

It is no blight upon the greatness of the show to concede that there is something to both interpretations. Who can look at the workplace camaraderie on display and deny that something important was lost in the intervening years? But just the same, who can look at the workers blatantly casual mistreatment of one another and deny that something at least as important was gained?

No, Mad Men is not a show that presents the sixties exactly as it was. No television show could. Those who claim that Mad Men is nothing more than surface rendered immaculate give the show far too much credit. Whole websites exist to document its errors of period style. The show is great not because it presents the sixties exactly as it was, it is great because it presents the sixties exactly as we remember it. 

It was Emerson who said that "[A man] dismisses without notice his own thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a sort of alienated majesty." The genius of Mad Men is that it displays America's memories of the sixties with complete fidelity to our present view of it. It's all there: the infidelities, the smoking, the drinking, the racism, the sexism, the pride and the prejudice, displayed with neither guile nor guilt. It takes no side and seeks nothing more than to present this era to us without judgment or inhibition. The fact that people have such divergent reactions to it speaks to that it does so with all the clarity of a balance sheet. Mad Men is not a show like The Sopranos that achieves greatness by giving us visceral thrills. It is a show that presents us a vision of an era that’s supposedly distant, and we respond because it is still an era very much like our own.

Like The Sopranos, Mad Men holds a mirror up to us, but what their mirrors display are very different. In The Sopranos’ mirror is a society of murderers and thieves from America’s present; we’re supposed to be repelled by their acts, yet we see that in so much of their lives they live exactly as we do – and we have to wonder, how different are we really from these thugs? In Mad Men, the mirror shows us an American society fifty years in the past in which the upper class is utterly indifferent to those around them – and we can supposedly congratulate ourselves on being different. Yet how much has really changed? Supposedly, we’re a less racist and misogynist society, more inclusive, more aware of our faults. But the poor of America is a larger group of people than ever, and probably poorer too. Is our country any more aware, any more concerned for their welfare than ever before?

As we wrapped up the fifth season, the show became ever truer to our memories. Those who once disliked have grown to hate it. For a number of years, the show seemed to be 'about' less and less with each passing episode. Just as history seemed to take a break from America in the late 50’s and early 60’s, the show opening seasons set a glacial pace, perfectly reflecting how light were the burdens of a white upper-middle class that had everything, yet was miserably unhappy. Nothing of consequence happened to them, and so they felt utterly without purpose. By the middle of season three, it's became difficult to remember if there was any linear plot to the show at all.

But since the end of season three, the momentum of plot development has grown as exponentially as an avalanche. Mad Men was once nothing more a smoky hall of mirrors with which the viewers could interact in any way they saw fit, but the mirror has long since shattered to reveal a funeral pyre. In season 5, probably the best yet, nearly every episode revealed a new development more shocking than the last. World events are catching up to these people, and the turbulence is getting closer and closer until the talons finally draw upon their necks.  

This show is about nothing less the dawn of the era that is still with us and now draws to its close. By 1968, the springtime romance of American power drew to its end, and in its place came the black comedy of a superpower grown fat on its over-privilege. Don’t expect that any of these people will be at the vanguard of the 60’s, it isn’t that kind of show. Mad Men is not a show about underclass people, it’s a show about the overclass’s reaction to the underclass – it’s a show about spoiled people who go through life blithely unaware that there are people whose entire existence is bound up in serving them, and these people are suffering. It never occurs to Pete or Roger that these people whose lives exist at their whims might want more, and if they’re not given it as a gift, they may take it.

I hate to disappoint people, but Mad Men will not end with the Storming of the Bastille. The Pete Campbells and Roger Sterlings of America still control this country, and the more people bristle at their authority, the tighter their grip grows. It’s 2012, and the story of Mad Men has still not finished, and the true rebellion against the partners of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce has not happened yet. I shudder to think of the magnitude of the explosion Mad Men foretells when it does. 

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ET: Almanac

La Lupa by Giovanni Verga:

She was tall, and thin; but she had the firm vigorous bosom of a brown woman, though she was no longer young. Her face was pale, as though she had the malaria always on her, and in her pallor two great dark eyes, and fresh, red lips, that seemed to eat you.

In the village they called her la Lupa, because she had never had enough—of anything. The women crossed themselves when they saw her go by, alone like a roving sh-dog, with that ranging, suspicious motion of a hungry wolf. She bled their sons and their husbands dry in a twinkling, with those red lips of hers, and she had merely to look at them with her great evil eyes, to have them running after her skirts, even if they’d been kneeling at the alter of Saint Agrippina. Fortunately, la Lupa never entered the church, neither at Easter nor at Christmas, nor to hear Mass, nor to confess.—Fra Angiolino, of Santa Maria di Jesu, who had been a true servant of God, had lost his soul because of her.

Maricchia, poor thing, was a good girl and a nice girl, and she wept in secret because she was la Lupa’s daughter, and nobody would take her in marriage, although she had her marriage-chest full of linen and her piece of fertile land in the sun, as good as any other girl in the village.

Then one day la Lupafell in love with a handsome lad who’d just come back from serving as a soldier, and was cutting the hay alongside her in the closes belonging to the lawyer: but really what you’d call folling in love, feeling your body burn under your stuff bodice, and suffering, when you stared into his eyes, the thirst that you suffer in the hot hours of June, away in the burning plains. But he went on mowing quietly, with his nose bent over his swath, and he said to her: “Why, what’s wrong with you, Mrs. Pina?”—In the immense fields, where only the grasshoppers crackled into flight, when the sun beat down like lead, la Lupa gathered armful after armful together, tied sheaf after sheaf, without ever wearying, without straightening her back for a moment, without putting her lips to the flask, so that she could keep at Nanni’s heels, as he mowed and mowed, and asked her from time to time: “Why, what do you want, Mrs. Pina?”

One evening she told him, while the men were dozing in the stackyard, tired from the long day, and the dogs were howling away in the vast, dark, open country: “You! I want you! Thou’rt handsome as the day, and sweet as honey to me. I want thee, lad!”

“Ah! I’d rather have your daughter, who’s a filly,” replied Nanni, laughing.

la Lupa clutched her hands in her hair, and tore her temples, without saying a word, and went away, and was seen no more in the yard. But in October she saw Nanni again, when they were getting the oil out of the olives, because he worked next to her house, and the screeching of the oil press didn’t let her sleep at night.

“Take the sack of olives,” she said to her daughter, “and come with me.”

Nanni was throwing the olives under the millstone with the shovel, in the dark chamber like a cave, where the olives were ground and pressed, and he kept shouting Ohee!To the mule, so it shouldn’t stop.

“Do you want my daughter Maricchia?” Mrs. Pina asked him.

“What are you giving your daughter Maricchia?” replied Nanni.

“She has what her father left, and I’ll give her my house into the bargain; it’s enough for me if you’ll leave me a corner in the kitchen, where I can spread myself on a bit of a straw mattress to sleep on.”

“All right! If it’s like that, we can talk about it at Christmas,” said Nanni.

Nanni was all greasy and grimy with the oil and the olives set to ferment, and Maricchia didn’t want him at any price; but her mother seized her by the hair, at home in front of the fireplace, and said to her between her teeth:

“If thou doesn’t take him, I’ll lay thee out!”

La Lupa was almost ill, and the folks were saying that the devil turns hermit when he gets old. She no longer went roving around; she no longer sat in the doorway, with those eyes of one possessed. Her son-in-law, when she fixed on him those eyes of hers, would start laughing, and draw out from his breast the bit of Madonna’s dress, to cross himself. Maricchia stayed at home nursing the children, and her mother went to the fields, to work with the men, just like a man, weeding, hoeing, tending the cattle, pruning the vines, whether in the north-east wind or the east winds of January, or in the hot, stifling African wind of August, when the mules let their heads hang in dead weight, and the men slept face downwards under the wall, on the north side. Between vesper bell and the night-bell’s sound, when no good woman goes roving round, Mrs. Pina was the only soul to be seen wandering through the countryside, on the ever-burning stones of the little roads, through the parched stubble of the immense fields, which lost themselves in the sultry haze of the distance, far off, far off, towards misty Etna, where the sky weighed down upon the horizon, in the afternoon heat.

“Wake up!” said la Lupa to Nanni, who was asleep in the ditch, under the dusty hedge, with his arms round his head. “Wake up! I’ve brought thee some wine to cool thy throat.”

Nanni opened his eyes wide like a disturbed child, half-awake, seeing her erect above him, pale, with her arrogant bosom, and her eyes black as coals, and he stretched out his hand gropingly, to keep her off.

“No! No good woman goes roving round between vespers and night,” sobbed Nanni, pressing his face down again in the dry grass of the ditch-bottom, away from her, clutching his hair with his hands. “Go away! Go away! Don’t you come into the stackyard again!”

She did indeed go away, la Lupa, but fastening up again the coils of her superb black hair, staring straight in front of her, as she stepped over the hot stubble, with eyes black as coals.

And she came back into the stackyard time and again, and Nanni no longer said anything; and when she was late coming, in the hour between between evensong and night, he went to the top of the white, deserted little road to look for her, with sweat on his forehead;--and afterwards, he clutched his hair in his hand, and repeated the same thing every time: “Go away! Go away! Don’t you come into the stackyard again!”

Maricchia wept night and day; and she glared at her mother with eyes that burnedwith tears and jealousy; like a young she-wolf herself now, when she saw her coming in from the fields every time silent and pallid.

“Vile woman!” she said to her. “Vile, vile mother!”

“Be quiet”

“Thief! Thief that you are!”

“Be quiet!”

“I’ll go to the Sergeant, I will.”

“Then go!”

And she did go, finally, with her child in her arms, went fearless and without shedding a tear, like a madwoman, because now she also was in love with that husband of hers, whom they’d forced her to accept, greasy and grimy from the olives set to ferment.

The Sergeant went for Nanni, and threatened him with gaol and the gallows. Nanni began to sob and to tear his hair; he denied nothing, he didn’t try to excuse himself.—“It’s the temptation,” he said “It’s the temptation of hell!” and he threw himself at the feet of the Sergeant, begging to be sent to gaol.

“For pity’s sake, Sergeant, get me out of this hell! Have me hung, or send me to prison; but don’t let me see her again, never, never!”

“No!” replied la Lupato the Sergeant. “I kept myself a corner in the kitchen, to sleep in, when I gave her my house for her dowry. The house is mind. I won’t be turned out.”

A little while later, Nanni got a kick in the chest from a mule, and was likely to die; but the parish priest wouldn’t bring the Host to him, unless la Lupa left the house. La Lupa departed, and then her son-in-law could prepare himself to depart also, like a good Christian; he confessed and took the communion with such evident signs of repentance and contrition that all the neighbours and the busybodies wept round the bed of the dying man.

And better for him if he had died that time, before the devil came back to tempt him and get a grip on his body and his soul, when he was well.

“Leave me alone!” he said to la Lupa. “For God’s sake leave me in peace! I’ve been face to face with death. Poor Maricchia is only driven wild. Now all the place knows about it. If I never see you again it’s better for you and for me.”

And he would have liked to tear his eyes out so as not to see again those eyes of la Lupa, which, when they fixed themselves upon his, made him lose both body and soul. He didn’t know what to do, to get free from the spell she put on him. He paid for Masses for the souls in Purgatory, and he went for help to the priest and to the Sergeant. At Easter he went to confession, and he publicly performed the penance of crawling on his belly and licking the stones of the sacred threshold before the church for a length of six feet.

After that, when la Lupa came back to tempt him:

“Hark here!” he said. “Don’t you come again into the stackyard; because if you keep on coming after me, as sure as God’s above I’ll kill you.”

“Kill me, then” replied la Lupa. “It doesn’t matter to me; I’m not going to live without thee.”

He, when he perceived her in the distance, amid the fields of green young wheat, he left off hoeing the vines, and went to take the axe from the elm-tree. La Lupa saw him advancing towards her, pale and wild-eyed, with the axe glittering in the sun, but she did not hesitate in her step, nor lower her eyes, but kept on her way to meet him, with her hands full of red poppies, and consuming him with her black eyes.

“Ah! Curse your soul!” stammered Nanni.

- Translated by D. H. Lawrence

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Sight and Sound Movie List - Der Huber

I want to preface this with a note about my own confusion at being asked to contribute. I've never thought of myself as a particular fan of film. I take them in every once in a while, but without condition for actors, directors or cinematographers. I don't know the shibboleths of describing film. This will be a list of films that I've enjoyed, and the best explanation I can muster for why they're fantastic.

Alright, let's do this by category, since that's the best way I can think to go over this. I will spoil things about most of these movies. Consider yourself advised.

Horror:

I hate horror movies. I really do hate them, which is why I feel compelled to find a good one to put here. 

Last House on the Left (1972, dir. Wes Craven) - This is the best horror film I've ever seen. Shying away from the startling style of horror, this is more depraved. It's much darker, in a way that only the 70s could have captured. Apparently it's also Wes Craven's first film. Don't let that dissuade you. It's actually a good horror film. Be forewarned that it is dramatically more graphic than most horror films. It relies much more on the horror of meeting a random psychopath, and less on the supernatural.

Romantic Adventure Fantasy:

Stardust (2007, dir. Matthew Vaughan) - It's hard to beat this for Fantasy Romantic Adventure. A young boy sets out on a quest to prove his love. A basic story that's well portrayed, and really well executed. It's cheesy, in a way that only a good fantasy movie can be. Claire Danes is great. Robert De Niro has some incredible scenes. And the whole fairy-tale storyline plays out to a T.

Comedy:

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988, dir. Frank Oz) - How can you go wrong watching a competition between a high-class European con man vs. a low-class American grifter? Michael Caine and Steve Martin play off of each other so well. For such a mindlessly silly movie at times, it's probably the apex of bad 80s comedies.

Best Extreme Movie:

Requiem for a Dream (2000, dir. Darren Aronofsky) - This movie is incredible. It's awful, and wonderful, and depressing and horrible. It terrifies me how well this movie links up the different forms of substance abuse and destructive behavior, alongside the underlying narrative that all any of these characters ever wanted was some attention and love. If we were really serious about scaring kids off of drugs, the D.A.R.E. program would show this movie to 5th graders. 

Film Noir:

Night has a Thousand Eyes (1948, dir. John Farrow) - I like my Noir a bit on the cheesy side, and this one has that in Spades. From Wikipedia:

"""

The film opens in San Francisco, where John Triton (Robinson) is "The Mental Wizard", a nightclub fortune teller. During a show one evening, Triton suddenly urges an audience member to rush home, cautioning that her son is in danger. As the story unfolds, Triton struggles with his newfound psychic ability, as all of his relentlessly bleak predictions prove accurate. Jerome Cowan (of Maltese Falcon fame) plays Whitney Courtland, Triton's best friend, who becomes wealthy using tips from the now-psychic Triton.

"""

Young, innocent and wealthy Jean Courtland is the subject of intrigue when John Triton has a vision of her untimely demise, accurate down to the hour and the location. The intrigue abounds. This movie hits the campiness factor so well given how it has aged. It contains all the critical noir elements, the pretty girl, the old cynical man, the ill-gotten fortune, and a cosmic sense of justice. 

It also has such lovely gems as asking a Geologist "You're a man of Science, is such a [psychic] phenomenon possible?"

Science Fiction:

Gattaca (1997, dir. Andrew Niccol) - I always thought this movie best described the kind of dystopian future that's possible. It's not perfect, and the story is about an intensely motivated exception to the rule. It's also a friendship story, albeit a rather 1-dimensional one. Like all great science fiction, the main character and premise carry the entire story. The rest of the environment is set up to play out the internal conflict of the protagonist against the dystopian future.

Made-up Categories:

Best Movie I thought was an inch shy of being perfect:

Se7en (1995, dir. David Fincher) - This move came so close to being everything I could want in a thriller. Senseless murders with a shocking mystery element. A plot with a reasonable amount of twists that doesn't lose sight of the destination, and a fantastic ending. There's only one problem with it, one little criticism that keeps me from fully enjoying it.

The center of the plot is that the killer arranges for the deaths of those seen as committing each of the seven deadly sins. The progression goes quite believably well except that he convolves envy and wrath together. It would make much more sense, both from a narrative perspective, and from a plot consistency, if Brad Pitt's character were to kill the killer, then commit suicide. Then you're balanced, envy and wrath have both paid the price. Without that balance, it doesn't make any sense. As it stands, the killer is just a monster, rather than a psychopathic genius. In a movie about the villain succeeding, the villain doesn't succeed in his intention.

Lastly the narrative feels imbalanced with Both of the detectives alive at the end. It would have felt more balanced for Morgan Freeman's character to end the movie in the same place it began, with him isolated and alone in a city that's killed everything he ever believed in.

Modern Noir:

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002, dir. Chan-Wook Park)

I call this Modern Noir because it follows the classic noir formula, but is made recently. Similar to Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, this a tale of committing a horrible crime for extenuating circumstances. The main character is especially sympathetic as a deaf, impoverished worker in Seoul. He kidnaps the daughter of the owner of the electronics factory he works at. With the ransom, he intends to pay some organ smugglers enough to get a replacement kidney for his dying sister, in exchange for one of his own. 

It gets very extreme when his handicap causes the tragic death of the young girl, setting off a series of events which can only end with vengeance. This movie can be held in contrast with Se7en (above), in that the ending has balance. All the characters have closure.

Best pair of movies that are the same movie:

Fistfull of Dollars (1964, dir. Sergio Leone) & Yojimbo (1961, dir. Akira Kurosawa) - I always have to look up which of these movies was made first (it's yojimbo). I oscillate between which one is my favorite, but the reality is that they're exactly the same movie. They have the same set of characters, with the same motivations and outcomes. The entire movie is almost shot-for-shot the same movie. 

In terms of the actual movie, and why it's fantastic, that's a bit harder to tease out. It is a classic, archetype of the "a stranger comes to town" story. An unnamed wanderer comes in and rights wrongs on no one's side but his own. For a Fistfull of Dollars, it's unburdened by the standard 'how the west was won' nationalism I rather despise. Yojimbo also avoided feeling caught up as an example of a larger societal shift, as 7 samurai was. They're both movies with what seems like an intentionally isolated scope, telling a tale where the good guys aren't that good. It's brutal and honest and fantastic. 

Best Sexy Movie:

Secretary (2002, dir. Steven Shainberg) - There's something about the transformation of Maggie Gyllenhaal throughout this movie that works. I love that it takes the premise seriously, runs with it, but does so in a lighthearted, romantic way. James Spader is his usual creepy self. They set each other off so well, and it just works.

Best Movie About Friendship:

The Shawshank Redemption (1994, dir. Frank Darabont) - I really enjoy this movie. It's well paced, and evolves the relationship between Red and Andy over 20 years. Over the countless trials inside of the prison, they build a deep friendship. I always found it fascinating that this movie never cast named female character. The movie is strictly about male friendship. 

Honorable Mentions (twitter style):

Old Boy - Extreme and Intense. 

Pan's Labyrinth - For Whom the Bell Tolls meets Alice in Wonderland

Waitress - Saccarine Sweet

Up - I'll admit it, I cried the first time I watched the opening

In Bruges - Of Mice and Men for European Hitmen 

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ET: Almanac

Upon meeting the young painter Eichler at the Grodzickis', I said: I don't believe in painting! (To musicians I say, I don't believe in music!) Then I found out from Zygmunt Grocholski that Eichler asked him if I make up these paradoxes for the hell of it. They can't imagine how much truth there is in them, truth that is probably truer than the truths that nourish their slavish "attachment" to art.

Yesterday I went to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes with N.N., after submitting to his pleas. The excess of paintings exhausted me even before I began to look at them. We would walk from room to room, stop at one of the paintings, then move on to another painting. Of course, my companion exhaled "simlicity" and "naturalness" (that secondary naturalness that is a victory over artificiality) and, in keeping with the obligatory savoir-vivre, he avoided anything that could be construed as exaggerated. I belched an apathy that gleamed with revulsion, animosity, revolt, anger, and absurdity.

There were ten other people besides ourselves who walked up, looked, then walked away. The mechanical quality of their movements, their muteness, gave them the appearance of marionettes and their faces were non-existent compared to the faces that peered out of the canvas. This is not the first time that the face of art has irritated me by extinguishing the faces of the living. Who visits museums? A painter, more often a student from a school of fine arts or a pupil from high school, a woman who does not know what to do with her time, a few art lovers, people who have come from afar and are visiting the city. Other than these types there was practically no one else even though everyone would swear on their knees that Titian or Rembrandt are wonders that make their spines tingle.

This absence does not surprise me. Large, empty rooms hung with canvases are repugnant and capable of casting one into pits of depression. Paintings are not meant to be hung next to one another on a bare wall, a painting is meant to adorn an interior and to be the joy of those who live with it. Here in the museum, the paintings are crowded, the amount crowds the quality, masterpieces counted in the dozens stop being masterpieces. Who can look closely at a Murillo when the Tiepolo next to it demands attention and thirty other paintings further down shout: look at us! There exists an unbearable, degrading contrast between the intention of each o these works of art, which wants to be the only and exclusive one, and hanging the paintings all together in this room. Yet art, not just painting, is full of such marginal clashes, absurdities, uglinesses, and stupidities which we cast outside of the mainstream of our feelnigs. An old tenor in the role of the young Siegfried does not jar us, nor do frescoes we can't see, a Venus with a broken nose, or an old lady declaiming young poems. 

I, however, am less and less inclined to divide my sensivtivity into compartments and I do not want to close my eyes to the absurdities that accompany art but are not art. I demand of art not only that it be good art, but also that it be well rooted in life. I do not want to tolerate its too silly temples or its too ridiculous prayers... If these are the masterpieces that are to fill us with admiration, why then do we feel afraid, uncertain and why do our emotions wander blindly? Before we fall on our knees before a masterpiece, we wonder whether this is supposed to be a masterpiece. We ask shyly if this is supposed to astound us. We ask ourselves diligently if we are allowed to experience these heavenly raptures, after whcih we surrender ourselves to admiration. How are we to reconcile this supposedly striking, irresistible, spontaneous, and obvious power of art with the indecisiveness of our reaction? Every step of the way arise amusing gaffes, terrible mishaps, and fatal mistakes which unmask all the falseness of our language. The facts challenge our lies every time. Why is this original worth ten million and its copy (even though it is so perfect that it makes the identical artistic impression) worth only ten thousand? Why is there a pious crowd that gathers before the original, but no one admires the copy? That painting supplied divine emotions as long as it was considered to be a "work of Leonardo" but today no one will look at it, because a paint analysis has shown that it is the work of an apprentice. That back by Gauguin is a masterpiece, but in order to evaluate this masterpiece one must be familiar with technique, have the entire history of painting in one's head, and have a specialized taste. By what right then do those who have no preparation admire him? If (and this is what I said to my companion after we left the museum) instead of analyzing paint, we would subject the reactions of the viewer to a more precise, empirical examination, we would uncover an unlimited falseness that would bring all the Parthenons crashing to the ground and explode the Sistine Chapel with our shame.

He looked at me askance. He understood that he was experiencing a crisis of confidence. My reasoning sounded simplistic not because, in his understanding, I was not right, but, first of all, because this was not the language of a person from "good artistic society" and because neither Malraux, nor Cocteau, nor any other of the people whom he respected would have expressed himself this way. This was a collection of concepts that they had long outgrown. Yes, this was a "lower sphere," something really beneath them. No one should not speak of art in this tone! I knew what flashed across his mind: that I am a Pole, that is, a more primitive creature. Yet at the same time I was the author of books which he considered "European," therefore, perhaps it was not Slavic primitivism issuing from my lips but perhaps I was making fun of him by making a nut out of myself? He said: You are saying that just to rile me.

Rile! If your stupidity riles me then allow me to rile you! Why don't you want to see that sophistication not only does not exclude simplicity but should and must go hand in hand with it? If a person who complicates himself cannot also simplify himself at the same time, then he loses his inner resistance to the forces that he has awakened in himself and that will destroy him. Even if there were nothing morein my words than a desire to submit to art, while maintaining sovereignty in the face of it, then this ought to be applauded. This is a healthy policy for an artist. Yet other, profounder reasons were crouching within me, about which he knew nothing. I could have said to him:

You think that I am naive, but it is you who are naive. You have no idea what is happening inside of you when you look at a painting. You think that you are getting close to art voluntarily, enticed by its beauty, that this intimacy is taking place in an atmosphere of freedom and that delight is being born in you spontaneously, lured by the divine rod of Beauty. In truth, a hand has grabbed you by the scruff of the neck, led you to this painting and has thrown you to your knees. A will mightier than your own told you to attempt to experience the appropriate emotions. Whose hand and whose will? That hand is not the hand of a single man, the will is collective, born in an interhuman dimension, quite alien to you. So you do not admire at all, you merely try to admire.

I could have said all this and a lot more, but I restrained mysel. All of this must remain stifled within me. How does one lend this thought the right weight, how does one build it up and organize it into a more elaborate work, if my time is that of a minor clerk and not respected by anyone. Should I speak out of the side of my mouth? Should I allude to a truth that is impossible to elicit in its entirety? I had to remain unconfessed, fragmentary, and helpless in the face of an absurdity that distorted me. And not just me. 

He says: I admire. I say: You are trying to admire. A slight difference, yet on this slight difference is built a mountain of devout lies. It is in this deceitful school that style is formed. Not just artistic style, but the style of thinking and feeling of the elite which comes here in order to perfect its sensitivity and achieve a sureness of form.

--Witold Gombrowicz - Diaries

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Late Friday Playlist #17: Doc Watson Edition

I wasn't comfortable doing any kind of memorial to Doc Watson since other people knew his music much better than I did. Then Ray Bradbury died, and I devoted two posts to a writer on whom I have absolutely no business commenting. So here's to you Doc Watson, from a music lover who was vaguely aware of you.

Deep River Blues 

Tennessee Stud 

Shady Grove  

Sitting on Top of the World

Nine Pound Hammer 

Peach Picking Time in Georgia 

Banks of the Ohio 

Streamline Cannonball 

Omie Wise 

When I Lay My Burdens Down 

Southbound 

Dont' Let Your Deal Go Down 

Cuckoo 

I'll Rise When the Rooster Crows 

New River Train 

On My Way to Caanan Land

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