TIRED OF THE DISCOURSE: WONDER WOMAN 1984 EDITION

Everyone is annoyed right now (at least - though not only - in America). I was standing in a long line to get groceries today, which shows how inconvenient the world is right now, and there was a guy standing outside with no mask on. And it was making me furious how long he was standing in line at distances six feet apart without putting one on. I don't know this guy, and we can stand six feet apart and if we aren't talking or breathing too hard maybe it's not a risk, but we're all tired and cranky. And it took a lot for me not to scold a guy I don't know who may have lost a mask and needed to buy one. I don't know. But I feel like this whole event makes us all feel like everyone else is an asshole.

For smart people who've spent the last nine months sheltering in place it's because we recognize this could have been over if people weren't being so selfish and short sighted. For less smart people it's because they feel limited by people telling them what to do. Everyone is upset.Gal Gadot first stepped in this with the now infamous "Imagine" video, which saw her and a number of visibly unsure celebrity friends sheltering at home in their lovely houses singing the Lennon song. What was likely the effort of a bunch of theater kids to brighten the mood went over horribly, partly because for a certain section of the population class politics are more important than ever, especially when there is so much income disparity and a bunch of rich doofuses telling the world to cheer up Charlie just doesn't play. But, it was also easy to clown because it was earnest. And earnest requires leaving yourself open to be mocked. The question is how much is that just the world basically listening to the mulletted smoker in the fleece jacket mocking Boy George and Whitney Houston? It is the easiest thing in the world to be cynical, but what and who are we picking on and why?

One of the disappointing side effects of the Trump presidency is then the coarsening of our culture. People who might think of themselves as pacifists - when pressed - might be up for bad things happening to the president and his cronies. It falls somewhere between justice and eyes for eyes. And their intentional disinterest in managing a natural disaster, and the fact that the entire Republican party is now a clown show filled with grievances for nonsense reasons is going to be something that will either be put down, or eventually ruin the country. Yes, 81 Million people voted for one guy. 74 Million voted for the other. DURING THIS. They wanted the guy running things now to run them more. 

The unfortunate problem is that releasing WONDER WOMAN 1984 right now is like releasing a feature length version of that Imagine video. Not that it's a shitty DIY bunch of celebs looking like idiots for even trying/caring, but it is a film meant to be a salve against the Trump era. It's an earnest film.

I say this having seen the film a couple of times now. The first time I saw it my reaction was "this is not going to go over well." I couldn't totally articulate why I didn't think it was going to work, but I could tell this was not going to play with some audiences. Maybe because it's bright, maybe because it isn't very Marvel, maybe because the trailer suggested a film more driven by the 1984 setting, which is mostly kept to a clothing montage and opening sequence. I didn't have a bead on it until I watched it again, and then I saw what the film was trying to do.

Wonder Woman never throws a punch. In the entire movie. Once you understand that, the whole film opens up. You may not like it, but there is a design to it. 

In the mall fight scene, everything is about defense and keeping the bad guys tied down. Having a fight scene where the main character is acting defensively plays weird. She is never the aggressor, but will leave the bad guys incapacitated. This fight is capped by the most violent Diana moment in the whole thing, where the bad guys are dropped on the roof of a car, but it's played for laughs. And if you have already decided this movie sucks you can be like "that would kill them." And if you say that to me, buddy, have you watched an action movie? When Diana protects Barbara from pushy street guy, we just see that he's been knocked away, not the act itself - we only see that Diana caught her. But when Barbara defends herself it's an act of horror because she is partly the aggressor. In the Middle East chase, Diana rips out a steering wheel and tells the driver the brakes still work. The reason why the car she's under flips is because it's falling apart and she grabs a pipe that causes it to go airborne, and then uses a missile to save children. The White House fight shows Diana at her most aggressive (she kicks), but it's always a defensive maneuver. This then is contrasted when Barbara gains her strength and beats the crap out of the secret service that then Wonder Woman has to also save from Barbara, while also protecting herself from them. I don't know shit about martial arts, but I assume WW's technique is all water based, using people's energies to defeat them etc., but that's not my area of expertise.

In the end Wonder Woman kills no one, not even Barbara. The only purely bad guys are the criminals at the beginning (and maybe the creepy street guy), but the film ends with redemption for everyone else. Because the story is about how cheating is bad. Which is why the film opens with WW losing because she cheated, it's why she can't have Steve, and why we can't trust magical BS artists who say they can give you everything. The film is about the redemptive possibilities of empathy, and the desire to fight bad with good. But not good that's accepts the only response to violence is violence.

And I can see audiences - many people isolating by themselves during the hardest time of the year to be alone, or even people who visit family members or flew and knowingly put themselves in danger because it's been a rough year - watching this movie and being annoyed with it's perkiness. This is a film that is trying to show a world without Trump, that doesn't appeal to base instincts of violence and revenge. And right now that's super easy to say to that "fuck you." Because the difference between "Imagine" and "Many things" is not that far.

DISCLAIMER: I can also tell you things that don't work about this film. I mean, I don't think the Cheetah design works at all, but a dodgy five minute CGI sequence in a superhero movie is not a deal breaker because if it was I could never watch them. Ultimately I think this is a pretty good studio movie.

George Lucas Doesn't Get Yoda

The Mandalorian  seems to play well for some. That "some" seems to like the prequels and hates THE LAST JEDI. Even if they know that THE RISE OF SKYWALKER is infinitely worse, they fucking hate THE LAST JEDI so they will beat up on it using Mando as a gotcha. I had to stop watching it because I didn't see a point in hatewatching nostalgia nothings. And that's what it is. But you know, if you enjoy it, go for it. I'm tired. There's a pandemic. 

But I think part of the divide is that there's some of us who have known George Lucas is full of shit and he doesn't totally get STAR WARS, which is why the prequels don't work, and those who think the prequels are as intended, and do so much heavy lifting to make them a coherent whole thatthey want to claim it's a master's thesis. But Lucas just doesn't get Yoda. At all. 

But, you say, didn't Lucas create Yoda? Yes and no. In a script credited to Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan and a story by George Lucas, there is room to suggest that Lucas had nothing to do with how Yoda turned out. But then you counter that Brackett died in 1978 - her credit is part courtesy - so there is always this thought that there are unknown knowns, or known unknowns. But here's the thing, George Lucas is credited as the writer of the STAR WARS novelization that has Luke as a twenty year old and Leia as 18. Either Lucas didn't actually write it (Alan Dean Foster is also credited, IIRC), or Lucas didn't actually know they would be brother and sister until RETURN OF THE JEDI, when they felt they needed another big twist like in EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (also one that could justify why the lead didn't get the girl). Regardless, the emperor has no clothes/master plan. Lucas never had a fleshed out nine film cycle, he lied. If you can't sense his change in attitude from THE PHANTOM MENACE to ATTACK OF THE CLONES to respond to criticisms, I hope that Kool Aid tastes delicious.

The other big thing is this, EMPIRE director Irvin Kershner was Lucas's film professor in college. Think about that. What a flex to hire your teacher to make a film about your cinematic avatar (and Lucas put a lot of himself into Luke) to then make a film about teaching that avatar how to be an adult. 

And then think about how much of a flex it is to make that movie, and then have it be as good if not better than STAR WARS. To then create an indelible figure like Yoda who basically tells the main character that he's a chump, and then when that main character ignores the teacher's advice, shows that he's a failure. And it works as a middle chapter narrative, so you can't even say Kersh was being a dick to do it. That's some fraught melodrama behind the scenes. But he did establish Yoda, what he is and what he's about. And Lucas doesn't understand Yoda at all. 

How can I say that? It's simple really. When Yoda says "Too old to begin the training" in EMPIRE he's negging Luke. It's not a Jedi rule in the universe at that time. How do I know? BECAUSE YODA FUCKING TRAINS LUKE. Not because he's their last hope, but because Yoda did it because needed Luke to know he ain't shit. Luke at that moment thought he knew everything, and Yoda needed to make him a pupil. That's not one plus fourteen times x to the fourth, that's what's on screen. Yoda pretends to be a weird old creature because he needs to teach Luke that he is looking at the world wrong. Which is why the most important line in the entirety of STAR WARS is "judge me by my size do you? Where you should not."

When Yoda says Anakin is too old to begin the training in TPM, it's a callback, but one that doesn't make any god damned sense. Why? Because it was never about age. But to make it about age makes it a thing. "Oh, that's how they do it." But if you recognize all those moments in the prequel that recall Luke's training are basically fan service (the blaster helmets) it's not a coherent ideology, but Lucas not really engaged, throwing out these moments to make fans happy. And any attempts to spin "How can the Jedi be such idiots?" into a coherent narrative betrays the fact that Lucas had no interest in doing any heavy lifting so he creates obstacles that are non-obstacles to keep them from being all powerful. I cannot watch the PT films (which I have recently) and say that Lucas had any plan so much as that any time he felt like "I should address why this is" his best response was "reasons" that now people try to map out into a coherent thing. And I'm not attacking this because I think I know Jedis better than George Lucas, it's because it's lazy. It's giving R2 the ability to fly after four movies because you can't write yourself out of a scene lazy.

How can I say that he doesn't get Yoda? Because it's a different character, and a much less interesting one (which is endemic of Lucas's PT films). Where's Yoda's sense of humor? Did he turn into a goofball magically twenty years later? I mean, it's possible being isolated on a swamp planet gets you goofy, but I don't think Yoda was bored. But as damning as TPM is in showing Lucas just not caring to engage with the ideas of the original trilogy, the moment that proves Lucas doesn't get Yoda is the minute Yoda fights with a light saber. Not because he turns into a whirling dervish, but because as a master he should never have to. It's a complete lack of imagination to have Yoda get into a fight and then lose because he's overwhelmed because it's judging him by his size. If you don't understand that Yoda is the moral heart of this universe, you don't get that universe. 

And this is something Rian Johnson understands to his core, and something Mandalorian does not, because it allows Baby Yoda to be a cute murderer. If you don't understand why I don't find that appealing, I don't understand why you like things. 

I think part of the reason why this is vexing to me is that the Lucas mythos is sort of like Trump. You're buying into this package that ignores the human element that suggests something completely different than what is being projected. And to find coherent ideology of the Jedi's actions (even if you can) in the prequels is to ignore the bigger picture for the service of something else. Like what you like. Enjoy the prequels if you do. But don't pretend it's something that it's not.

The Underrated Insanity Of Tsui Hark And Jean-Claude Van Damme’s KNOCK OFF

Tsui Hark’s Knock Off has fallen by the wayside, like much of America’s brief fascination with Hong Kong cinema. Which is unfortunate as the film deserves to be canonized for its commitment to insanity. It also features Jean Claude Van Damme’s best performance outside of JCVD… not that he’d recall as he’s suggested he was so coked out at the time he doesn’t remember filming it. Like I said, it’s a special movie.

Let me start with a little bit of history. Before the handoff in 1997, there was a concern (made explicit in films like Hard Boiled) that Hong Kong and its film community would be destroyed by the change of rule from England to China. This led many artists like John Woo to make films that seemed to also serve as audition reels. Hollywood -- wowed by the impressive stunts and action sequences in those movies -- were quick to work with these directors and stars in a move that draws parallels to the importing of German filmmakers in the 1930s and 40s. Actors like Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Chow Yun Fat dabbled with making films in America, while directors like John Woo, Ringo Lam and Tsui Hark also tried their hand stateside. The directors were often handed low budget action movies, and all three mentioned made their first English language films with Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Van Damme’s appeal, like Chuck Norris before him and like contemporary Steven Seagal, is that he’s a white martial artist, which meant that many films were built around his ability to punch, kick and do the splits (seriously, he did the splits a lot) while speaking a form of English. Of the action guys, he’s easily one of the best actors: Seagal’s range seem to go from squinty to ticked off, while Van Damme can actually emote (perhaps like a caveman, but still). And unlike Seagal and Norris, he can be both convincing and appealing in a love scene, or if nothing else it never seemed cruel to the actress. During the 90s one could expect a Van Damme film or two a year, with Timecop his biggest hit, and Street Fighter his biggest fiasco.
 
Hard Target imported John Woo, and there Woo showed America he could handle our industry, while Maximum Risk got Ringo Lam to make a film about Van Damme playing twins (which he’s done a couple times) in a global thriller that was a swing and a miss, though it’s a film I find very watchable despite its flaws. By the time Tsui Hark got to Van Damme in 1997, they made a buddy picture with Dennis Rodman. Double Team came at the end of America’s fascination with Hong Kong cinema as Hollywood began to absorb their techniques, so there’s a sense with it that they threw a bunch of things in the film to make people excited. Not only do you have Hark, Van Damme and Rodman, you also get Mickey Rourke, a riff on the British TV series The Prisoner, and some very nutty action sequences, with the capper involving the heroes being saved from a gigantic fireball by a Coke machine. Double Team is pretty bonkers, and it’s well worth checking out. But it can’t compare to the gleeful insanity of Knock Off.

By 1998, when Van Damme and Hark reteamed for Knock Off, it was like the world wasn’t paying attention. For the most part, they weren’t. Though John Woo showed he could direct big blockbusters like Face/Off and Mission: Impossible 2, Van Damme’s career (much like Seagal’s) was pretty much over, and films like Double Team and Knock Off grossed about ten million each. His next movie went straight to video (which was shocking then), and the film after that was Universal Soldier: The Return. It was a sequel to one of his biggest hits and when that tanked it spelled the end.
 
Knock Off began with a script by Steven E. de Souza, the action writer of the 1980’s. Commando. 48 Hrs., Die Hard. The Running Man. Hudson Hawk. The Flinstones. He did it all. And by the 90s, he wanted to make fun of the films he made popular. Knock Off (as made explicit by the title), was meant to be a joke on all these same-y action movies, which may have been why Francis Ford Coppola briefly flirted with making the movie (though it’s hard to imagine his version being made with JCVD). According to de Souza, much of the film is as written. Perhaps it would have been funnier had an American directed it, but in Hark’s hands it becomes a borderline surreal concoction.
The film follows Van Damme’s Marcus Ray, a former denim knockoff artist who has moved on to work for V-6 Jeans. But as the film starts, the movie is more concerned with Russians in Hong Kong, who are not only dealing in knockoff jeans, but ones that have little explosives in them that are as powerful as a stick of dynamite, and emit green flames (yes, green flames). The movie starts in the middle of a sting operation where the Russians are trying to get their latest shipment, but something goes wrong and the cops move in. The film briefly sets up some of the Russian antagonists, mostly by giving them colorful looks, or in one case a cough. But when the cops arrive (led by Michael Wong), everything goes nuts.

And from this opening action sequence, it seems that Hark -- who directed such classically constructed films like Once Upon a Time in China and has been referred to as the Asian Spielberg -- decided he didn’t want a single shot in the movie to be boring and so every place he puts the camera is interesting and surprising. In the opening chase sequence, Michael Wong is in a boat chasing the Russians, and one of the Russians has a sniper rifle. He shoots one of Wong’s men, but to show that death, Hark cuts to blood bursting in air. It’s impressionistic, and the film borders on chaos, incoherence even, but every decision is bold and crazy. Right away he sets the tone, as the film stock seems to change in moments, and he’ll use a fisheye lens for the hell of it.

After this opening set piece we’re introduced to Marcus’ partner Tommy Hendricks (played by Rob Schneider) as the camera decides to go through an earring, because why the fuck not? He’s surrounded by models, and Schneider attempts to make jokes and points out that Marcus isn’t around. So Ray gives Marcus a call. And what does the camera do? It decides to follow the phone call through the universe. We then see Van Damme driving a nice car and singing along to a Cantonese pop song. At this point you are either with the film, or it’s just going to turn you off. Marcus checks in on some former employees, and their shoddy knockoff products (which involves Hark having a picture in picture just because), and there we meet Skinny (Glen Chin), who seems to have become the top dog in the knockoff market. He also introduces the idea that Marcus is about to be in a big race.

So the race involves rickshaws, with Marcus carrying Tommy through crowded Hong Kong streets. It seems to be a big deal because there’s Americans and Australians who are also competing. Also in the race: Eddie Wang (Wyman Wong), who’s like a brother to Marcus, and also deals in knockoffs. For the competition Marcus needs sports shoes so Tommy bought him Pumas, but it turns out the shoes are knockoffs (the name has two M’s), and the film shows Marcus putting on the shoes from his foot’s POV.

Let me say that again, Knock Off features a foot’s point of view.

So Marcus, Eddie and Tommy start the race, and it involves running through Hong Kong markets at breakneck speeds, while Marcus’ knockoff shoes start falling apart (we can tell because the camera goes inside the shoe as the glue unsticks). And by going through the marketplace, it gives Schneider a chance to grab an eel. Why? So he can whip Van Damme’s ass, which he does twice (it makes Van Damme whinny). Eddie is cheating and has a double run in his place, but that double is grabbed by Russians. Since Marcus is friends with Eddy and thinks his friend has been kidnapped, he chases the car with his rickshaw, and gets it to crash into a supermarket. Van Damme, unarmed, must take on the Russians with their guns, which leads to a bullet POV shot that goes through a can of soup. The action becomes partly impressionistic as Van Damme must sense where to move to avoid being shot.

The sequence ends with Marcus and Tommy being taken in by the cops, and introduces Karen Lee (Lela Rochon), an executive from V-6 Jeans who informs them that their last shipment was stocked with knockoffs. After this terrible day, they get dinner, where Tommy is taken in by some tough looking guys. It turns out (after a fight scene) that Tommy’s CIA, and he partnered with Marcus for cover, which leads to some of the best acting in both Van Damme and Schneider’s filmography. His boss, Hendricks (Paul Sorvino), is monitoring the knockoff artists and the Russians, who it turns out are in bed with Skinny and want to kill Eddy because he sent the shipment from the beginning into the ocean. Crosses and double crosses ensue.

The first time I saw this film in theaters was probably mid-week with a friend, and we weren’t expecting much nor likely were the three other audience members, but there came a moment at the end of one of the fight sequences where there were subtitles on screen, and I was incapable of processing the words. The film offers so much unique visual information that it’s overwhelming. Which is probably why I went back and saw it again the next day, and made a point to see it five times in the theaters. The film spoke to me, and it continues to, I’ve probably watched it at least once every year, and love showing it to people who have no idea what they’re in for.

Film Crit Hulk asked me to write this piece, so allow me some Hulk level discursions. Let’s talk about filmmaking for a second. There is a language to cinema in which every shot can enhance and/or advance the storytelling. This is best shown in horror movies. Why are you tense? It’s because of what you can and can’t see, and the length of the shot(s). This is all basic 101 filmmaking stuff, so I won’t dwell on it too long, but the sad truth is the language of cinema has been degraded. This is part and parcel with so much of cinema being about making days, and the devaluing of visual storytellers. It’s the old joke of shot/reverse shot in which so much of what happens is basic information that has no flair. It used to be that TV directors were waved off as middlebrow hacks, nowadays television has become one of the best places for adult drama, the lines are blurred, and a television director helmed the most successful film of the last three years.

Let me give an example of the good and the bad of this. There is a shot in The Avengers where the camera goes up and over the bickering Avengers to look at Loki’s staff. This shot sticks out in the movie for a couple of reasons. One is that Joss Whedon, to that point, hadn’t really done anything like that in the movie before. Like inserting iambic pentameter in the midst of a rap verse, it’s jarring. To a certain extent it should be, it’s meant to be, because it’s drawing focus to the staff. The problem is that Whedon’s visual language isn’t precise, and the fact that Loki’s staff is a corrupting agent is spelled out in the dialogue. You can see exactly what he’s trying to do, but it doesn’t quite work. To research this moment, I put the film on again, and watched the scene and then watched the movie to the end. It’s funny how Whedon isn’t a great visual storyteller (his visual sense, when not guided by special effects, is meat and potatoes), but the film is totally compelling regardless.

Whereas a brilliant example of the shorthand of cinema can be found in Fargo. There’s a moment that’s stayed with me since first seeing the film (not that I haven’t seen it a number of times since), when William H. Macy’s Jerry Lundegaard finds the body of his father-in-law. The film doesn’t use dialogue to convey how he feels in that moment. All we get is the shot of his trunk being popped, and we the audience know everything. That’s brilliant visual storytelling. And using the language of cinema, using the distance characters exist from the camera to suggest where they are in the world, to present POVs for a specific reason, cutting between images to create tension or parallels are why film fans may adore a film like Stoker even if the narrative isn’t all that great, or why so many of us love filmmakers like Brian De Palma and Edgar Wright. You would think a filmmaker would make every frame count for something, but that’s just not the case most of the time.

Now, I’m not about to make the argument that Tsui Hark is working on that level of mastery or perfectionism with Knock Off. No, there’s something more punk rock about the film, and what’s apparent is that there’s at least one eye-catching shot in the film every minute of screen time. And because Hark obviously knows what he’s doing behind the camera, this must be read as intentional.
And it’s the thing that keeps me coming back: Hark’s fascinating choices in terms of staging are consistently of the “what the fuck” variety. I don’t know what the boring way to film a rickshaw race is, but here there’s a shot where the camera starts from a rooftop, descends and swoops into the action. A possibly boring sequence where Lela Rochon chews out Van Damme and Schneider is staged so when Rochon stands up to talk we see it from her point of view and makes the men look smaller. They’re also put in frame with toys on a desk, which makes them seem clownish by nature. In a sequence where a bunch of faceless goons are mowed down, one is shot through the head and a white cloud of brain mist rises from his head. There are at least a hundred indelible moments in the movie, and perhaps it is sensory overload. But… that’s why I love it.

Not to mention the weirdness, cause this is a weird fucking movie (in the best possible way). Marcus has to confront Eddy about the nanobombs in the knockoff product, and it gives Van Damme his finest acting moment to date, where he tells his semi-brother that he made a deal for him with the feds as he’s threatened with a gun. Sure, you could compare it to the “pull the strings” speech in Ed Wood, but Van Damme is fully committed. That scene then ends with Eddy being targeted by a missile which sends him flying outside, to die in a green flame explosion. It’s followed by an action scene starts where Van Damme and Schneider must escape from a fruit warehouse, which is a stunning set piece of claustrophobia as most of the fruit workers have long but dull knives, and the fruit around appears to be spiky pineapples (it doesn’t have the stems so I’ve never been sure) which makes even the fruit hreatening. The sequence ends with Schneider and Van Damme escaping and mumbling “Hoola, hoola hoola. Hoola hoola hoola.”  This is then followed by a scene where Van Damme chases down Skinny, and to knock out Skinny’s bodyguards he climbs the beams in the warehouse, and uses them to jump down on his opponents.

Sometimes great directors will pull out all the stops visually, but often they end up like Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Awesome in theory, but sort of torturous in its entirety. And this is similarly a kitchen sink film, but it’s as if Hark was using the film not as an audition piece, but as a chance to try everything he ever wanted to do with a camera. It’s not so much an action movie (though the action sequences are well staged, exciting and bonkers) as an experimental film that just happens to star Jean-Claude Van Damme and Rob Schneider. There may be no point to it, but in this package, as a Van Damme vehicle, it’s fascinating as it tells a coherent story that the filmmaker has little interest in. It’s more about the end fight sequence, where everyone’s on a boat that’s wet, and the motion of the water makes it easy for Van Damme to slide around (literally, like he’s on a slip and slide) and kill people. That end sequence is like nothing you would ever see in American action movie, and maybe in the context of a subtitled Hong Kong film it would seem of place, but here, with all these American actors, it achieves a sublime strangeness.

Francois Truffaut talked about a scene in Howard Hawks’ Scarface. To quote the master directly: “The most striking scene in the movie is unquestionably Boris Karloff's death. He squats down to throw a ball in a game of ninepins and doesn't get up; a rifle shot prostrates him. The camera follows the ball he's thrown as it knocks down all the pins except one that keeps spinning until it finally falls over, the exact symbol of Karloff himself, the last survivor of a rival gang that's been wiped out by Muni. This isn't literature. It may be dance or poetry. It is certainly cinema.” When I think about Knock Off, I think of this quote. For better or worse.

Things of note:

The film cuts from a fat man smiling to a gigantic fish. Then has Van Damme and Schneider talk while showing two men’s asses. Symbolism!

Lela Rochon gives one of the worst line readings ever in a major motion picture: “You were pretty eager to five minutes ago,” is the worst.

The theme song for the film is amazing. “I’m convinced that this is really not my song, I bought it in Hong Kong, it’s a knockoff. I’m convinced that we were really holding hands, sorry that’s no hand, it’s a knockoff. So close to real, the look, the feel, so close and yet, the paint’s still wet.” It’s one of the best novelty tie-in songs.

The film’s last line of dialogue is Rob Schneider saying “No action movie is complete without sweat.”

It’s worth nothing there’s a kind of terrible section of the movie where – towards the end – our heroes and villains are all in a boat as the handoff is taking place. The boat begins to drift out into international waters and the ship is targeted by a British officer who notes that if the boat crosses a line, he’ll have to blow it up. Conceptually, the idea that most of the heroes have no idea they’re in jeopardy from this attack, and the relief that comes for those that do know when it’s narrowly avoided is very theoretically cool, but the fact that the footage of the helicopters who are sent in to destroy the boat looks like stock footage (with some who are arming missiles shown to be unarmed) meant to pad out the film to a ninety minute run time (the film runs 91).

I once went to a screening of Goodfellas where Paul Sorvino did a Q&A beforehand. Afterwards I rushed out after him with a copy of Goodfellas and Knock Off. Point one: I was way more excited about him signing my copy of Knock Off than Goodfellas. Point two: I wasn’t sure if he’d get mad at me for even asking him to sign it, so I started by saying what a huge fan I was of the movie. Thankfully he enjoyed making it and was pleasantly shocked when I showed it to him. I was worried he might punch me.

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: BONG JOON-HO (THE HOST)

The more cineastes get to know Bong Joon-Ho and Park Chan-Wook, the more likely it is they’ll be known as the Spielberg and Lucas of Korea. They’ve already redefined Korean cinema, and made huge blockbusters that have outgrossed each other (Oldboy was a huge hit, but The Host‘s gross was so high that 25% of the population has theoretically seen it). But who’s whom, or – more to the point – who wants to end up as George Lucas? Both are supremely gifted, and have shown their talents through a couple of films that could be called masterpieces. You could nerd out and tap Bong as the Lucas figure, partly because he gave Park a copy of the Manga of Oldboy. But to flip that script, more damning evidence comes this Friday, as Park has already made a (Vengeance) trilogy, while Bong has made his monster movie with the masterful The Host, which can easily be called the best monster movie since Jaws.

And the big screen high of The Host is one of my favorite movie going experiences in recent memory. I already had tickets to see the film Friday night as part of a festival screening when I got an invite to interview director Bong. As such I was offered a complimentary ticket to see the film Saturday afternoon, and loving the film as I did, decided to watch it twice in a day. Shortly after my second screening, I sat down with Bong and an interpreter. Bong speaks some English, and would sometimes respond in my native tongue, while other times he let the translator do her job. The film opens Friday, and should be sought out.

I was wondering are there any of the Free Park Kang-du shirts , did you make any extras, are they for sale?

As you can see there were many T-shirts, and everyone was wearing them, so myself and the crew thought "Hey, we’ll get one afterwards," but, due to budget constraints they were made in China, so after a couple days of shooting and poor storage, they were too smelly, rotten, and impossible to wear. But we have the design still so maybe we should make it as a souvenir.

I’d buy one! (Bong laughs) I have to tell you I thought the film was amazing, I absolutely loved it. You’ve said that the scene where the daughter shows up and starts eating (which is revealed to be a dream) is the heart of the film. It seems the sort of thing you can’t get away with in America. Do you face any pressures to make it more linear?

That was in the script from the beginning, and even when people were reading the script they were like "what happened?" "Why is she here?" "Is this a typo?" (laughs) But for me it was the most important scene, it’s an objective illusion. To me there was never any confusion, but the people around me were not as sure. Something I found out after the final cut of the film was that at the time, the investors and distributors didn’t like the scene and there was some talk. "We should take that out, normal audiences won’t understand it." But the production company took care of it, so it never reached my ears.

With the last two films (this and Memories of Murder) you’ve been writing genre pictures, but what makes them some of the best films of recent memory is how you interlace these human moments into the story. So, when you’re writing it, you seem to embrace the framework of genre… one of my favorite scenes in Memories is when the main character is having sex but then his penis falls out, and moments later his girlfriend’s cleaning the blackheads out of his ear… so when you’re writing how do you weave those in? How do you balance it out?

Honestly, I don’t know what to say, it’s just how I work. My starting point is from an American genre type film, but I’m never trapped by it. Although I may start with the idea that Memories of Murder is a thriller, or The Host a monster movie – and I do – but from that point on I get further and further away from the genre. Find those, you know, cracks in the genre is where I add my detail, or my Korean details or Korean emotions. Also, all my characters are very normal or very weak, so it’s very natural, it’s fundamental that audiences will be drawn to the more normal person. All my characters have faults and defects.

What was the genesis of The Host? What made you want to make a monster movie?

Well, I’m not one of those big or manic fans of the monster movie genre, it’s not that or that it’s my slogan "I have to make one of these films!" It came from the location, the Han River, When I was younger I lived in an apartment by it, and watching the water flow back and forth I thought "what if the Loch Ness monster had popped out, what would happen and what a mess that would be?" So it might have been juvenile, but it stayed in my head, and eventually turned into a film.

So when you get ready to write something like this, do you go out and rent the Orcas and King Kongs and the Godzilla vs. Megalons and all the genre pictures? I ask because one of the things that I find so great about The Host (and Memories of Murder, for that matter), is how it understands the constructs of the genre, but also plays with them. Do you sit down and watch King Kong Lives?

For reference or inspiration? In this case, not this kind of typical monster movie, I was inspired by M Night Shymalyan’s Signs and Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. For instance in the movie Signs it deals with an alien invasion, but it’s hugely different from other alien invasion films like Independence Day, the reason being it focuses on the family, and isn’t a film of spectacle. It’s about the family, and the minute details of the family. That’s a film that inspired me.

Recently it was announced that Universal bought the right to a remake of The Host. Are you involved at all?

I’m already in the process of preparing two new projects, so I don’t like rehashing old stories, I like doing new stories. I have no interest in doing the remake, and I don’t think Universal has any interest in me doing the remake, so I think we’re both happy where we are right now. I’m just curious about it, it would great to have a director like John Carpenter or M Night Shymalyan do it.

I would like to see that too. I understand that you passed Oldboy on to Park Chan-Wook.

I’m a big Japanese Manga comic book fan. I always read them, they’re always in my bag and in my head. The original Oldboy wasn’t that famous or popular in either Japan or Korea, but sometime in 2000 or 2001 I found it in a very old bookstore, the story fascinated me, and I recommended it Park Chan-wook, he’s a close cinema friend of mine. "Read this, very funny" but his adaptation is amazing. You know the original story?

No, I just know the film.

The beginning part, the first half is almost the same, but the other half is a complete creation. The story of incest wasn’t in the novel. The story of him being in prison for 15 years is the same, but from the prison to incest and on is a complete creation and is shocking and powerful. It disturbs you.

From what I understand he’s producing your next movie. Le Transperceneige, or Snow Train?

Maybe my next next one, yeah, yeah.

I understand that’s going to be in English.

Not exactly. The story is about the train. There are many survivors there, from many other countries, so mixed dialogue, but 30-40% may be in English. The others Korean and Japanese, all mixed.

Is there a role for Song Kang-ho (star of The Host and Memories)?

I can’t speculate.

So, you’re a huge comic book fan?

Yes, I like graphic novel comic books from Korea, Japan, Europe, it’s my hobby. There was a point where I wanted to be a graphic novelist, but though that didn’t come to fruition, I draw the storyboards for my films, so that’s when I pretend I’m a graphic novelist.

In the film "seori" gets mentioned a couple of times. Was that a phenomenon in Korea?

It’s not a phenomenon – it’s actually just children’s play. It does have traditional history. When you go into a field and steal a fruit or two, if you get caught they do give you a pound on the head, but it’s not serious enough to go to the cops. It’s like a traditional things that kids could do when playing. When we were doing the subtitles, we couldn’t find an equivalent word in English, so after we went through an extended thought process, we though oh well we’ll write "seori" and explain it in the dialogue next.

On last quick question, what was the last movie you loved?

The Science of Sleep.

Oh, did you love Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?


Of course, that was very good. But I loved The Science of Sleep more.

Horror Stories: Liz Phair's autobiography and my Liz Phair

When I was 17, Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville came out. At the time I had a subscription to Rolling Stone. I think I mostly got it for the movie stuff. Weirdly, I didn't have a subscription to a magazine like Premiere. I had a take it or leave it attitude towards the mag; I don't remember if my dad got it for me, or I got a subscription because of some school promo or what. As I get older I try not to make up lies for myself about what I do and don't remember, and as I get older, there is just more that gets lost in time to the fact that who fucking cares (but I do I know I had the Twin Peaks cover issue, that much is certain). I don't know if that's how I heard about Liz Phair, but it seems likely. I was watching MTV's 120 Minutes around that time also, but I remember 120 more from College, as the University of Oregon provided its students with free cable, and I don't know if one of her videos - which were never all that amazing - hooked me. I doubt it. But at that time, it was for sure not radio play (outside of College radio, I don't think I've ever heard Phair on the radio). 

The reason I would love to have an origin story is because there are few acts of art that have reverberated through me like Exile in Guyville. It was like reading Plato's Symposium or the cave metaphor for the first time, or films like Jaws, Five Easy Pieces, Nashville, Rules of the Game, Happy Together.... these pieces of art are touchstones of my being. And as such, Liz Phair became my everything. (Side note: because of the nature of rock and roll, I never considered getting a boner from the until I heard her. Though Rock is usually sexual, I don't think I would have considered masturbating to an album before Guyville. Every woman reading this is probably rolling their eyes.) As much to that point as I loved Davids Byrne and Bowie, or Prince, they never opened up worlds for me like Liz. Much of the art I was most invested in to that point came from men. I wouldn't say I lived a double life, but as I entered my senior year in High School, as my disconnection from schoolmates went into overdrive, she was my Northern Star.

I've probably written about this before, but my mom got my brother and I into the rich kid's public schools while we were lower middle class, so I always felt a out of place from my surroundings. I would hang out with kids who kept their G.I. Joe toys in boxes, maybe never to be opened, while I would do chores for days and weeks on end to get to go to the store that had piles upon piles of the Gonk and medical repair droids STAR WARS toys. We grew up in a neighborhood that was twenty years away from gentrification, and had more minorities than the rest of Portland, so I felt both out of place in my neighborhood and my school. They wanted me to skip fifth grade at one point, but I believe I was held back mostly because it was readily apparent I wasn't socialized. But that was a problem long past high school for me. Maybe most of us try to patch up those holes our entire lives. Some never succeed. And in some ways I feel like I've been getting better and better about being aware and connected for the last thirty years of my life, but also that I'm still learning. The other weekend someone commented on my posture. I slouch because I'm six four. I slouch to make myself less physically intimidating. I see myself as inherently threatening so I try to reduce that threat by wearing glasses and making myself as small as I can. But I don't slouch consciously, at least I didn't until then... The glasses I knew.

But back to Liz Phair: From the get, from track one Six Foot One, I was fucking in. There was something urgent to the music, but also the album is all over the place emotionally in such a way that that becomes the through line. A contained narrative and something more. An essay, a memoir, a confessional. Exile - to me - showed every facet of being a woman in the nineties, the highs and the lows, and the peaceful, somewhat stoned, happy place of someone believing in something that lies between religion and mysticism. But maybe I loved the naked honesty most. Though during high school and much of college my best friends and closest confidantes were women - those friendships weren't sexual, they were born of being in school together - Phair's dialogue wasn't something those friends could or would share with me. I remember an Arsenio Hall interview where an actor said because of an IN LIVING COLOR sketch where an Asian man said he was super horny, he hadn't thought about Asian men as being interested in sex. That is fucking stupid, but also - culturally - this is understandable as we're growing to see how important representation is to show the humanity and interests of other cultures. Because when you see them you can see that you're like them. When the white male gaze is the dominant one in television and cinema, if you are a straight white male, you don't think about how other people see things because you're afforded the luxury of not having to.

So listening to Phair sing about fucking blew my god damned mind. As much as a song like Flower may have turned me on, it was Fuck and Run and The Divorce Song that made me love her. The sense of repetition, that these were things that even if you knew were coming would still be unavoidable, the Raymond Carver-esque detail for humanity, I was in. Phair was every girl I had a crush on. But she was also me. She struck me as smart enough to observe the mistakes she was making while she made them. The patterns we fall into, but are unable to avoid.

And not to besmisrch artists like Alanis Morrisette or Sheryl Crow, one got that Phair was the author and creator of her material in a way that made it all personal. Honest. Not... presentational? I'm not saying they're phonies, that's not it, but their art seems more commercial and by that nature more opportunistic, whether talking about having fun or blowing someone in a theater. Phair also has a swagger, which I think is why I gravitated to her and PJ Harvey over artists like Tori Amos, who was more sad angry than aggressive angry. I mean, seriously, PJ Harvey's Dry is one of the most badass songs ever written, and I love her too, but maybe because Phair is an American there's a bit of a difference. But also Phair was obviously a white upper-middle class woman who liked smoking pot and having sex and playing music and there's less of a confrontational vulnerability to her. And perhaps - like Catherine Bigelow - there's an element of her borrowing from men to make herself better understood, I mean Exile was scene as a response to The Rolling Stone's album.

I have listened to Guyville more than any other album (the only competition is Broken Social Scene's You Forgot it in People), and still it's an album that's evergreen for me.  I followed Liz's career intently for the next decade. Her follow up, Whip-Smart, is solid but is also very much a sophomore effort. It's a little more aimless, but it's mostly great. The only problem is you can just feel how some songs have been kicking around for a while, and some are new and the structure isn't as perfect because you feel her trying to replicate what worked about the first album with the same narrative hook. Guyville was conceived as a song by song response to Exile on Main Street, and that gave it a structure that (even if the original concept was abandoned) gives a greater focus than anything else she's done before or since. That said, I think her second best is Whitechocolatespaceegg, because it seemed to accept that Phair had grown older, and though she was wrestling with success and trying to find new ways of talking about the same things, and motherhood and adulthood, songs like Polyester Bride and Go On Ahead are still brutally honest, while also rocking. Though there is an obvious push in these songs towards a more commercial approach (they're much cleaner sounding, etc.), that's not a bad thing and it doesn't feel overproduced like her next album "Liz Phair."

Let me be clear: I don't hate the self titled album.  And I understand why it broke some fans, but also, they were attacking for the wrong reasons. Phair was obviously trying to do something more commercial, and that turned her into a pariah for a number of fans and websites that saw her as one of the great indie rock icons of the '90s, and when she tried to cash in, they resented her attempt. And if you can look back now with 20/20 vision, she was persecuted, railroaded and the worst part is that this seemed to shake her confidence. I don't want to say she never recovered, but her next two albums are hurt by an artist trying to second guess themselves.

That said, it's got obvious issues. The problem is that pop culture took a lot from Guyville, and you could see that Phair - who by then was divorced single mother - had different things to talk about and some landed better than others. People talk about HWC as a low point, but my big problem with the album is that she worked with two sets of superstar producers and you can feel their fingerprints on the sound, which makes it one of her least coherent albums. There's some stuff that feels like it's too much of Michael Penn's production, and other stuff that feels like Phair gunning for radio play at the detriment of what makes her great. Perhaps as a single mom she wanted more out of her career, but by the time of Somebody's Miracle, she started sounded a little bland.

But maybe I'm wrong. This weekend after finishing her book I revisited Whip-Smart, the self-titled album - and thought Little Digger is maybe her greatest accomplishment - and finally listened to Funstyle and I found things to like. I don't know if I've popped on Somebody's Miracle in over ten years, so there was a definitely a cultural movement against Liz Phair The Sellout that changed how I listened, and that noise might have driven me away. But also... with musicians, sometimes they have a period you really respond to, and though I think it's sad that when people see Paul McCartney in concert they treat new music as the time to check their phones between Beatles songs (where they Instagram five seconds of Hey Jude to show that they've seen Macca), but also I put on his new album and got bored at a certain point, so I get it. Maybe I didn't try hard enough, or maybe Maybe I'm Amazed is a better song than anything on it, and I'm missing nothing.

But this last year, Phair won me back and then some with the release of her memoir "Horror Stories." It is seventeen chapters on different moments of her life. No, she doesn't walk through Girly Sounds or the inspiration for much of her music (though she does note that "Fuck and Run" is meant to talk about how sometimes relationships fall apart quickly, that we often have these relationships that explode in and out of our lives, which is what it always seemed like, and does point out that when she was twelve, it wasn't actual sex, as she says she was a virgin until college). One story is about running into someone she knew in school who achieved a level of fame that was totally different than hers. Another is about giving birth while - to use her words - high as fuck. Another is about Ryan Adams and all of the sexual harassment she's experienced over her life.

On some level, Elizabeth Phair, of what I know, was never going to be a normal soccer mom. But to appreciate her art, you can tell that she was drawn to the suburban life she grew up around, and wanted that, but going by her music that was never going to satisfy. And so you get the stories you expected about shitty relationships, bad behavior on everyone's part, and some wild ass anecdotes about infidelities. But also portraits. She talks about a Trader Joes cashier who she flirted with that goes in wild directions, and points out something I have noticed about myself, which is that sometimes when you are trying to take care of someone else, you're just trying to take care of yourself in the least selfish way possible. Or the relationship she had with a guy who got someone else pregnant while they were dating and how hard she fought to stay in it, and how she felt bound to him partly because of the relationship/sex, but also because of her connection to his kids. I think like a lot of people around my generation, she realized she was doomed to repeat a previous generation's mistakes. And did. Because the tools weren't there to fully reject some of the worst rules of the game.

Her chapter on #MeToo made me weep, because she's got a laundry list of people who have creeped on her. And for me at first I was like "I would never, I have never" but then also, I had to admit to myself I've never been in a position of power that would let me take advantage of others. And I don't know, I can't honestly say that if I achieved great success at the age of 25 or 30, I might have become gross because I could. I don't know. But I know enough about myself to know that I could have gone down terrible paths, simply because I felt disconnected for much of my life that I could get sucked into bad shit. And so as much as I want to believe I'm decent person, there are some tests I've never taken. And hopefully I would or will pass them, but just the same, knowing that is something.

But more than that, her memoir is like MAD MAX FURY ROAD for all of us who love Liz Phair (I would like to say I love Elizabeth Phair, but I'm not going to pretend to know her). It's everything you've ever loved about her in it's purest, most perfect distillation, because she has always been a master storyteller. She was always a ray gun, shooting lasers of truth, and she rocked while doing it. Horror Stories doesn't have a beat to dance to but it reveals more but also everything you always suspected. The world is a better place with Liz Phair in it, and as I understand, she signed a two book deal. I would read her until the end of days. Bring it.

THE RISE OF SKYWALKER spoiler thoughts

Imagine Donald Trump in the waiting room for a medical visit. Imagine him getting bored and playing with the toys for children. At first he pushes those beads with his fat fucking fingers. It's like a slide for the piece of wood. Ha ha. But then he gets bored. He then sees one of those toys where you're supposed to match shapes. And so the president decides to push a square peg into a round hole. Someone from the secret service says "I'm sorry Mr. Trump, I don't believe that fits." But Donald being the Donald, he decides to keep pushing and pushing, thrusting this piece of plastic into a hole its not meant for (I'm sorry if this sounds like rape, but then also our president is a rapist, so that's going to happen) until finally brute strength lodges the piece into the hole, but he has now made the game broken and unplayable.

This is EPISODE IX of STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER.

Writer/Director J.J. Abrams has shown himself to be good at a number of things, specifically television pilots and first episodes of rebootquels - which may be the exact same thing. But as critical as I can be of the man, THE FORCE AWAKENS is near a miracle. It introduces a squad of new characters and most of the old ones, and ingratiates them into a new but familiar narrative. He does so with energy and reminds you why you loved the OT in the first place. The biggest problem with the film is that Abrams sets up mysteries like Rey's Parents, or what's up with Luke? But he does them in such a way that's so vague it could be anything, so it could be anything. It's just we've seen what happens when he plays with his mystery boxes, and when he leans too hard into them, you get SUPER 8.

Rian Johnson, in taking over for THE LAST JEDI, took all of those loose ends, and turned them into something way more interesting than anything Abrams could come up with. The mystery of Rey's parentage is a mystery to her. She wants to believe that her parents are special, that they left for some unknown reason that will make sense of why they abandoned her. It turns out they're just terrible people. Why is Luke hiding out on an island? Because he's abandoned the force due to fucking up the training of his pupil, sorta like what Obi-Wan did. And as much as people want something different, many of these choices seem the only logical ones after what Abrams punted (you can't really make Luke a force for good if he's been hiding out where no one could find him, unless he too is on a quest that is ill defined and at odds with everything that's going on), while also subverting expectations (people wanted Luke to be a badass, but at the end of the day, he's always been this character, someone who sometimes gives up too easily at the wrong things). A number of people did not like this, but when it comes to Star Wars and the internet it's hard to know what percentage is real, and what is propped up by the loudest, most annoying fanbase this side of DC/Marvel and Ghostbusters fanatics (which may all be the same crowd). From my perspective, they seem annoyed that Johnson tried to make the story interesting, relevant, and drawn from all of the source material. Which is why Luke's final act is so perfect, and sets up a way more interesting movie than what we eventually got. Some people seem to think he betrayed THE FORCE AWAKENS, but he didn't, he just didn't approach the narrative with the sort of flippancy that Abrams did, and so when the rebels have claimed their victory, of course shortly thereafter the First order would follow them home in the hopes of destroying their rebellion. Why wouldn't you start shortly after the end of the first film? Sure he could have kicked it down the line some, but that's where I perked up and others I guess tuned out. Rian Johnson approached his sequel as a filmmaker.

Abrams, faced with what Johnson did, decided to start pushing that square peg into a round hole and he basically ruined his Star Wars. Salieri got his revenge on Mozart, but at what cost? Me, I'm fine with never watching TRoS again, but since I saw it last night, let's unpack some shit.

Because Johnson got rid of Snoke, guess who's back? The Emperor. Why? Because Ben Solo needs to redeem himself. And the only way he can do that is by having someone more powerful than him to turn against. What has the Emperor been doing? Building an army for thirty years in secret just as he survived. None of this makes any god damned sense, in terms of the franchise, the previous two films, or in terms of the film at hand. That is a huge problem with this movie. Everything happens because reasons, as if Abrams objected to trying to find motivation.

The next hour is then basically people chasing after objects that will lead them to more objects, and so when people talk about this film is in a rush and doesn't have much time for character, that's objectively Abrams fault because a lot of these side quests could have been eliminated to spend more time on the character dynamics, many of which were introduced by Abrams himself. But because Johnson complicated them, he decides to take his ball and go home, much as Maz Katana is left with nothing to do again. And because he doesn't like what Johnson did with his characters, he decides to avoid character arcs and growth. Other than maybe Kylo getting killed and resurrected and then realizing that he's an asshole? I think that's his arc? His character is woefully under-serviced by this film. Poe and Finn also have nothing, and Rey is afraid of going bad (even though she confronted that in the last film), but this lets Abrams do his Empire homage by having evil Rey face real Rey.

For the most part, new characters serve to realign the fracnhise to make it less interesting and more familiar. A perfect example of this is the character played by Keri Russell. Why is Felicity in this movie? It seems two reasons: To make Poe into more of a Han Solo character (he has a past as a "Spice Runner," which is like a weak way of avoiding calling him a smuggler), and to de-gay his relationship with Finn. Fans have often felt that there was a love/sex triangle with Finn in the middle of Poe and Rey, but this film decides to abandon that, and all of the sexuality of the previous films, outside of a pair of relatively chaste kisses. The film also sets up a new matching color relationship for Finn, but then abandons that female to Lando. I guess Abrams wants Finn's secret that he only wants to share with Rey now to be that he's force sensitive, but it reads in the film like he's afraid to tell her he loves her in front of everyone.And also, Finn developing Force powers fees like such a punt for a story at its conclusion.

Abrams brings back Greg Gunnberg, seemingly as an act of defiance. By what we saw in the last film, he wasn't around and likely killed off screen, but now he's back and he brought Dominic Monaghan with him. Rian obviously cast some of his friends in TLJ, and there's nothing wrong with it, but Johnson also hid Jospeh Gordon-Levitt as an alien, and even if Noah Segan got face time, he didn't get much if any dialogue and is killed. One senses Abrams gloating by bringing back his old buddy, and adding more familiar faces from his previous work (see also: Keri Russell).

And as much as him basically neutering Kelly Marie Tran into a red shirt who doesn't die in this film is a slap in the face of TLJ, I was more offended with what he did to Hux. Johnson decided to make Hux into - not a joke but - a person who is driven by power and is feckless, whcih I find an improvement over his bland loud fascist character in TFA. Because he's been defanged for good reasons, Abrams then makes him a traitor/spy, and then once that's revealed kills him off immediately, and replaces him with Richard E. Grant's character, which could have been interesting... if it wasn't in keeping with every other artistic decision made in this film, which is erring on the side of conservatism. But the very fact that he's made a spy, but then is killed off minutes after that's revealed suggests an annoyance with what that character's become. Or perhaps it's just bad storytelling. Either or.

I don't want to stretch too much, but just as it would have been a lesser movie if Norman Jewison had directed MALCOLM X instead of Spike Lee, J.J. Abrams is a child of wealth, and comes from a successful Hollywood family. I don't think he understands why it was so important, so powerful, to make Rey not special in the familial sense. And the bloodline thing here would be horribly insulting if it had any conviction. The film posits that the Emperor had children. So, what, was he married? Did he knock up a prostitute? Partly because of his role in the OT, but partly because of the antiseptic nature of the PT, the Emperor has no sexual energy for anyone in the franchise other than perhaps Anakin. But then also, his son/daughter already rejected him, so the bloodline aspect is already horribly compromised and rushed. It's as if the only purpose is to make Rey special in a way only someone of a bloodline would understand. And maybe rich people shouldn't be making fantasy stories for proletariats (see also: PRETTY WOMAN). But it also feels like he doesn't know how to tell this story without having that reveal, and that's just like someone with a fetish unable to achieve release without the fourteen things their fetish requires. On top of which, right now in real life we're seeing how bloodlines are part of what's making the world a worse place. It's a bad look.

As we've seen with Abrams before, specifically STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS, he wants to create emotion with big shocking things, and then immediately walks them back. Three characters over the course of the film are killed and resurrected so quickly that it's impossible to mourn or believe the deaths have any meaning or purpose.

Also, as we've seen with Abrams before, he likes to make choices that look cool, but don't follow the rules of the narrative. It makes no sense for the Enterprise to be under water, but it looks cool for the Enterprise to emerge from water, so cool trumps all. The Emperor shoots lightning so powerfully he's able to knock all of the (and just the) rebel ships out of the sky, but that's a heretofore unknown power that probably would have come in handy before, just as setting up some of the new mythology that all comes in a exposition dump right before it happens would have been preferable to whatever the fuck this was. Why would Rey holding two lightsabers, two weapons, defend herself from the Emperor. It doesn't make sense in context of the film, this trilogy or the franchise as a whole. Going by what we know, she shouldn't use a weapon at all.

It's a fucking sloppy ass movie where characters show up where they need to at times the plot calls for it, with no bearing on what's going on,, what they said previously, anything. Part of me thinks the biggest problem with the film is that they wanted it out two years after TLJ, and when Colin Trevorrow was let go they had a time crunch, and Abrams was their only options when Johnson passed. I've long heard that Abrams wanted to make Star Wars his new playground, and perhaps when tasked with closing out the Skywalker saga, his main innovation was to not. Sadly, I think all the loose ends, and pointless narrative choices were partly about keeping the door open to continue this story, so Finn's secret, and Lando's new mission with the former stormtrooper, and all sorts of shit is left dangling because he hopes to make Episode 10-12. Going by Friday's numbers, I don't think that's going to happen. Honestly, I think they need to regroup before they go forward with anything more than the Disney + shows because this is a disaster, and I don't think even the most vocal TLJ haters are going to be happy with this. I think because they were never going to be happy with this.

All of this said, I thought Leia/Carrie Fisher was handled as well as possible, even if the use of deleted footage feels like a mad lib at times. There was no easy solution and though some may complain about the logic of the Han Solo dream, it makes sense in the context of Fisher's death, and I think it works, it's probably the best scene in the movie. Because it has heart, a heart partly because it's so obvious Ford did it knowing Carrie couldn't.

Damon's Definitive Rankings of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

So, um, most days at some point I feel an existential dread. As an adult male I would like to have a family and children, but also the world is GD F'd right now that it seems like that's an act of sadism, and we've got a moron at the wheel acting like he's in the midst of a cocaine-fueled commitment to a bad decision. And that moron is lauded by at least a sizeable chunk of America's population and I live in California and it disgusts me that so many states like mine subsidize the lives of the people who are making this country worse. I hope the whole left coast secedes if we get a second term of the noxious terrorist. Republicans are basically evil at this point as there is no policy arguments any more. It's all personal stuff, which should have been left out in the first place, but basically they all seem like bad boys waiting for their spanking, which never comes because we never hold successful white men accountable.

And this is because the Republican party is dying and it knows it and it wants to take everyone down with it. Because Trump is the last electable Republican presidential candidate and they know this. But then also, his election was a fluke and may have been partly caused/helped by Russian interference, but we're not going to look into that.

Here's my pet conspiracy theory: There is a rise of incest porn in pornography. I found this out due to a Mark Ronson podcast about the death of porn star August Ames, which is so weird I wish I knew more about it. Also, I mean, I've been to Pornhub, and it's not exactly subtle how much of it is "hot step-someone f's me." Do we know if this is because of Russian hacking? Do we know why Incest is a super popular porn thing, or maybe it's popular because of bad people trying to make the world worse? Or should we look at how many people have Oedipus complexes? Because we live in a shame-based society, no one is going to talk about this until it's too late. Just in the same way culture is becoming weaponized. Fucking I love RICK AND MORTY and the last thing I want to see is more RICK AND MORTY because of the way culture has turned it into this thing. Similar to DIE HARD. I love that movie, stop the XMAS discussion already, it's "Sylvester Stallone put on 20 pounds to be in COPLAND" level of discourse. But every year, every couple of months it arises again.

23. THOR - This is the film that most shows Marvel's growing pains. They hire Branagh, who's main thing seems to be Dutch Angles, and then split between the immense size of Asgard and the tax rebates of New Mexico. Also, it's a non-origin origin movie. Fuck this.

22. THE INCREDIBLE HULK - Ang Lee's movie is a masterpiece of Freudian discourse. The follow up is like "SMASH." And as such it's perfectly watchable and instantly forgettable.

21. AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON: Joss Whedon is a terrible director. There are good things in this movie, but see the first sentence.  

20.  AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR: I don't like spending 149 minutes on set ups that aren't paid off.

19. SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME: Jake G is great in this movie, but it - like THOR and IRON MAN 2 - feels like it's too busy servicing things that aren't directly a part of the narrative.

18. IRON MAN 2: For a long time this was the bottom entry, but ENDGAME makes it slightly more interesting. After it Marvel films get pretty watchable. Also, it posits that Bill O'Reilly is a HYDRA agent.

17. DOCTOR STRANGE So much legwork to set up weird shit that eventually becomes normied. Cinematic gentrification.

16. ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: Pleasant room temperature.

15. ANT-MAN: No Comment.

What do we do? Do we revolt? Are we afraid of dying? On some level I am and on another I'm not. Like, what does it mean that I'm willing to suffer and die for something I believe in while still worrying every god damn day about the fucking rent which seems reasonable for where I live, but then I don't know how long I'll get to stay due to the world being what it is right now. For much of my time in LA I had places where the rent was a thousand bucks or under. Partly due to roommates and whatnot. If I move any time in the near future getting a place for under $1500 seems unlikely. And it's not like there's an equal move to pay me more, so how would I have money to pay for what Fox News would call inessentials like, you know, a nice meal out from time to time.

14. GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY - Parental issues mixed with the remix factors of this move make me actively not like it while also enjoying the surface pleasures. Like eating McDonald's it is both filling and garbage.

13. SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING - I wish they made a sequel to this movie. Michael Keaton and Donald Glover are the main reasons why this ranks so high, but Marvel's run on Spidey is best in his guest appearances in other movies.

12. CAPTAIN MARVEL - This movie is perfectly fine.

11. THE AVENGERS - This movie shouldn't work and is actively terrible for at least thirty to forty minutes. Whedon can't direct to save his dick and yet... Fuck me when it works it fucking works.

10. IRON MAN - The basic-est bitch of the MCU, this movie succeeds because of casting and tone. As a story it's fine, but Robert Downey Jr. - who will probably spend the rest of his life trying to walk away from the character that cemented his legacy - is perfect, and created the archetype that the franchise needs to move away from.

9. THOR: THE DARK WORLD - Am I ranking this way too high? Probably, but I think if the film had anything more than a television director, it would be (for everyone else that is) a top ten Marvel movie. The third act is stellar and it turned Thor into "God Jack Burton" a film before RAGNAROK did. (this also points out that most Marvel movies are three star efforts - Sorry not sorry)

8. AVENGERS: ENDGAME - This movie is a failure on so many levels, but only because there was way too much it had to accomplish. So it focuses on some things it can get right and forgets the rest. All the talk about time travel and everything that happens because of it is perfect nonsense because the film is about giving you a boner when the CGI dudes beat up the bigger CGI dude. I spent ten years watching these films and I'm happy they've ended some shit even if it felt like contractual obligation deaths.

7. CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER - If this film had a stronger third act, instead of "Shit we need to happen for THE AVENGERS" it would easily be the best Marvel movie.

6. CAPTAIN AMERICAN: CIVIL WAR - I'm sorry, Giant-Man is better than most things.

5. GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2 -  There are few sequels (outside of THOR) that really up their game by diving into what's there. And if the first film was about family this film is about FAMILY and it fucking nails it on a galaxy brain level. There is the family we have and the family we can choose and I prefer it's Freudian noodlings to the first film, perhaps because it's unintentionally a remake of ANG LEE's MOTHERFUCKING HULK.

4. IRON MAN 3: The Third act is CGI  explosion meh (ON A FUCKING SHIPYARD which has been a set piece for at least two recent action movies previous on top of LETHAL WEAPON 2), but as a course correction for the franchise and as a stealth sequel to KISS KISS BANG BANG, it's aces.

3. CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER - Hey, did you know, Republicans are Nazis? Seems crazy, right?

2. THOR: RAGNAROK - This is the DIE HARD of Marvel movies. Perfect popcorn.

1. BLACK PANTHER - I don't think this is a flawless movie, but I don't think the Marvel franchise is anywhere close to being more than "somewhat thoughtful franchise film-making." Mostly they're some basic bitch shit and pretending otherwise is ridiculous (even if I enjoy them). But this is the one that suggests there is a glass ceiling to the MCU and that eventually it will be broken. Because having its final fight on an underground railroad... It's at once subversive and submersive. I want more Wakanda.

I don't know if I care about Marvel going forward. I don't know if I care about Star Wars going forward. We've hit the breaking point. I don't know if I care about Hollywood moving forward. Because we move every day closer to COUPON: THE MOVIE and I like it when art explores things, and currently we're at a point where art doesn't make people want to question anything. STRAW DOGS is a great movie and I want more cinema like that - purposely transgressive, not "I'm a racist in sheep's clothes" transgressive - but I also get that when you have to deal with so much external chaos it's hard to want to examine yourself/society. And I hope we get to some place that allows that level of discourse to return, but as long as we're having active shooting drills instead of banning guns, that's not going to happen.

0. HULK - This movie is better than any MCU film by substantial margins and if you don't agree you're wrong.

A Memory of a Summer Drive

I was a theatre kid. All through middle school and (at least) at the beginning of high school I auditioned for every play, and though some I couldn't appear in because of other activities, I often got cast. I got burnt though. I was doing mostly construction toward the end of my sophomore year but put a lot into the department even when I wasn't acting. During the big end of the year party/speech the drama teacher thanked everyone but me, so I stopped doing it. I was too insulted, and that probably led me to pursue writing more than acting. Also, by Junior year, I was on track to spend two months in Russia in the middle of the year, so I had other things to do, and my love of film was growing to the point that I would rather study Criterion editions (on laserdisc, I'm old) than appear in Auntie Mame (not helping - I couldn't sing). By senior year my best friend had graduated and lived less than five minutes from campus and my schedule was such that I could duck out at lunch. So I was done. Nowadays I would never think to act, though as someone who is a nerd, I have certain improv abilities based around the fact that when bullied the best recourse is often "yes and."

Regardless, when my eighth grade was coming to an end I auditioned for an acting troupe called Teens and Company, because an older student - who was obviously awesome - did the exact same thing, and I too got cast. We would go from school to school doing sketches we wrote ourselves about sex and sexuality. I had a killer audition, I could tell. The problem was everyone else in the troupe was sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen. I was fourteen. I had maybe kissed a girl at summer camp at this point, but... I think I got in because they needed more men (mostly women auditioned) and I was snappy, but also there was a sense of intentional diversity NINETIES STYLE. So we had one gay performer, an African American male and female, a fat girl, an Asian lady, a stoner, a super serious actor, and a class clown. But once we found our positions, I was the kid brother. I was a ham. I was that year's Brooks Whelan.We had a pow wow at the end of the year after we did this thing, and one person kinda apologized that I was butt of a lot of jokes. Looking back, I get that I deserved it, but maybe I never should have been in the troupe to begin with. I had nothing to say about sex, my experiences were non existent.

Many of our shows (to which I would have one, sometimes two bit parts) involved traveling around Oregon. And one time we went to the middle of nowhere so our advisors had to rent a van and drive us to - I believe - Corvallis. Bruce, who as cliche would lead you to believe was in fact the gay one, was our defacto leader, and he had a couple of the girls as his partners in crime (and since we all came from difference schools and groups, three was enough to be the deciding voice in a troupe of ten), as such, much of the music on the trip was Depeche Mode. Violator had just come out, and so I probably heard it eight times on that trip alone. As a fourteen year old boy in 1990, I wouldn't say I was homophobic - I liked Bruce, we were friends - but I wasn't a dancer yet. I was an insecure, sexually inexperienced boy who wasn't comfortable enough in my sexuality (which at that point was just kinda coming into the fore, I had recently figured out how to masturbate) to enjoy it. But because of AIDS, pop culture was knee deep in exploiting gay panic, and I was consuming all of it. It wasn't a fear of the other, it was a fear of self. I wasn't ready to accept Depeche Mode into my heart, because at the time Depeche Mode was known for being a gay band (for more background: https://gawker.com/5951419/the-stigma-of-synth-my-secret-life-with-depeche-mode), and I was a little more Public Enemy. That said, as much as it may have been gay panic, it could have been also that that was all they ever wanted to listen to, and as the younger kid brother, I felt sat on.

The funny thing is, I actually got one of my tapes played at one point I think because they recognized their monopoly. And my choice was a tape that contained the first two albums by The B-52's. They HATED it. Because it wasn't cool. I wasn't cool. But it makes me chuckle to think about. Because the band I loved was probably more gay than the band that every straight white male in 1990 would call gay. The eighties were weird. If you missed it, you missed nothing (except some great art, but that happens in all decades). Still, it was pretty awesome trolling. And The B-52's are the fucking best.

On ONCE UPON A TIME... IN HOLLYWOOD and The One R

Around the time when I was graduating from college my father was having problems finding a job. He had worked for one company most of my life, but when he didn't take a promotion, he was made redundant. The main reason why he didn't take the job was because he/we would have to move to Seattle (as I have been told, much of this is second hand information that I remember from twenty + years ago). As a man who didn't grow up with computers, the world was passing him by. My mom and I noticed that his behavior had gotten a little off, and one night when I think my mom asked him what he wanted to do, his answer was that he wanted to die. Then he had a stroke in front of us. It was, to say the very least, theatrical (like I said, the very least).

My father then spent the next ten years living up to his wish, albeit slowly. He had multiple miniature strokes, which ruined his short term memory, and the longer it went on the "simpler" he got. Sadly, he was in care for years in Portland as my mom could no longer live with him or take of him because there was a persistent and real fear that he might accidentally do something terrible (like leave the gas on) if he was left alone. Eventually he lost the ability to speak, and in one of the last conversations I had with him, he told me that he recently watched THREE FUGITIVES and loved it. I moved to Los Angeles in 2004, he died in 2007. I didn't see him for most of those three years, but by the end he was in a wheelchair, out of Portland in a Veteran's home, unable to speak, and toothless due to a root canal. There are so many layers of horrible to this story. One of the worst is that he sort of wished it on himself.

Before I moved to Los Angeles, I started dating a girl named Sara. We had gone to college together and she worked in the computer center, so I saw her all the time. I was painfully shy then (while also being loud, such is my lot), and we may have flirted a little, but when I ran into her at a Liz Phair concert - around the time I was let go from working as a film buyer for a theater chain - we connected through Friendster and set up a date (which happened after I was let go). Around that time I came to LA to see if I could live there, and as I had a number of good friends already in the city, it seemed like the right thing to do. So, here I was dating Sara and we had an amazing first date. One where you talk all night until you get in the car and then make out for so long (but because it's a first date you don't push it) you go home sore and exhausted. But the longer we dated the more I had to think about my future. LA was calling, but could this woman I went to college with be "the one?" Eventually our clothes came off, but by the time we got around to having sex, I was twisted to the point where I couldn't perform because there was too much pressure, and if we had I might have felt locked in. She dumped me shortly thereafter. I think I'm legally required to tell you that that hasn't happened to me again, but it's one of those things where I know that what was going on in my head made it a non-starter (which is a form of decision-making). I moved. And a couple years later, maybe even a decade or so after, I checked in on her - for whatever reason - on Facebook. As I can best make out from what's available there, she had a brain tumor and died a couple years ago.

I don't talk about this ever (out of respect for her), but I dated a supermodel. She lived in my apartment complex and we ended up hanging out for a week and a half before she moved back to Europe. It was perfect. We went out dancing, we watched the World Cup, we were clicking, I could make her laugh. And after she left I ended up sending her an email a couple weeks later just saying that I missed her. She then said she was going to a party in Somerset, and needed a date. I told her that I didn't think I could afford it, and she said she had frequent flier miles. Two days later I was on a plane bound for England. Oh, also, around this time I was fired from one of my writing gigs, just as another place I was writing for folded. My trip to England to see her (and my brother and his family) was fucking magical. Ask to see the pictures some time.

Two years later she got in touch and we had lunch. It was going okay, no BEFORE SUNSET, and then I joked that if Trump got elected, we should get married, because I wouldn't want to live in America any more. She then said, "but what about kids" and said something along the lines of "would it be real?" And I was like "yeah, I'd love to have kids, I would totally marry you for real" and she said "then why didn't you ask me two years ago?" I just assumed I was good company. That she liked me, but that also I was in her life because she wanted someone. I never thought she wanted me.  I went home after she basically said "I don't like you any more" and I put on STOP MAKING SENSE because it was all I could do to stay sane. (she invited me to her birthday party this year, so I think we're good, though that could have been an automatic thing).

Should I have proposed back then, or tried to stay in Europe? I remember that moment (one of our last together) where she was on the fence about going home or coming to meet my brother and maybe staying a while, but as we had just left Somerset after sleeping for maybe four hours in a tent in the middle of a party, I was exhausted and wasn't up for twisting her arm even if she wanted me to do so. But then also, everything to that point had been perfect, and I didn't see a future for us, so why ruin perfect? Maybe I just wasn't looking hard enough. But then also, that would have been insane. Like, what am I going to do in Europe. Also, we never watched a movie together. If I put on something like RIO BRAVO is she going to dig it? I mean, not that it's that important, but still. I've fallen in love with people and moved fast, but I don't know how that with her would have worked. Would I have found a job in Europe, or would we come back to the states, but if the... None of it made sense to me.

I went out drinking with a friend a couple years back, and he was having a rough time because he had just broken up with someone, and asked if I had regrets. I said no. I said something after that like "are there things I regret, yes." and he told me I blew it. When I think about the things where I feel like I failed, where there was a moment to choose path A or path B, I don't always feel good. Well, some of them I feel good because they were awesome. But at the same time, I can't dwell on them. I lost my father before I lost him, and as the situation worsened  I was talking to another friend about it, and his father died when he was three. And when I was opining that I wish I got to know my father as a man, he was like "well, you're talking to the wrong person about that, at least you had one." And though I wish I had known my father better, and I wish I didn't remember the sick version of him more than the non-sick version, my father was essentially a good egg, all things, and though I might have some qualms about how he raised me, and questions about who he was, I don't have any control over it. I know my father's life was probably miserable in his final years, but I also know that if I spent more time with him, it would have destroyed most of the best memories (of which there are less than I would like), and would have been at a certain point more for me than him. Did I abandon him? Maybe. What would my life been like if I stayed in Portland and married Sara? Would I have gotten a job at a place like Powells (or more likely retreated back to Movie Madness, even if there would have been zero money in it), would we have been happy, had kids? Would the European have my kids and maybe we get divorced, or we compromise and live in England, where I might have been able to find work and would have been closer to my family? These are all paths that could have been.

I don't know. But I also don't think about these things except when I think about these things, because it's wanking. And I've got nothing against jerking off, but I don't like dwelling on whatever happened that I cannot change because A) that's not how time works and B) I believe I am made of my decisions, good and bad. This is the path that got me to where I am now. And that may not be the best path, but I don't hate my life, or the various and numerous highs and lows that have come from it. Is it possible the best me has an Oscar/mansion/children by now? Of course. I could also be dead. I could also be blind. I could also be in a plane wreck. If you're really going to start rolling some twenty sided dice, go all the way.

The things that I have done that I feel like may have hurt people I don't feel good about, but I think a lot of them - if I were to apologize - might net blank stares. Mostly because I don't know if they always feel the same way I do, just as probably the most embarrassing moments of my life may not be a blip on theirs. Maybe I feel this way because often when people quote me back to me I generally don't remember that bit of cleverness. Things stick to people in different ways. There's very few people I would want to apologies from- but I'm also willing to admit that is partly white privilege talking. I've lived my life trying not to hurt people almost to a fault. I feel like Frankenstein at times while my inner soul is Bill Haverchuck. I'm this super large skinny nerd.

Speaking of. ONCE UPON A TIME... IN HOLLYWOOD, let's dive into spoilers.

SERIOUSLY, SPOILERS

SPOILERS BITCH
SPOIL
SPOIL

At the end of the film, our heroes kill the three people who would have killed Sharon Tate and those who were staying with her at the time. This is something that once the film screened was kind of spoiled immediately because no matter how you dance around the subject, you can't talk about the movie for great lengths without talking about the ending and by talking about Tate, by including Tate, one suspected Quentin Tarantino would pull another INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS situation by reworking what happened. Honestly, I was hoping for something more clever, like that the Manson clan killed Cliff and Rick instead. Not because I hated them, but because their deaths would be a transference like what happens in DEATH PROOF.

Instead, the Manson clan are taken out by a "good guy with a gun" as played by Brad Pitt's wife killer Cliff Booth. And as much as it is satisfying to watch the three die a grizzly death, the violence towards women is more pronounced (perhaps because there are two of them), and over the top. I am not defending the Manson people in any way shape or form, but the images of a woman set on fire, and having their brains beaten out register stronger than what happens to Tex, who gets chomped hard by a pitbull, which - using that kind of dog - seems a conscious choice. And though I felt catharsis in this moment, it's a deeply conservative movie in the sense that it validates the viewpoint that competent but terrible people may be the solution to abjectly terrible people. (As for the narrative beat of Pitt's character being a wife killer, I suspect as much as this is a point Tarantino makes to give him a greater redemption arc, but could also be that Hal Needham told him a story about Robert Vaughn's stunt double that he had to include because it was too out there not to.)

This is a movie about regret. But what regrets? For a movie about 1969, Tarantino removes race, sex, and war mostly out of his equation, relegating all three to a trunk ride. Yes, Sharon and Roman Polanski go to the Playboy Mansion, but it's to dance around clothed people. Bill Cosby isn't there even if he was. Polanski, who - going by what I know of the situation - was an all around shit husband who wanted an open marriage, is not much of a character, nor are many of the Hollywood icons featured in the film (Damian Lewis must have had most of his role cut out, right?) This is about two middle aged white guys who need affirmation and support and redemption. Because they know they need it.

Ever since DEATH PROOF, Tarantino has been making period films. I wouldn't say he's retreating to the past, but he has - at least in 3/4 - been righting historical wrongs. You can get away with that easy in DJANGO because of genre. But the brilliance of BASTERDS - which was apparent from reading the script - was that his changing of history was also about playing against our expectations. "They're going to try and kill Hitler, but they will fail because history." "but what if they did succeed?" That's a great narrative gimmick, but it's also an atomic bomb. Christopher Nolan must have felt the same way with MEMENTO and INCEPTION and DUNKIRK. There are certain narrative devices that can only be used once, or only used once people forget about them. That QT goes to that well again is unfortunate even if he does an incredible job of making his alternate timeline a rock solid case. But once he introduces the alt timeline, the ending is boring. Sure, it's fun, but we know where it's going.

My problem, on a DNA level, is that this isn't useful. It's fun in IB because it's about sticking it to Nazis and giving Hitler the death he deserved, but this is more personal - even if Tarantino elides the underbelly of the real people and the time and place. I love Tarantino, and outside of THE HATEFUL EIGHT (which as politically on point as it is, is self indulgent wankery) I like to love all his movies. But at the end of the day, even though I think the ending is saved by Rick being shy and awed by Jay and Sharon liking his work, Tarantino wants to change the past. I don't.

But also, I get it, I didn't spend twenty years working with and for Harvey Weinstein.

On the fear of conformity

Recently A WRINKLE OF TIME was on in the background. There's a sequence in the film where the main characters end up in a cul-de-sac where every house has a child in front who are bouncing balls at the same time. We then see all the children, and all are of different races with different haircuts. At this moment the film fails because it tries to paint a portrait of multicultural assimilation, and it at once says too little and not enough. It's a hopeful portrait of terribleness that doesn't work because we've taken way too many steps forward and too many steps back from the 1950's version of the American dream for it to be inclusive.

If our culture, if America were different, there might be a case for this fear of multicultural assimilation, and hopefully things will change so much in the next thirty years that this portrait will feel right (spoiler alert: it won't). But in a post 9/11, Post-Trump American landscape, this is a patently ridiculous thing to show/fear. America is nowhere near the point where it is accepting of different cultures and races for a myriad of reasons, to cite one obvious recent example: a Jewish temple got shot up because conservatives have portrayed George Soros as a boogeyman. Republicans have so stoked the fear of the other that White Nationalism has become the bedrock of their beliefs.

Alas, the fear of suburban complacency doesn't exist any more as no one accidentally becomes a Republican. No one can fear accidentally turning into a pod person or Stepford wife in America at this point in history. The fear of complacency is non-existent because the American Dream no longer exists.

These days, going to college guarantees you nothing but debt if you are lower or middle class. On top of which the middle class is an endangered species. Many adults would sell their soul if it gave them a home, a partner, and children that they could afford to the point they wouldn't have to worry about taking care of braces or a wrecked car. I know too many people who have good jobs that are working second jobs because they have to make ends meet. Most people live in debt.We've gone from an economy that supports a single breadwinner to an economy where to have two children both parents tend to need to work, and where having a full time job is no guarantee you can afford room and board. If the previous appeal of Conservatism was that it was the party that taxed you less, that doesn't matter when taxes aren't the reason why you can barely afford things and it isn't easy to get by. Republicans have ruined selling out, because there's no one to sell out to.

But, perhaps just as importantly, the fear of becoming a pod person, the fear of falling in line with more conservative elements in our culture is gone because to be a modern Republican you have to embrace racism, sexism and the fear of the other to the extent that it's a feature, not a bug. You can't pretend that it's a cultural thing, or a belief system argument. Trump and his administration is actively pursuing policies for the benefit of no one but racists. They don't want people to be tolerant of viewpoints they don't accept while also being offended that their intolerance is not as tolerated as those minorities they look to oppress.

It's not that people are being converted - this is nothing you can fall into accidentally at this point - it's that people's truths are being revealed. We reached the end of They Live, Nada has destroyed the cloaking device, and a good chunk of the population is cool with being led by aliens who obviously don't have their best interests in mind.

I say this, but I also look at James Woods on twitter, who's been called to arms because of the California fires, and it's obvious he's a terrible person who found his humanity when he saw something that might change his life/day/people he knows. The problem with other-ing to point that modern Republicans are at these days is that it's effective only when you have no practical experiences, and can be destroyed if that person is capable of accepting truths. It's easy to hate things you don't know. It's harder when you live and work and are surrounded by people who are just like you, who want similar things as you, but maybe look a little different. To be a modern Republican is either to be rich and selfish or dumb and hateful. Racism is inherently stupid, and racism has become a core tenant of modern Republicanism, so that party is now for stupid people, by stupid people, and the feedback loop of Trump and Fox News is getting dumber and louder.

They forgot the carrot for people who are comfortable with racism as long as it's not front and center. They forgot to provide for their true Scotsmen because it's the end of this hustle so they are just pillaging what they can. The white picket fence is no longer a realistic dream, it's no longer a dream, period. Good job, Republicans, you ruined the myth that you're whole fucking ideology is based around.