Mike Long Does Annie's "Heartbeat"

So, the deal is, this guy is posting a new dance video every day for a year. This one and The Runaways' "Cherry Bomb" are my favorites so far.

New Trends in Independent Cinema

You've all heard about "mumblecore" and mumblecore (no quotation marks) and mumble-core and the mumble-corps (good one, J. Hoberman), but here is some up-and-coming stuff you might want to be the first on your block to talk about.

Jumbo-core: This is just like mumblecore, but with obese people.

Jumble-core: Antisocial young folks compete to finish puzzles in the daily paper.

Mumbly-core: Romantically fumbling twentysomethings inadvertently cut off each other's fingers.

Fumble-core: Post-collegiate pals ill-advisedly join a fantasy football league.

Grundel-core: It's insane, this guy's taint. Probably the next step for Joe Swanberg.

Grendel-core: Ill-at-ease part-time grad students try to impress each other by discussing Beowulf.

Dumbo-core: Socially inept young adults sit around and talk about which Brooklyn neighborhoods they would live in if only they could afford it.

Rumble-core: Rival gangs of white middle-class twentysomethings clash on the street. Voices are raised.

Stempel-core: Overeducated vicenarians cheat on a nationally televised game show.

Core-core: At the cusp of a delayed adulthood, affluent caucasian kids (and one Asian) sit around eating apples.

Bumble-core: Like mumblecore, but with more buzz.

Is this thing on?

Sorry.

Well, whatever you want to call it, I've only seen what's available on video. I want to make it down to the IFC Center while they are having their "New Talkies" series, especially for Hannah Takes the Stairs and Quiet City, but finishing my MA and finding a job are a higher priority the next couple weeks. (Hmmn. I sound like one of "them.") I adore the two Bujalski films. (I think I mentioned them somewhere else on this blog.) I'm less thrilled with Kissing on the Mouth and The Puffy Chair, but I do dig all the naturalism and I am eager to see more of it.

Jan Pehechan-Ho

I know this is the Bollywood clip only the most dilletantish of fans would add to his blog, but I can't help it. It makes me happy.

Lyrics (according to someone's comment on YouTube):
Jan pehchaan ho
Jeena aasaan ho
Dil ko churaane waalon
Ankh na churao, naam to batao


(Let us get acquainted
It would make life easier
You who steal our hearts, do not avert your glances
Tell us your name)

Dick Cheney comes clean about Iraq

I got this video from moveon.org:



So you knew all this 13 years ago? Can we stop calling outright boldfaced lies "mistakes" or "errors in judgment?"

Gay Man Women-Haters' Club

A sensitive type like me goes into a film like I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry expecting to find fault. I was prepared to find the type of gay stereotypes portrayed here by David Spade (mercifully briefly) and Nick Swardson. I was unsurprised when the gruff, macho, angry firefighter played by Ving Rhames turned into a Chaka Khan-singing, mincing exhibitionist after coming out of the closet. I was only a little bit surprised that Chuck (Adam Sandler) and Larry (Kevin James) never found themselves in a situation where it was necessary to demonstrate any physical affection for one another. I mean, that would be gross, right? I’m not exactly shocked that the film tries to have it both ways, mocking gays throughout and then preaching a message of tolerance at the end.

I was surprised by some things, though, and not pleasantly. I haven’t read anything about the crude way the film objectifies women, and there are even some critics who don’t see fit to mention the key role that Rob Schneider plays in the film. I think I’ve figured out the social hierarchy the film presents, so let me break it down for you.

-Straight men (except the ones who devote their lives to homophobia, as opposed to practicing it casually like our heroes, and except Steve Buscemi, for some reason)
-Gay men (ridiculous, but mostly in an amusing way. What can you do?)
-White women (The pretty ones are vapid sex objects. The unattractive ones (Rachel Dratch, Mary Pat Gleason) are ridiculous for wanting to be sex objects. Sometimes one is so damn hot that they transcend mere sex object status and become one’s primary sex object.)
-Asian women (sex objects)
-Asian men (of such low status that even Rob Schneider needs the addition of a funny wig and huge Coke bottle glasses to convey just how ludicrous they are)

Now, as critics, maybe we’re not paying attention. Maybe we’re scouring the film so conscientiously for signs of homophobia that we don’t notice the way women are portrayed. But in hindsight, the film is more repugnant in its treatment of women than in its (still somewhat troublesome) portrayal of gay men.

First off, we have the twins, Darla and Donna (portrayed by Rebecca and Jessica O’Donahue). Outer borough types, and easily duped by Chuck (apparently, despite the fact that he’s played by Adam Sandler, some kind of amazing lothario), who cheats on one with the other, and then uses their competitive nature to trick them into kissing each other for the amusement of his firefighter pals.

Then there are the Hooters girls. These women are apparently a stable of women that Chuck keeps around. For some reason, they are all Asian. They are giggling, squealing morons, not much smarter than household pets. Chuck shows Larry (Kevin James) how he can trick them all into bending over for his scopophilic pleasure.

Then there’s “Doctor Honey,” called such because when the hospitalized Chuck calls her “honey,” she corrects him, demanding to be addressed as “Doctor.” Finally, a woman with some self-esteem, who is not charmed by Chuck’s good looks (?) and his boorish manner. I did think to myself, I admit, that she looked more like a porn star than a doctor, and later realized that she is played by Chandra West, who actually plays a porn star on the HBO series, John from Cincinnati. So that may explain my confusion on that point. In any case, Dr. Honey stands up to Chuck’s piggishness in the hospital, and the next time we see her, she’s dressed up in fetish gear, in Chuck’s bedroom with the Hooters girls. So, haw haw, stupid women thinking that they will ever be respected or treated as equals when it’s guys like Chuck who really know how to treat them. I was less than amused. Was there a way to treat Dr. Honey’s apparent self-respect as something other than a cheap joke? I guess the important thing was to establish that Chuck is a pimp.

And then there’s Alex, the lawyer played by the smokin’ hot Jessica Biel. Biel is undeniably attractive and a likeable presence, but she hasn’t shown such great judgment to date in choosing her roles. Because Chuck is pretending to be gay when he meets Alex, she doesn’t get to experience the full impact of his charm. He surreptitiously ogles her; she mistakes him for a nice guy. Their relationship never really progresses much beyond that point. Even while pretending to be gay, Chuck’s masculine charm is apparently so overwhelming that she finds herself attracted to him. He adores her, but it’s never clear that this attraction is substantially different from that he feels for his twins and his Hooters girls. She’s just hotter than they are.

Meanwhile, that Rob Schneider character had me wondering what Guy Aoki is doing these days. (And if you haven’t seen Jesus is Magic, you should.) I mean, Mickey Rooney’s clownish “yellow-face’ performance as Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s is offensive, but at least the film’s many defenders can point out that it was made over forty years ago. Hasn’t our culture progressed past this type of thing yet? How does Rob Schneider get on his high horse about Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitism and then turn around and play a degrading role like this? It makes me wonder how firm he is in his commitment never to work for Gibson. Heh.


There are a few laughs in the film, and there are bit parts from people far too talented for this like the aforementioned Rhames, along with Rob Corddry and Robert Smigel, but in the end, it was more depressing than entertaining.

Edit: In surfing the internets during my "research" for this story, I found out that Rob Schneider's mother is actually Filipino, so maybe that makes his portrayal of a Japanese man less offensive somehow? Anyone?

Here are some photos of him, as a baby, as a Mexican, and as a hot chick. You decide.

One more thing I had to add here: Dan Ackroyd might, and Sandler might, but NYC firefighters, in general, do not love Rudy Giuliani, nor should they. Nor should anyone who actually lived or worked here during his mad reign. He's as venal and opportunistic and dishonest as they come, and he'd make a fine successor to GWB, but I thought we were sick of that crap.

"Did you order a pizza?"

-My favorite line from William Friedkin's Bug, which I saw earlier tonight at the Museum of the Moving Image, and liked quite a bit. I can't understand how the normally astute Stephanie Zacharek found the film so unbearably self-serious. While an intense and not altogether enjoyable experience, I thought the film was darkly funny. That whole exchange where Peter (Michael Shannon) emphatically asks Agnes (Ashley Judd), "What don't you know?" was amusing in a dreadful, doomed way, as I think was intended.

Also, I was unfairly dismissive of Rise: Blood Hunter. There were a couple of moments, between Avid-farts, that amused/surprised me, along with the relative heartlessness of the lead character. Still...

Tribeca Part 4: Korean Gangsters

Things did get better at Tribeca, before they got worse again.

Before I go into that, in response to ‘heckler blog,’ who’s apparently created an account just to comment here (perhaps he should have named himself ‘blog heckler’), I have to reiterate that I realize my story about Jamie Kennedy and Pablo is hearsay. However, in the little time I’ve known Pablo, he has proven himself a very trustworthy person. He acknowledged that the crowd seemed to be against him. No surprise, really; there might have been some Jamie Kennedy fans at the premiere of his new film, and they might not be the type of people who are predisposed to listen to someone who speaks very good English (but with a foreign accent) criticize their hero. I have absolutely no reason to doubt his account of what happened.

That said, I think you might be right about me being a nerd. So that stung a little.

Anyway, the two best films of the few I managed to see at Tribeca were Michael Kang’s West 32nd and Yoo Ha’s A Dirty Carnival, which has already achieved some success in South Korea.

Both are follow-ups to films that I liked a lot. West 32nd is Kang’s second feature. His debut was the humane but brutally honest coming-of-age comedy, The Motel. A Dirty Carnival follows Yoo’s well-executed political/social drama, Once Upon a Time in High School.

I was slightly disappointed in West 32nd, not so much because of the film’s shortcomings, but because in many ways it is a standard, if culturally specific, gangster film, and with my enthusiasm for The Motel, I was expecting even more. It’s a solidly entertaining drama about a driven young attorney, John Kim
(John Cho of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle), who, in his efforts to help the family of a Korean teenager who’s been arrested for murder, immerses himself in the shady underworld of Manhattan’s Koreatown, with the untrustworthy, volatile low-level gangster, Mike Juhn (a noteworthy debut from Jun Sung Kim), as his guide.

John’s beneficence is motivated in part by his attraction to Lila Lee (Grace Park, whom fellow nerds will recognize from Battlestar Galactica, handling a challengingly complex role with aplomb), the older sister of the murder suspect.

Naturally, things spiral out of control, and John, unable to turn away from the case, finds himself increasingly wrapped up in Mike’s chaotic world.

Kang writes multilayered, believable characters, directs his actors with skill, handles the violence reasonably well (including a chopstick assault lifted from Takeshi Kitano’s Fireworks), keeps things moving forward despite an incident-laden plot, and his film has a strong sense of place, and of community, from the room salons of Chelsea to the Korean neighborhoods of Flushing, Queens. But I didn’t find the story quite as convincing as the characters or the setting.

A Dirty Carnival is also a standard gangster story in some ways, but Yoo Ha writes and directs it with such power and energy that it transcends any genre limitations. This is the gangster saga at its pinnacle.

In an amazingly magnetic performance (I almost think you can tell how good he is, and how well shot the film is, from the screenshots posted here), Jo In-Seong plays Byung-du, a low-level gangster with money troubles who finds brutality and murder the only way to ingratiate himself to a mob boss (Jeon Ho-jin) and get ahead.

He turns out to be quite good at it, but naturally, there are complications in his rise to the top. Aside from his dangerous gangster rivals, Byung-du has to contend with a
manipulative old school friend, Min-ho (Min Nam-gung), a desperate aspiring filmmaker. Min-ho wants to make a gangster movie, and he needs Byung-du’s help to make it gritty and believable.

Min-ho ingratiates himself by re-introducing Byung-du to his old high school crush, Hyun-ju (Lee Bo-yeong).

The fascinatingly detailed and fluid relationships between the characters, combined with the strong visuals, the magnificently choreographed chaos of the fight scenes, and Yoo’s intricate but believable plot, held me rapt throughout its 141 minute running time. This is a special film, and Yoo may now be in the same class with the immensely talented Bong Joon-ho (Memories of Murder, The Host)

If I’m up to it, I may come back later and write something about the last film I saw at Tribeca, Rise: Blood Hunter, yet another Avid-fart (term © Vern) -laden saga of a vampire who hunts her own kind, this one distinguished by the surprisingly frequent appearance of the bare boobs of Lucy Liu’s body double.

Or maybe that says it all.

Tribeca Part 3: Nobel Son better Lookout

The first movie I saw at Tribeca this year was Nobel Son, and despite the presence of a fairly strong cast, including Alan Rickman, Mary Steenburgen, and Bill Pullman, it was an inauspicious start.

Rickman plays Eli Michaelson, an insufferable egomaniacal lout of a college professor whose head just swells bigger when he learns he’s won the Nobel Prize for chemistry. Eli cheats on his wife Sarah (Steenburgen) and looks down on his son, Barkley (Bryan Greenberg) because Barkley is studying anthropology, more specifically cannibalism. The femme fatale, a poetess who calls herself City Hall (Eliza Dushku), seduces Barkley, who soon finds himself kidnapped by self-proclaimed autodidact Thaddeus (Shawn Hatosy).

If this already sounds a bit overstuffed, believe me I haven’t begun to scratch the surface. I didn’t even mention that Sarah is a brilliant forensic psychiatrist or that Danny DeVito plays the obsessive compulsive who rents the upstairs room. It’s not really clear why this particular family would need to rent out the spare room, but then there’s an awful lot here that doesn’t make sense. The kidnapping plot and the subsequent revenge plot are of the type that rely on a vast multitude of unlikely coincidences to work, and yet somehow they pretty much all come together.

It’s all presented with a surfeit of annoyingly gratuitous vertiginous camerawork and rapid-fire editing (including split screen). Director Randall Miller, who co-wrote the film with his wife, Jody Savin, also edited the film himself, and the model for the shooting and editing appears to be Tony Scott. I get a headache just writing that name, so I wasn’t impressed with how convincingly Miller copies his style.

Rickman is still pretty fun to watch, and Dushku is way too talented to be playing such a ridiculous role. I liked her character, but it soon became clear that I was responding to the actress’s energy, and by the end, I had no idea who she was playing. Greenberg was also fine, but he has one long heavy scene with Hatosy in which Barkley undergoes some kind of sudden and unmotivated personality change. The writing is flashy, like the directing, but sloppy.

I also saw The Lookout this week, with Pablo. Not at Tribeca, obviously, but this was a much stronger example of the caper film.

Pablo didn't care for it, but I thought it was very smart entertainment. Great performances from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeff Daniels, and Matthew Goode, a sharp script by Scott Frank, who also directed. He keeps things fairly simple and clean, and lets the twists and turns of the plot and our growing attachment to the characters drive the suspense. Isla Fisher plays the requisite seductress in this one, and I thought she was solid. She’s not necessarily a better actress than Dushku, but the script presented her as a real person, rather than some convenient construct whose personality shifts around to suit a convoluted plot.