The Hot-Doll Pages

The West Wing

2012-01-27T15:54:00.000-08:00

Schmaltz is just unBritish, isn't it? I think it was Ian Hislop I remember reciting that old cliche about The West Wing being a kind of liberal fantasy to comfort the political classes, the warm glow from their tv sets making them forget the horror show playing out in the REAL White House. But Brits are made of sterner stuff. No, no. We know that politicians are nincompoops, civil servants are weasels, and spin-doctors are power-crazed bullies. We can take it. In fact there's a certain grim enjoyment whenever those low expectations are met...

The defining feature of The West Wing is its sentimentality. The conceit is that all that guff about public service actually means something to the people you're watching. I just finished the final season: this is a show where one of the characters obsessively re-reads the Constitution of the United States when he has time off; where one of the most moving scenes is the President handing his own pocket-sized copy to his aide. When Josh says he prefers Rob Zombie's early work, I'm pretty sure he just has the wikipedia page crammed somewhere in his memory.

The famous frantic walk-and-talk shots don't connote chaos, but efficiency. These people work even when they are between offices, and they stay on top of everything. They also speak inhumanly fast, and make jokes so quickly it seems as if they're somehow telepathically linked -- a hive mind of witty conversation where the improbable set-ups whizz by so fast you don't notice them until the punch-lines hit.

And the show luxuriates in the grandeur of office. Just the title sequence gives you a flavour. Washington isn't just a place, it's a magical palace at the center of the universe where all human life is monitored and nurtured by caring, committed worker elves buzzing around a kindly Father Christmas. It's manned by impressive guards, it hosts shimmering balls, it has hi-tech video screens displaying satellite images. There is protocol, there are obscure ridiculous rituals. You're all supposed to call him 'Mr President'...

And man alive, the melodrama you endure for SEVEN YEARS watching the cranky, awkward political genius and the patient, perpetually crestfallen secretary circling each other, never quite connecting. And their romance so mercilessly stretched out, every advance circumvented, derailed by their own brutal indecisiveness. This is epic romance on an ENORMOUS scale, Sam and Diane manipulation taken to the very limits of tolerability. By the time they get it on, trumpets sound and the Second Coming has arrived (well, the election of another Democratic President anyway).

And I love it. I find all of this soppy, fuzzy, idealistic bombast nonsense supremely addictive. Having gone through all the seasons now (the luster somewhat lost after season four) I'm more aware of the traps this show lays down to ensnare your comfort-seeking mind. But there is a lesson here as well. Undoubtedly all this pomp and ceremony really does affect people, inside and outside the machine. And sometimes, you need that myopia, those inspiring speeches. They give you that glory-boost to get your ass working and motivated through 15-hour days.

The West Wing is at its most touching when it focuses on characters who sacrifice their lives, their sleep, their peace-of-mind to the never-ending marathon that is governance. When the show steps outside the White House to examine the utter wasteland of their private lives, it reaches a place of deep pathos. I remember some long-ago season where Josh arrogantly lists his achievements before admitting he 'doesn't know how to do this' i.e. ask someone on a date. C.J. says something very similar to Danny at the end: she doesn't know how relationships work, she didn't have the time to figure it out. Sam Seaborn has a life in California which he didn't have when he was Deputy Communications Director. And yet he gives it up, because the job is that important.

And while you're watching The West Wing, you really believe it is.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

2012-01-21T12:29:00.000-08:00

I haven't read the book, but you can't spend the past few years engaged in cultural discourse without being aware of the problematic nature of the author's feminism. Laurie Penny, whose opinion on this I tend to trust, insists that he clearly didn't "intend to glamourise violence against women", he was just trapped by genre conventions. According to Penny, Salander's character is "well drawn" in the books, but I remain doubtful. Following conventions is a choice, and I wonder whether this heroine really escapes the "ninja computer hacker" box Larsson puts her in. But I have no desire to read the book, so I guess I'll never find out.

I wanna talk about David Fincher's adaptation, which is an uncomfortable watch. Back in 2010, Fincher's The Social Network drew out the moralist in me (not always a good thing). This film also gets into trouble on gender politics grounds, which makes me suspect that Fincher is a stylist extraordinaire who doesn't trouble himself with questions of philosophy. Salander doesn't escape sexualisation in this film, even, I dare say, in the rape sequence, which is shot in a dramatic rather than a realistic way. I think the impact would have been harder if the scene ended with Salander desperately trying to escape as the door shuts. The audience can work out the rest from her revenge.

Depiction of rape is complicated. One argument is that it can only be justified when it is done from the P.O.V. of the victim, with his or her lack of consent irrevocably clear to the audience. Thus you try and limit the circulation of potentially dangerous sexual fantasies, which might lead to imitative behaviour in the real world. Another is more liberal, one that the Alan Moore who wrote Lost Girls might support. Fantasies are fantasies, who are you to judge what is criminal or not, if it remains inside people's heads? You can be as disgusting as you like, as long as you respect the rules of consent in the real world and ensure you do not hurt anyone. There are difficulties with such a John Stuart Mill view, but I tend to lean towards it rather than try and legislate on how sex should be portrayed in art. We should live in a world where we can be trusted to control our desires, rather than have them controlled by someone else.

What is crucial for me is that a work is upfront about its intentions. As Sady Doyle tried to show in her demolition of G.R.R. Martin, there is something creepy about a fixation on sexual violence against women (the Tiger Beatdown post about Larsson makes the same point). For me it is enough that someone who fixates on sexual violence should be aware of how creepy it is, so that their work becomes at least in part about that creepiness. I would feel better about Larsson if he treated his stand-in Blomkvist less kindly, and showed the uncomfortable similarities between himself and his straw-men antagonists.

The film tries to do this: the villain suggests that the "urges" he has are shared by the hero. But this is one line going against an entire film in which Blomkvist is hot, smart, suave and impeccably principled. It's not enough. I wanted to see Blomkvist's mind becoming polluted by the heap of mutilated women he is investigating. I wanted him to get srsly worried about the state of his mental health, feel the risk of contagion from being stuck on an island with a bunch of depraved fascists. Moreover, I could have accepted the film's slick and stylish coating, its motorcycles and its lesbians, if the veneer was more evident. Reviewers have suggested that the opening music video credit sequence was misjudged. It is definitely incongruent with the mood of the scenes that bracket it, but I would have changed those scenes, not the music video. Fincher could have thrown his audience into a fever dream of hip fashion, fast cars and delinquent sexuality, rubbed all the problematic genre conventions in people's faces, so that, as in The Matrix, they are convinced of the unreality of everything around them. And in the middle of this whirlwind, he could have had one bespectacled persecuted journalist becoming ever more uncertain of the ground he is standing on, starting to question himself, just as Larsson should have done.

Shame

2012-01-14T15:04:00.000-08:00

I was puzzled by the title as well, seeing as Fassbender and Mulligan's actions are pretty shameless right up until the very end. Never mind the desperate sex, what interested me were the polarities Steve McQueen sets up between this brother and sister: The brother is tall, rake-thin and haggard, the sister is short, youthful and glowing. The brother is super fit and can run for miles, the sister is a slob asking if she looks fat. The brother works some incomprehensible corporate job, the sister is a singer. The brother is totally independent, the sister is totally dependent. Both are lonely.

All of which makes me wonder if the film assembles these gender roles, pushes them to extremes, in order to undermine them -- neither ideal can lead to any kind of society. There needs to be a mean.

Fassbender's character has a penchant for blue -- swathed sheets wrap his privates in the opening shot, as if to put his overactive gonads on ice. Mulligan's performance at the bar is bathed in shimmering gold. The colour returns at the end as a washed-out yellow, which permeates Fassbender's final orgy, him pumping away, looking more and more ill with each thrust. This is the only connection, the only warmth, either sibling is capable of.

It's a striking film, with brilliant performances by the leads. I don't agree with the complaints from certain quarters that the characters lack depth. McQueen is quite suggestive about the possible origins of their malaise, but leaves enough ambiguity about their past and future to let his audience make up their own minds.

Jane Eyre

2012-01-14T12:44:00.000-08:00

I haven't read the book, but you don't live into your twenties without knowing every beat of this story. I want to talk about the 2011 film directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, which is magnificent. Although I knew what was going to happen, before seeing it I didn't know what Jane Eyre was about. Many things, turns out, all of them leading up to Jane's flight from Thornfield Hall, which serves as the dramatic opening sequence of the film. Jane is young, poor, female, with a rare intellect, a bountiful imagination, and ambitions beyond the station God and fate have assigned her. Her horizon is ring-fenced, but Rochester's betrayal pushes her to escape. This is suicide, and Jane is lucky to survive. Freedom is barren when the mores and institutions to foster it don't exist. What is there to do apart from settle for love.

And for that you need respect, your own and that of your partner. This means honesty, and humility. Jane grows up surrounded by deceit, hypocrisy, arrogance and abuse. It is miraculous she has any faith in family or religion at all. And yet she does, resolutely committed to the idea that her essence as a human being conveys a fundamental dignity no prejudice can efface. Rochester is a coward, and must be maimed and impoverished before Jane can accept him. What is attractive about him is that, as a libertine, he doesn't give a flying toss about Jane's provenance or situation. Also, he's played by Michael Fassbender and Michael Fassbender is all caps HOTNESS. Jaime Bell can't rival that, poor guy. He offers wider horizons but a passionless marriage, and his ultimatums suggest it will be far from equal. Jane has to run again, but this time she has money, and Rochester has been cut down to size. So, in the end, she marries him.

Quite interesting that several viewers, while admiring the gothic tone of the film, missed out on the melodrama. This I find surprising, as I teared up three times in the cinema (even though phones rang FOUR TIMES during the screening, one swine even picked up). My guess is that the film dialled back the romance in the novel (which, after all, is narrated first person). Mia Wasikowska's Jane is very controlled, she pushes the emotions inward. I thought that was believable and moving. The whole film is a glorious piece of work, and will (surely?) become the definitive adaptation of the book.

A Dangerous Method

2012-01-08T07:54:00.000-08:00

Jake over at Not Just Movies notes that much of this film occurs in bright daylight -- no accident. Like A History of Violence, Cronenberg is interested in the socially unacceptable and repressed impulses that lurk beneath ordered normality. Jung and his wife Emma live in meticulously managed opulence. Their conversation is the height of good breeding. And a bit boring. Keira Knightley's Sabina arrives to shake things up.

Knightley has proven that she could do educated, steely and ambitious in films such as Pride & Prejudice and Atonement (let's forget Pirates for now). Here she does all of that as well, but first she has to twist and wrack and scream and distort her features, and she succeeds in being both sympathetic and unsettling. Her confession scene (no other word for it) is dynamite stuff, the camera slowly drifting from two shot to centre on her face as she reaches some kind of apotheosis. We really should forget Pirates.

The poster for the film suggests that Sabina is caught between Freud and Jung. She is, in that her intellectual debt to the former clashes with her personal relationship with the latter. But I think the more interesting entanglement is Jung's -- how he drifts away from his mentor and father figure under the influence of Sabina, and the instigator of their affair, Otto Gross. Freud's method retained the belief that the unconscious required restraint, and that neurosis develops when the regular process of repression was disrupted. Mortensen plays him as fastidiously careful. He is mindful of all enemies to the cause of psychoanalysis, he does not reveal his dreams to Jung. Gross, on the other hand, is a libertine -- pleasure is a simple good and people should be free to seize it. Sabina, while never meeting Gross, finds that sexual exploration is the route towards serenity and transformation, although she prefers to elucidate her experience using Freud's terminology.

The root of Sabina's neurosis was sexual, but Jung thinks Freud's fixation with sex is counterproductive. He is also dissatisfied with Freud's complacency in simply helping his patients cope with the world as it is. He has wacky ideas about the mind's powers over matter and time. The unconscious is much more vital than Freud thought -- a pathway to transcendence, rather than a threat to civilization.

A dangerous method? I guess the film's point is that the 'talking cure' for mental disorders can contaminate the person who cures, just as much as physical cures for contagious disease. Madness is catching. We are told at the end of the film that the onrush of war killed Sabina and exiled Freud. For Jung, it spurred a mental breakdown, from which he emerged to become the preeminent psychologist of his day. He died in comfort. The film suggests that the breakdown was partly personal, Jung losing Sabina forever. But perhaps it is also intellectual -- the mass slaughter showing that Freud's emphasis on repressing animal instincts was right all along.

10 books in 2011

2011-12-30T16:48:00.000-08:00

Might as well continue to do this roundup. I have read more this year, but more was focussed around the dissertation I had to write to complete my degree. Work means I haven't been thinking (and thus writing) about what I have read as much on this blog. I'm hoping to correct that in the new year. We'll see if I actually manage it. (Maybe my new Kindle will help!) Divided by genre, otherwise no order.

R.G. Collingwood - Autobiography [link]

Peter Singer - How Are We To Live? [link]

David Hume - Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

Friedrick Nietzsche - The Birth of Tragedy
Aristotle - Politics [link]

William Gibson - Neuromancer [link]

Steph Swainston - No Present Like Time

Grant Morrison / others - Final Crisis [link]

Alejandro Jodorowsky / Moebius - The Incal
Sam Kieth - My Inner Bimbo [link]

Favourite songs of 2011: 10-1

2011-12-18T03:16:00.000-08:00

10. JoJo - Marvin's Room (Can't Do Better)

Drunken self-delusional 3am desperation. Should have ended Drake's career by now.

9. Nicki Minaj - Super Bass

Rap meets bubblegum pop and crushes everything in its way (Gaga the first to be pulverized). Not a lot of bass to the heartbeats, but never mind. ‘When he make it drip, drip, kiss him on the lip, lip!’ keeps it filthy as well as sweet.

8. P Money & Blacks feat. Slickman - Boo You

Blacks's verse at the end jarred a bit after reading a piece about the prevalence of gang rape in London. Gave an uncomfortable ring to 'oh yeah fam, when I'm done with your girl, might pass her on to the bredren as well'. Got over it by convincing myself that the sentiment is much more childish: fantasies of saying boo you, you’ve been cuckolded added to impotent dreams of fucking 'too many, too many hoes' across the length and breadth of England. Receives extra bumps because Royal-T’s Hot Ones remix from 2009 was probably my most played grime track this year, and because the Blacks & P mixtape was really very good.

7. Araabmuzik - Electronic Dream

A stand in for the entire album really, the opening 15 seconds one of the best intros to a record I’ve ever heard. ‘My love may be invisible, but I inspire the dreams that guide you’. Trance diva as muse singing to the inspired producer. Reminds me a lot of FSOL’s Papua New Guinea, but slowed to hip hop tempo, the prescience replaced with reminiscence.

6. Katy B - Power On Me

Another stand-in for the entire album, which is one of my favourites released this year. The opening track has a similar sound and theme to the now classic As I, but it is more suspicious, accusatory. Katy's a wary lady. ‘So glad I knew not to rush things with you because now you've grown on me so naturally’. Something you could say about the whole album, actually. It’s a grower, crammed with delightful embellishments only noticed on the third replay: the descending 'bloop-bloop-bloop-bloop-bloo' in Movement, the Charly sample that bookends Go Away. Personally, I don’t understand the accusations that Katy’s voice lacks personality. Robyn’s voice has also been described to me as flat and unremarkable, which I find insane. Powerhouse technical performance is not what either songwriter is about. Instead they go for truth. And Katy’s has an earnestness that conveys her character very clearly to the listener. Personal favourite vocal moment: the coquettish ‘oh’ that caps the bridge in Why You Always Here.

5. Johnny Foreigner - (Don't) Show Us Your Fangs

I love it when my fave indie band of recent times reminds me of my fave indie band of all time. Belle & Sebastian left behind for harder guitars at the end, of course. Includes a faint ringing sound that comes in at the chorus which always makes me reach for my phone. Johnny Foreigner are building a career on singing about travel, random people you meet on the way, home-sickness and love at long distance. This year I’m finally where they are and the connect is even harder. ‘Every leaving means heading somewhere new’. Shivers each time I hear it. The band leaked the mp3 for free, so you have no excuse. Extra bumps because the new album is really very good.

4. Rockwell - Aria

See here. Hopefully Untold will bring this guy to the attention of non-d&b heads. Undoubtedly some of the most exciting ‘bass music’ {{what a horribly bland name for it}} coming out of London right about now. I mean, just check out this weirdness.

3. Kozzie feat. Marger, Merky Ace, Rival, Ego, Scrufizzer - Spartan (Remix)

‘That's how you do an 8 bar riddim!’ Someone should have told Lethal. Call to arms from the new wave of the grime scene. Here’s to exciting times ahead.

2. tUnE-yArDs - Bizness

Blues for a brighter 21^st century. Also dance music for a brighter 21^st century, featuring the drop of the year. In my dreams, DJs mix this in next to a lot of the other stuff on this list. Extra bumps for the album, obv. One of the most energizing records to come out this year, burning with the (often self-directed) anger of victimhood. But the music is celebratory, colourful and fun -- giving us a way out, pointing to happier times ahead.

1. Purity Ring - Ungirthed

See here. Still sounds fresh at the end of the year. Music made by polyglot creators for polyglot listeners. In fact, I recognised it being blasted out of a Mercedes on Great Russell Street and thought: now that’s an interesting choice for ridin’ out music... But rather than gluttage or hyperstasis, this evokes something very particular and private: cold bedsits, blue mornings, the passing of time, the way the banal can be transformed by a sense of the unworldly. 'Girth' is an archaic word for encircle, and this song seems to be about everyday surroundings being stripped away. That uncanny numinous feeling that leaves you shivering, teeth clicking, ears ringing, all moorings lost. It’s at number one because it shows that overexposure to the mass of stuff out there doesn’t limit the crafting of something singular, and because I can play it on repeat forever without tiring of it.

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Favourite songs of 2011: 20-11

2011-12-17T02:28:00.000-08:00

20. Rustie - Globes

I like a lot of the more lively parts of Glass Swords as well, but I found that this glowing sunrise of an interlude builds the endorphin rush better than the singles material.

19. Ke$ha - Shots On The Hood Of My Car

Going down and out while burning bright and happy... When last call feels like the apocalypse. Simon Reynolds will be able to bring in Bataille here, if he hasn't already. Someone needs to give me a proper copy so I can hear the twinkling synths actually twinkle.

18. Trim - I Am (Preditah Remix)

The Wire thought this version was too poppy. As opposed to Skipping Rope? Idiots.

17. dom - Burn Bridges

Chillwave that kept the drums

16. Burial - NYC

A.k.a Fostercare Part 2. Vocals clearer than ever before. ‘Didn't you know this is love when I'm around you... Now I see... Leave me... No.’ Burial reaching beyond London? I can't hear it, apart from a sample of what sounds like Method Man at the end.

15. Blawan - Getting Me Down

Blawan's version of chopped r&b uk dance is predictably awesome. A track built on the dual meaning of getting and being ‘down’. ‘Maybe all you need’s a shoulder to cry on’... the club providing that shoulder. The uncomfortable bass grinding underneath the dance, pain not completely numbed, remaining when the night is over. A shame the guy dropped the ball a bit at the end of the year.

14. Damu - Be Free

The hiccups that accent the end of each 'just let go don't be shy' -- the music demanding a transport to arpeggiating kaleidoscopic bliss, the dancers panting, stumbling along, trying to keep up.

13. James Blake - Unluck

Didn't have the patience for the whole album, I'm afraid. Apparently, this started off as more of a club-oriented track, and I wonder if there’s something left there which makes it a standout. As with his other songs, there are only a few endlessly repeated lines, but the song's shifting elements, builds and drops, ensure they never get boring. The words themselves are difficult to distinguish, and may perhaps shift as well, but 'care for me' and 'playing, falling, there' are clear enough: the freedom of childhood, under the protective care of family, now lost.

12. Rival feat. Discarda, Jammin, Nasty Jack, Kozzie, Badness, Merky ACE, Sharky Major, Danny D, Kwam, Big Narstie, Blacks, Dark Boi, Ego, Diesel, Jammer, Jamakabi - Lock Off The Rave 8 Bar Remix

Darq E Freaker unleashes a migraine-inducing barrage of clanging, while Discarda, Merky Ace, Big Narstie, Dark Boi and Jammer provide the lyrical peaks. Rival and Jamakabi wrap up the whole thing nicely. Unevenness is inevitable with so many MCs, but when it hits, it hits harrrd.

11. Azealia Banks - 212

This year's Like A G6, with any justice. Ribald, irreverent, irresponsible, bitchy, self-obsessed. ‘I’MA RUIN YOU CUNT!’ Ms Banks sounds like she might be insufferable in real life, but she also sounds like a really great time.

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Favourite songs of 2011: 30-21

2011-12-14T10:29:00.000-08:00

30. Bok Bok - Silo Pass

Slim pickins from Night Slugs this year, but this one kept the neon green flame burning. Sounds like a bus full of kids bumping and grinding on Mario Kart’s Rainbow Road.

29. Beyoncé - Schoolin' Life

State of the world address from its biggest R&B star, weirdly off-kilter with the economic dustbin a lot of her listeners are in.

28. Pritch & Trim - Stereotype

Trim’s on a badboy thing, as always, except here he doesn't say that in so many words, instead playfully baiting you to do the assuming. Plenty of space for him to weave around on this gloopy hip hop beat, which is how he likes it. And it shows.

27. Ny feat. Giggs - Be With You

Davinche going for pop gold, that awful hair in the video. There's always a will-to-glamour failing to disguise the girl-next-door about Ny. Great songwriter, regardless. Giggs kinda goes his own way with the concept, but when the 'be with you boy' vocal meets the 'b-b-b-b-be with you' sample, I tend to stop caring.

26. Terror Danjah feat. Ruby Lee Ryder - Full Attention

Danjah’s resurrection of R&G sea-saws between the R and the G. Ruby Lee’s static-drenched swoons are met with heavy drum and bass stomps. Apparently, the idea was that MCs would spit over it. Unsurprisingly, no one was crazy enough to try. I mean, where would you fit in?

25. Kelly Rowland - Motivation

Big up Shark Attack for this one. Kelly finally stops playing the asexual house goddess and asks you to make it rain, no less. Lil Wayne's sex raps are always arch in the extreme, but it's not like the rest of the song lacks the silly. 'Baby I'ma be yr motivation' is hardly what I wanna hear in an amorous context, not to mention 'make mama proud'. The absurdity is what makes the song such a winner. That and another truly astounding vocal performance from Ms. Rowland, who deserves better than a desk job adjudicating the X-Factor.

24. Jacques Greene - Another Girl

Learned recently that this is a shameless rip-off of this, with a lot of the personality of the original ripped out. But a breezy summer r&b-flavoured jam is a breezy r&b-flavoured jam. That is to say, always welcome.

23. Britney Spears feat. Nicki Minaj and Ke$ha - Till The World Ends (Femme Fatale Remix)

Another star turn from Minaj, plus clucking. Plus Ke$ha not being annoying. Plus lopsided structure -- guest rap, chorus, THEN verse one. Plus another chorus, plus obligatory dubstep breakdown. Eletro-pop gets a bit unpredictable. And the burning up / burning out motif that we'll talk about more when we get to Ke$ha proper.

22. Balam Acab - Oh, Why

This gets the Perfume Genius / Youth Lagoon thing right by avoiding any and all resemblance to Coldplay. Its upward climb is built on tape hiss, sampled radios, pitch-shifted vocals. The track's peak is distant and blurry through the onrush of sheets of rain. It's epic yes, but neither obvious nor bombastic.

21. Faze Miyake / P Money - Blackberry

Like this more than Take Off, plus it has P Money talking over it about how his girlfriend is ignoring him because her nose is buried in her smartphone. Which is hilarious.

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Favourite songs of 2011: 40-31

2011-12-10T04:16:00.001-08:00

40. John Talabot feat. Glasser - Families

Delorean has been missed. Luckily we have this instead. ‘Strangers in your home’, but ‘it’s the beginning of us and the end of them’. You make your own family.

39. Pandr Eyez - Little Bit

Bass squelch, wall of sound haze, vocals buried under the noise. Weary wisdom about the futility of chasing success. Worth five Video Games.

38. J Majik & Wickaman feat. Dee Freer - Ritual

‘I can't get through to you. You never should have let me go’. Where did those '90s days go? Shout out to my sister for this one.

37. Julianna Barwick - Bob In Your Gait

The massed choirs-of-one dialed back to reveal a lone voice following a simple piano line. Sometimes that’s all you need.

36. Addison Groove - This Is It

O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K build to THIS IS A PROFUSION OF COLOURFUL PULSES. About as playful and fun as the Swamp-Hessle sound gets. And we need more of that.

35. Pistol Annies - Hell On Heels

Shout to Lex for this one. Probably the first country music I've really enjoyed. Interesting hip hop comparisons being made. Argument is that this is also post-recession working class music, except that it comes from white females who live in the Republican-voting South, so are unfairly marginalized by liberal (male) music snobs. I fear that line can sometimes degenerate to more-hip-than-thou posturing, but hey, one-upmanship is an ever-present feature of internet discourse. All I can say is the album is the perfect distillation of what Drive-By Truckers have been trying to do for an entire career, and the title track's smouldering menace is the best example of the Annies' mixture of defiance and desperation.

34. FaltyDL - Hip Love

‘It's getting insane I know... Don't you see I don't need you around... True... Spend more time with me...’ Bad break-ups over muffled clattering 2step drums.

33. Toddla T feat. Shola Ama and J2K - Take It Back

‘Can we take it back to how it used to be, baby’. Where did those 90s days go?

32. Shackleton - Deadman

Same old same old genius.

31. Champion feat. Ruby Lee Ryder - Sensitivity

Kingdom and Funkystepz didn't really hit that funky-vocal sweet spot this year, but Champion did. Ruby Lee is on youtube doing Aaliyah covers, and she brings a bit of the lost legend’s unshowy sensuality to Sensitivity. Producers must love her -- how she blends with the track rather than just sitting over it. And Champion excels here. The beat withholds and teases as much as Ruby Lee’s whispered nothings.

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Favourite songs of 2011: 50-41

2011-12-07T13:10:00.001-08:00

50. Wiley - It's Wiley

‘Back to the bars that I wanna hear playing in the back of the car. We already know that's not for the charts. But it's what I done back at the start and I still feel smart.’ Yeah, keep the grime fans happy while you chase success, with a rework of Eskimo no less. It WAS smart.

49. Jessie Ware and Sampha - Valentine

Saturday morning Guardian-reading electronic pop music. So I guess I have to like it, right? So grown-up, so middle class, but it’s charming in its mannered daintiness.

48. D.O.K - East Coast

Interweaving synthy hooks to gutter basslines and ringing sirens. Energy off the scale. Comes close to the still unsurpassed Chemical Planet, which is probably the best single Butterz have ever released. Danjah schooled him well.

47. Yasmin - Finish Line (The MIKE DELINQUENT PROJECT Remix)

The mercenary garage remix alive and kicking. The original receives a short nod at the 2:30 mark, but then it’s back to skippy kiss-offs. Good break-ups over crisp swinging 2step drums.

46. Pangaea - Hex

Badman gets mistreated: chipmunk'd till he's hoarse, compressed into grainy digital squiggles. Pangaea's vocal slicing completely overpowers the thumps and grinds he lays down underneath. There are two riddims going on here, and the syncopation / disorientation that creates makes this track absolute dynamite.

45. Starkey feat. Merky Ace and Kozzie - PC

How much effort goes into sounding effortless? ‘You're working so hard...’ at what? For what? Beefs waged online, youtube views, twitter followers. ‘What have you done for the scene this week?’ Grime as hungry and competitive as ever, but everything is now channelled through your PC.

44. Chase & Status feat. Delilah - Time

Delilah goes for ravey diva in the verses, but then in the chorus she actually starts raving. An edge, a rawness. Pleading to lashing out to self-hatred when you love someone that doesn't love you back. (P.S. video completely ruins the song and everyone involved should rethink their career choices.)

43. Peverelist - Dance Til The Police Come

Finally, Tom Ford gives us something you can really lose your shit to. I swear at some point there’s about seven things going on at once. Expertly crafted dance floor madness.

42. St. Vincent - Surgeon (Live)

By which I mean her performance for Spin (linked above... it's better without the 'dance jam' at the end). Whoever thinks this song is about sex needs to listen to it more closely (srsly, now!) With St. Vincent it's all about the space stretching out between each note -- the tension and the pressure and the final SNAP into utter collapse. New album sounded like curve-balls for the sake of curve-balls and I didn't give myself time to absorb it.

41. Royal-T - Orangeade V.I.P

Cherryade is great, but Darq E Freaker will be represented otherwise below. This is also big and dumb, but the way it constantly morphs into new forms puts in on another level. Bashed piano chords, whistles, countdowns, screeches, YEAHs, layered expertly over the background fizz of a soft drink waterfall. Over-caffeinated grime banger.

<<60-51

40-31>>

The Devils

2011-12-05T14:44:00.001-08:00

Another case of watching something so stunning and timeless it becomes difficult to talk about. Shout out to Mark Kermode for this one, he has said many kind words about Ken Russell recently. I had never seen any of his films, so I thought I should start with the early, controversial, heavily censored one (obv). The Devils is actually very humane and poignant, and quite clever about the nature of sexual sublimation and religious frenzy. It's also extraordinarily designed -- creating a kind of hyperhistory that punches all of the weirdness to the forefront. Unlike a lot of modern historical dramas which tend to underline how similar the past is to the present, Russell aims to show us how different it was, and how lucky we are.

The Ides Of March

2011-12-04T06:51:00.001-08:00

Breaking news, everyone. Politics kills ideals fast. Oh, you knew that already? So did I. In a scene at the beginning of the film, Maurisa Tomei's plays Soothsayer (her character's name is Ida) and makes the point that no successful candidate is clean. Gosling's protagonist doesn't believe her. He is still infatuated with Clooney and what it will mean when he's in the White House. Predictably, Ida is right, and the film tracks the history of Gosling's fall from innocence.

However, that history is pretty unpredictable, almost to a fault. The power plays and double crosses become so extreme that it's hard to work out how we got from point a to point b. But Gosling, and Clooney's direction, save the day. From the very first shot, there is something uncanny and unsettling about Stephen. The steely focus, the not-quite-there look in his eyes, hint at a ruthlessness that explodes into action midway through the film. Clooney also plays smooth with increasing flashes of callousness. By the end, both are thoroughly disagreeable and really quite scary. It's left to Paul Giamatti's shadowy cackling demon to spell out exactly what addiction to politics does to the soul.

Clooney direction is economical but assured, aimed squarely at capturing the mercurial nature of the characters. Several key turning points in the film occur off camera, being reported second hand and after the fact. Characters keep having their questions thrown back at them, even in the most personal of conversations ("How old are you?" "How old do you think I am?") Philip Seymour Hoffman is thrown out of the car because you don't win by relying on trust and loyalty (indeed, the film makes you wonder how he got that far). Again, Paul Giamatti is there to explain: politics is about having that undefinable poise that makes even your enemies love you. Machiavelli was right: virtù is not about being virtuous.

One of the final shots tracks a new intern as she delivers coffee to the staff. Her conversation with Max Minghella is wonderfully ambiguous, recalling the first exchange between Stephen and Molly. Will the new recruit be killed by sleaze and blackmail, or is there a chance that Ben will be different? We don't know, just like we don't know what kind of people our politicians really are. This is a much bleaker film than the feel good supercool Good Night, And Good Luck, and it's much better for it.

Rubicon

2011-12-02T13:26:00.001-08:00

This piece says it better than I can. Rubicon is really two shows, each one has its own plot, mise en scène, themes. It practically had two different creators. And the stuff from the 1970s just isn't as interesting as the stuff post-9/11. What was most disappointing is that the season ended on a flourish influenced by the former rather than the latter. Truxton Spangler's motive is some conspiracy beyond even his control, rather than the much more chilling revelation in the fourth episode, where he switches off a call from his nagging daughter, and tells Will about the "gift" of distance. Intelligence, government as a whole, is about seeing people as patterns and numbers, not as people. This is all Spangler knows (I wonder if the name is a reference to Spengler?) There is no empathy there. Just the joy of seeing the connections, manipulating the actors, executing the most daring and audacious plans, and impressing his cabal of school-friends.

Pace-wise, Rubicon has its moments, but it can sometimes be a slog. The nonsensical plot and the absurd institution at the centre of the show (where everything is on paper, and everyone has too much time on their hands) doesn't help your investment in the story. The opportunities for extremely rewarding character work were not taken. Instead, Grant starts off an asshole and inexplicably morphs into dependable rock. His infidelity, Tanya's substance abuse, and Miles's failed marriage get perfunctory treatment. They are little asides to add a couple of extra dimensions, before we get back to Will's quest for answers. I would have preferred it if the show abandoned the season-wide narrative, and instead did standalone episodes testing the characters' personal, ethical and political mindsets -- like the episode midway through where the team have to decide on whether to order an air strike in an area full of civilians, or when Tanya and Miles witness U.S. sanctioned torture.

...but if I wanted that, I might as well have just gone and re-watched my West Wing DVDs, right?

Favourite songs of 2011

2011-12-01T12:10:00.000-08:00

Once again, would like to get this over with before all the other end-of-year lists go up, because I get horribly, irreversibly corrupted by them.

There’s a change of presentation from previous years where tracks were divvied up into genres. For the first time I’ll be counting down like other music nerds. I tried dividing them up, but realized pretty quickly that this didn’t work anymore. Pop has cross-bred to such a bewildering degree that setting up boundaries has become hopeless. It doesn’t help that the list is even longer this year, which makes the mess all the more evident. I ended up with five massive catch-alls: pop-r&b, hip/trip hop, grime-funky, post-dubstep-drum&bass and indie-chillwave. But where do you put the hip hop chillwavey stuff from Tri Angle, the rave-indebted pop coming out of the UK, grime MCs on dubstep tracks? Not only that, but I get the feeling that my musical tastes have narrowed somewhat. I could only find three entries for the hip/trip hop category, only one a recognizable rap song (it kicks off the list). My consumption of music broadly defined under the indie banner has also declined (about 11/60 on the list). Focus has zeroed-in more than ever on UK dance music of all descriptions (39/60 on the list), a testament to the richness and diversity of the various scenes, for sure. But there’s also a personal connection that I’ve increasingly become aware of and treasured, a change from the days where I largely looked to the USA and Pitchfork for relief from landfill indie. Actually, the fact that the people making this stuff also grew up or live in England (that I’ve even seen some of them!) adds a salience to their productions that’s ineffable but powerful.

Simon Reynolds and Martin Clark have continued to be much-relied-on guides through the glut of sonic material out there. The guys from Butterz have single-handedly restored my faith in grime, for which thanks are due. Alex Macpherson’s enthusiasm has pushed me further into long-forgotten pop and r&b areas. FACT, Resident Advisor and The Quietus have joined Pitchfork as go-to publications for new emissions. The many contributors at ILX and Dissensus have also become key sources for exegesis and cutting edge developments. Sometimes I get the feeling that I spend as much time reading about music as listening to it, which doesn’t worry me too much, since music is there to be shared and thought about. A four-minute pop song is a compact package of ideas and emotions that can represent the most non-verbal aspects of being human better than anything we have. Thinking about how you react to it, and learning about other people’s reactions, are both valuable instruments in the search for ever-greater self-awareness.

Lists have rules (which are of course bent and ignored at the discretion of the list-maker). This one steals a few from Kieron Gillen, which are adapted to suit my now rather different tastes. One track per artist becomes difficult when you get to collaborations, particularly between producers and vocalists in grime tracks, so I've made many allowances. One track per artist also means that the other work the artist has done this year that I’ve liked gets factored-in by higher placements, which is usually noted. A couple of entries are thus stand-ins for the albums they have released, which saves me the trouble of doing a separate favourite albums list. Since my attention has been mostly occupied with electronic dance music, a singles genre if ever there was one, I can count the albums that I've stuck with through the year on one hand. Finally, I’m not posting the whole thing immediately, because sixty write-ups is a lot of work. Plus, it helps pad the blog out a bit. And for those reading, part of the fun of lists is the anticipation, right? Top sixty to fifty appears today, then I’ll post batches of ten as and when I feel like it. I make the rules, after all.

Compiling lists like this looks daunting from the outset, but actually modern technology makes it pretty easy. Sort by date on the iTunes (your library should of course be kept fastidiously tidy). Pick out your faves from the current year, lob them in a playlist, and compare tracks to their neighbours, which quantifies quite clearly how much something means to you. Check Last.fm to see if anything is missed out or misplaced. If yr really mental, you’ll listen to the playlist bottom to top a couple of times to be absolutely sure of the running order, but I didn’t really have the time to do that. Nor do I care thaat much about what comes after what, so long as it gives a pretty good idea of what I value the most.

Favourite songs of 2011: 60-51

60. Young Bleed - Holla At Uh Dog

With the video: True Blood alternative credit sequence if the show was about Lafayette. As it should have been.

59. Vibezin - Mad Sick

The vocal is blurry around the edges, the synth bleets muted, the drums reverbed. Cobbled together from the crates, and the crates are dusty. A funky roller from another time and place.

58. Dauwd - Ikopol

Stood out from the more established names on the [unclassified] Adult Swim mixtape. Perhaps I’ve just been missing my regular dose of Mount Kimbie? The track is breathless, unsure, a male voice croons, repeating 'want you to...' And at around the 2.55 mark he finally gets his answer, impossible to decipher, but aching with enthusiasm.

57. Elite Gymnastics - So Close To Paradise

Jungle, meet noise pop. I think you'll get along. Hushed confessionals over sweeping vistas -- the personal becoming cosmic.

56. S-X - Bricks

Riding in triumph. Crown on your head. Slaves at your feet. Glory all around.

55. Hyetal feat. Alison Garner - Diamond Islands

I didn't have time to involve myself with M83's new double album (the reviews, even when good, suggested that it was a bit of a chore). But I had this instead, which served adequately. That booming drum sound and the swelling chorus is so 80s, it’s embarrassing. ‘I don’t remember... your eyes, your face’. Yeah, but you remember the soundtrack.

54. ASC - Silkworm

Kills everything Boddika has done dead. The Autonomic sound doesn’t get better than ASC, I think. Silkworm is a smooth roller, but its edges crackle with intercepted transmissions, striking a nice balance between serenity and paranoia.

53. The Chain - Lostwithiel

Post-dubstep that kept the drums.

52. xxxy - You Always Start It

Stepping into the shoes Joy Orbison kicked off. Swirls of synth spin you around as ‘you... you-yup-you...’ hiccups along. And then the groundswell, the pathetic ‘you ALWAYS start it!’. The sound of all your arguments running out and being too confused to be reasonable anymore.

51. Clams Casino - Illest Alive

As close to a club banger as this Tri Angle hip hop stuff gets. And thus, awesome.

50-41>>

Frank Miller, Twilight and Criticism

2011-11-27T06:47:00.001-08:00

More cross-posting from Whitechapel for blog-padding purposes, this one from a thread discussing the Frank Miller incident.

I realise this thread is in the sink, but @Finagle's question -- does an author's life and beliefs and informal writings have a bearing on critically interpreting their fiction? -- is an interesting one.

Made me think about the way the Twilight novels and films have been interpreted solely through the knowledge that the author is a Mormon, which doesn't answer why the series is such a phenomenon. (I have been guilty of this as well). Obviously, Stephenie Meyer's readers can't ALL be socially conservative Christians, there must be something else in the work which makes it vital for them. I think commentators haven't been paying enough attention to the reader-response part of @J.Brennan's New Criticism / New Historicist outline (v. helpful, thanks!)

I think I generally lean Historicist, just because privileging every reading equally, while obv nice and democratic, just gets unmanageable and a bit boring. Sure every reading is of some worth, but some are more interesting than others -- either identifying ideas and emotions that are more meaningful to you, or able to bring in relevant contexts that can shed light on the way the work was produced or received. The latter can be a platform to explore broader historical questions -- where does the work fit into the discourses of its time etc. Of course, that should be contexts plural, so you don't just narrow it down to the range of influences and motives of the author, but recognize that studying the way the work moves through society and history is equally important.

To bring it back to Frank Miller, a work (like for example) The Dark Knight Returns can stand on its own, with the reader free to interpret its ironies in any way they want. That has some value, at the very least to the individual involved, perhaps to others with whom the interpretation holds some kind of resonance. But there is also value in looking at it in the context of Miller's other work, his influences, and piecing together stylistic and thematic constants or shifts. And there is also value in looking at what impact the work had, how others interpreted it, and what that says about the form (comics, literature) or the discourse (superheroes etc.), when it came out and now. All three are worthwhile endeavours, and I tend to admire commentators that can do all of them -- although it can be a lot of work!

Submarine

2011-11-20T09:35:00.001-08:00

I'm too lazy to chase up the quotes now, but I'm pretty sure either Twilight or True Blood (or both) have been described as being about the 'terrors of intimacy'. Compared to Submarine, they really really aren't! The title references a recurring metaphor for depression used in the film -- that of being underwater. In one sequence, ultrasound (heard by dogs but not by humans, which is significant for Jordana) is turned into a symbol for communication between people, and the fact that we can never completely understand others. The link made is that depression is caused by excessive solipsism. Further, that openness to your fellow woman and man, no matter how scary and painful their situation, is the only route that leads away from suicide.

This is a clever, quirky and funny film, beautifully acted, almost note-perfect. Almost. I have my own quirks about this sort of thing, but the final scene didn't entirely work for me. At first I thought it was due to the fact that the rapprochement was indicated through a visual metaphor (Oliver following Jordana into the sea, but remaining above it). If the film's point was communication, then using symbols rather than words (which is what Oliver's mother used, in a hilariously blunt way) undermined it somewhat. But no, that's just stupid (words ARE symbols and all that...). After a bit of thought, I realised that my problem was much simpler. It's Youth In Revolt again: Oliver shouldn't earn forgiveness just by walking into the sea, and Jordana shouldn't start to trust him because he gets his feet wet. Oliver's hopeful expression, and Jordana's smiles, arrived too early. I could have done without. Sure, the film remains ambiguous about their future, but I would have liked more ambiguity. Dudes shouldn't be given a gentle ride when they fuck up.

But as I said, I have my own quirks about this sort of thing. It's a testament to the film's uncompromising attitude that it could well have ended with Oliver alone on the beach, fade to black, premonitions of death, and I half-expected (maybe wanted) it to. But the final image of Oliver, Jordana and her dog is too potent to discard. Still, less hope, fewer smiles. Communication isn't easy. Learning to do it takes longer than one film's running time.

We Need To Talk About Kevin

2011-11-12T14:44:00.001-08:00

I saw this a week ago and haven't had the time to write about it, even though I've really wanted to. The film is almost perfect, one of the best I've seen this year, and well worth your time. I just wish I had the memory of it fresh in my mind right now, but I'll have to make do.

I gave Lynne Ramsey the benefit of the doubt last time around, and I'm glad I did. We Need To Talk About Kevin is more focussed, and clearer, than the meandering Morvern Callar. Peter Bradshaw is otm when he talks about motherhood being 'a ritual in which the adult consents to gradual parasitic destruction', although when it comes to Eva and Kevin I think the ritual is more important that the parasitic destruction. I say that because of the last dialogue exchange in the film. Eva finally breaks a habit of a lifetime and stops patronising her child. Instead she treats him as an equal. No more games, just an urgent need to understand 'WHY??'. Kevin's response highlights how monumental that question is: 'I used to think I knew. Now I'm not so sure.'

Eva's problem is that she plays at being a mother rather than really being one. Her behaviour towards her children is codified by rituals learnt and internalised from movies and books. Christy acts like a typical little girl, and so the relationship works, but Kevin has no desire to play by the rules society has prescribed. The film dismisses the charge of autism or mental illness. Kevin is just smart enough to understand and manipulate the codes of behaviour he sees around him, and the fact that he is too intelligent to fit within the established idea of what a child should be like makes him lash out. He torments his mother because she is lying to herself, trying to love her son even though she cannot. Hypocrisy is Kevin's enemy, the fact that people obsess over serial killers without recognising the uncomfortable sources of that obsession.

My only problem with the film is that Kevin isn't really a real person to me, rather a preternatural demon sent to play with or expose people's self-deception. The scene in the restaurant where he lists all his mother's pathetic stratagems strains credibility (although I should say the person I saw it with had no problems with it). Eva's response to such a horror frustrates, as it should, as that is what the film is about. I wasn't always very sympathetic towards her, but perhaps that lack of indulgence is just a sign that my own mother was much better at raising children than she was.

Drive

2011-11-12T13:41:00.001-08:00

Really now, I wonder whether this has any more depth or nuance than something like The Fast And The Furious. Refn's loyalty to archetypes and fairy-tale simplicity remains intact. He didn't choose this film, he was chosen for it by Gosling, and my feeling is he did little apart from bring his idiosyncratic style to it and strip away the excess to bare-bones plot, character, action. But is that enough?

Sure, Refn's unusual casting choices pay off, although I suspect more could have been done with them. Gosling is no action hero, his expression remains too weirdly childlike, but there isn't all that much underneath it either. Ron Perlman and Albert Brooks playing at gangsters has a certain thrill of the unexpected, but their dialogue is extremely by-the-numbers compared to what (for example) Tarantino could have delivered with the same materials. Carey Mulligan and Christina Hendricks don't have to do anything apart from look pretty and vaguely troubled, although they both do that very well.

So what is Refn trying to say? I don't understand whatever existentialism is implied by the driver's automobile fixation. Like Valhalla Rising (and, I guess, Bronson, although I haven't seen it), Refn comes back to study male bloodlust. Like One-Eye, the driver kills and sacrifices himself to protect a little boy, in part learning to love as well as hate. Why Refn returns to this chivalric motif is a mystery to me, but I'm rather suspicious of the kind of gender biases that may lie behind it. The trouble with sticking to archetypes is that they limit your field of possibility, which inherently leads to conservative results.

I didn't mention it in my post on Valhalla Rising, but Refn's style requires a certain degree of patience. That film was so nuts that I found I wanted to stick with it only to see what crazy territory it would move into next. Drive is more grounded, and the slow pans across beautifully designed soundstages can be quite tiring. The hot pink titles and the great 80s-indebted soundtrack are fine embellishments, but without the throb of a well-paced plot beating through it, the film's style starts to drag a bit.

I don't think Refn is capable of making dull films. His eye for great frames and his willingness to make uncompromising choices marks him out as a director worth watching. He reminds me of Chan-wook Park, another filmmaker who tries to add an art-house sensibility to genre movies. The work of both directors is superficially gorgeous, but has troubling or incoherent themes. It's still early days, though. Perhaps they'll get over themselves and try to collaborate fully with good writers. Or maybe they'll learn on their own. As of now, they still haven't made the masterpieces they are clearly able to make.

Hume and ethics

2011-10-26T14:34:00.000-07:00

I may not have time to write proper posts anymore, but I still seem to have time to argue with people on comics forums. So to pad this blog out a bit, here's me philosophizing on Whitechapel:

I should come out and say that I LOVE Hume, and pretty much think he's on the right lines meta-ethically, even if some of the technicalities of his system now seem a bit crazy (to be fair, he was writing in the 18th century -- we know a lot more about human nature now). I have to admit that I don't quite understand your misgivings about him: for Hume ethics was ALL about 'how we get there'. There are no transcendent 'oughts'. A scientific approach to moral philosophy seeks to understand the emotional processes by which 'oughts' are generated in different societies.

@Solario

What you say about societies w/o the capacity for empathy is true, but this is hypothetical, right? Human beings have evolved to live in groups, have certain instincts, empathy, because all of these things help us survive. And ethics is a human phenomenon: we can only empirically study what's in front of us. That's about as 'logical' as ethics can get, no?

Basing your entire value system on ethos and the actions of others is even more problematic and arbitrary

Hume argues that we do this all the time, that it's a natural disposition humans have. I think a lot of that makes sense. It's arbitrary from a transcendental point of view, maybe. But if you ground ethics on the real-world experience of how humans behave, then its quite a logical point to make.

Just generally, my sense is that what is so difficult to accept about this stance is that it inevitably leads to some kind of relativism. Criticizing alternative belief structures becomes difficult when you don't have deontological laws or utilitarian calculuses. Then again, the understanding that your ethical beliefs are grounded in illogical, emotional assumptions might also teach humility, and perhaps tolerance as well. You might say (and some have) that this awareness can have a moralizing effect!

Mushroom pasta

2011-10-15T12:58:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so posts have slowed down alot in the past month, what with valuable time now taken up w/ work (can't talk about it), BDs (don't know french well enough to talk about it) and Farscape (really not worth talking about). ((Altho, by-the-by, if people thought Gaius Baltar was the pinnacle of self-serving sci-fi Brit brats, they obv haven't experienced Dominar Rygel XVI condescend from his hover chair)). Practically the only activities I CAN talk about are everyday banalities like cooking. I haven't cooked since I came to Brussels, b/c I was staying in catered halls (where the food was surprisingly good) and then when I moved out, I reverted back to my old MO of eating absolute trash. I'm talking doritos washed down w/ beer lows, here. (Tho shd say, this being Belgium, the beer is totally worth drinking at every opportunity. Paying a euro for a can (a can!) of Leffe DEMANDS that you develop an alcohol dependency post-haste.)

Today, I finally got myself together. Went to the local hypermarket to buy supplies. Middle class student stuff: 2l olive oil, large bag o' pasta, bottle o' passata, garlic, onions, milk, museli, black pepper w/ the plastic grinder-cap, chili flakes, mushrooms (cause meat/fish/cheese is expensive). Oh, and beer of course. Go home, this is what I did, and what you should do too, if you make a habit of listening to people on the internet. Pour a goodly amount of olive oil in a pan, and put on a low heat. No need to be frugal, you've just bought two litres of the stuff. And you bought two litres of the stuff because this is the ONE THING that both tastes divine and has ZERO negative health consequences. Eat it every day, it will make you live forever. Word is bond. Dice up two onions. I was using a plate and a serrated knife, so you can imagine how neat my dicing was. No matter. Throw them into the pan. Yr gonna cook these mofos slow, make 'em melt. I slightly burnt mine, because I was busy with the garlic, but you will do better!

Garlic. I decided on four cloves, because I'm not sharing my breathing-space w/ anyone this evening. Chop, as fine as you can. Plate and serrated knife meant mine were pretty chunky. Go get them mushrooms, wash five or six, and slice them any which way you like. Chuck all that in the pan. Put a little bit of milk in it, the fiends love it -- immortal words from Raekwon the Chef. You should follow his advice. In all things. Also pepper, lots of it. I'm a six twists of the mill kinda guy. Chili also vital. You don't have money for fresh basil / oregano / other herby shit. Yr going for the heavy artillery. Spice, spice, spice. Finally, a couple of spoonfuls of the passata. Don't over-tomato, you don't want the sauce too sharp. Plus, this stuff costs a fortune and you want it to last the next fortnight.

By this time, you should have had the kettle boiling. No? I always forget as well. Boiling water in the pan, heat up. Put salt in the water. My pasta of choice is fusilli, called macaroni by the ignorant. Chuck two handfuls in (if yr as hungry as I was) and boil that shit until it's cooked. Not overcooked. People always overcook pasta. It should be chewy, not soupy. Extract and taste samples every two-three minutes until you get it right.

Right, by this time the sauce should have reduced down to a paste. Pour some of the pasta water into it to get it runny again. Then drain the pasta, throw it in the pan w/ the sauce. Spoon it round for a minute until it's good and mixed, and then pour it on a plate. By now you should be ravenous, so I shouldn't have to tell you to eat the thing immediately. Two three clementines for dessert (they're in season now), then lie down and type-up your activities for the internet to read. Then go watch Farscape.

The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me

2011-10-03T11:52:00.000-07:00

Posting the rambling comment on Hugo Stiglitz Makes Movies: Record Club #2 -- Brand New over here:

Late to the party. Was really looking fwd to this discussion, but then of course I forgot all about it! Reading thru and listening again, the following thoughts occurred:

I hear a lot of Mogwai-type post-rock on this album... which I think is great. The biggest problem I have with the genre is its grandiose portent and its lack of personality. Lacey's whispered confessionals and strained screaming solve those problems -- there's a confused guy at the centre of all the winding / crashing guitars. Brand New can hypnotize and pulverize just like Explosions In The Sky, but they've got heart as well. This might be why I'm not such a huge fan of 'Welcome To Bangkok' or 'Untitled'... they skip what's so engaging about the band. They aren't particularly interesting post-rock pieces, either. Quite simple arrangements...

I initially hated the soft crooning switch to shouting, because it sounded really wrong -- how would you produce such extreme dynamics live? But then I realized that it's actually a really cool effect. It internalizes the songs, makes them about the sounds in your skull rather than the sounds at a show.

As for the lyrics... some of the clunky lines grated at first. But I got over that. I think too many people are scared of being earnest, and I admire the way Lacey has the guts to put himself out there (as has been pointed out above, his ambivalence about this is a key part of what makes Deja Entendu so interesting). Actually, I think his conviction and his voice can redeem a bad line quite well! Plus, there are enough gems on the album to make the work of unravelling meaning rewarding.

The obscured lyrics are a boon in this task. The effect is a bit like what Grouper gets up to. Suggestions of words shrouded by the music -- songs that become more about mood than message. Also, it might be a way to avoid the teenage spokesman role Lacey's so uncomfortable with.

'Handcuffs' is a bit too arch for me. The darkness becomes comical. Also dislike 'Limousine', which is too stretched out, the repeating line at the end just becomes annoying (didn't know about the story behind the song, but it doesn't really make it more interesting for me). 'Millstone', 'Jesus', 'Know' and 'Archers' are all amazing tho. I think Deja Entendu is superior, but Devil and God is a great step forward. Daisy was awful, tho...

Dogma

2011-10-02T15:27:00.000-07:00

OK, Clerks you can forgive because it was Smith's first feature and he had no money. But should I let shoddiness slide four films in? Smith has some professionals to work with now. But Alan Rickman, Chris Rock and Selma Hayek just seemed lost, not knowing what tone to aim for -- how arch or how serious each line was supposed to be. Linda Fiorentino is TERRIBLE. I really liked her sarcastic resignation in Men In Black, but Bethany's character requires something more than that. And Smith really cannot film conversation scenes w/o making them look like bad tv. Dude, give me an over or a two-shot or make the camera MOVE a little, rather than just cut to the next facial expression... gods, this is just boring!

Smith does have a talent for writing. The best scene in the film is the marketing meeting being turned into a temple of idolatry (although it's slightly undermined by the lady in the boardroom being put on a pedestal). Rufus's injunction to stick with ideas rather than beliefs is also well-meaning (although once you start thinking about it, not all that substantial). The notion that religion is being undermined by its own pretensions to infallibility, its dogma, is a great hook for the whole film, but the relapse back into faith at the end is puzzling. I guess it is supposed to be -- Alanis Morrisette silently suggests that existence is just a benevolent joke. But my feeling is that Smith fudges the REALLY philosophical stuff by making God inexplicable.

Then there's Jay and Silent Bob. I'll admit to laughing at the former's torrential swearing and the latter lighting a smoke after throwing two guys off a train, but a lot of the other japes fell flat. These dudes are clowns, obv, but Smith has the tendency to celebrate their immature and offensive ways. He's not distant enough. Literally! He loves being a blunted, slacker-nerd who fetishizes black people and silently defends (fears) women... He's the comic-book guy who doesn't fully accept that you have to stop being a comic-book guy.

Sex, Lies, and Videotape

2011-09-29T14:45:00.000-07:00

Y'know, it's been a long time since I've felt the numinous whilst watching a film. Addiction to pulp can do that to you. With pulp the thrills are visceral, and the pleasures intellectual. But that emotional connection, where you feel the filmmaker plucking all your strings, delving to the very core of who you are... that I haven't felt in a while. So my thanks to Soderbergh and his team.

I don't have the energy to discuss Sex, Lies, and Videotape in the reductionist way I deal with most things on this blog. This film is too big for me, I don't have the capacity to capture and box it into four paragraphs. But if ever I need to be reminded of the seductive (and addictive!) nature of honesty, and the mesmerizing effect of watching people on screen, I'll definitely come back to this one.

A while ago, I posted a notice about The Filth being one of the best comics I have read, promising that I'll write about it when I've figured it out. I never did. Well, I don't think I will with Sex, Lies, and Videotape either. It's just one of my favourite films. Sometimes that's all you're able to say.

Clerks

2011-09-25T14:53:00.000-07:00

Having the perspective of everything that has happened since 1994 makes watching this film for the first time rather underwhelming. Whatever innovations Kevin Smith cooked up have been digested and recycled so many times that there's zero shock factor now. The lo-fi production and the unconvincing acting just give the film a weird quaintness. The question is worth asking: who needs Clerks when you have Superbad?

Smith's script is best when dealing with Dante and Randal's opposing motivations for clerking -- the former's bumbling conformity and the latter's relaxed hooliganism. Smith's script is weakest when dealing with the female characters -- Veronica goes to unbelievable lengths to keep her boyfriend happy, and Caitlin's nymphomania is a (very uncomfortable) joke. Both ladies have their entire lives defined by Dante (Caitlin makes statements to the contrary, which are almost immediately contradicted). They never feel like independent beings. And it's hard not to read some misogyny into Silent Bob's words of wisdom at the end: women are either replacement mothers, or whores.

It's the first Kevin Smith movie I've seen, and so far I'm not that impressed. Looking fwd to seeing Dogma, tho. Proper production values, and perhaps a more enlightened outlook, are expected...

Valhalla Rising

2011-09-24T16:51:00.000-07:00

Xan Brooks has a decent summary of what to expect. He didn't think there was much behind it all, but I wonder... Refn strikes me as a bit of a dick, but he definitely wants to say something with this film, and it's worth thinking about what that might be.

One-Eye has one eye, and is mute. He gets asked several questions as the film goes on, some rather existential, to which he doesn't reply. All of this suggests to me that he's a symbol for the God that doesn't answer prayers. The one eye is itself symbolic -- restricted vision, a humanity that's missing. No love and all war. It also might connote the eye-for-an-eye principle. One-Eye has been brutalized by his pagan captors, who impassively play games and make cash with people's lives, and he spends the first part of the film getting his revenge. That done, he drifts off, not knowing what else the world has to offer.

The rest of the film seems to deal with religion and its corruption. One-Eye joins a band of crusaders that promise to cleanse his soul. On the journey to Jerusalem (v. Rime of the Ancient Mariner) they go crazy and try to kill One-Eye's companion, a boy (Colridge's albatross), but One-Eye stops them. Upon arrival, the Viking chief becomes a fanatic (and dies) , the priest and the chief's son go to be with their deceased loved ones (and die) and the rest become restless when there's no treasure to be found (and get killed by One-Eye).

The final part of the film is about a sacrifice: One-Eye drops his axe, and offers his life in order to save that of his companion, the boy in search of home. The final scene is of the boy looking out into the sea, and imagining One-Eye looking back, free from the blood-lust that consumed his existence. Whether this is One-Eye rising on the third day is left to the viewer to decide.

This redemptive parting shot makes me think the film isn't just about natural man's innate capacity for violence -- Cormac McCarthy doing Vikings. Rather, "Wrath" is contrasted with "Sacrifice", and there's stuff in between about how lofty ideals end up doing funny things to your head.

One of the strangest medieval slaughter-fest movies you are ever likely to see. What I like about it is its obvious allegiance to mythic and genre archetypes -- stripping characters and dialogue to essentials, and focusing on building mood. Obv. you might have problems with the portrayal of the 'savages', cast in the red-skinned demons-in-hell role. Refn also says some stupid things about gender in the interview linked above, so I suspect he's prone to taking up insensitive or uncomfortable positions in his films... which makes me want to see Drive all the more -- will Refn deal w/ chivalry w/o being patronizing and reactionary?

Winter's Bone

2011-09-16T15:09:00.000-07:00

Peter Bradshaw covers a lot of it. Transgression and taboo is certainly on the menu -- the film's climax is a chilling desecration scene, which ends up saving the vulnerable family faced with losing everything. However, the broader picture Winter's Bone paints is one of an environment so remote and rugged that the only political units that really matter are family. The patriarch is the law here, so you better not get on his wrong side: Ree's father betrays him to the police and dies for it. However, Ree's uncle has to stir things up before the patriarch moves to calm things down. That's the line you have to negotiate, protect your family whilst paying your dues to the power in the land. Where the people are poor and desperate, pre-modern politics holds sway.

Jennifer Lawrence is incredible in the lead role, although (perhaps because I've seen her dolled-up in X-Men: First Class) her stellar good looks did bug me a tiny bit. There seems to be a model for the way heroes are presented -- they HAVE to be extraordinarily attractive, otherwise I'll stop sympathizing or get confused. No slight on the actor, tho. Looking fwd to more from her.

The Exorcist

2011-09-15T17:57:00.000-07:00

Roger Egbert gets rather distressed at the end of his review, worrying about the numbness of contemporary audiences who need extreme horror to feel anything at all... Bless. Revulsion at video nasties seems to have been quite widespread.

Sensory overload is definitely part of it, but dynamics is even more important. This film is looong, the characters and situation built comprehensively before the action starts. Indeed, the tensest part of the film might be before the theatrics even begin. The mother-daughter relationship is so sweet that you start dreading the eventual manifestation of demonic influence -- a development that unfolds with excruciating slowness.

But what makes the film last isn't so much the scare-tactics as the characters and themes of bereavement, mental illness, loss-of-faith and loss-of-innocence, which all resonate quite powerfully (Ellen Burnstyn, Jason Miller and Linda Blair are magnificent). There is also the beginning's gnomic visual allusions to relativism and nihilism -- Father Merrin is a mysterious character throughout, but he seems to be battling with demons that have existed for the entire span of human history. The devil is trying to convince us we are animals, and in that desert in Nineveh Merrin faces a pagan statue looking down on two fighting wolves. It's dog-eat-dog out there, except when it isn't. Karras chooses to sacrifice himself in order to save Regan. When you throw the mumbo-jumbo away, The Exorcist asks only that we don't despair, and that in the face of evil we have the courage to do the upmost to save each other. That's where its true power lies.

Nightmare on Elm Street

2011-09-14T17:06:00.000-07:00

"Tina didn't want to sleep alone"... and that's why she had to DIE. Horror's condemnation of pubescent sexuality is something I'm quizzical about, since it eagerly teases its audience with nubile ladies and then takes rather sadistic pleasure in ripping them to pieces. Perhaps the intention is to reveal the dangerous qualities of aggressive, domineering male sexuality -- putting the audience in the place of the helpless. But there is a voyeuristic tone to some of the scenes that compromises the force of the message, but I'm thinking of Halloween more than Nightmare on Elm Street.

The latter gets to the heart of the issue by dealing with the power of fantasies and dreams directly (Blue Velvet is pretty much about the same thing). Krueger has chosen to abandon reality and realize his most selfish and antisocial desires. He is also a symbol for middle class fears of the feral working class (he likes to hang out in a factory). The hero has to learn how to identify what's real from what is imagined, and conquer it (the booby-traps as a symbol for the mastery of nature?). But ultimately, we cannot escape the fact that we are prisoners of our senses and what our imagination does with the information they give us. We make our own reality, and we can't always control what goes on in it -- Freddy can always sneak out and get you if you're not careful.

Aria

2011-09-14T12:47:00.000-07:00

The song made an appearance on my mid-year list of fave albums / tracks, but I've been meaning to talk about it for a while... got the urge again after talking to someone who had met Rockwell, reading Neuromancer, and listening to Rude Kid's 'The Best' about 5 times in a row yesterday. There's a lot going on in the Rude Kid tune: mournful female murmuring, marching claps, the endlessly repeating synth line, the growing space between the bass thumps and the snare crack. The vox is embedded within the track, and at points drives it. It's an integrated thing, the tension coming from the way elements are pulled out and dumped back in.

Rockwell's 'Aria' is different. It's not an integrated thing. It's six and a half minutes of complexity stumbling over itself until it collapses, and the vox providing the imperative to begin again. "Sing to me" cries the echoing female voice, and the clicks and whirrs spring to life, strangled "eh-eh-eh" noises and an exclamatory "SIGH"about as human as we get. The image I have is of an rusting robot slowly winding down, becoming increasingly erratic as it attempts to perform its functions: a motley collection of sounds doggedly trying to imitate the workings of the human soul.

How do you make modern machine music sing when it's inherently cold and inorganic? Rockwell seems to me to be expressing the loneliness of the obsessive bedroom d&b producer: a life spent organizing bundles of sonic information on computer screens. 'Aria' opens with the sound of surf and birdsong, before the dramatic double blast of drums begin the ordeal: the outside world blocked out, backgrounded, as the Muse invokes and demands the sublime from tools that cannot deliver it.

An aria is a piece for one voice, usually accompanied by an orchestral arrangement. Drum & bass, as the name will tell you, is primarily focused on the arrangement end of the spectrum. Rockwell's focus on the voice here might express a dissatisfaction with what the genre, perhaps instrumental dance music as a whole, has or can achieve.

Neuromancer

2011-09-10T15:45:00.000-07:00

Because when you listen to enough Vex'd and Boxcutter, you start to get curious, y'know?

Obv slightly redundant to read this for the first time in 2011, when so much of what is described in the book has now become reality. Also unfair to fixate on what Gibson got right or wrong, although I did a lot of this as I was reading. For example, Case's 'Fall' from the 'the bodiless exultation of cyberspace' into the 'prison of his own flesh', while overly apocalyptic, did capture some of my own dissatisfaction when I jack out of my computer. I mean, surfing the webz is hardly a blissful rapturous out-of-body experience, but it is a kind of hungry addiction -- the dogged, sometimes desperate search for distractions, cravings, new stimuli. Withdrawal becomes less about missing the highs, as realizing how insignificant and worthless they were. I don't develop a death-wish when I'm away from my console, in other words, rather a regret at the hours stolen away by the machine.

Gibson also noticed the way computers could make you see reality differently: 'the dance of biz, information interacting, data made flesh in the mazes of the black market'. I've done this myself, although mostly through the frame of videogames. I've often felt the horror of realizing that, unlike an FPS, I cannot just reload a savegame of my life and redo that terrible decision I made a couple of hours ago. I've also come across people who have described the way they perceive their personalities and behaviour through the lens of RPGs (altho never in such simple terms as "I'm lawful neutral, is she chaotic good?"), or who understand politics through the resource management of strategy games.

Anyway enough about me and my personal problems. What is perhaps the most interesting part of the novel is Gibson's allusive discussion of AI. Wintermute (as the Finn) tells Case that the 'holographic paradigm' is the closest humans have got to 'a representation of human memory', and that 'artists' specialize in such representation. However, they are not good enough at it. We're 'always building models', but now we have the chance to build the real thing. Gibson links together memory, consciousness and the need to represent it as the fundamental drives behind invention, a process that will culminate in the creation of AI.

The plot of the novel is shaped by Wintermute's attempt to fuse with another AI and acquire the ability to form its own personality. Wintermute is all intelligence, no soul (the left brain w/o a right). Neuromancer ('Neuro from the nerves, the silver paths. Romancer. Necromancer. I call up the dead') is able to store personalities and build worlds, but has no interest in what is outside itself. The book takes this name because it is also a vessel containing artificially created personalities in an artificially created world. It's one example of the human capacity to imagine -- to imperfectly represent the memories stored in our consciousness.

There is another aspect to this unfolding. These two AIs are owned by a reclusive family that control a multinational corporation, their power making them both more and less human: a hive which clones and freezes its members for when they are needed. Their aim is immortality -- 'a gradual and willing accommodation of the machine'. One of the members of this family realize that such an existence is a sham, forever unsuitable for human life. She gives Wintermute the urge to merge with Neuromancer and to destroy / take over the hive the family have created. But when this happens, the two AIs become something else: the sum total of the whole show -- all possible forms of human consciousness. Unsatisfied, the go off in search of other AIs, and leave humanity to themselves.

Case is called out of Neuromancer's matrix / heaven by music: 'Maelcum's Zion dub'. The matrix is described as being 'like city lights, receding' -- a system too intricate to be comprehended, always out of reach. The book ends by evoking the simple sensations of food, sex, sleep, the darkness of 'pulse and blood', the 'long pulse of Zion dub'. Music being non-representational, it's used by Gibson to suggest pleasures of immediate sensory experience: the life beyond cyberspace or novels -- the baseline animal-self we all start off from. My sense is that the book, as opposed to heralding the advent of a higher form of consciousness, is actually trying to vindicate and celebrate this more simple form of life. As Case tells the flickering screen at the end: 'I don't need you'.

Bad Lieutenant

2011-09-07T11:05:00.001-07:00

First Herzog film I have seen (WHERE have you BEEN all my life??) and it's a scorcher. I watched it late last night with ma homie, and memories are vague, but I was thinking about it a lot today as a very pedestrian version of the film's events took over my life. I made a foolish mistake that led me to question how tight my grip on reality really was: some synapse forgot to fire between the read -> remember -> write process. It's actually quite scary how CRAP my brain can be...

In Bad Leutenant, Nic Cage's grip on reality is VERY shaky. There are the iguanas (we'll come back to that) and an extraordinary scene (a oner, I think) where he accosts a couple leaving a club, and things get very David Lynch by way of Quentin Tarantino. Scene is repeated, which (film skool 101) means it's important! Cage's character Terrence is a police detective whose life slowly spirals out of control -- gambling debts, losing a witness while high, conspiring with drug-lords, threatening the relative of a senator etc. The film leads you to expect one, very unpleasant, resolution. But no. He solves the case and gets a promotion. Why? Three things. One, Cage (srsly) is charismatic and commanding, even when caned. Two, audacity -- people around him are so astounded by his crazy behaviour that they do what he says. It also makes him unreadable -- the drug-baron thinks he's crooked, but he's not. Finally, and most importantly, LUCK. The film makes this point explicit -- one of Terrence's plays fails, but it works out anyway. And that's it. Success.

It's all very Machiavelli, actually ...((Ah philosophy, I knew you'd be useful!))

I think the croc scene is meant to suggest this. One croc goes on the motor-way. Result: car crash. The other croc walks away, an over shot tracks it as it escapes -- the same kind that tracks Cage throughout the film. It's luck, innit.

And the fish. The film begins with a snake swimming in a flooded prison, and ends in an aquarium. Is this a nature / art, chaos / order contrast? We begin in the jungle, but some of us are skillful and lucky enough to escape.

Cowboys & Aliens

2011-09-04T15:03:00.001-07:00

I haven't read the original comic, although if Fred Van Lente was involved, I suspect it may be a winner. The film is great tho, not that you would know it from the reviews. Peter Bradshaw completely misses the point (clearly spelled out by the filmmakers themselves), as well just getting things wrong (the bracelet WAS explained!). Also, the Wild Wild West comparisons are just lazy. There is no trace of Steampunk in this film, nor is it going for buddy-film comedy.

Obv, we'll need to go over the basics for the benefit of those critics who weren't concentrating at their screenings. Cowboys & Aliens has a premise based on a pun, quaintly enough. Cowboys & Indians IT AIN'T. Instead, the cowboys get to experience the genocidal end of imperialism themselves -- here's what happens when more powerful guys with the big guns and the grasping hearts (quite literally, turns out) come round to steal your stuff. No fun at all, is it? MIGHT need to hook-up with those Indians you were killing off in order to deal with these BIGGER bastards. (There's also a weird absolution arc where the adopted son forgives the sins of his father... don't know how that would play with modern Native Americans).

What abt Olivia Wilde's character, tho? Boring romantic interest, maybe. But notice her origin: the bastard aliens destroyed her 'people'. Also notice the finale where she climbs into the middle of the alien tower-spaceship and blows it to pieces. Also notice her resurrection by fire. Comment on tyranny / patriarchy / phallocentrism? Is Ella an ambassador from a freer world destroying herself to destroy evil? Will she rise again? Like JESUS? Am I just making shit up? ...JUST making shit up?

Religion also covered. There's a brilliant funeral scene in which Sam Rockwell pretty much summarizes the creed (I suspect) many Americans uphold in practice. Innocence to experience also covered. A little boy has to learn how to use his knife (ahem) when faced with the world's horrors. I'm thinking Favreau and his eight writers (!) hit a lot of profundity with their wisecracking cowboy show. A slight problem with pacing (the film is 20 mins too long) isn't gonna take away from that. Don't know about the comic, but the film is DEFFO a winner.

Three Colours: Blue

2011-08-29T16:51:00.000-07:00

Ian McEwan's Saturday follows a well-off surgeon for a day around London, and stuff happens, some very dull (squash), some quite exciting (assault). Oh, and that day is the 15th of February 2003 -- the massive protest march against the invasion of Iraq. Now, the reader is supposed to spot the connections -- obv the surgeon's story is some allegory for the workings of international politics. But as is usual with McEwan, you never know exactly what THE POINT is supposed to be. Personally, I don't mind so much. Whenever I've read anything by him, I could always cobble together some meaning for myself (which is what it's all about, right?). Also I forget said POINT almost immediately (don't ask me to explain Saturday. All I remember is that the references to Hobbes were supposed to contrast with the surgeon's decision at the end of the book. Or something. It probably involved religion or gender -- it usually does with me.) With McEwan, the journey was always worth it anyway, particularly the early fucked-up stuff. Not so much with Saturday tho. Saturday was pretty shit...

ANYWAY. This film reminded me of Saturday only because ostensibly it's set out to be a comment on the blue bit of the french flag: liberty. But then we spend all of our time hanging out with a widow processing her grief. The connection? Beats me! OK not really, because I have books and the internet to explain to me that the film swaps the political for the personal, navigating the contours of the chazm between liberty // love. Love makes you unfree: that shot with the reflection in the eye. You can't see for yourself anymore, you see through others. It's all a bit Rousseau, actually. ((Ah philosophy! Gotta be useful for something!)) And as the film's finale sings to us: love >>> everything else.

But really, I would have preferred it if Kieślowski had called this film something else, so it didn't have all this misleading baggage which doesn't add anything and merely distracts away from the otherwise quite beautiful story of someone learning to live and feel again. A lot of this is on Binoche, who does a marvelous job being by turns icy and vulnerable. I'm also sort of impressed by the sex-worker character, who didn't seem to be shaped by creepy male fantasies (call bullshit on this please, if you think otherwise). Actually, all the characters were handled elegantly. This film cuts the crap right out, so that every line is from the heart. That's refreshing. I liked everyone I met.

David Thomson hits on something when he describes this movie's 'pride and humourlessness' as 'crushing'. The story and themes do not reach Magnolia-size (BTW pretty much my fave non-genre film, I think). And yet Kieślowski is obv going for that level of grandness. It's a bit pretentious, in other words. Quite literally.

Did I just call a French art-house movie pretentious? Welcome to the Hothouse, friends! Sweltering with original insights and controversial opinions!

American: The Bill Hicks Story

2011-08-29T04:16:00.000-07:00

I'm new to Bill Hicks (and stand-up in general) so getting my info from this film might give me a different slant from other Bill Hicks fans. This biography has a particular approach: getting at the subject through the people who knew him best -- family, friends and their archive of photos and video. It's Bill Hicks from the subjective standpoints of those close to him, and the filmmakers take a step back to let them tell the story. This is their testimony, and we judge the truth-value for ourselves. The way they use animation to realize the various episodes described is clever. We don't just get talking heads, but a larger-than-life reconstruction of what they are talking about: a great way to portray the workings of memory.

This is one way of doing biography, valuable perhaps, but with Bill Hicks I think there's a lot that's missed out from the focus on his personal life. As the film makes clear enough, his work was a way of escaping where he came from. Indeed, the info the film provides gets very general whenever Hicks is away from Texas and his family. We don't get many details on this life placed in different contexts. Where does Hicks fit into the history of stand-up comedy? Woody Allen and Richard Pryor are mentioned as influences, but for those that don't know who they are, what did Hicks take from them? What was his influence on others? Why was he so successful in Britain? What did he read? His philosophy can't JUST be explained as a result of a far-out trip on magic mushrooms. How did his stand-up actually WORK? One thing I noticed from the clips was the way Hicks could get away with critiquing American idiocy by co-opting parts of the audience and making them feel that they weren't the stupid ones.

This is stuff a more traditional biography might cover, with input from academics and disciples. Perhaps it has been covered to death elsewhere, which is why this film took this particular route. It provides a very good portrait of the man: hard-working, driven, very American as the title suggests. But my feeling is it missed a lot of what made Bill Hicks such a cult figure.

The Skin I Live In

2011-08-27T15:07:00.000-07:00

I'll take this as Almodóvar's atonement for Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, the last film he did with Banderas, and which made my political correctness siren start wailing over here. This film isn't entirely clear of testy moral waters. Like Talk To Her, there is a rape by an 'innocent'. Perhaps because of the different circumstances -- Vicente did stop (eventually...) when consent was withdrawn -- plus the fact that the film's stance is more distant, I didn't get worked up about it. Whether this is tantamount to hypocrisy I'll leave to you.

But at least here we have a prisoner (who may have succumbed to stockholm syndrome, or maybe not -- we are left to draw our own conclusions) who breaks free and is reunited with a real loving family (of women, of course). I wonder if Vicente steals Norma in the end?

The focus should be on Robert, however. A magnificent performance by Banderas, who has enough charisma and passion to sell his absolute devotion to his deceased wife and child, while at the same time being the clinical obsessive bad guy. When did the madness emerge? His wife started shagging his id-driven brother and his daughter was pretty old to be playing with toys when we first see her -- maybe Robert was the one that defenestrated both, albeit indirectly. Marilia was of the opinion that she had given birth to demons. Zeca "the tiger" is an animal, no restraint at all, a true rapist. Robert is all about restraint, control, observation, intervention -- I'm not surprised that his wife cuckolded him and his daughter developed social problems. And his undoing by Vera comes exactly when he lets her in. Just as he starts becoming human, punishment is delivered.

A wondrous film. The best Almodóvar mystery I've seen so far.

Super 8

2011-08-24T18:08:00.000-07:00

Dude, seriously, quit with the lens flare already! It made sense when everything was shiny new and space age, but this is just a railway station in the 70s. There is no need for it!

A bit weird, this film. Star Trek had enough jokes to cover for the obv character beats and themes. This tries to use cuteness instead, and I dunno... Maybe I'm a cold cynical bastard, but I didn't really feel involved.

Apart from one scene. BUT SHE'S NICE TO ME! ...that one hit hard.

Also, stay for the short movie that plays over the credits. As my wise friend from over here pointed out -- very Garth Marenghi.

All-Star Superman

2011-08-24T02:36:00.000-07:00

I'm always slightly daunted by Grant Morrison comics, which are never as simple as they appear. For example, the second issue is overtly about Lois accepting Superman's secret, but its also a riff on the Bluebeard story -- Lois thinks she is going to be trapped and forced to make lots of superbabies, but in fact Superman offers empowerment. Now if you don't have your wits about you, you may miss these big things Morrison is talking about.

There is a lot to be impressed with here. The first issue has to set up everything in 21 pages, so the first page origin and the splash on the next two are brilliant at getting across everything you need to know. The way Morrison cuts between Superman, Lois and Luthor in that issue, and across two time continuums in the tenth, shows the control he can exert over a story.

My favourite issue is pretty linear, however -- number five, which looks at Luthor as interviewed by Clark Kent. What's interesting is that Luthor portrays himself as a revolutionary attempting to create a new human renaissance. For him, Superman defines the ideal, meaning that no one can establish any alternative values ('abstracts') while he lives. The sequence in which the prison walls become panels brings a whole meta-element into this. Luthor is trapped in a reality which does not allow for his genius to flourish. As he says himself: he is a born dictator, but Superman always stands in his way, ideologically as well as literally. And all of this is brilliantly undermined by the irony of Luthor complementing Kent on his bumbling humanity. The issue is framed by Kent visiting and leaving the prison, from the air and then under the ground, which makes me wonder if this is a riff on the Inferno: Kent shown around by a demented Virgil before being carted off by an insane S&M Beatrice at the end. Maybe not, but the fact that the comic suggests such grandiose comparisons is a testament to the way it can talk about big ideas in a compact and plot-driven way.

Issue ten is the other highlight, in which Superman runs a test case of a universe without Superman. There, as here, people create gods, then try to surpass them. Nietzsche appears writing his Zarathustra. Finally, a zoom in to a pencil sketch of Superman (but in a different costume). The issue is about letting go and trusting others. Superman learns that he can rely on people to continue to generate ideals and try and live by them. That one page sequence where he saves the suicidal girl captures this well. As Mark Waid says in the introduction: Superman achieves his power by believing in us.

The religion to science development is what the book ends on. Superman provided the 20th century ideal for human aspiration. He is a modern god. Some, like Lois, think he will return once the sun is fixed. Others, like Leo Quintum, move on to solving the problems of the universe themselves. The gods show us the way, but then human ingenuity takes over.

Starter For 10

2011-08-22T15:23:00.000-07:00

I was looking for something along the lines of this, and was rather disappointed. It's all a bit O.C. isn't it? Did Dominic Cooper have to look EXACTLY LIKE James Dean? Did Alice Eve have to look EXACTLY LIKE Catherine Deneuve? YES, obv, because otherwise we wouldn't know what character they were playing. James McAvoy was charming enough, and Benedict Cumberbatch was very funny as the team captain (also, Rebecca Hall can marry me now, please). But they didn't have a lot of depth to dig into.

The script is written by the author of the original novel, and I'm thinking either the book's rubbish or he doesn't know what he's doing. Because the film is big on cliche, lacks wit, and relies on cringe for tension. To be fair to it, there is a fundamental decency to the story that wins through (just!) despite the platitudes and contrivances. However, I do wish the characters had a few more dimensions.

Morvern Callar

2011-08-21T15:15:00.000-07:00

With this film, I got the feeling that a lot of THE POINT was left in the original novel, with director Lynne Ramsay preferring to do Malick-style meandering w/o the voice-over. But whatevs, it was entrancing. From some of the arguments on the IMDB page, I got the impression that the novel is superior (it's narrated first person, which immediately tells me that there must be more character / theme stuff going on than you get in the film). But I haven't read it so I'm forced to ponce over what Ramsey provides. She should have thought about that.

The hook is that Morvern's lover commits suicide, but leaves his finished novel dedicated to her with instructions to send it to publishers. Morvern does so, but not before substituting her name for his. Then she takes his money and goes on holiday. And that's pretty much it. Her character is explored through action rather than dialogue, and what we see is a sullen, restless, impulsive, resourceful, uneducated girl who enjoys silence, ants and sexual encounters with strangers. ??? indeed.

I'm thinking the dead boyfriend hangs all over this film, which leads me to suspect it's less about some sort of existentialist journey (how terribly old fashioned!) and more about aesthetics and interpretation. Why not? Didn't some guy in the 60s declare the death of the author? Well I don't know about that. This guy leaves the protagonist with a "Sorry Morvern. Don't try to understand. It just seemed like the right thing to do", his love, a new jacket, a lighter, and a mixtape which she (and we) listen to throughout the film. Communication through objects and music, plus affection and condescension. Is dead boyfriend writing Morvern's life for her ("don't try to understand")? Did he want to set her free ("the right thing to do")? Or is his little toy rebelling, claiming her right to her own life, with reparations for the exploitation she's suffered ("Sorry Morvern")?

Or maybe I'm just looking for nuance in an otherwise pretty but dull film? I'll give Lynne Ramsay the benefit of the doubt. The film was pretty. And, I should have mentioned this before, Samantha Morton is magnificent.

Underground

2011-08-17T18:08:00.000-07:00

I'm not quite able to give the commentary Kusturica's film deserves, partly out of ignorance of the particular history the film explores in fairy-tale and allegory. Others will have to judge whether the portrayal is accurate and responsible. From where I'm standing (as I said, ignorance), the faintly nationalistic spirit of the final lines had an uncomfortable ring. But then again, my feeling is that Kusturica is pretty ambivalent about everything he is showing us. The last scene is a fantasy going on in Cerni's head, let's not forget. And Cerni is a dimwit who has no qualms about forcing women to marry him and kills his own son out of negligence. There are no heroes in this tale, no matter how much the three leads resemble stock noir characters (the unyielding oppressed fighter, the inscrutable villain, the femme fatale). And it's quite an achievement portraying such corruption in a sympathetic way, and on top of that all the arch cartooning and slapstick. I swear this film shifts tone about 20 times.

For philosophy buffs (this shit has to be useful for something, right?) Marko's phenomena vs. real maps pretty easily onto Nietzschean metaphysics. You have your environment, and you have the lies you invent to make sense of it, and the one who lies most beautifully runs the show. Also, it's hard not to interpret the moment when Jovian first sees sunlight as a rework of Plato's allegory of the cave. Both scenes are beautifully accomplished. Through all the fun and dancing, it's those bits of genuine feeling that will stick with you.

Miami Vice

2011-08-12T08:35:00.000-07:00

It's Michael Mann, right? What do you expect? The film vs. digital debate is a bit academic, I think. You trade colour for versatility, and whether you are prepared to accept those terms depends on what you're aiming for. Mann has found he can do more with his tiny cameras, and on the evidence, I say leave him to it. But hey, it's Michael Mann, right? Every frame is beautiful.

The film kicks off at a nightclub, where undercover police are keeping their eyes peeled for some pimp to show. Which gets you to the centre of what Miami Vice is about -- the observation, prediction and ensnaring of enemies. The scene is repeated mid-way thru the film, but this time the crooks are watching the cops, and the consequences are disastrous. You gotta be more guarded.

Which might explain why everyone speaks in this super cool, professional manner. All the dialogue in the film is either business or small-talk with subtext. When Sonny and Rico have their heart-to-hearts, or when Sonny gets all flirty with Isabella, this becomes extremely hilarious. Relationships are built, maintained, and destroyed with photography and sound-design, which makes them appear entirely physical. When (gods-forbid!) the characters actually start talking about their feelings (you know, the way real people sometimes do!) they do so aphoristically and with terrible metaphors. And when you try and do soppy Romeo + Juliet stuff in this circumspect way, it just doesn't work.

Mann is keen on the love-interest sidelines, and seems to want to explore the way personal lives can fuck up the business of competition and survival. But (once again) this descends to ladies getting into trouble because they are not smart, cold, or hard enough, and getting saved by resourceful gents who ARE that smart, cold and hard. Well I'm sorry, but Trudy should have made mince-meat out of those two aryan supremacists, and Isabella should have thrown Sonny out of her house as soon as he interrupted the booty call with negotiation. That's what would have happened if I was in charge.

Just to stir-up the controversy a bit, Miami Vice shares more than a few common features with what is still Michael Bay's finest film, Bad Boys 2. The latter is a garish cartoon, its fetishes border-line offensive. But it's striking how many of its cues Mann, a respected auteur, follows. Mann buys his inimitable style with humourlessness, and if I had to pick, I'd stick with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence rather than Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx.

Captain America: The First Avenger

2011-08-12T08:29:00.000-07:00

I did the rant about 3D before, so won't waste words here. At least this film was more colourful than Harry Potter, so I could actually SEE the action sequences. Which was good, because they were extremely enjoyable. As was everything else.

There is absolutely nothing original in this film. Plot-points, characters, themes are all recognizable repeats from previous adventure, SF and war movies. What you get is more of them, and faster. Nazi scientists to laser guns to train heist to death scene to interrogation scene to motorbike-chase and so on.

Rarely have I seen a film go through the motions with such poise. Characters are as flat as cardboard, straight out of Hollywood history, but their lines are carefully balanced between sincere and arch, and are delivered with sharp timing. Not once did I wince, and I laughed quite a lot. Tommy Lee Jones seemed to be having a blast handing out deadpan putdowns to all and sundry, but he could also eat his words without having his authority undermined. Bucky was super suave as the playboy in the uniform, but his superior / inferior / ultimately loyal relationship with Steve Rodgers was also handled very well. Poor Peggy got stuck with the thankless romantic-interest role, but the film pushed the gushy stuff between the lines, so Hayley Atwell was allowed to be an adult and kick some ass as well as flirt and get jealous. Bit like Thor, tho, that kiss came out of nowhere (and at such a silly moment!). Better to have left it with arranging a date, but I'm guessing the film-makers lost that battle.

But really, Chris Evans carries this one on the back of his giant super-soldier shoulders. You couldn't have just got a smiling tank like Chris Hemsworth to play the role. Even when Cap acquires the bod, the face has to remain humble and honest. As a skinny, delusional glory-seeker, you still believe Rodgers has that quiet determination and bravery that would make him an inspiration. Chris Evans manages to convey a faith-in-oneself despite the failures and rejections life has brought, a faith born out of a simple but rigorous sense of what's right. When he speaks to Peggy, he is (or very quickly becomes) sure of himself, so you get the feeling that the reason he hasn't got the women before is because they haven't been listening. Bucky does shoot back the suggestion that Rodgers's ambition is fueled by a sense of inadequacy, but again, Evans's performance contradicts that reading. It's more simple than that. Rodgers wants to fight because he's the hero.

And Hugo Weaving wants to destroy the world because he's the villain ... pretty much. The thematic line being fed is the question of how to deal with power. The Red Skull is an Nietzschean strongman with the will to dominate all weaker forms of life. Hydra is the mindless, numberless force he assembles, and whose existence he defines and directs. On the other side there's Steve Rodgers, an ordinary kid given extraordinary abilities, and grateful for them, and with humility intact. He's been beaten up all his life, and now has the opportunity to fight the bullies back, on a global scale. The people he assembles around him aren't faceless, but diverse, and with personality streaming out of every pore. It's the free world against totalitarian terror. A time when things really were that simple.

But the film is also an extended origin story, because Cap wakes up in a new world where the bullies and the honest jons are much more difficult to tell apart. The opening and concluding scenes undermine the genre stereotypes and period fittings the film riffed on (much better than First Class did, btw), and hopefully set up a more complicated Captain America that we will see in The Avengers next year.

True Blood

2011-07-30T09:17:00.000-07:00

The premise of the show is that a Japanese firm has managed to synthesize human blood, bottle it and sell it, removing the need for vampires to kill humans and allowing them (those that desire it) to re-enter society. But choosing to go mainstream isn't easy. In the illiberal South where the show is set, the vampire Bill Compton has to confront small-town ignorance, and the disdain of other vampires in his attempts to fit in.

This setup means the show can easily comment on issues of privilege and minority-rights, and to its great credit, it takes those opportunities. Characters have passionate arguments about being black, gay or female and dealing with prejudice. But how exactly can a vampire metaphor reflect these different experiences? Before the invention of True Blood, vamps were, of necessity, murderers. Even when this necessity is removed, many choose to continue living outside the law. The show is clever in balancing the value of tolerance (Sookie) against the very real danger vampires pose to human life (Sam). To me, the closest parallel that suggested itself is the attitude many Bulgarians have towards Roma gypsies, who have a reputation of keeping to a way of life that is incompatible or even hostile to the majority. Now, I would argue a priori that Roma gypsies, and other such racial-cultural minorities, have been criminalized by society. By portraying these issues using vampires (who certainly have inhuman powers, and seem to have difficulty restraining their lust and bloodlust) the show is in danger of suggesting that real-world minorities are discriminated against because they have something in their nature that is wrong with them.

This sounds pretty sensitive, even for me. But imagine if the show managed to confront this difficulty head on. Why are vampires so anti-social? Maybe because they are products of society just as everyone else is. Maybe their anarchic libertinism is just another social construct. Maybe they haven't so much created their identity, as believed the identity others have thrust upon them. A natural conclusion to Bill's story might be the re-establishment of that normal boring domestic lifestyle he lost so long ago.

Needless to say, I don't think True Blood is going in this direction. The social-commentary aspect of the show seems to be a cool little side order to the fiery main meal. In the words of creator Alan Ball, this series is all about the 'terrors of intimacy'. Louisiana is hot, sticky and very very sexy. God and public approval try (and usually fail) to keep a lid on passionate excess. Our heroine Sookie is a telepath constantly facing up to the hypocrisy that results. Eavesdropping on everyone's dirty little secrets for most of her 25 years has miraculously resulted in a open and benevolent disposition. Like her brother Jason, Sookie is dim enough get into some pretty hairy situations. But while Jason is led into innumerable scrapes by his egoism, Sookie gets there by being nigh-suicidally selfless.

Sookie's superpower isn't telepathy so much as the ability to not be ruined by telepathy. You would expect her to be withdrawn or misanthropic, resigned or angry. Instead she's awkward but cheerful, and bursting with goodwill. This despite not being able to go on dates because she is able to hear all the beastly things prospective boyfriends are thinking about. But Bill is a vampire, thus unreadable. Plus he's tall, dark, handsome, and seems to be playing nice. Romance ensues, with much gothic archness. The traditional thematic features of vampire stories are retained: lust and pain, sex and death. But Sookie's telepathy, and some self-awareness, could allow for a deeper exploration of the psychological drives behind such desires and fears. Why does she forgo dating the safe and dependable (and pretty cute) Sam? At points I wonder if her unlimited reserves of generosity concerning vampires is pathological: an obsessive need to will a malevolent world to be better, or get torn to pieces. Sookie's optimism often looks more like a death wish.

I'm in the middle of season one as I write this, and am still unsure of whether the show is able to go in these directions. We are saddled with a murder mystery plot, and various side-plots involving knockout supporting characters: Jason, Tara, Sam, Lafayette. Diverting as these guys are, they often drain time and interest away from the central couple, and leave the potential depths that could be explored through that relationship unvisited. And if the main characters remain in Edward and Bella mode, then I don't think I'm going to stick with them through to Season 2.

Thor Review

2011-07-28T10:45:00.000-07:00

I wrote another review for M+, but I don't think it's going to be published, in which case it might as well go here as well. Again, a more 'professional' version of the rambling over here. Should say that this film is shaping up to be my favourite of this year...

Inspired by the success of Jon Favreau’s Iron Man, Marvel Studios have become more confident about giving unknown superheroes to quirky filmmakers: Thor is brought to us by none other than Shakespearian thespian of renown Kenneth Branagh. Another inspired choice. Branagh delivers the operatic pathos / bathos required for a film about space-gods, but more importantly, he could use his name to attract the likes of Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, Stellan Skarsgård and Idris Elba to the ensuing silliness. Most importantly, he brought with him the magnificent Tom Hiddleston as Loki, who walks away with this film in his pocket. Comparisons with Ledger’s Joker will and should be made.

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is set to inherit the Asgardian throne from his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins in typical scenery-chewing form), but he is proud, over-confident, and more than a little stupid. The diplomatic fiasco he wreaks convinces Odin that his son is unfit for rule. Thor is cast down, like Lucifer, from heaven, like Christ, to earth. His hammer, like Excalibur, is jammed in a piece of rock to be prized free when Thor proves his worth. Meanwhile, Thor’s mischievous, manipulative and inscrutable brother Loki becomes king.

To say more would be spoiling it, since Loki’s motives remain unpredictable up until the very end. In itself an impressive dramatic achievement, and one that is enhanced as the complexity of the character comes into view. But you can find intelligence everywhere in this film. The religious and mythological tropes pointed out above suggest multiple readings and resonances. Thor’s sojourn on Earth does not just teach him humility. This is a world without gods, without certainties, filled with people trying to create them for themselves. Thor becomes involved in assisting the life-project of one such mortal: Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster is an astrophysicist investigating wormholes, the rainbow bridges Asgardians control. Chris Hemsworth’s charisma (and fittingly divine abs) obviously have a part to play in their inevitable romance, but it is as benevolent emissary of a more magical world that he wins Jane over. But not just that. Thor is a barbarian in New Mexico, and the film extracts superb comedy from his neanderthal qualities. This is the story of hunkishness civilized, the acceptance of self-sacrifice. In the process of proving himself to his father, Thor proves himself to Jane.

The film’s focus on Thor and Loki’s duel, while rewarding, doesn’t leave much room for the other characters. Natalie Portman is typically charming and funny, but she has precious little time to establish her growing attraction to Thor, hence the final triumphant kiss feels rather sudden. Skarsgård and Elba have even less material to work with, so it is impressive that Branagh gives them just enough space to hint at depths left unexplored. Even Jane’s intern, Darcy Lewis, who exists solely to provide comic relief, is given a subtle one-liner pay-off. I got the impression that Branagh (understandably, given his background) cares about his actors and wanted to push their creative buttons. This attentiveness to details of character is welcome in a genre that usually encourages attentiveness to details of spectacle.

Indeed, there are problems, perhaps not entirely soluble, to do with pacing and visuals. Representing heaven is an ancient quandary in the field of imaginative endeavour (just ask Milton), so perhaps we should not be too judgmental if Asgard’s glossiness leaves us rather unimpressed. However, the ruined world of Jotunheim is similarly drab on the design front, and the battle which it stages will leave you hankering for your LOTR DVDs. More significant is the awkward way the film has to jam together plot and origin story, Earth and Asgard. The bracketing device at the beginning tries and does not quite succeed in creating a sense of urgency to the first act, although once Thor is exiled the energy levels pick up substantially. Nevertheless, these flaws are not extensive enough to spoil this film, which otherwise offers emotional and intellectual delights few superhero films have delivered. It’s going to be a big year for Marvel Studios, with Captain America and X-Men: First Class both coming out soon. Thor has them launching into it with their best foot forward.

Source Code Review

2011-07-28T10:38:00.000-07:00

I have another thing up at the M+ magazine, which I want to post here as well, a tidied-up version of the blathering over here. This one's the director's cut:

Duncan Jones replaces the monotonous cabin-fever of Moon with express trains, bombs and inter-dimensional travel with his second feature film. However, the thematic concerns remain the same: little guys trapped inside tyrannous organizations that nevertheless ensure the peace and comfort of the majority. Where does personal fulfillment fit in with the duty you have towards others? Jake Gyllenhaal takes over from Sam Rockwell as the decent guy put under extreme pressure to do the right thing, and while not quite hitting the breakdown as hard, he is likable enough to keep you invested in the role. Vera Farmiga is even better as the C.O. of Gyllenhaal’s mission, going from cool efficiency, impatience, on to empathy, and then to defiance and heroism. Michelle Monaghan is given thin material as the romantic interest, but her charm saves the character. With Gyllenhaal, she manages to sell the corny notion of eight-minute chunks of life having the potential to contain universes of experience.

The film stumbles with its generically creepy villain, who’s motives are skimmed over rather than delved into. Some of the other flourishes made by Jones fall a little flat. It’s difficult to escape cliche with a side-plot about the search for approval from a distant father, although Gyllenhaal handles the scene admirably. There is also talk of going to India to find yourself, which while self-aware, fails to inspire. Some may find the film’s conclusion a little disappointing, the rousing bitter-sweet crescendo thrown away by another twist in the narrative. I’m also obliged to inform you that the film contains uses of ‘quantum’ which my more scientifically-minded friends insist is absurd, although since I don’t understand this ‘quantum’, I cannot possibly comment. But these are arguments to have in the pub after watching the film, which you should definitely do. Source Code is a compact, involving SF thriller asking those big existential questions, and it demonstrates that Jones’s trajectory is on the up.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

2011-07-28T10:30:00.000-07:00

Allow me to moan frustrated about the horribly disfigured aspect my 3D glasses gave to this film. The spectacle cast in shadow, almost unrecognizable, to no purpose whatsoever. I paid the pounds sterling equivalent of £6 for this shit (this in a cineplex in Varna) and feel royally ripped-off. Kill this fad dead, please, movie-theatre-going public, I implore you.

THAT rant over with, we can move on to say that this final chapter was thoroughly enjoyable, with slight reservations. Radcliff will never be Harry Potter, but the onrush of events and the gravity of the melodrama serve to disguise that fact. Indeed, there is really very little space for the kind of character-building Part 1 indulged in, which comes as a relief. Shorter, sharper pay-offs, and a greater emphasis on metaphor and theme, make this installment arguably the best of an uneven series.

Two things, really, one done well and the other not. Heaven is hard to do in fiction, but the white plain stretching to pillars blurred with refracting light did the business. And the call-back in the final scene at King's Cross is overt, underlining the importance of free-will. What do I do now? -- that endless question. Death or the courage to go on. You get to decide.

But a Harry Potter film wouldn't be a true Harry Potter film without at least one concluding scene botched. Immediately after Harry threw the broken pieces of the Elder Wand off the bridge, I began to direct the scene differently in my head. Cut the sweep, Mr. Yates. Radcliff should have let Grint's question hang in the air, then grin and say "Yes!", giving the audience the impression that he WILL claim invincibility, greatness. And then he should have calmly snapped the wand in two, and dropped it as if it were worthless. Stepping down, trading a determined look with Grint, then Watson, and they all smile at each other. And they walk back to Hogwarts, like they always have before, picking up the threads of conversation as the camera cranes away. Power rejected as an empty prize, our heroes settle for love and normality -- the family dramas at platform 9 3/4 which close the film. THE POINT, of all of it, bottled, quietly sipped. THAT'S how it should have been done.

2011-07-13T16:14:00.000-07:00

'Either the universe is a confused mass and intertexture, soon to be dispersed; or one orderly whole, under a providence. If the former; why should I wish to stay longer in this confused mixture; or be solicitous about any thing, further than how to become earth again? Or, why should I be disturbed about any thing? The dispersion will overtake me, do what I please. But, if the latter be the case; then I adore the governour of the whole, I stand firm, and trust in him.' - Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Meditations

[Admin note: I'm gonna be away a while, so posts might get EVEN MORE sporadic. Two things I should note in passing. One: Game of Thrones contains enough scenes that improve on the book (Renly + Loras, Robert + Cercei) to counter-balance the chapters in the book it ruins (all the scenes with Lysa Arryn). In other words, I'm sticking with the show. Two: Steph Swainston has written some of the best fantasy novels I have ever read, which makes her decision to quit and become a chemistry teacher very sad indeed... Right, off to the motherland where all those flouncy quotations I keep posting here get worked up into a twelve hundred word dissertation. It will happen.]

2011-07-06T04:42:00.000-07:00

"And since all hope of this were vain and idle, if no universal mind presided; since without such a supreme intelligence and providential care, the distracted universe must be condemn’d to suffer infinite calamitys; ’tis here the generous mind labours to discover that healing cause by which the interest of the whole is securely establish’d, the beauty of things, and the universal order happily sustain’d. This, Palemon, is the labour of your soul: and this its melancholy; when unsuccessfully pursuing the supreme beauty, it meets with darkning clouds which intercept its sight." - Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, The Moralists

Gone Baby Gone

2011-07-03T17:17:00.000-07:00

Right, yeah, ok, slightly stretching credibility, this one. But this is genre, right? That final shot shoulda toldya that the TV you've got in yr livingroom transmits packaged payloads of emotional manipulation and moral dilemmas for your entertainment and edification. Right? It don't have to be real. Just relax into it!

...is my attitude to all plotting matters. But Ben Affleck does enough of the clever set-up and pay-off to earn some previously unforthcoming respect. The vaguely Catholic absolutism of the private crime-fighter comes into conflict with the institutional utilitarianism of the police department. But the Catholic thing comes back another way. At the beginning Patrick goes on about the irrevocable importance of community: you take the girl out of Dorchester, but you SHOULD NEVER take the Dorchester out of the girl. This is where she belongs.

And to its credit, the film tries to make no judgement about Patrick's rigidity on this and all issues. I get the feeling both Afflecks wanted to portray him in as noble a light as possible. But at the same time, events and context are designed to demonstrate just how misconceived his attitude is.

Good to see Michael K. Williams and Amy Ryan from The Wire fame in this film. The latter especially did wonders as the negligent drug-abusing mother. The scene in which she has to extract the promise from Patrick got pretty arch, but she managed to conjure some emotion into it. Michelle Monaghan (again) not given enough, which got rather annoying. And while Morgan Freeman was excellent in the finale, he really did ham it up something awful in the tool-up-and-get-ready scene. Casey Affleck does great, although with that raspy whine, he's really better off playing cowards or serial killers. Oh, and when Ed Harris puts on those sunglasses, you just KNOW he's up to no good. Why? Because, hello! He's Ed Harris!

Game Of Thrones

2011-07-02T10:57:00.000-07:00

"The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends. It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace. They never are." - Ser Jorah Mormont

"When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground." - Queen Cersei Lannister

"The High Septon once told me that as we sin, so do we suffer. If that's true, Lord Eddard, tell me ... why is it always the innocents who suffer most, when you high lords play your game of thrones?" - Lord Varys "the Spider"

Should re-post this ramble over here:

Shit's hitting the fan in A Game of Thrones. Bout time. A book this long is going to have some problems plot and pace wise, but once it gets down to it, it's riveting. And I do admire the thought behind the world-building. I've studied a little bit of medieval history in my time, and Martin has certainly done his homework. If anything (I'll say this of Mieville as well) you'd want MORE of that on show. Why is the monarchy so influential if each house has their own army? How does Drogo distribute tribute and ensure loyalty in his khalasar? I've got my own answers, and perhaps there are answers down the line. But if the project is to make fantasy "realistic" (go from exploring myth / symbol to the kind of social commentary you find in SF) then my medieval-geek glands need just a little bit... more.

Characterisation IS kinda thin, tho. My friend who's watching the series described Prince Joffrey as Draco Malfoy without the depth, and he's right (so far...). Personally, I get the feeling Stark wouldn't last a week faced with real Anglo-Saxon / Carolingian warlords. What is this code of honour he sticks to really ABOUT? I cheered Littlefinger on every time he skewered it. Wouldn't Stark have been more interesting and convincing as a conflicted anti-hero doing beastly things in office whilst trying to protect and care for his family? Maybe that's down the line as well...

Anyway. Haven't enjoyed a fantasy book this much in years. I feel a binge coming on.

To add: I've only seen the first couple of episodes of the HBO series, and so far it seems like a pretty straight adaptation. The book is pretty televisual to start with -- chapters are always single scenes (sometimes intercut with flashbacks and dream-sequences) headed by p.o.v. characters. If anything, adapting it could have been an opportunity to fix some of the book's limitations. But instead, the world and characters were rendered even more simplistic and unoriginal, with blood and boobs tacked on most gratuitously. At times, the style reminded me of The Golden Compass film. With both projects, the creators forgot that the source material won its readers by building fully immersive worlds where social structures were coherent and you could see the dirt underneath a character's fingernails.

Also: expect all of these opinions to change once I actually finish reading the book / watching the show!

Dusk + Blackdown / Elijah + Skilliam / Loefah

2011-07-02T03:29:00.000-07:00

I should probably shut up about my FWD>> excursions after last time's embarrassments. But do want to post the suggestion that the instrumental grime pushed by the Butterz camp stomps all over the piss-weak uk house Joy O and cohorts are offering. Just sayin' the only thing I heard Loefah play that could stand up to the Royal-Ts and D.O.K.s leaned heavily on the footwork. Even the Butterz stuff I'm not that keen on has a swing / personality / energy "Sicko Cell" will just never match.

Confess to being all a flutter at the sight of D Double E and Terror Danjah in the room -- absolute superstars in an alternate reality where pop music isn't about cynically conning the consumer.

2011-06-18T08:42:00.000-07:00

'All the time of this present age is but a point of eternity. All things are but little, changeable, and presently to vanish. All things proceed from the universal governing mind, either by direct and primary intention, or by necessary consequence and connexion with things primarily intended. Thus, the horrid jaws of the lion, poisons, and whatever is pernicious, as thorns, as mire, are the consequences of those venerable and lovely things you admire. Don’t, therefore, imagine them foreign to that constitution of nature which you reverence; but consider well the fountain of all things.

He who sees things present, has seen all things which either have been from eternity, or shall be to eternity; for, all are of the like nature, and similar.' - Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Meditations

2011-06-13T10:09:00.001-07:00

'...as machines which require the most workmanship may be stopped or disordered by the defect of a single nail or wheel: so the error or offence of one man puts the rational system or society of mankind out of order. Any person, by almost one single free act, may destroy a house or ship, nay a city or a fleet, by fire or wreck. Any king or governor can, by an easy and free act, overwhelm whole nations with war, rapine, slaughter and villany.

...

'God does not permit any bad elections, but such as may be reconciled with the good of the whole system, and has digested and order'd everything in such a manner, that these very faults and vices shall tend to the good of the whole.' - William King, An Essay on the Origin of Evil

Brazil

2011-06-12T17:25:00.000-07:00

..."art direction run amok at the expense of any scrutiny" is David Thomson's verdict, although he phrases it as a question, and is pretty tentative about shooting down Terry Gilliam's "unquestioned visual imagination". Well this viewer is cocksure and confident in pronouncing himself all for it. We cannot find invention this extravagant anywhere else, and we should be glad to have it.

Towards the end, I was getting a little worried that the film was stepping into Star Wars territory, but I should have been more trusting. Gilliam twists brutal satire out of those fantasies as well. Lovely Oedipus-complex complications as well. Necrophilia indeed! No fantasy, however personal, is safe. Touchy film-students may get a little queasy about the oriental samurai-emperor dueling with Pryce's angelic crusader, but again... fantasies, right? Absurd, camp, cliched and impotent.

...but what else do we have?

2011-06-11T07:06:00.000-07:00

'Walk forth calm, contented, rejoicing, returning thanks to the Gods, who, from their infinite bounty, have opened the safe and quiet harbour of death, at all times ready to receive us from the stormy ocean of human life; who have prepared this sacred, this inviolable, this great asylum, always open, always accessible; altogether beyond the reach of human rage and injustice; and large enough to contain both all those who wish, and all those who do not wish to retire to it: an asylum which takes away from every man every pretence of complaining, or even of fancying that there can be any evil in human life, except such as he may suffer from his own folly and weakness.' - Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Hanna

2011-06-08T12:40:00.000-07:00

Now THAT is how you do a tracking shot! Srsly slick moves in Joe Wright's third outing. And that's The Chemical Brothers providing the ass-kicking soundtrack to all the ass-kicking. Visual and sonic killa-bombs galore!

But what's with the fairy-tale motifs, eh? Hanna is trained-up in the Arctic wilds in the ways of C.I.A. ninjas by dour but kindly Eric Bana, then let loose on the world in order to neutralize immaculate ice-queen stepmother Cate Blanchett. But the endless drilling leaves little room for music, beauty and fairy-tales. "I just missed your heart" (a hunter's, rather than Cupid's, arrow) at the start and at the end of the film, followed by bullets, red on white. THE THEME, in a nutshell.

The fairy-tale thing gets silly ONCE, at the end, where we didn't really need another deer appearing to get what's being said. Otherwise, I forgave all the silly bells and whistles. If this is a film about our need for stories, fantasies, friendship-bracelets as the stuff that makes this rat-race life worth living, then let's glory in the magical artifice of it! Cinema! Glorious!

Bradshaw isn't at his best over here, but he does pick up on a certain uncomfortable gender overlay to the film's theme. Hanna's father is the pragmatic survivalist, her mother the passionate alternative type - a pattern repeated with the couple Hanna meets on holiday. And the reason Cate Blanchett is so frosty... well she's made the unnatural choice not to spend her years birthing sprogs, hasn't she? Does funny stuff to the female brain, that. Hmm... Lost a lot of points there.

But the gorgeous goings-on are just distracting enough to make you overlook the questionable thematic content. Worth seeing, if you can still find a screening somewhere...

Basically-halfway 2011 favorite albums / singles

2011-06-02T18:05:00.000-07:00

Reposting, slightly amending, this comment over here. Now with added linky.

3 Albums (in order of preference):
tUnE-yArDs - w h o k i l l
Julianna Barwick - The Magic Place
Dom - Sun Bronzed Greek Gods (UK release this year)

27 Songs (loosely grouped by genre):
Purity Ring - Ungirthed / Lofticries
Jessie Ware & Sampha - Valentine
Hyetal feat. Alison Garner - Diamond Islands
Jacques Greene - Another Girl
Blawan - Getting Me Down
Addison Groove - This Is It
xxxy - You Always Start It / Ordinary Things
FaltyDL - Hip Love
Sepalcure - Your Love
Burial - NYC
Rockwell - Aria
ASC - Silkworm
Peverelist - Dance Til The Police Come / Fundamentals / Sun Dance
Shackleton - Deadman
Tyler, the Creator - Yonkers
Nicki Minaj feat. Esther Dawn - Super Bass
Britney Spears feat. Nicki Minaj & Ke$ha - Till the World Ends (The Femme Fatale Remix)
Toddla T feat. Shola Ama - Take It Back
Chase & Status feat. Delilah - Time
Yasmin - Finish Line (The MIKE DELINQUENT PROJECT Remix) / On My Own (Stenchman Remix)

Ny feat. Giggs - Be With You
P Money & Blacks feat. Slickman - Boo You

X-Men: First Class

2011-06-02T10:32:00.000-07:00

Uncanny X-Men has been overloaded with mythology for some time now, and First Class was one attempt at recapturing simplicity and accessibility, riffing on the Stan Lee 60s series (Astonishing could be seen as doing the same thing, but in an 80s Chris Claremont vein). So the comic did one- / two-issue arcs full of bright colours and teen energy. When it came to adapting it to film, they got O.C. creator Josh Schwartz to direct.

But then reading the wiki, you learn that Marvel were also planning to make an X-Men Origins: Magneto film, and that as Brian Singer pushed Schwartz out of the writing chair, the two projects were merged into one. Which explains it all, really. X-Men: First Class is actually two films, and they don't fit together that well.

So there's very good drama! drama! from James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender... and there's some fine japery! japery! from Banshee, Havok and Darwin trying to take down the Hellfire Club (sidebar: really strange line-up, but a lot of the bigger names have been used already...) BOTH these stories are handled very well (what with the drama! and the japery!) but there's just not enough time invested in either, so e.g. when the yoots have to pick sides, you don't really know what their motives are.

Other blunders: accents go a little haywire; January Jones is miscast, then given nothing to do; Moira McTaggert isn't Scottish; the period fittings aren't prevalent enough...

...but the above gets wiped clean by an absolute killa of a cameo.

Verdict: not bad. Thor absolutely destroys it, however. Capt. America is up next...

Attack The Block

2011-05-22T11:44:00.000-07:00

My take can be summarized by the following:

Also, if we haven't met, I am basically a watered-down version of this guy:

A Serious Man

2011-05-17T17:06:00.000-07:00

You read this one at your peril. Will Self's complaint that the Coens are simply mischievous formalists doesn't quite cut it here. If anything, A Serious Man gives some insight into why they are so difficult to pin down. This is a movie about a guy battered by the winds of fortune asking God that big question... why? And of course, there's no answer beyond the patronizing and pathetic "be a good boy". If life doesn't give you any answers, why should films?

So the gnomic folk-tale beginning plays hopeful reason against fearful superstition, but doesn't fall down on either side. Fast-forward to the present, Larry Gopnik is a physics professor that loves math but doesn't quite understand the fables used to explain it. Unfortunately, life isn't solved as easily as sums are: his wife wants a divorce, a student is trying to bribe (then sue) him, his neighbour is annexing bits of his lawn. Gopnik tries to stay on the straight and narrow as events overwhelm him. Should he do nothing, reacting passively to each new demand, as he always has done? Or should he take action, abandon categorical imperatives and bend with the winds of fortune? Cruel irony that the latter step summons the storms of infernal retribution. Gopnik is not as constant as Job, and so God exacts vengeance. Rightly? Or is adherence to ideals in this imperfect world complete madness? What does it mean to be a 'serious' man? No answers.

ETA:

Except that maybe the identification of divine justice with a school bully you owe money to nails the masochism of dutiful living dead. My reading of the gnomic folk-tale is anti-miraculous (disciple of Hume that I am), although the "ghost"'s behaviour is certainly strange. The religious authorities that are appealed to do not provide satisfaction or solace: life's either full of unseen potential or a big joke. Larry's acquiescence is pushed to breaking point, and I get the feeling that the Coens want him to break... the rest of his family don't care for him, why should he? I definitely fall down on one side, and I'll risk presumption in suggesting that the Coens probably fall the same way, although they are pretty reticent about it.

2011-05-16T14:33:00.000-07:00

'Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature, by showing men in all varieties of circumstances and situations, and furnishing us with materials from which we may form our observations and become acquainted with the regular springs of human action and behaviour.

...

'Should a traveller, returning from a far country, bring us an account of men, wholly different from any with whom we were ever acquainted; men, who were entirely divested of avarice, ambition, or revenge; who knew no pleasure but friendship, generosity, and public spirit; we should immediately, from these circumstances, detect the falsehood, and prove him a liar, with the same certainty as if he had stuffed his narration with stories of centaurs and dragons, miracles and prodigies.' - David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

2011-05-16T11:46:00.000-07:00

'It argues more wisdom to contrive at first the fabrication of the world with such perfect foresight that, of itself, and by its proper operation, it may serve all the purposes of provenance, than if the great Creator were obliged every moment to adjust its parts, and animate by his breath all the wheels of that stupendous machine.' - David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

An Education

2011-05-14T15:46:00.000-07:00

Fish Tank in suburban London in the 1960s, basically. Class shame makes the parents of bright young Carey Mulligan complicit in her seduction by suave but creepy Peter Sarsgaard, a man ten years her age. If he's got the papes (and regardless of how he gets them) it's all gravy. Mulligan -- brilliant, confident and bored out of her mind -- wants an out. Oxford used to be it, until Sarsgaard turned up with his nightclubs and restaurants and fun. That's what Britain is missing, Jenny tells her teachers. What's all this education for if you end up with a boring life? She learns tho, innit... there are no short-cuts to fulfillment. The point: you don't get yr education in school.

Fine performances all round. Alfred Molina could have just delivered a caricature, but his crazed outburst about money not growing on trees is genuinely shocking, and the repentance at the end is exquisitely poignant. Great work also from Rosamond Pike as the street-wise doll who cannot quite manage refinement. My love for Olivia Williams knows no bounds, and she's stellar in the otherwise generic role of inspirational teacher. That final scene she has with Mulligan is a total tear-fest, although I confess to being a sucker for this kind of aspirational stuff (when Battlestar Galactica did it I cried buckets). Anyways, the whole thing would have fallen apart if Carey Mulligan wasn't so freakin excellent. New Keira, for serious. I was wondering where the next one would appear. Can't wait to see her kicking ass and taking names in some upcoming rollercoaster-based blockbuster... but she'll go far without my career advice.

The film does get a little BBC at times, some scenes are borderline hack-work. Nick Hornby's script is at its best when it sticks to restraint and comedy. But, you know... niggles. iPlayer it. You shall not be left disappointed.

Rousseau

2011-05-13T14:26:00.000-07:00

Rousseau wrote about everything (music, education, nature, religion). These notes are just about his political thought, for which you have to go to the Origin of Inequality. This starts by consciously putting aside the facts and going for conjecture and hypotheticals. The particular thought experiment Rousseau describes is isolating man from society and seeing what you have left: a solitary animal sharing two instincts common to many animals: self-preservation (sustenance, procreation and indolence) and pity for the suffering of other creatures. This thought experiment quickly turns into conceptual history. Rousseau identifies man's nature by removing him from society, and then claims that this isolation is man's natural condition: a rather sneaky way of introducing the crucial, unsubstantiated (and mistaken) centre-piece of his theory.

What separates men from other animals is perfectability, or free will. Men can use their reason to replace immediate instincts with longer term objectives. We are not slaves of our passions. We can go beyond our natures. Rousseau relates this ability with our self-preservation instinct. Perfectability is the 'source of all our misfortunes' because as we become more rational about securing our survival, we increasingly move away from our pity instinct, which is the source of all our social virtues (although this is in tension with statements made elsewhere, see below). Where do these alternative longer term goals come from? Our imaginations. We desire things not immediately within our grasp, things we don't really need. This conceptual freedom (call it positive liberty) is a double-edged sword.

Perfectability is triggered by necessity and inspires reflection, prudence and innovation (we create bows, fishing rods and traps). Using these tools, we become aware of our superiority compared to other animals, and experience pride for the first time. Next, we notice that other humans use similar techniques. At this point, we associate loosely to achieve shared goals, but if our private interest changes, we immediately abandon the collective. Loyalty is weak.

Next phase: technological advance and natural disasters create tighter bonds between humans. We get huts, villages, language and family life. Dependence on tools for survival is the first yoke we impose on ourselves, originally our bodies were strong enough to provide us with everything we needed. Rousseau considers independence to be another kind of freedom (call it negative liberty). Splitting Rousseau's freedom into these two parts helps make sense of Rousseau's confusing ideas about political liberty.

Society means comparisons between individuals, and the creation of ideas of merit and beauty. Some become better then others, people start to have preferences. This creates feelings of vanity and shame, which in turn can strengthen into contempt and envy. But while such anti-social egoistic feelings are restrained by the pity impulse, we are at the golden age of human existence: midway on the journey from indolence and peace to competition and war. We are independent from other men, and our wills have not entirely quashed our benevolent instincts. Negative and positive liberties are in balance.

The next step is another advance in positive freedom, another reduction in negative freedom. Metallurgy and agriculture inaugurate the division of labour and property. We become dependent on other men, and natural inequalities (of age, strength, intelligence) start producing unequal outcomes. Those more able get more. Feelings of preference become more pronounced, men have to start appearing to be superior in order to survive. Ambition and emulation completely obscure natural qualities. Pity is forgotten. The contempt of the rich and the envy of the poor lead to incessant war.

This is halted by the social contract. The rich scam the poor into establishing property by law in exchange for peace. Where there is less inequality, the contract will produce more democratic forms of government. Rousseau's project is to make the contract and the law preserve liberty and virtue. Because if nothing prevents the acquisitiveness (the positive liberty) of the rich, revolutions and contracts will increasingly barter away the (negative) liberty of the many for peace, until there is only slavery left: a new state of nature with one all powerful tyrant -- a new equality were justice and morality are eliminated once more.

How to prevent this from happening? I'll avoid the plans in the Social Contract, which are confusing. Look at the Letter to Geneva which opens the Origin of Inequality. In that city-state, rulers and ruled have one interest, everyone knows each other, there is no conquering spirit, neither are conquerers attracted to it. The danger there is that the people don't trust their magistrates: the former need to recognize that obedience is in their true interest.

The constitutional proposals for Corsica and Poland help explain this attitude. Corsica is perfect for developing and maintaining independence: it just needs an autarkic agricultural economy. Division of labour and trade means dependence and subjection. Instead, citizen farmers should be happy in their mediocrity, fiercely disciplined, fit and healthy. As Rousseau puts it: better to make bad use of fields than bad use of men. The rejection of modern commercial values will deter conquest. Have people dispersed equally throughout the territory, which will avoid combination and faction: extreme decentralization with a few virtuous elected individuals in charge.

Rousseau's proposals for Poland is the best place to figure out what the general will (Rousseau's definition of 'virtue') really means: recognizing the community interest as your own interest. It is not the sum of private interests (which are irreconcilable), but creating a sense of common good to set against centrifugal private wills. What this ultimately means is patriotism. This can be encouraged by making the country's cultural life (dress, festivals, religion) more distinctive. Education (emphasizing the country's laws and history) is also crucial in making citizens feel uncomfortable anywhere outside the motherland. Patriotism, rather than guns or money, is enough for international security: Russia may swallow Poland up, but she will not be able to digest it. Poles will continue fighting Vietcong-style until they are free.

Rousseau rejects the idea of returning to that prehistoric golden age. Our pity instinct is too far gone for that to work. Patriotism replaces it by redirecting the modern feeling of vanity away from self-preservation and towards selfless activity. But patriotism and virtue can only thrive in enclosed environments where the community knows and can monitor each other. Emulation is given a patriotic mould. Public esteem is bought not with wealth or beauty but with duty to the common good. The regulating function of spectatorship is diluted in large countries, which have to rely on a Hobbesian Leviathan to avoid anarchy. True liberty (the balance between independence and perfectability) can only be found in small republics such as Geneva.

Aristotle's Politics

2011-05-12T13:52:00.000-07:00

The previous post ended on the notion that Aristotle's attitude could be described as more authoritarian than Plato's, by which I meant that for Plato the goal was a harmonious community, for Aristotle it was the happiness of philosophers. In fact, for both, the two are related. But I think the difference in attitude is interesting, and puts into question the conception of Aristotle as some kind of democrat.

Aristotle's Politics begins where his Nicomachean Ethics left off. Associations, like everything else, aim at some good. The family provides for the daily material needs of each member. The village can ensure a broader range of material needs. The city can deliver self-sufficiency and the good life. Man is a political animal in that he cannot fully exercise his capacities in isolation: contemplation requires a moderate fortune (wealth must not turn into an end) and slaves. The city structures society so that those capable of the human virtues are able to demonstrate them.

Most are incapable of the human virtues. Like children, it is in their interest to be ruled. Natural slaves are identified simply as those people capable of being enslaved. Strength is a virtue. Those capable of winning wars and enslaving others deserve to do so. Slaves do not have the ability to deliberate (and so identify what is right in each circumstance), and even if they did, they lack the power to act according to what their reason suggests. Women can deliberate, but Aristotle claims they lack 'authority' -- which could be interpreted as that lack of power also characteristic of natural slaves. Women might be as rational as men, but their physical feebleness disqualifies them from the opportunity of fulfillment.

Most of Aristotle's emphasis is on association through necessity, as a means to ensure survival and more broadly, the conditions for a philosophical life. However, he does concede that people also have a social impulse separate from self-preservation, which would suggest that fulfillment can also be found in perfecting that capacity and desire, i.e. in the political life.

The ambiguous relationship between intellectual and practical virtues is demonstrated by the fact that Aristotle provides two models for the best form of polity in his Politics, one ideal and one more realistic (it should be noted that the work's provenance and structure is not certain). We'll start with the latter.

The successful community has to ensure the common good (as the family does) rather than the interests of rulers (as Aristotle admits is the case between masters and slaves). The statement about slaves here is in tension with the one above. More generally, Aristotle is torn between having to preserve the common good and having to protect the interests of those capable of being philosophers. Ultimately, it is in the interests of contemplative men to have a stable society around them that provides the leisure needed for their inquiries, but this part of the work is mostly concerned with ensuring that stability.

Reason, prudence (as well as justice) demands that the excellent (those who would preserve the common good), should rule, rather than the well-born, the wealthy, or the many. If only one man exceeds all others in practical virtue, he should be king and the association will be a monarchy. If one man rules according to his private interest, then the association is a tyranny. Similarly, aristocracies are ruled by the few who are 'best', while oligopolies by the rich in their own interest. Constitutional governments are possible when the many have excellent qualities (usually of a military kind). Democracies are ruled by the poor multitude in their interest.

Aristotle argues that the many can rule well -- they can put a broader range of qualities in the services of the community. Deliberation in a group also has the effect of cooling passions. Aristotle is more lukewarm about rule by the poor -- they can merely identify good rulers. But if the community has a a large poor population, they will resent exclusion from political decision-making, and so they must at least be allowed to vote.

Aristotle lists the forms of government from best to worst:

Monarchy (one is pre-eminently virtuous)
Aristocracy (few are pre-eminently virtuous)
Constitutional Government (many possess at least military virtue)
Democracy (poor)
Oligarchy (rich)
Tyranny (self-interested king)

In an oligarchy, the rich are leisured, can devote time to politics and rule by decree. In democracies, the poor have to work, and so rely on laws. The mean: laws and prerogative, is always better. This points in the direction of constitutional government. This is redefined as a mixed constitution, where both rich and poor have a role in politics. However, a new mean is to be sought there. The rich are arrogant and ambitious, while the poor are envious and criminal, and their clashes lead to faction and the abandonment of the common good. The middle class is where reason and duty are to be located (perhaps they are the militarily excellent). Where there are no obviously pre-eminent men that can assume leadership of the community (so that it becomes a monarchy or aristocracy), a mixed constitution with a large middle class is optimal.

Now to turn to Aristotle's ideal polity. The focus is now firmly on the primacy of the philosophic over the political life. The polis has to be small enough so that citizens know each other (and can select suitable office-holders), and large enough to ensure self-sufficiency. The agricultural and manufacturing classes have no leisure and are excluded from citizenship (they are described as slaves or serfs). They are managed by citizens, whose other duties are determined by age. The young serve in the military (only to defend the community, conquest distracts away from internal development and contemplation, although slaves have to be acquired from somewhere...). Service in the army provides the experience needed for rulership. Once mature, citizens manage their households and the practical affairs of the city. When they reach old age, they retire from political life and assume the religious one. As noted in the previous post, for Aristotle the study and worship of the gods is equivalent to scientific and philosophical contemplation.

In this way, practical and intellectual virtues are apportioned according to age. Both are absolutely essential to the good life, although the latter is more distinguished. To relate this to the above list of constitutions, Aristotle's ideal looks most like an aristocracy, although the pool of citizens (who have to man the army) seems to be quite wide, so it retains elements of a constitutional government. The two models, I would argue, are broadly compatible. To return to my comments at the beginning, you need a harmonious community to philosophize in, but the philosophy, rather than the harmony, is the goal. Plato's philosophers rule for the good of all, Aristotle's rule for a time, and to ensure the conditions conducive to philosophy / the worship of the universe.

Machiavelli

2011-05-12T09:21:00.000-07:00

The Prince ends with the notion that Italy needs a new Moses - an armed prophet that would unite the peninsula and go on to dominate Europe. The prophet part of the equation is vital. Agathocles had power, but was despicable. Cesare Borgia had power and glory, which is why he was virtuous, despite all the despicable things he did.

How do you acquire and keep power? Three things. An independent citizen militia is the foundation of your authority (mercenaries are cowards, auxiliaries are untrustworthy). Next, you must ensure that the populace do not hate you. They provide the manpower for your armies, so their support is crucial. What they desire most is liberty, so if you do not violate their property and women, they will tolerate your rule. Low taxes, which encourage investment, is also good policy. Finally, the rich are your rivals. What they desire most is dominion, and so they have to be managed. You must be prepared to eliminate and replace entire ruling families, even when loyal, if necessary.

How do you acquire glory? Morality is nothing more than censure and praise (see the discussion in the Discourses below). It can be manipulated. Ciceronian virtues are not always prudent. Generosity means high taxes: you win over the ambitious few whilst alienating the many who serve in your army. Compassion means disorder: again favouring your friends will make you the enemy of the populace. Your army respects cruelty and a disciplinarian attitude. The love you buy with favours is fickle: people's affections shift with their interests. Fear, on the other hand, is a constant restraint.

Forget Cicero's integrity. You need to use any means necessary to hold power, assemble an army, and win wars. This is what true 'virtue' is. Virtuous actions are determined by results, and so by circumstances. Good rulers are able to adjust their character to the character of the times. However, few can dissemble so well. In which case, fortune favours the brave: constant military activity and daring is more likely to secure success. It keeps people guessing, and makes you impressive. Remember: charisma stupefies people, and success carries its own legitimacy. You can get away with anything if you are successful and charismatic, if you have power and glory, if you are an armed prophet.

But what's the likelihood of a man as virtuous (in Machiavelli's sense) as Moses turning up in Italy? We turn to the Discourses to answer that question.

As men multiply and form groups, they pick strong and courageous leaders to defend them against invasion. Life in society gradually creates morality through sympathy (recreating the positive or negative experiences of others using your imagination). This morality becomes enforceable through laws and punishments, and a notion of justice is created. Subsequently, when communities have to pick leaders, their criteria shift from strength (defence) to prudence (justice).

If power is inherited, it will eventually be assumed by incompetent or corrupt people. Such rules inspire resentment, which encourages further tyranny. The result is conspiracy and revolution. If the revolutionaries also make their authority hereditary, the cycle will continue. However, the revolutionaries could also create a democracy. However, empowering the people leads to license and anarchy, until another revolution reinstalls hereditary rule. The community is weak during the revolutions, and revolutionaries often call in outside powers to help their cause, risking foreign subjection and dissolution.

Thus the riddle of politics is to ensure a stable constitution that provides a constant succession of virtuous rulers without the license found in democratic societies. The answer is a mixed government with balanced powers.

The populace should be allowed to express their grievances through institutions. This will reduce the threat of conspiracy, disorder, and appeals to foreign powers. However, people also need to be controlled by laws, although censorship and religion are perhaps even more important. The latter replaces fear of the prince with fear of the gods, ensures that men keep their oaths, and boosts discipline and morale in the army. Ritual and ceremony is there to be manipulated. Religion should serve the interests of the community: rather than Christian humility, it should encourage ferocity and patriotism.

Although individuals may be better at constructing laws and constitutions, the people are better at preserving them. They are wiser, more dispassionate and more constant than princes. They can be persuaded by the arguments of the wise. Dictators can be elected to deal with abnormal situations. A prince cannot change his nature easily, while republics can call on a diverse range of human natures to deal with each problem. They are more adaptable to changing circumstances, and so are more successful.

In both books, the aim of political activity is power and glory. Why? Machiavelli repeatedly insists that men are wicked. Human appetites are insatiable, people are perpetually discontented, ambition drives all industry. In some respects, Machiavelli's view of history is circular: evil is a constant, empires rise and fall. But in other respects it is linear: nature purges weak regimes and replaces them with better alternatives. Machiavelli's project is to design institutions that will regulate men's wicked, ambitious natures so that society remains viable and long-lasting.

The rich are dangerous because their ambitions are turned inwards, towards dominating the poor. Princes and elected rulers alike must protect the interests of the people, channel their ambitions through the militia, and direct their desire for glory outward. For Machiavelli, liberty and harmony can only be created when all antisocial tendencies are put in the service of imperialism. Power and glory is the aim because this is what makes society possible.

Aristotle's Ethics

2011-05-11T04:09:00.000-07:00

More notes. Aristotle's Politics will follow shortly.

Aristotle begins with the assumption that everything in the world aims at some good: it has a purpose that is part of its definition. Objects can have multiple 'ends', which are not all of equal worth. The superior end is identified by its 'self-sufficiency': it is pursued for its own sake, rather than as a means to something better.

So what is the 'end' of a human being? What is 'good' for humans? Humans value happiness above everything else: it is self-sufficient, desired for its own sake. Honour, wealth and physical pleasure are means to attaining happiness, they are not ends in themselves.

Aristotle also postulates that everything in the world has certain capacities. A plant can grow. An animal can also perceive the world. Human beings can also reason. 'Virtue' is simply using these capacities well. Thus the excellent use of reason is what human beings should strive for. This is what is virtuous concerning human beings.

If we may bring in Thrasymachus from over here, you could ask whether the correct use of reason would necessarily lead to the identification of those virtues Aristotle eventually identifies. For example, is the virtue of justice always rational?

As we have seen, the highest human capacity is reason, and the highest human desire is happiness. These must be the same. Aristotle's ethical project is to make them the same: make the practice of virtue pleasant -- a part of a happy life. This requires education.

Aristotle is difficult because he claims that reason, virtue and happiness are intimately related, and yet at the same time human beings have to be conditioned to make this relation, which casts doubt over how natural or evident this relation is. You get the feeling that Plato's transcendentalism is not entirely abandoned here.

Aristotle applies the 'self-sufficiency' rule to work out what kind of happiness is superior. Reason directed towards others human beings (political life) is imperfect because people are changeable. Reason applied to unchangeable objects (science / philosophy) offers a more sustained and intense pleasure. Men engaged in such activity are God-like: contemplative and self-sufficient.

If the ultimate end of human beings is scientific enquiry (often described in religious language by Aristotle), the reason-virtue-happiness relation may make more sense. Practical reason, a virtuous character, and the pleasant state of mind it produces, are all instrumental: they ensure the stable conditions for the exercise of the highest human capacity (reason) towards the most perfect object available to it: the unchanging laws of the universe.

So while Plato insists a happy community requires the rule of philosophers, Aristotle insists that philosophers being free to be philosophers is what constitutes a happy community: a rather more authoritarian attitude.

R.G. Collingwood

2011-05-08T16:29:00.000-07:00

Now that I've pretty much completed my course (apart from the dissertation, which we shall not speak of), I though I should post some of my notes over here for personal reference and for anyone who is interested. I'm starting with Collingwood, since I've been yabbering incoherently about him recently, and some people have questions. Should give warning that this is my interpretation, there are probably other and better ones out there.

In his Autobiography, Collingwood describes the way his contemporaries treated the problems of philosophy as constant: philosophers were all asking the same questions and coming up with different answers. But as anyone with a brain can work out: when Plato and Hobbes talk about the 'state', they mean different things.

Which means that while the solutions philosophers come up with can still be evaluated, their presuppositions cannot. The latter are answers to previous questions, all part of the march of history. 'Metaphysical' presuppositions are 'absolute' in that they are not based on anything else but the natural world (cf. Kuhn's paradigms in the history of science). When interpreting texts, we should look at the particular questions they set out to answer. Nietzsche is (perhaps unconsciously) referenced: there are no philosophical 'facts', 'nothing capable of being memorized is history'.

So what's the point of Plato or Hobbes, then? Collinwood insists that we need a better understanding of human affairs and how to handle them. Science has created weapons of previously unimaginable power, as WWI demonstrated. Thus it is imperative to figure out how to manage human behaviour so that colossal bloodshed is avoided. Psychology is a dead end on this front. Collingwood argues that the subject doesn't really study the mind ('consciousness' 'will' and 'reason') but reduces it to 'sense' and 'appetite'. It gives all activity an (invented) unconscious motive. As a result, it removes the distinctions between truth and error, good and bad (see below for Collingwood's ethics). Rather, the answer to this particular problem is history.

Let's switch over to the Principles of History for a bit, which gives some more background on Collingwood's idiosyncratic reason / passion divide. History should be concerned with 'free activities' i.e. ones that do not proceed from man's animal nature. The historian studies deeds that express thoughts -- the way agents envision and amend their situation. They should rethink the situation again and evaluates the decision reached by the agent. Hence the famous claim that all history is the history of ideas.

Biography is NOT history, because it either details events that embody no thought, or those thoughts that have 'gossip value'. The biographer's purpose is merely to arouse feelings of sympathy or malice in the reader, and so she emphasizes the animal side of a person's existence. History should be about that rationality that is the peculiar capacity of human beings. But the picture is muddied: emotions can come into it if they are related to thoughts, and you might wonder how easy it is to separate one from the other.

Collingwood's notion of free will is even more strange. Physical conditions condition man as a physical being, but his thoughts are 'free' in that they are 'self-determined'. I think this means that agents can recognize the constraints of their environment, society (even their passions?) but can also think beyond them - conceive alternative preferable situations and act to bring them about. History is crucial in providing these alternatives, but we'll get to that in a bit. Here we should note that if history is about recreating the mental world of past agents, then studying the social (even psychological!) constraints they faced would be part of the project. Conceivably then, a division of labour could still be imposed between intellectual and social historians.

Back to the Autobiography. The value of history is in teaching skills that help you recognize the less obvious features of the present: it gives you a 'trained eye' with which to analyze the situation you are in. While we make a lot of decisions according to rules that deliver standard results in standard situations, sometimes the situation is unfamiliar or sufficiently unusual to require going beyond rules. In these cases, we need to be able to ignore present desires and interests, view the situation holistically, and behave 'righty'. As you can tell, Collingwood's ethical system isn't particularly systematic -- it's all about getting that awareness only history can give you.

So what is this awareness exactly? As mentioned above, history according to Collingwood is the history of thought. A historian's job is to think over past thoughts. He doesn't re-imagine them (as one of my teachers, sensibly, suggested). Collingwood is clear on this: the historian rethinks the same thought as the one, say, in Napoleon's head. It's a direct transfer. This makes sense if you keep in mind the reason / passion divide mentioned above. Emotions are particular, ephemeral, inconsequential; rational thinking is entirely recoverable across space and time, so long as you have the presuppositions it's grounded on. Collingwood assumes that these have not changed very much: Medieval thought-patterns are still 'living' in the present.

The past thought in the historian's mind contradicts the other thoughts he has formed by engaging with the present. Hence the proof that human beings are conceptually 'free' from their environment: we can think beyond our temporal context. The historian rethinks lots of different thoughts that originally belonged to different contexts. This amounts to being lots of different people. I think there is an implicit suggestion that such an expanded awareness would dampen the desires and selfish interests that derail 'right conduct'. More explicitly, Collingwood argues that having this augmented consciousness will make you comprehend 'human affairs' better. Being more people will make you understand people more, and hopefully help you work out how to stop them killing each other with the enthusiasm they demonstrated in the latter 1910s.

Thor

2011-05-02T13:11:00.000-07:00

Well done, Mr. Branagh. Most of the (stellar) cast signed on without reading the script just because you were behind this one. And it seems to me like you worked with them in the design stage of each character. Skarsgård, Dennings and Elba had nothing roles, and yet you managed to create pay-offs for all of them. Well done, sir!

Perhaps I've been reading too much Nietzsche recently, but how about Thor as a film about the conflict between will to power and resentment? Let's run with that for five seconds. Thor is the beefy, over-confident idiot at one with his physical nature, Loki the starved, jealous schemer who sideswipes glory. I mean, the horns of his helmet are actually turned back onto himself -- the perfect symbol for the ascetic self-loathing Nietzsche so maliciously detailed. And ascetics are more interesting. Loki steals this film: a younger son with an inferiority complex who compulsively plots petty conspiracies against his brother, who ends up trying to annihilate whole worlds in order to purge his sense of being an unworthy outsider, who faces the ultimate choice between fulfillment and oblivion, because second-best is intolerable. Just about the most fully-realized and down-right Shakespearian villain in a superhero film I've seen. Up there with Ledger's Joker, for serious.

But it's not really Nietzsche, of course, because Thor is sent down to earth, crucified and resurrected in order to learn the value of humility. Love, too, although Portland's Magdalene is an astrophysicist with her own life project, and her gushing is entirely understandable when confronted with Hemsworth's frankly divine torso. It's very much the girl getting the hunk in this film. And hunkishness civilized. Thor is a barbarian in New Mexico, and the film plays on his neanderthal qualities to superb comic effect. Slowly his experience of these weak mortals teaches him to live for others, and with uncertainties. Until his friends come to get him, he has accepted exile and the fact that the Allfather is dead.

I think the film had a slight problem with pacing at the beginning, some of the editing during the dialogue scenes was clunky (we get it, Loki's silence is significant!), and some of the CGI was a bit flat. But these flaws are forgivable when we have acting, characters and themes that are so satisfyingly intelligent and beautifully accomplished. A real must, this one. Well done, Mr. Branagh!

Right. Bring on Captain America and the X-Men!

2011-05-01T12:21:00.000-07:00

'Weak and timid minds, afraid of the present because they are unequal to the emotional strains it imposes on them, find a welcome calm awaiting them when they step outside it into the emotional past, where all passion is spent, all strife ended, and action that once was alive and dangerous is stilled in the calm of death. To such minds there is great attraction in the study of history, because it seems to offer them an escape from the urgencies and perplexities of actual life into a realm of peace.' - R.G. Collingwood, The Principles of History

The past inside the present

2011-05-01T10:15:00.000-07:00

You know what? The fatuous musings over here might not be ENTIRELY fatuous. I was just re-reading R.G. Collingwood's brill Autobiography (the spark that lit the Cambridge School fire) and seriously, if the hauntologists need a more coherent theory than just "something with ghosts in", then they can do worse than this:

'...the modern historian can study the Middle Ages ... only because they are not dead. By that I mean not that their writings and so forth are still in existence as material objects, but that their ways of thinking are still in existence as ways in which people think.'

...the past which an historian studies is not a dead past, but a past which in some sense is still living in the present.'

Although the metaphor Collingwood goes for is not ghosts but light. Paraphrased:

'...the present is not opaque, it is transparent, so that the past shines through it and their colours combine into one.'

Fitting, since history is what will save humanity from the abuses of technological power witnessed in the 1910s. Less nostalgia or fear of the repressed, more augmentation of consciousness -- becoming 'a great many kinds of man' (pre-feminism, this) able to deal with every situation effectively to advance the interests of all.

So not really hauntology then... Call it what it is: an idealism which Hegel might recognise...

I like it. For me it sounds like this and this and this and this...

2011-04-28T12:37:00.001-07:00

"In general, men judge more by sight than by touch. Everyone sees what is happening, but not everyone feels the consequences. Everyone sees what you seem to be; few have direct experience of who you really are. Those few will not dare speak out in the face of public opinion when that opinion is reinforced by the authority of the state." - Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

Chew

2011-04-26T17:28:00.000-07:00

The hook for this little comic is that Agent Chu gets a psychic read from the stuff he eats, helping him solve impossible cases. This in an environment where poultry has been made illegal following a massive bird flu epidemic. Crazy stuff, but it's used very intelligently: as satire on prohibition and food production. What really sticks, however, is the comment on cop-work: 'It's a sad fact, an awful truth. Sometimes, in the course of this job, you're going to eat terrible things, all in the name of justice'. The speech is by Mason, Chu's partner (a cross between Orson Welles and a grizzly bear, according to the creators). While Chu's so straight he'll throw his own brother in the can for smuggling chicken, Mason is an ends justify the means kinda guy. The two are set on a collision course at the end of the first book.

If there's something missing, John Layman (who scripts the series) calls it out: Tony Chu really is a humourless protagonist. And although Rob Guillory (the artist) makes Mason jump off the page every single time he appears on it, there is something a little generically eccentric about the character. As for the pathetic romance, it isn't upped by japery, so just stays pathetic. You're expecting Casanova levels of rapid-fire odd-ball chicanery, but it's actually rather grounded. There's clever storytelling here, but for me it lacks that gut-punch factor.

Siege: Avengers tie-ins

2011-04-25T03:52:00.000-07:00

I slammed Bendis pretty hard up there, didn't I? Slightly less dismissive now that I've read the Siege tie-ins he penned, where you find all the character / drama that makes the punching in the main book explicable. There's lovely moments between Luke and Jessica (although some of the dialogue and speechifying meanders a bit) and the Hood and Madame Masque. Over on Dark Avengers, we finally deal with Osborn and the Sentry properly, and there's a genuinely disturbing sequence with Bullseye that reminds you of just how great Bendis's Daredevil was.

Now I'm just annoyed at how this cross-over was organised. No unifying theme behind it (at least Secret Invasion riffed on the 'war on terror'), just an EVENT you can hang lots of different story threads on. Well I'm sorry, but that's not good enough. The Marvel U may be a vibrant community, but the desire to see it all in one place isn't as pressing as the desire for good storytelling. With Siege, all of Bendis's talent was in the background books. The answer is obvious: bring that background to the fore.

Aetheric Mechanics

2011-04-20T17:19:00.000-07:00

Sherlock Holmes gone steampunk, I thought, although Warren Ellis is gracious enough to provide his own genealogy, which also includes The Prisoner of Zenda and Japanese anime. You've got to use yr deductive skills on this one. The language, it being an alternate world story, is unfamiliar, and I had to read some exchanges several times before I could piece together what was going on. The only time it bugged me was the hour-long gap between two panels, signaled by the appearance of tea and an ellipsis at the beginning of Sax Raker's dialogue. It took about five seconds for me to realize that the conversation between those panels had shifted. This either means that the effect doesn't quite work, or that I am stupid.

In any case, as with all good speculative fiction, the world starts to feel more comfortable as you spend more time in it. Particularly liked how ur encouraged to look for clues with a page of silent panels examining a dead body. Like Dr. Watcham, ur trying to second-guess the brilliant detective working in front of you. (I got none of the clues right btw.) On a related note, some of the blocking is inspired. Particularly admire the three-panel zoom thru the motor car window from Watcham to Raker. Also the page of over-the-shoulders that lead to the p.o.v. half-page spread of Raker's study. Very lovely. The artist is someone called Gianluca Pagliarani. He has a very clean unfussy style, and the detail of his crowd-scenes, ships and laboratories is impressive.

I'm no scientist, but the science here is very funky: quantum strings fired thru laptops full of old movies into the brain of Albert Einstein reconfigures reality. Or something along those lines. There's talk of 'haunted meat' -- fiction reshaping fact, characters becoming real people. But the real interest lies in the dynamic between Watcham, Raker and Inanna. Watcham is scarred by his tour of duty, but will live to see his friend taking that experience seriously -- applying his intellect not just to solving crime in London but to international politics and war. Raker makes the choice Veidt refuses to make in Watchmen, putting the personal first, and then trying to salvage what is left of the world. It's a crazy resolution, but an inspiring one as well.

Another Apparat cracker, in other words...

2011-04-20T13:24:00.000-07:00

'This avidity alone, of acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves and our nearest friends, is insatiable, perpetual, universal, and directly destructive of society. There scarce is any one, who is not actuated by it; and there is no one, who has not reason to fear from it, when it acts without any restraint, and gives way to its first and most natural movements.' - David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature

The God Delusion

2011-04-17T13:47:00.000-07:00

More notes for later pondering. I'm not all that interested in Dawkins going thru all the metaphysical arguments for why God doesn't make sense, since logically watertight philosophy obv isn't what motivates belief. Some years ago I wrote an embarrassing post abt my own history with religion, which criticized Dawkins on this point. Turns out my comments were unfair, he does talk about the origin of religion and morality. And since my interest in Hume and Smith revolves around these areas, I wanna note what he says on the subject.

I've also gotten to understand and like the guy a bit more, although I think the four-page analysis of the hate-mail he receives is still indicative of a certain narcissism. Says the kid with the blog, right? Pots and kettles and whatnot... Notes follow:

Religion consumes resources in activities that do not directly ensure the survival of yr genes, so what in Darwin's name is goin on? Little evidence that it helps with stress-related disease, although the placebo effect might suggest it's a factor. Then again, religion can often cause stress...

Instead, Dawkin's favours the idea that religion is a by-product of other useful psychological predispositions. One such predisposition is for children to unquestionably accept the advice of their elders (one does wonder how much experience Dawkins has with disciplining children...). Thus beliefs are easily transmitted from generation to generation, but this doesn't explain where these superstitions come from.

For this Dawkins goes deeper into evolutionary psychology, refering to the research of Paul Bloom, who argues that children instinctively form dualistic ideas about mind and matter, and that they assign purposes to everything, making them hardwired for belief in souls and a Creator. But how is this useful for survival?

Well, predicting the behaviour of the world around us (e.g. of predators or potential mates) is very useful for survival. Here Dawkins turns to Daniel Dennet: establishing physical laws is time-consuming, so humans cut through the process by assuming there's a design or purpose to the things we encounter (e.g. we don't need to understand physics to identify what a torch or a gun does). A further short-cut (when situations are really time-sensitive), is to assume that such purposes are intended by agents (e.g. this lion wants to eat me). This intentional stance may be where the instinctual dualism comes in, and why we postulate weather gods and so on (tho such imaginings are not esp time-sensitive...).

There are other by-product explanations, and Dawkins lists a bunch of people with them (seems like almost any disposition can 'misfire' and form gods -- this vagueness is rather annoying). One he likes enough to explore is the propensity to fall in love (and so stick with a partner in raising children) redirected towards loving God in a sexy Teresa of Avila way. More interesting is the idea of constructive irrationality: it being advantageous to hold strong convictions and persist with beliefs rather than vacillate and never get shit done. Dawkins mentions self-deception and wishful thinking in relation to this, but doesn't explore either in the kind of detail they deserve.

The main point is that religions are by-products of useful dispositions, consisting of local arbitrary elements, and also elements that appeal to some fundamental psychological uniformity in humans. This is illustrated by a very long discussion of memes. (The whole ideas-genes analogy has always struck me as an incredibly long-winded way to explain something pretty straightforward, so I'm movin on).

On to the Darwinian origins of morality. Natural selection very easily explains hunger, fear and lust, but what about altruism? Genes can code behaviour that encourages the survival of the same genes in other bodies i.e. kin. Also, reciprocity as explored in game theory: the most stable option is to give the benefit of the doubt, repay good deeds and punish bad ones. Reputation for generosity spins off from this, as does conspicuous consumption -- advertising yr superiority by demonstrating yr ability to preserve others).

Life in villages, or as roving bands of baboon-like animals, is ideal for the evolution of such dispositions (xenophobic grouping as well). But these are general rules which misfire, even more so in modern society: our pity instinct directed at strangers unable to reciprocate is one such 'precious' Darwinian mistake.

There are moral universals coded into our natures which we cannot easily justify with reason, a moral sense or grammar, revealed by questionnaires posing moral dilemmas. Kant's injunction to not use rational beings as means to an end (even a useful one) without their consent seems to be one such principle (tho what the evolutionary explanation for it is not explored).

The idea that we need divine reward and punishment to be good is dismissed, but the (more interesting) existentialist challenge: how to determine morality without religious absolutes, is fudged: Dawkins leaves that to the moral philosophers, tho I suspect he sympathizes with consequentialists rather than absolutists or deontologists.

If part of moral behaviour is genetically determined, the rest is all about zeitgeist. Dawkins claims there is a 'somewhat mysterious' broad liberal consensus on ethical principles (basically the equality of races and sexes), which moves in a consistent positive direction. Dawkins admits he's practicing amateur sociology here, but points to the influence of leaders such as Martin Luther King and improved (secular) education as possible drivers of this zeitgeist. Biology and evolution is especially important for Dawkins here because it removes the grounds for prejudice and partiality, which he identifies strongly with religion (but also, according to his theory, with genetically encoded dispositions). As for where the zeitgeist goes next, Dawkins refers to Peter Singer's Animal Liberation and a move to a post-speciesist condition. A nice note to end on.

Girl Unit / FaltyDL / N-Type / Untold

2011-04-15T03:21:00.000-07:00

In that order, I believe, over @ FWD last night. Interesting how the line-up doesn't line up in order of profile. I mean, who is N-Type again? He mostly span halfstep wobblers, which you know, fine, if you like that sort of thing. For me, the vibes came and went. Not so with Untold. Solid hour of bobbing and weaving thru his clatter. Interesting that he didn't try to wrong-foot people with the more dance-unfriendly tunes he's capable of. But he was rounding off the night, and perhaps he didn't want to make things difficult. In my semi-intoxicated state, everything sounded like 'No One Likes A Smart-Arse' from the EP. Perhaps he has embraced that sentiment.

But the real draws were Girl Unit and FaltyDL. I arrived midway thru the former's set. He was doing his glowing cavernous southern hip-hop thang, tho he found room for Pearson's 'Deep Inside' refix in there. The floor was still too empty for it to really have an impact. He ended on his own swooshing version of Ciara's 'Ride'. The dubsteppers seem to love that tune, as did I. Apart from those peaks, the emphasis was on laying down spaceous swaying music. I swayed. 'Twas good.

Falty's turn on the decks was a bit disappointing for me. He started off (I think) with the breezy riff at the beginning of 'Gospel of Opal', but then instead of Anneka's beautiful vocal, we got some beach party chanting. I thought he would just stick to his muffled 2step beats and pour on all kinds of washes and pulses and vox on top, but instead he went everywhere. Perhaps he thought he needed to lead into N-Type's more rugged sound, or just fit the pumping dance-floor formula, but I missed the skittish rhythms and the soulfulness he's capable of.

Source Code

2011-04-09T11:19:00.000-07:00

Duncan Jones trades 2001 for Philip K. Dick, and it's a good call. Can't get away from that hour-long tv-special vibe, but it doesn't feel ponderous here. I think this is down to the actors having simple but compelling little narratives to run thru. Monaghan gets very thin material, but her charm saves the character. Farmiga is superb as the dispassionate C.O. trying to keep a level head. Watching her move from callous annoyance to empathy and heroism is a treat. Wright is a mass of manic ticks, but he does a lot better than the standard creepy bad guy (one of the weakest parts of the film - what is his motivation again??). And Gyllenhall. There's one breakdown scene he fumbles, where I just couldn't believe him the way I could believe Sam Rockwell. But everything else he does better: the flirting, the confusion, the very moving phone-call to his estranged father, and I swear he is the grand master of the fatalistic long-stare.

Jones's throws in some impressive visual trickery. It doesn't dazzle like the world-bending in Inception, but keep things 'warped sci-fi' in what would otherwise be a pretty straight-looking thriller. The smooth tracking shots thru gratings come as standard, but there is an awesome leap from a moving train, and a pretty cool still close-up where the dungeon background reconfigures itself. And Jones, incredibly, finds original ways to film slow-mo explosions. The film begins by smashing together verticals and horizontals, which creates an effect that is a bit too abstract for me to understand. Regardless, there is invention and playfulness here, subtle but delightful.

Yet still has that tv-movie vibe? Why is that? Femes, innit. There's a joke about going to India to find yrself, but really it's hanging a lantern on some very corny corn. Gyllenhall's reconcilement with his father is little better, although he handles the scene really well. MUCH better is Gyllenhall's relationship with the two women in the film, one being inspired to defy her tyrannous employers, the other finding universes of experience in little eight minute bursts. This last idea is really let down by the way Jones chooses to end his film. Partly I was peeved because I couldn't understand the quantum (Aitch had to explain it to me very slowly). But I also felt that the glorious freeze-framed final kiss would have been a great way to end the thing - you didn't need an afterlife, a final twist in the narrative. Black Swan > Inception. I want films to build to crescendos, not pull the rug from underneath at the last moment. This is why Source Code isn't going down as a fave, despite all the learnin Jones has done since his debut feature. Next one will hit the mark, hopefully.

(On an admin note, and for whoever's listening, there's not gna be an awful lot of posts this month, for I've got essays to write in the real world. Hopefully the Pages will get livelier in May. Looking fwd to that a WHOLE bunch)

Ethics in an age of self-interest

2011-04-01T10:09:00.000-07:00

The sub-title of How Are We To Live?, a self-help manual (basically) by Peter Singer. I had Singer pegged as a straight Benthamite, so the existential bent of the book (the title is significant, if a bit ungainly) was a surprise. Don't really have time to do more than summerize for future pondering, unfortunately. Pretty convinced on the whole, tho more pessimistic abt the last part. Notes follow:

Genetic explanations for altruism towards yr family (they share yr genes to some extent). Also, more broadly, anyone you can establish stable reciprocal relationships with: since these structures help survival. Thru an experiment with "prisoner's dilemma" games, some basic rules for exchanges are laid down. Always be ready to co-operate, stop co-operating if the contract is broken (no turning the other cheek here), forgive if guilty parties show clear signs of wanting to co-operate again, don't let envy stop you co-operating. Most systems of justice, in most societies, follow this pattern. So in many areas, our natural inclinations point in an ethical direction (Singer pretty much defines ethics as the opposite of self-interest).

So far, so very David Hume. The problem is that all this co-operative behaviour is essentially local. We're not helping those who are not helping us. Singer needs a way to enlarge the circle of sympathy. Ethics is about going beyond self-interest.

The religious answer is dismissed: encouraging an ethical life thru fear of hell is nasty, and with the decline of religion, unworkable. Kant's categorical imperative alternative (no rewards, just duty) is junked for driving an unnecessary line between ethics and self-interest (the amiable Humean position set out above). Closing off morality in this way means you are not able to justify it to those who do not accept the rules you lay down. (Howev, see below...)

Hume (and genetics) could also be used to counter the existentialist response to the decline of religion (that there is no morality, so all our choices are arbitrary). But Hume's benevolence is still local, and questioned by Bentham's more pessimistic utilitarianism: self-interest (pleasure and pain) governs behaviour, and to resolve the conflicts between individual and social pleasure maximization, you need the law.

Singer then swivels to talk about how to make life meaningful, setting out the existentialist solution of generating yr own project, and work towards it, regardless of what it is. Singer sanctions this plan, but wants to be able to evaluate the choice. Some projects are more worthy than others. Obsessive emulation and psychiatric inwardness both come under fire for being ineffective at providing fulfillment. Surprise, surprise, the best projects are the ethical ones, because they are the easiest to justify.

What are the criteria for evaluating the merits of life projects? This is where Singer's Benthamism shows up: reducing evident pain and suffering. From the P.O.V. of the universe, yr pleasure is no more important than any other being's pleasure, no matter how 'other' they are (animals therefore qualify). Singer brings up Marx as an example of an ill-conceived project along these lines, but says these mistakes shouldn't deter us.

But, that pesky Hume problem: this lovely citizen-of-the-world stuff doesn't square with our genetic wiring. Singer has to concede this point. Kant is right in some respect: reason suggests an ethic that conflicts with our interests. We can observe that there are other beings who experience pleasures, and that (from the P.O.V. of the universe) pleasures are equally privileged, so the fact that we care for certain people's pleasures more than others is contradictory. And with the rise of global communications, the contradiction becomes ever more evident.

John Stuart Mill muscles in at the very last moment to raise the quality of pleasure question. Yeah ok, absence of physical pain might not be the only value we value, but it is the most immediate and universally agreed upon. Pain always puts higher pleasures (like beauty, autonomy etc.) on the back-burner.

Singer admits that a life of absolute impartiality is both impossible and undesirable. He just wants to modify our vision a little, make us aware of the broader picture: poverty, animal cruelty, the environment. I think he also wants to square this with self-interest. Commitment to a good cause can provide that life project we psychotherapy-addicted consumerists all seem to want.

2011-03-29T09:50:00.000-07:00

"Sir Isaac Newton himself who could measure the courses of the planets, and weigh the earth as in a pair of scales, even he had not algebra enough to reduce that amiable part of our species to a just equation: and they are the only heavenly bodies, whose orbits are as yet uncertain." - David Hume, Letter to Mrs. Dysart of Eccles, April 1751

2011-03-25T10:06:00.000-07:00

'It would be ludicrous to believe that a defenseless people has nothing but friends, and it would be a deranged calculation to suppose that the enemy could perhaps be touched by the absence of a resistance. No one thinks it possible that the world could, for example, be transformed into a condition of pure morality by the renunciation of every aesthetic or economic productivity. Even less can a people hope to bring about a purely moral or purely economic condition of humanity by evading every political decision. If a people no longer possess the energy or the will to maintain itself in the sphere of politics, the latter will not thereby vanish from the world. Only a weak people will disappear.' Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political

Silkie / Mosca / Ikonika

2011-03-24T18:20:00.000-07:00

In that order, I think, over at FWD>>. The sound, compared to Fabric, was pristine, clear, sharp, beautiful. Silkie was recognizably soulful and spacey. Mosca went for thunder and rudeboi chatter, but it was Ikonika's rugged videogame workouts that did the most damage. Never rated her all that much after that Contact album, but now I'm pretty much in love. Dropped her own bleepy version of Ciara / Tricky Stewart / The-Dream's 'Ride' in the middle of her set, a song (and video) I've been obsessing over these past couple of days. Moment of the night.

2011-03-24T08:51:00.000-07:00

'To the wild billows it has been said, ‘thus far shalt thou go, and no further; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed.’ Vainly then do they beat and foam, restrained by the power that confines the struggling planets in their orbits, matter yields to the great governing Spirit. But an immortal soul, not restrained by mechanical laws and struggling to free itself from the shackles of matter, contributes to, instead of disturbing, the order of creation, when, co-operating with the Father of spirits, it tries to govern itself by the invariable rule that, in a degree before which our imagination faints, regulates the universe.' - Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Joe The Barbarian

2011-03-20T16:57:00.000-07:00

A riff on Conan? Fantasy novels in general, according to wikipedia. And it's Grant Morrison, and he's playing inside our collective unconscious again -- funneling timeless allegories of life vs. death, science vs. faith, cowardice vs. courage, thru a tale of a bullied teenager with an overdeveloped imagination dealing with bereavement. Heaving with ideas (warrior rats, dwarf pirates, flying machines) and phenomenal set-pieces (there's an awesome retelling of Gandalf's duel with the Balrog in the middle of the mini). As important is the palpable sense of threat Morrison and artist Sean Murphy create. The hero is diabetic, and a lack of glucose fires off a spectacular, and very distracting, hallucination. The tension between wanting to explore this marvelous imaginary world, and wanting its author to survive, is very well managed. Thrilling.

Ramadanman / Joy Orbison / Ben UFO / Mala / Pinch

2011-03-19T11:32:00.000-07:00

@ Fabric, my first exposure to dubstep in rave form. Pretty good line-up, right? Some of the leading lights gathered together to celebrate the release of Ramadanman's FabricLive CD. So 'twas of interest that Rama's set, which kicked off the party, moved me the least. Very housey, I thought. You couldn't escape the 4/4. Where did the swing go, dude? The haywire precussion bits were the most energizing, but quite a lot of it plodded. I was pretty grateful when the awkward transition to James Blake's "I Never Learnt To Share" heralded the end of the set.

Joy Orbison b2b with Ben UFO were next. Joy O may prove to be a bit of a one-hit-wonder, I fear. Was that jazzy noodling I heard on one of the tracks? Ben UFO in action, however, was mesmerizing. My spirits had picked up by the transition to a more garage-y rhythm, anyways, but the way he pulled the beat back and dropped it... the man's a pro.

Mala b2b with Pinch was the highlight of the night, obv. One bringing the half-step, the other the wobble. A better fit for the soundsystem as well, I thought. The youngsters with their chopped vox and synths had the the buzz and bubble of their tracks filtered out by speakers that leaned overwhelmingly on bass. That said, I listen to Hessle's audio on computer speakers, so my perspective is probs very skewed. Anyways, once things got down to the gutter rumbles and whipcracks, skanking became an unadulterated pleasure.

As for the venue, bit of a maze. Looks great, in a superclub pretending to be grimey kind of way. The male/female ratio was really bad, however. The ladies disappeared almost entirely when the old-gen dubstep kicked in. Hessle's take on funky house is perhaps still too muscular for the female contingent to fully get on board. Racial mix was predominantly white, perhaps because of the (very house and techno inflected) music, or perhaps because it's Fabric and it costs a fortune. Very middle class clientele as well. Man, everyone looked just like me! Highlights weren't many. The fat guys with the sunglasses are always the most fun. I swear the guy standing next to (but not in) the dj booth looked exactly like Kieran Hebden. Also spotted a kid with a Tellison t-shirt, for which I was grateful. Not an insular scene, at least. But not a particularly inspiring one, either.

Somersault

2011-03-14T17:58:00.000-07:00

Oppression on two levels. Heidi needs her bambi eyes, and men, to survive. Her widowed landlady is the contrast here, their scrapbooks the link between them. When Heidi tries to ensnare Joe, asking him if he loves her yet, Joe bristles. So Heidi makes herself vulnerable, dependent.

But look at Joe's farmhouse, his reference to peasant food, Heidi not knowing what to order at the restaurant. The relationship bridges a pretty stark class division as well, one brought out emphatically by Joe's jealous friend Stuart.

Great how gentle the touches of dialogue are. Bianca telling Heidi she's "alright"... to ride her brother's pony. Heidi and Joe's relationship is BUILT on indirect communication. Karl's empathy problem rather bluntly states the case: Joe can't communicate, and the only intimacy Heidi is aware of is the physical kind. Actually, Joe's just as bad, and a hypocrite for it -- rejection leads him to look for rebounds in surprising places.

Hence the blue. VERY blue, this film. Snow snow snow, snowing in the emotion. Joe uses boiled water to melt the ice off his windshield -- his first night with Heidi. And the climactic scene where the confrontations spill out -- flame red.

Several (male, which is interesting) reviewers were a bit frustrated with the beginning and ending of the film, but I think the answer lies in the director's professed fairy-tale sensibility. The film kicks off with Heidi kissing her mother's boyfriend, and then being discovered. Her mother is horrified, and Heidi runs away. No motive is readily supplied, so it does end up feeling slightly contrived. But I think the fairy-tale mood comes to the rescue. It's a thematically relevant way to launch our heroine into her somersault. When things turn upside down, then we'll get to the bottom of her character. And the ending? Well, I just like to think that the director has read Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber. Feels contrived, until you start thinking about it.

Batman R.I.P.

2011-03-14T14:04:00.000-07:00

Morrison is so consistently excellent, you end up focusing on the small number of storytelling beats he fumbles. Here, the conversation with Jezebel in the Batcave, and some of Doctor Hurt's speeches, are less sublime, more ridiculous. The pulp needs to touch base with reality SOMEWHERE, Grant. In general, the two villains weren't all that interesting, perhaps because I haven't read the series as a whole. (Le Bossu, on the other hand, was magnificent.)

But this is me quibbling at the margins. Yet another sumptuous performance, hitting that nerve of unrelenting tenacity in Batman's character much better than Gaiman did. The confidence in the storytelling, particularly in the later issues, is a marvel. Morrison is almost better at the lightning fast, hypercompressed scenes, distilling the essentials before zooming on to the next page. He trusts his audience to keep up. And our trust is rewarded.

Siege

2011-03-12T15:57:00.000-08:00

Please tell me this is the end of it now. We know the line off by heart. Avengers Disassembled, House of M, Civil War, Secret Invasion -- one giant pre-planned story involving the entire Marvel universe. Is it now done? Has Bendis had enough? Isn't it time to let this thing go?

Only four issues, this one, so there's no space for anything but the punching. And said punching is just the siege of Gondor in Return of the King, but with superheroes. In itself, nothing to complain about -- there's plenty of widescreen battle-scene glee here. But what happened to the characters, guys? Osborn? Loki? Their motives, anyone? And the Sentry? Allegory for what, pray tell? What is this book saying? Why was it written?

Bendis has had a grand old time playing in the Marvel universe, and his impact at the company will (deservedly) go down in history. But he needs to leave the playpen for a bit. He's talked loads about how he believes constant output improves quality, but I think he's mistaken. His jokes aren't funny anymore, and he's running out of things to say. Tap out, man. Give some other writers a chance. Let's see what Fraction or Brubaker or Hickman can do.

Hauntology and the Cambridge School

2011-03-12T04:47:00.000-08:00

I'm not really old enough to get into this 'hauntology' biznezz. Nostalgia can only go so far when ur in yr early twenties. Sure, I've been transported to foggy past worlds by records such as Untrue and Suburban Tours, but I've also been to Ybor City on the back of Separation Sunday. On the whole, it's difficult for me to believe that the present is somehow inauthentic, cannibalistic, whatever. Then again, I probably don't understand all this very well. Clearest exposition of hauntology I've read is in a piece on The Invisibles, for Jebus's sake! Still, this is the internet. You are positively encouraged to pontificate on stuff you know nothing abt!

Anyways. Was reading James Tully's account of Locke's property theory just now, and got to the part where he hits back against Marxist readings of Locke as the founder of bourgeois liberalism. Tully is a pretty fervent disciple of the Cambridge School (he shouts out Foucault, Pocock and Skinner often enough), and his project is to rescue the radical Locke -- the Locke who, for example, argued against absolutist private property. The Locke who was on the side of Christopher Hill's Levellers and E.P. Thompson's working class. Because that's what Skinner's method is all abt. You look to the past to discover those defunct ideologies that could serve as alternatives to present day moral and political assumptions.

Interesting parallel, innit? Might just be a parallel. Hauntology is a pretty loose concept, seems to me. Just a disposition, a vague despair, escapism, if ur being particularly unkind. Bet you can find those feelings throughout history. The idea could also probably loop together a mass of unrelated modern phenomena. But what do I know! Simon Reynolds's new book will hopefully set me straight on the subject...

My Inner Bimbo

2011-03-08T17:03:00.000-08:00

Not for everyone, one of the quotes on the back cover says. Raw, interesting, confusing, are some of the other verdicts. Sam Kieth being known for mainstream work, this sort of psychedelic, psychological, semi-autobio stuff seems to throw reviewers off-balance. And B&W to top it all off!

A shame, really. This book shouldn't be viewed as niche or difficult. It is pretty much getting the comix thing right, I feel. Forget panels. Here is the brain of the author in words and pictures -- non-linear storytelling with everything left in. Jokes, influences, neuroses, flights of fancy. Everything that makes up who we are.

My Inner Bimbo has a killer hook. We have a 50-year-old protagonist called Lo and his 62-year-old wife called Betsy. It's a marriage not without its problems, which lead Lo to create for himself a Bimbo companion, which serves both as a projection of femininity and as a representation of his teenage self. Both are cast as young, weak and stupid, and Lo rapes / beats them up for it... You sold yet?

Be warned, the rest of this post is gonna get into detailed exposition and decoding. Lo met his wife when he was a teenager. Now that she's in her sixties, he's settling for porn rather than sex. He's also flirting with his hot art class teacher. Gradually we realize what's going on. Lo courts his wife's disapproval, then when she attacks him, he plays the martyr. It's a petty way of punishing the woman that makes him feel powerless. Ultimately, the routine is caused by regret at marrying so young.

Sidebar: if the book has a fault, it's the rather blunt way it relays Lo's problems. At times it almost feels like yr reading the notes of a psychiatrist. Then again, I can deffo believe the character (who is into all kinds of New Age self-improvement) self-analyzes in this way, so Kieth just about gets away with it.

The Bimbo, meanwhile, is initially just a sex object. However, a confrontation with Manet's The Lunch on the Grass begins a journey into subjectivity. She is the part of Lo that engages with art and develops as a person. But Lo isn't listening. He traded self-awareness for self-pity a long time ago. The Bimbo can't influence him, or get rid of him, so resolves on suicide. It doesn't quite work out (she is a part of his brain, after all).

Suicide also shadows Lo's existence. His wife's previous hubby killed himself, and the suggestion is that if Lo doesn't sort himself out, he'll end up dead as well. There is some very obvious symbolism with swords here: Lo has to straighten his one out and "stab" the Female Disapproval Monster. Sex seems to be key. Part of Lo's problem is the division he creates between body and spirit. Sex becomes porn, a mental activity. The hot art class teacher, meanwhile, urges her students to embrace their inner anarchy. Go wild, get weird. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and sleep with your wife!

Bimbo's suicide having failed, she expresses her distress by taking a vow of silence. Lo's curiosity about her experiences with the hot art class teacher leads to a confrontation with all his problems. He figures it out, and is reconciled (physically and spiritually) with his wife, and his female side. The only problem left is a lack of purpose -- Lo has no existentialist project. He's tied up, drifting, not listening to his singing Bimbo / muse. The final issue has a climactic battle where the conflict of the book is reimagined in allegorical form -- hero vs. monster. Lo, thru his Bimbo, discovers his own imagination, a new confidence in his drawing, and decides to tell his story in comix form. At the end of the book, Lo and his Bimbo become more and more alike. She isn't needed anymore, and Lo finally lets her go.

How many books have traced the way a self-pitying middle-aged man's sexual revenge fantasies have eventually led to enlightenment and transcendence? Not that many, I'd wager. Kieth is serving up something really fresh and exciting here. More people need to get on it.

2011-03-05T09:42:00.001-08:00

'The fortunate and the proud wonder at the insolence of human wretchedness, that it should dare to present itself before them, and with the loathsome aspect of its misery presume to disturb the serenity of their happiness.' - Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

The Social Network and Criticism

2011-03-05T08:32:00.000-08:00

Mercer Finn has been published! Well, sort of. In a spangly digital magazine called M+. Boy is it pretty! Check it out here. My bit in it is a re-working of this post from the blog. While yr over the jump, look over fellow conspirator Tim Grundy's piece on webcomics, which has very effectively convinced me that there are better ways to waste my time on the internet. In fact, flip thru the whole thing and see what catches yr eye.

My article in the magazine is slightly edited for space (and probably for the better). I've only got the text I've sent over to the editor, which is what I'll post here. Call it the director's cut. Straight from the source:

The Social Network manages to achieve something quite rare in the film business: universal critical acclaim and controversy. Its numbers on Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes are eyebrow-raising (95% and 97% respectively), but it has come under fire from various quarters for its less-than-judicious treatment of its subject: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. To me, the mismatch represents two different ways of evaluating film, and art in general, which I shall herewith pompously entitle ‘technical’ and ‘moral’. Bare with me.

In technical terms -- as a film, as fiction -- The Social Network is brilliant. David Fincher keeps the talky-talky action, you know... ACTIVE. Which is pretty impressive, seeing as having people talking in rooms for two hours (as Aaron Sorkin describes his screenplay) is rarely conducive to entertaining cinema. The pace of Sorkin's dialogue is critical in giving the film propulsive power, but Fincher's montage sequences do just as much to keep things moving. I didn't know internet start-ups could be so exciting! Sorkin (who earns my never-ending admiration for creating The West Wing) is at his usual erudite blabber-mouth best. His comedic touches in particular deserve to be singled out. Look out for hilarious scenes with chickens and Harvard principles. And Jesse Eisenberg's shift from robotic nervousness to even more robotic confidence was captivating. He’ll sweep up awards this year, I’m sure of it.*

All good stuff, but let’s move to that grey area between the ‘technical’ and ‘moral’ analysis of art -- themes. Here, the film’s achievements are more shaky. Built around the irony of a creator of a networking site who cannot maintain friends of his own, The Social Network does a fine job of showing the full range of arseholery Zuckerberg is capable of. The descriptor 'asshole' bookends the film, delivered by two different ladies, and Zuckerberg goes from 'is' to 'trying to be'. Personally, I don’t really understand what Fincher and Sorkin are trying to say here. The next step, I guess, would be 'trying not to be', and the final image is both cruel and hopeful on that score.

This slightly fumbled ending leads me to suspect that the film might not be as clever as it appears to be. But even if I found it lacking, it remains impressive enough, from a technical viewpoint, to make the rave reviews understandable. But there is a bigger failure here, what I think can be described as an moral failure. The film is NOT fiction, or at least does not pretend to be. Before seeing it, I was aware of Sorkin’s insistence that his research was thorough, and that although he added drama, the story he was telling was factual. And I believed him! Only when I returned from the cinema to read around the subject did I find that the film’s ‘facts’ are, actually, seriously contested. Irin Carmon over at Jezebel (who was in the year above Zuckerberg at Harvard) notes that the decisions made by the film-makers about their story are pretty curious. Zuckerberg’s Facemash site compared men as well as women. He has had a serious girlfriend since 2003. The Social Network obscures and ignores these bits of biography. Carmon concludes that Fincher and Sorkin are “doing Zuckerberg himself a disservice to reduce his creativity and problem-solving to a sort of digital hate fuck”. The film is morally culpable.

Nathan Heller over at Slate, who was also at Harvard and knew Zuckerberg, points out that the film represented both in an extremely misleading way. Harvard was not a ‘citadel of old money’ with a ‘Jewish underclass’. The real Zuckerberg was “outwardly friendly, often smiling, confident”. Heller allows for the fact that the pressures of narrative can distort reality, but maintains that if the film’s ambition was to make sense of Facebook’s origin and success, The Social Network fails miserably. Facebook was not about getting dumped or getting into a fraternity, but grew out of a particular feeling of community that existed at Harvard. Zuckerberg was never “the best programmer around”, but he was a ‘canny and receptive cultural reader” who put those social bonds and that culture on the web. Heller reveals that there is a more interesting story here, and The Social Network did not tell it.

So we are left with a brilliant film that commits two serious ‘moral’ errors: against Zuckerberg specifically, and against the audience generally. Zuckerberg has been lied about and we have been deceived about him. Moreover, if we were led to expect a considered explication of Facebook’s origin and success, we have been rumbled. My question here is how to balance these ‘moral’ considerations with the +95% reviews the film received. I doubt whether review aggregator sites would include the articles by the two objectors mentioned above, because Carmon and Heller were writing commentaries, not reviews. They did not talk about cinematography or editing. However, they did talk about character and themes. From there they went on to critique the ideas the film was presenting as inadequate. My suspicion is that the +95% reviews have cut this last element out, and have left the audience to judge for themselves.

The Social Network is particularly good at demonstrating the distortions this approach can create. I think that criticism should cover all these areas. A critic should understand what a work of art is attempting to achieve (and how well it does so), but then should also evaluate that aim. Critics should be allowed to say that a film is bad because they do not agree with it. Such presumption might appear difficult to take at first. The irresistibly likable Mark Kermode, being a devotee of horror, has expressed wariness about making moral judgments on films. Nevertheless, his favourable appraisals of the Twilight movies, and his unfavourable appraisals of Judd Apatow’s comedies, seem to me to be based on something other than their technical achievements. Try as we might, we cannot divorce ourselves from our beliefs when we react to the beliefs of others, whether friends or film-makers. Acknowledging this when producing reviews is not only more honest, but encourages a more rounded evaluation of works of art.

* This piece was written a WHILE ago...

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

2011-03-04T15:36:00.000-08:00

Yet more links to Peter Bradshaw reviews. As is typical, the Christian layering is what leapt out at me most. Jesse James as the American celebrity-Christ. A living counter-cultural myth with the forces of order breathing down his neck. A fraud -- he didn't restrict himself to killing Unionists and he didn't give to the poor. But when did that ever matter? Playing the charismatic but deadly warlord is enough to ensnare the imagination. And people like him don't retire. Suicide, as Charley Ford so ironically tells him, is a coward's way out. So how do you go? How do you kill a god? You have a coward do it for you.

The cheap reenactments, and the religion they perpetuate, are a fake of a fake. Except it always becomes real, if enough people believe it. Charley's act becomes more and more lifelike, but he doesn't have the skill to engineer a glorious end. Bob is assassinated, but he never had a glorious life, ending up as a saloon owner and married to a stripper. And he realises this, and repents, before the end. Maybe his last words were a confession..?

I'm being pretty elliptical (even for me!), but that's kinda the effect the film has on you. It's all long takes, long dialogues, long silences. Oblique but tense. Bradshaw has a problem with the voice-over, but he likes his cinema extreme. I found I needed that comforting familiarity. Otherwise, I don't know if I could have taken the endless chilly exteriors and tormented, crumbling psyches...

2011-02-26T09:02:00.000-08:00

'Hereditary succession is a burlesque upon monarchy. It puts it in the most ridiculous light, by presenting it as an office which any child or idiot may fill. It requires some talents to be a common mechanic; but to be a king, requires only the animal figure of man -- a sort of breathing automaton. This sort of superstition may last a few years more, but it cannot long resist the awakened reason and interest of man.' - Thomas Paine, Rights of Man

A Genealogy of the Doctrine of Utility

2011-02-25T13:04:00.000-08:00

This blog is really turning into a scrapbook, now. I attended a lecture by Niall O'Flaherty (who first taught me on the history of political ideas) and I just wanna jot down some thoughts.

The basic idea is that the secular British utilitarianism of the 19th century has its roots in the theological utilitarianism of the 18th century. Here's how it works. In explaining the origin of morality, natural theologians sought a middle ground between Mandeville's reduction of all motives to self-interest and Hutcheson's divine 'moral sense'. The solution was that we associate goodness with utility, but then form abstract rules based on those associations to the point where we follow those rules even when they are not useful. Hence: a moral sense born out of self-interest.

(I think this looks a lot like Hume's idea of justice, but more on that below.)

The problem here is universality: you only get local moralities with this system. So you need something else. You need God. God has designed human beings to be happy, thus whatever promotes their happiness is moral. All that association and abstraction gets in the way of this simple fact and needs to be ditched. And so: utilitarianism.

Hume, being an atheist, can't go for the God option. Both his and Adam Smith's (also Rousseau's) moral systems remain products of social environment. Maybe that's why they didn't track into the 19th century? Instead you've got Paine's adaptation of natural law, Kant's categorical imperative, Bentham's utilitarianism... Maybe Hume needed a more secular era to get his due?

Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader?

2011-02-24T00:38:00.000-08:00

After the Morrison madness, it would have been especially difficult for Gaiman to shine. Like a lot of his stories, it's a bit... nice, in that unthreatening, vapid, Gaiman way. Not without merit, however. It's a gem of an idea, cute but poignant. And it does get at something essential about Batman -- his delusional obsession with this ridiculous crime-fighting business. It's all a lie, but not if you believe it. And that unbreakable will that never gives up on a problem. The man's crazy, he can't stop, he'll die in battle.

And be reborn, inevitably. The ending was a very rich cheese even by Gaiman's standards. But if the niceness is a bit sickly, it's still niceness. You can't hate him for it...

Superman Beyond

2011-02-23T03:54:00.000-08:00

May have been in a darker place when I wrote this. Obv I haven't been able to stick to the comix downsizing that was promised. I've quit Ultimate Spidey and X-Factor for cost reasons, and becasue I get better Bendis and David elsewhere (you should really check out Scarlet and Fallen Angel). Buffy Season 8 ended pretty well, with a welcome confession of sins from Whedon in the final issue, so I'll be picking up the new season when it comes out. Plus I keep buying trades -- this comix disease just cannot be rid of!

That's just the background to me having a second run at Final Crisis. I'm abt half-way thru now. It's telling, perhaps, that I quit last time just before reaching the centre-piece of the story, the two issue Superman Beyond arc. If I had read it then, I may have been much more enthusiastic about the whole book. The writing here is really quite dense -- symbols and patterns weaved with dazzling skill. I just want to unravel some of them, for reference more than anything.

Monitor is absolute and perfect, a white conscious void. (God?) Flaw encased in concept containing contradictions / events / stories. It's harmful: stories destroy / limit / define. Mysteries infect Monitor. History begins.

Contact makes probe split in two. One half a Silent Sentinel, a doomsday weapon to be used at the end of the world / final crisis. (Christ?) Other half Dax Novu. Seeks knowledge, infected with the bleed / life (body?). Died to chain beast / himself. Becomes Madrakk, eater of life. Will be unleashed at the end of the world / final crisis, when Monitor civilization declines and falls. (Lucifer? Anti-Christ?)

Mammon / Madrakk the evil god of greed / property / material wealth. Coming out of the bleed / void into the multiverse. (Body taking over the mind? Addiction to story?)

Superman and Ultraman not dualities but symmetries. Beyond conflict. Hate crime fused with selfless act. An act of enormous power. Transcendent.

The Silent Sentinel awakes (awesome letterbox effect on this page!) in the city of Monitors (readers?) between dimensions / panels. Realm of form and meaning to realm of primal forms. Weeja Dell meets him and leads him to final battle. Lover of Nix Voltan who would have fought against the Vampire Gods, but was killed / exiled unjustly.

Madrakk holds elixir of life, only vampires can consume it. Madrakk believed into existence, but Superman a better story. Madrakk is Dax Novu corrupted. Superman knows his origin, and kills him. Even the idea of him lost and forgotten.

"To be continued" a warning: stories never end. Carved on tombstone: life after death after life.

Part 1: Ogama cast down where he can do no harm. Feeds Ultraman the blood of Madrakk. Will return when Superman is weak.

Part 2: Superman wakes his sleeping beauty with a kiss. Feeds Lois the bleed and revives her. Remembers and saves while Madrakk forgets and kills.

Character's dreams, character's lives, our dreams and our lives, all resonate with story.

Enough fragmentary notes. These two issues tell a kind of meta-story behind ALL stories: tragedies, comedies, the quest... The presence of Captain Atom -- Watchmen's Dr. Manhattan -- might signal the kind of ambitions Grant Morrison has here. It's an staggering piece of myth-building, an intelligent exploration of our collective unconscious, and a supreme achievement in comics, really.

Blasts Secret Invasion out of the water, that's for sure.

ETA: Finished the book last night. It was huge, constantly surprising and very very awesome. There's just one more detail to add to the ramble above. The final crisis is only that of the Monitor race. They have decided to stop interfering with the earth and surrender to the bleed / life. Also significant that the humans and super-humans win using Metron's gift of knowledge. Has Morrison been reading Feuerbach, one wonders? We don't need the gods anymore. They have become human beings.

The one line that effectively summarizes all of the above: "This is the story of all our stories."

Savage Grace

2011-02-20T16:56:00.000-08:00

The effect so seamless, I didn't even notice it until it was pointed out in the "making of" feature on the DVD -- the film divided into five days, crucial turning points in the narrative. A decision forced by lack of funding, but one that pretty much makes the film what it is. There is no sweep. Rather, it is intensely focused on the detail of family bonds and secrets. Close-ups of revealing looks, faces composing themselves, moods shifting in unpredictable ways. And the pace is masterfully controlled. There is so little gap-filling info that you are constantly engaged thru every transition. And the set-pieces are gloriously put together. A movie full of little crescendos.

As for the content, well Peter Bradshaw can help with that. Father, mother and son all fail at fulfilling their expectations of each other. Barbara has to act the part of high-society wife, but her obsession with keeping up appearances alienates her husband. His presence and demeanor is a constant reminder that she doesn't fit in, and so she uses sex both to fight against and then to conciliate him. Doesn't work, obviously. He settles for sadism and then someone more carefree (and more youthful to boot).

Brooks is oppressed by the legacy of his more successful forebears, and wants his son to be cast in their image. But Tony is a mummy's boy, indolent, and worst of all, gay. Tony both desires the approval of his father, and finds his macho attitude stifling. But after the divorce, mother and son both fall apart -- drawn ever more tightly to each other, and yet repelled by that closeness. Dependance and distance, an embrace and a knife -- constant, concurrent extremes that tear the family apart.