The Cove

Every two weeks or so, a movie shows up in our mailbox (the wonder of Netflix!) and the excitement of the red envelope quickly turns into bewilderment when I realize that this is yet another movie that I have never heard of. Sometimes, it's the other way around, and it is Anna who says, "Why did you put this in our queue? This happens because Anna and I like to add movies that we hear referenced on This American Life, from friends who are even deeper into the world of arts and culture, and from an insatiable desire to watch movies that are amazingly depressing, but also - so we believe - very important.

Last night, I watched one that falls in that last category, what may be called "Depressing Documentary" (the Oscar winner in this category may just be "Deliver Us From Evil" about sexual abuse within the Catholic Church). The one I watched last night is right up there with "Deliver Us ...": The Cove - the story about the slaughter of dolphins in Taiji, Japan.

I am not typically upset by much, but - boy - this was disturbing, especially the ending. I am planning to never visit a "family-friendly" dolphin park again, and - yes - that includes SeaWorld, kids. Shoot: I even found myself at 11:15 pm last night thinking, "I'm not sure I can eat another piece of sushi."

For me, that's huge.

But, even with that warning, I want you to watch it.

I want you to watch it, specifically, because I think this movie is an incredible lesson on what "social justice" honestly looks like. I believe it heart-wrenching-ly shows you the struggle that any conscientious, concerned individual has to go through in addressing a wrong in the world (and, yes, there are still plenty of those). It makes you realize how truly sadistic and fallen can be the ways of industry, and how inconspicuously communities, nations and even you and me can get caught in the death-dealing gears of productivity and progress.

Plus, you cannot watch this movie without realizing how this is indeed one of the enduring legacies of human civilization: the slaughter of innocents for the sake of human comfort and gain. I know: not something you want to watch with a bucket of popcorn!

But, this is how wrongs are righted. And maybe that would be reason enough to watch it: maybe it would spark some desire within you to make a change. As one of the heroes in the movie said, "Either your an activist or an inactivist."

Wes

It's a Life ... Time Alone Tells if it is Wonderful

In 2003, I saw It's a Wonderful Life in its entirety for the first time in my life.  Anna and I had escaped Los Angeles for a mini-retreat up to Santa Barbara at my Aunt Lynel's house.  It just so happened that our visit coincided with the annual network television showing of the movie.  From that point on, Anna was hooked.  It has easily become her favorite Christmas movie, and it's not too far from the top of my own list.  

Today, there was a great article in the New York Times about this film.  The article is largely about how George Bailey's life is hardly "wonderful" in traditional movie terms, and the article included this humorous bit:

“It’s a Wonderful Life” is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher and your oppressively perfect wife. It is also a nightmare account of an endless home renovation."

To read the entire article, click here.

Wes

The Dark Night ... and Days

My brother-in-law came into town this past weekend to celebrate my birthday.  Very kind of him, I will say.  Even more kind:  he helped get everything ready for my birthday party on Saturday, staying around to grill and clean-up.  Nice dude that Drew.

Drew and I had talked a few weeks ago about seeing the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight, which has created quite a stir after months of anticipation - largely stemming from Heath Ledger's untimely death.  From what I gather, the movie has benefitted nicely from the tragedy.  

Anyhow, I had given up on the idea of seeing the movie about a week ago.  Anna and I had refigured our budget, which invariably makes me feel like it's time to pinch some pennies.  Plus, I had read a review in The New Yorker that was fairly scathing of The Dark Knight.  And, on top of that, the other review in that same magazine was for Wall-E, the newest Pixar film that has been released, and that review was glowingly positive.  

So, I had determined to see Wall-E if I saw any movie.  But, here's the thing, Drew shows up and asks me, "What are you thinking?"  He's like this, one of the many reasons I love him.  He'll just show up on your doorstep one day, as if you and he had never parted ways.  And, he'll pick up a conversation that you started two weeks ago.  And, this time, which is not usual, I knew what he was talking about.

"You want to go see Batman?" I asked back.  

"Well, I figured we could go," he began.  In the next few moments we did the dance of commitment.  I realized that he had actually waited this long simply to see it with me.  He realized that my promise might not have been complete.  

But, Drew, he's a nice guy, and I hate to be the one to bear bad news to a nice guy.  And, in fact, I did want to see the movie.  So, two hours later we're standing in line at the local cinema that is overwhelmed with families and teens and college students on a busy Friday night.  

And not long after that, we're sitting in the theatre, jam packed full of human beings, about to be belligerently assaulted by over two and half hours of what The New Yorker called a celebration of perversity.  And, it was.  

Yes, the movie was good - riveting and dramatic.  No doubt about that.  And Heath Ledger's performance?  Well, it wasn't really a performance.  It seemed real, which was both the draw and the repulsion.  He seemed to overwhelm the film and the movie theatre with his unwieldy madness.  As one commentator said, Ledger is proof of how staring into the abyss of madness is dangerous.

But that raises the question.  How can staring into the abyss can be good for anyone?

What I am really driving at is this:  movies in particular, but also our news and television, have become much darker, much more sadistic in recent years.  I'm sure some sociologist is taking note of this somewhere and beginning to evaluate when it began, but it seems to me that the turn came almost precisely after September 11, 2001.  At least that's how I remember it.  In the years that followed that horrific morning, images and stories of torture, of nihilistic destruction, of horror that leads to post-traumatic stress-disorder began to appear:  Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, movies like Hostel and Saw, television shows like 24.  And the age old debate about culture influencing media or media impacting culture begins anew.  

The Dark Knight then is but one in a series of movements that makes this decade one of the harshest, darkest in my personal memory.  And it seems like a shame that Drew and I spent $8 a piece to be immersed into that world.  Like I said, Drew's a nice guy.  And I'm more of a Pixar guy anyway.

~Wes

Rosebud

The Simpsons: Season 5 ... wherever you are, I miss you. I hope someone is watching the "Rosebud" episode tonight.

I've just finished Citizen Kane (still AFI's #1 movie of all time) for the first time in my life (my previous attempt secured a great nap after only making it through the first few minutes in my dad's lazyboy recliner).

Perhaps just as good as the movie was the accompanying second disc, which details the momentous battle between Orson Welles and William Randolph Hearst - Godzilla and King Kong egos at war.

The lesson learned: beware the appetite of ambition. It ultimately consumes the consumer.

Welles prodigious will catapulted him into fame, fame he created in radio and theatre. But, he was always living on the tight-wire of genius, running from place to place and project to project as a way to keep his attention off of the shadow and faults that lay at his feet. With youth, he could do so. His enormous energy kept his identity glamorous, but it was an identity like a stage set - thin behind the show. He devoured life, plowing through meals (two steaks, two baked potatoes, a pineapple and a bottle of whiskey for dinner every night), dominating rooms, overwhelming nay-sayers, bewildering critics.

Two generations before him, though, Hearst had fashioned himself in similar manner - using his inherited wealth, which his father secured from mining in California, to launch a whole new way of seeing the world: print journalism that captured the fantastic, the strange, the nitty-gritty, and thus the common man's attention.

In Citizen Kane, Welles launched himself at Hearst, seizing hold of a man that would give Welles what had always brought fortune to him earlier: adversity. Only this time that is exactly what he got.

Welles' refusal to back down from Hearst, and his own drive to make himself a great man eventually brought his own life into the arc of tragedy that was the fictional Citizen Kane. It is harrowing to watch an aged Welles before the camera confessing that 2% of his life after Citizen Kane was about making movies. The other 98%: "hustling," trying to live a lie which was his life, trying to let his image outpace his reality.

So, let the words of the Beastie Boys stand as the last voice of reason: "Be true to yourself and you will never fall."

Wes

Philip Glass

Anna and I watched The Illusionist for the second time last night, and five minutes into it Anna said, "this is definitely by Philip Glass."  I was amazed that she knew so surely (only later did I realize that she saw his name in the opening credits - you sly girl).  

Like most things, we are just now getting clued into something a million other people already know:  Philip Glass is a beautiful genius, and his work is breath-taking.  In some ways he is becoming to modern, artistic cinema what John Williams has meant to big screen blockbusters.  His scores are signature pieces, and you most likely recognize his music even if you still don't know his name (think The Hours, or Secret Window).  

His style is minimalist, which I wish meant more to me, but my musical appreciation and knowledge is fairly thin.  Side note:  I remember one of my professors of economics at DePauw University said he was into minimalist "stuff" back in 2000, but I had no idea what he was talking about.  I prefer to believe that he knew then about Philip Glass, which is probably correct.  

Anyhow, there is a documentary forthcoming about Glass titled GLASS:  A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Pieces.   You'll note in the trailer that the San Francisco Chronicle called Glass our "greatest living composer."  I noticed and took delight in the fact that his genius exists and somehow continues even amidst the chaos of home.  For all parents who live in the heap of constant confusion and endless madness, Philip Glass seems a Phoenix of hope.

I look forward to seeing this film ... six to twelve months after it is released in artsy corners of our nation.  Do me a favor and see it if you can.

Wes  

Gritty

We've been watching a lot of gritty films recently, mostly because those are films that garnered attention for male actors this past year.  Tonight we watched The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - a poetic Western where the audience must suffer with the misery of betrayal.  The brutality in the movie is not abundant, but what is there is accentuated by the blunted, pure force of guns and bullets that had not yet been refined to weapons of stealth and sexy-precision.  Guns sling slugs that pound more than they stab.  Gaping wounds result and blood pools instead of trickles.

On Monday, we watched Daniel Day-Lewis' powerful role in There Will Be Blood, which - as you could well predict - has its own fair share of pooling crimson and buried bodies.

Now that you think we're very morose around this house, let me just say that we saw Eastern Promises a few weeks ago.  And I was definitely in favor of the Coen's taking best picture for No Country for Old Men.  

All of these are great gritty movies, but where would they rank along with some of the other classics?  What do you think?  What movies come to mind when you think of gritty, white-knuckle drama?  Here's my top ten (in no particular order):

1.  The French Connection:  Gene Hackman's pretty much pissed off at the world in this one, and I would be too if I had to be a tough street cop with the nickname "Popeye".  This movie - along with Steve McQueen's Bullit and Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry films - defines gritty, especially given the matter-of-fact cinematography Hollywood was in love with throughout the late 60's and 70's.  Guns echo over whole cities.  It seems that Hollywood was determined to cast the chaotic cultural clashes of the 1960's by reframing the Western genre within urban jungles.

2.  Collateral:  I just love this movie.  Set within Los Angeles, this Michael Mann film made a star of Jamie Foxx and allowed people to see another side of Tom Cruise.  The grittiness of this movie is set early on when a hired-assassin (Cruise) drops a man two stories on top of a cab.  Throw in a great car wreck, close-quarters shootouts and Vincent (Cruise) as a walking wound by the end of the film, and you've got true grit.  Mann mixes all gritty motifs:  Samurai culture, Westerns and Cop Drama.    Interesting note:  Javier Bardem appears briefly in this film as the shadowy, super-cool, Mexican drug king, Felix. 

3.  No Country for Old Men:  Yes, that is the same Javier Bardem who walks around Texas as some form of menacing death known as Anton Chigurh (be it person or power we know not).  This movie highlights two other key pieces of gritty movies:  terse and tense speech and the agonizing "bandage your own wounds" scene.  Ouch.

4.  Dirty Harry:  Come on, this scene pretty much defines gritty ... once again, notice how much elements of Cowboy/Western movies come out in the cinematography.  

5.  Unforgiven:  This relatively modern Western starring Eastwood and Morgan Freeman also includes Gene Hackman.  "Any man who doesn't want to get killed better step on out the back."  Here's a key scene. 

6.  The Departed:  I don't know anyone who saw how this one was going to end, but you knew from the beginning this Boston mafia movie would end with plenty of shooting and some double-crossing.  Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio show off some of their own grittiness against some seasoned tough guys.  And, in the end, someone ends up taking a bullet between the eyes - no mercy, no hesitation, just the cold reality of death and life, losers and winners.

7.  Tombstone:  Any movie that starts out with a reckless, vile group of outlaws gunning down a bride, a groom and a priest has got to be gritty.  But, if you think the bad guys are iron-guts, just wait until the fury of justice is unleashed through Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russell) and Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer).  

8.  Chinatown:  This is why I never visited Chinatown, never mind all the scary Hello Kitty merchandise!  Basically the same substance of those other gritty-city dramas, this film also has a bit of film noir mixed in to add mystery to the mayhem.  Still, the ending (a regular punch to the gut) tilts the scale over to true grit.

9.  Road to Perdition:  You don't think of Tom Hanks as being a man of grit, but this surprising film sets Hanks in mob-infested Chicago at the beginning of a new century.  This movie highlights another common gritty theme:  good guys have to wade through crap - becoming viciousness - in order to release others.

10.  The Untouchables:  Al Capone gives a bat to the head, and a shootout breaks out that sends bullets hurtling past a baby-carriage free-falling down marble steps.  De Niro is Capone; Kevin Costner is Elliot Ness.  Every great American city deserves its own gritty movie, a film that shows what it took to bring order to burgeoning chaos and violence.  Force has to overcome force to subdue a gritty world.  

So, there they are.  My top 10 ... although, don't kill me if I change my mind by morning.  At least give me the honor of a duel.

What are yours?

Wes

Music

Hey, everyone. I am ready once again to stretch my musical awareness (which usually means some minor purchases on iTunes). So, if you have any ideas how I should spend $20 or so, let me know.

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In other news, Ingmar Bergman died this week - film maker and philosopher. His most famous film is The Seventh Seal, which involves a medieval knight playing chess with death:


Anyhow, I've been co-leading a bible study on Revelation for our church, and - wouldn't you know it - this weeks study has us looking at Revelation 8:1 ... about the seventh seal. Clearly this is true evidence that history is now nearing its fulfillment.

Anna and I watched The Seventh Seal not too long ago ... actually, I think I was the only one to make it through that one. I remember being bored at times by the heavy imagery and overt philosophy, but I loved the overall message. In short, it is about the triumph of love and faith over despair, death and disbelief.

Wes

Dark Days

We watched Dark Days tonight - a documentary about a homeless community existing in the subway caverns of New York City. We watch a lot of documentaries in our house. Yes, most of them - as our extended family usually points out to us if they ever take our advice and watch them - are depressing. But, most of the time documentaries these days are professionally crafted and edited to keep some form of distance between the action occurring in the film and the viewer sitting comfortably at home. You don't tend to sit in the misery of other people. Documentaries like The Future of Food or An Inconvenient Truth are certainly full of their woe, but they also end positively - hoping to lift the audience into a new way of behaving.

Well Dark Days has no such ambitions. Filmed in black and white and using loud, obnoxious subway trains as "cuts" from scene to scene, you watch constantly uncomfortable - trying to understand the anxious, disturbed, drug-saturated minds of men and women who have been reduced to scavenging like rats (which the director also uses as another "cut" device). Thirty minutes into the movie I started fearing the filth had jumped off the television and invaded my house.

You watch men pulling raw meat out of garbage bags - explaining how this is good meat since it comes from a Jewish deli where the meat is not thrown out with the other trash, "coffee grounds and shit" - and you're thankful the filming is so gritty. You watch two young men arguing over who will dump out the latrine - a painter's bucket set-up under a handicap accessible seat you'd expect to find hovering over a hospital or retirement home toilet. Eventually, the new kid takes the bucket not twenty yards from their makeshift house and pours it onto a stinking mound. No music. No narration. Just the inescapable hopelessness.

Or so I thought.

At the very end of the movie Amtrak issues a statement that the underground community has 30 days to vacate or else they will be evicted by force. But before the police can march into the depths, a homeless relief center in New York works with Amtrak to negotiate a better deal: the homeless men and women will be transferred to Section 8 housing and into apartments with another chance at life.

It's naive to think that's all these people need, and Dark Days never attempts to answer the pervasive reality and disaster mental illness and drugs has and will wreak on these people's lives. But, as the movie closes, you can't help but feel that some form of redemption has occurred.

In the conclusion, particularly, is where the brilliance of the black and white film is realized. For sixty plus minutes, the screen has been a barely visible abyss - with occasional light added by bright film lamps and small fires. For the last fifteen minutes of the film, however, the light has been reversed - bright light pours in to apartments, highlighting the sanitary shine of new paint and carpeted floors. One man stands over a frying pan cooking chicken, explaining how you never realize just how dark your life has become. You feel like you're in that room (just like you felt you were in that underground hell), which allows you to breath. And relax. But no where near as much as before you started the film. Some scenes are just too dark to forget.

Wes

Recipe for a Box Office Bomb

I am always amazed at the entertainment industry which tries to break movie-making down to a science. Perhaps it is trying to imagine studio execs looking over scripts and trying to "figure" a budget for a final chase scene involving three Ferraris, dozens of stuntmen, ten fire engines, and the collapse of the Golden Gate Bridge (hypothetically speaking). Wouldn't that be a sweet job! Just imagine the bravado and stupidity you'd have to have to venture into that conversation.

Then, on top of all that, there's the extremely nebulous, yet incredibly important fees celebrities command for the mere appearance of their name on the titles - let alone their acting skills. Who in the world determines that Tom Cruise was once worth $20 million dollars a movie? Do all actors have standard fees - like dj's that play at middle school dances and quincieneras? What does William H. Macy command? Or Bruce Campbell? Do execs have cards of every star complete with information about how their last three movies performed? I'm sure they do; I wouldn't be surprised to hear that they have something comparable to a baseball card: picture, stats, best year, etc.

One thing we can know. Hollywood, movie "forecasting" is about as accurate as any other type of forecasting: pretty crappy. I chuckled through this article in the LA Times about the flop that is Sahara, a movie I helped send into the red because there was no way in hades that I would put this cheese-puff in my Netflix queue, let alone pay money at the box office.

Sahara is a classic example where people in the arts industry - for the love of all things holy - simply refuse to be creative. Instead, they take a classic movie - in this case, Sahara - and hope to resurrect it by throwing money at a star who is no where near as cool as the original (Bogart vs. McConaughey ... please!) with some extra flesh, fire and effects. Such efforts are nothing more than processed art. For shame, for shame.

And I normally love what Penelope Cruz does! I don't even know how to reconcile Vanilla Sky and Sahara?

I know people who work for and within this media machine. And for four years, I regularly ran or walked by plenty of crews doing a shoot somewhere just south of our apartment. I have to believe that 90% of the people within the system are artistic and imaginative, but I also know that all the money floating around the process of making movies draws plenty of less-desirables. Did you see how much they spent on catered meals ($1.4 million) and bottled water ($105 k). How absurd is that? Why wouldn't you want to grow fat on that excess - even if it meant hanging around the fringe.

And somehow $9 tickets, promotional ties, television replays, DVD's and foreign markets are more than enough to cover all this extravagance. With plenty left over. Clearly. Los Angeles now includes something like 250,000+ millionaires in the county. That's freakin' amazing. Especially considering that a good chunk of that 250k comes from a medium of entertainment and art that wasn't even present two hundred years ago.

Do you think any of this stuff gets recycled? Like, say, the walkie-talkies that cost over $100k ... do they sell those at the close of filming, or do they go to some wharehouse in Burbank?

I love movies. Don't get me wrong. But, I would be naive and hypocritical if I didn't stare into the obscene abyss that generates all of this. To do that, though - to critique the movie machine - is to bite the hand that feeds you. Besides, it's not like you needed another reminder that the world isn't very just or fair.

What you really want is an escape - another world. Thankfully, someone is always working their tail off and throwing money at another project that will do just that. Coming soon ... an escape from reality.

Wes

p.s. - if you're up for exploring this issue more deeply, check out Wikipedia's piece on "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman.

New Tricks, A Ticker, and Two Tickets

This weekend we made it to our second movie in the theatre since Wyatt has been born. We chose wisely. Breach was the movie - starring Chris Cooper, best known for his work in Adaption & Seabiscuit. The movie is based on actual events concerning America's most dangerous spy, who was only recently uncovered. The agent, Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper), is an enigma and a paradox. His public career, his family, his personal habits of devotion, even his ardent morality turns out to be nothing more than a sham. Beneath the surface, lie a great many demons, which he manages eerily to conceal: sexual perversion, pride, self-loathing, jealousy, anger. There is a great scene at the end of the movie where Chris Cooper is questioned by Dennis Haysbert (24/Allstate dude, who Anna and I sat next to while watching The Incredibles in Pasadena). Haysbert asked Cooper the question that drives a great deal of the viewer's interest: why? Why did Agent Hanssen go down a path of complete corruption? The scene is somewhat similar to the great dialogue between Brad Pitt and Kevin Spacey in Se7en.

You would really have to be a mature, reflective, aware person to pull off the performance Cooper does in this movie.

Something else reinforced my appreciation for actors/actresses today. I found myself watching a documentary on the making of Rocky. It seems rather absurd to think of Sly Stallone as a mature, reflective person, but he surely has to be. Watching the documentary proved as much to me. Granted, the overall course of the Rocky series eventually trailed further and further from true theatre. But, the first Rocky was a work of art; it was full of drama, complex characters, and, best of all, it didn't opt for an unrealistic ending.

Now, all I have to do is convince Anna it is worth watching. She doesn't quite believe that it really did win the Oscar for Best Film in 1976.

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I'm currently wearing a heart monitor, and early today, I had the opportunity to view my heart through the sketchy gray-tones of an ultra-sound machine. Hopefully, this brief examination of my heart will lead to no news. I recently saw a doctor for a physical (first one in about five years), and I mentioned that my heart seemed to go out of sync once in a blue moon. He didn't seem too concerned about it, but he did want to observe for safety sake.

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Bought, Lost: Season 2 on DVD this weekend. I have only watched the first four episodes, but three out of the four were fantastic. The first two seasons of Lost will go down in history as some of the best seasons of television.

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Made two more songs using Mac's Garageband: "Down" and "You Should Have Been There." I wish there were some way to broadcast these silly little diddies, but I don't think it is possible. So, the music will have to stay confined to the Kendall household, but I'll be happy to play them for anyone visitors willing to listen.

Wes