Thursday, December 27, 2012

2012 film releases that stayed in my mind.

I'm behind on my moviegoing for this year (didn't even see the cult film du jour HOLY MOTORS), so this leaves out a lot of year-end awards contenders which I'll catch up with in weeks to come.  But here are several films I found memorable in a good way:
DJANGO UNCHAINED, LES MISERABLES, BERNIE, THE RAID: REDEMPTION, THE DEEP BLUE SEA,  YOUR SISTER'S SISTER, THE FIVE YEAR ENGAGEMENT, LINCOLN, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, FRANKENWEENIE, WRECK-IT RALPH, SKYFALL, FLIGHT, SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, THE HOBBIT (yes, THE HOBBIT), COSMOPOLIS, THE AVENGERS, LIFE OF PI, ARGO, THE MASTER, THE BOURNE LEGACY, ARBITRAGE, THE IMPOSSIBLE

Memorable, though flawed: ANNA KARENINA, KILLING THEM SOFTLY, KILLER JOE, BULLY, INTOUCHABLES, CLOUD ATLAS, HAYWIRE, THE DICTATOR, LAWLESS, LOOPER, JEFF WHO LIVES AT HOME

Actors better than film: THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL, HITCHCOCK, PROMISED LAND

Underachiever Award of 2012 (Tie): Tim Burton for DARK SHADOWS--perfect storm of too-jokey script plus Tim's unwillingness to leave soundstage/CGI creature comforts behind and shoot a lower-budget film in either NY (where Dan Curtis did his DARK SHADOWS features) or the British countryside; Meryl Streep's smug, lazy pirouette of a performance in HOPE SPRINGS; Pixar dumbing itself down with BRAVE.

Most memorable L.A. revival house film viewings this year: POSSESSION (uncut version), BEGGARS OF LIFE

Semi-guilty pleasure of the year: THE EXPENDABLES 2

Revised poem about poetry: SINNING.

SINNING




I’m alone in a small rowboat on the sea of Poetry.

A few feet away is a great white whale.



I’m offended by the comments the whale makes.

He's certain of his superiority to me in every way.



The whale blows opulent spouts of water about “community”.

But it’s a gated community keeping most poets at bay.



It’s time for me to stop turning my cheek.

I harpoon Moby Bard, spilling blood.



The whale proceeds to ram my rowboat until it’s destroyed.

I tumble into icy water and begin searching for safe harbor.



After I swim a few miles, I see another rowboat.

It’s filled with four studious practitioners of verse.



When I approach the boat, I cry out to the poets:

“Listen to me! I’m trying to help more of us to be recognized!”



For a moment, they stop to hear.

Then, they smash my unsubmerged body with their oars.



“O vile, foolish, childish, profane, divisive man!” they say in unison.

“Consider this a scolding! Never challenge the wise white whale again!”



After the pummeling ends, the four poets row to the whale.

They proceed to clean and bind his wounds.



I watch the poets’ efforts through a haze of pain.

Then, I swim away--wondering why I bought a rowboat.







Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Before we forget Newtown tragedy: another posting of poem ANOTHER POEM ABOUT GUNS.

Given that the media will be focusing on avoiding the Fiscal Cliff into early January, it's appropriate to repost this poem to keep some attention on the disease of gun violence directed at random individuals:

ANOTHER POEM ABOUT GUNS




saw the four-year-old boy



with his mother



at a Target store in the Valley



and the boy had a plastic toy pistol—



black with orange painted on the barrel



to tell everyone it’s not real—



and the boy waves the gun



and yells BAM! BAM! BAM!



I hope and pray that someday



the boy’s mother



will make sure he knows



the exact place



where fantasy stops



and tragedy becomes eternal





Monday, December 24, 2012

Is ZERO DARK THIRTY this generation's MISSISSIPPI BURNING?

"Because we're all that bad if given half a chance. We're all about as decent and humane as the next guy until circumstances and dark guidance bring out our inner monster."

The above is film reviewer/blogger Jeffrey Wells (www.hollywood-elsewhere.com) discussing Errol Morris' Abu Ghraib torture documentary STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE in 2008.

Cut to 2012.

"Are you going to tell me that if your son or daughter has been kidnapped and is being held in some secret, all-but-impossible-to-discover location and might possibly be killed if you don't find him/her...are you going to tell me that if you've captured a close accomplice of the kidnappers who refuses to talk...are you going to tell me that all you're going to do is take this guy out to lunch and feed him hummus and tomatoes, and if that doesn't work you're going to take him out for drinks and then set him up with $5000-a-night prostitute in hopes that he'll reveal the location?"
[I'm omitting a swipe at "Hollywood liberals" (plus Alex Gibney, who directed the anti-torture documentary TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE,) and fast-forwarding to Wells' end sentence.]
"It's moments like these when I'm less than proud to be a lefty. Because the way the liberal Hollywood mob is ganging up on this film is appalling, and close to disgusting. A bunch of sensitive pantywaists towing the sensitive-liberal p.c. line."--Wells in support of Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal's nondocumentary of the pursuit and killing of Osama bin Laden, ZERO DARK THIRTY.

It's not just Jeffrey Wells; other film critics including Glenn Kenny and veteran (and highly readable) wiseass Tom Carson are whipping filmmakers like Gibney and columnists like Glenn Greenwald (plus U.S. Senators) for pointing out inaccuracies in a film conceived as a docudrama (fiction and fact blended together), making political points, and not remembering "it's just a movie."  In addition: the allegations that Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal may have been co-opted by CIA pro-torture hardliners in preparing the ZERO DARK THIRTY screenplay.

Sony is almost certainly cheering the see-it-and-decide-for-yourself controversy over a film [I'll see it sometime during its' theatrical run] which, apparently due to a surface replication of Bigelow and Boal's "nonpolitical" approach to the Iraq War in THE HURT LOCKER, may turn out to have the greatest popular appeal of Bigelow's entire filmography (including NEAR DARK, POINT BREAK and STRANGE DAYS).

Tom Carson namechecked THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS in his ruminations on ZERO DARK THIRTY.  It may remain for audiences (short-and-long-memoried alike) to decide if ZDT becomes a multigenerational war film classic--or this generation's MISSISSIPPI BURNING (the semi-forgotten Alan Parker-directed 1988 docudrama which adopted an FBI-centric, civil-rights-leaders-free view of the fight against white Southern racism in the 1960s).

Let's end with this observation from HOLLYWOOD ELSEWHERE commenter "Otto":

The feigned outrage against "Stalinists seeking to quell artistic freedom" is about as genuine and coherent as the NRA's outrage that "they want to take away our guns.'
Just as no one wants to ban all guns, no one is seriously challenging the director's artistic license to depict what she wants. They are criticizing the film's claims that it's based upon fact and yet employs post-hoc logic connecting torture and intelligence that led to UBL's location. And they are criticizing the chest-pounding basement dwellers whose interrogation experience is confined to a Taco Bell drive-through, but who nonetheless delight in their insistence that torture is an effective intelligence tool.
Invoking Stalin is inapt, as Stalin effectively censored dissenters. People criticizing Zero Dark Thirty are not preventing anyone from making a movie of their choosing. Rather, like the filmmakers, they are expressing their opinions.


Friday, December 21, 2012

Complete End of the World playlist.

From my Twitter feed to this blog, here they are:
Skeeter Davis -- The End Of The World:
Robert Plant, Alison Krauss - Gone Gone Gone:
World's End Dance Hall - English & Chinese Sub - Miku & Luka - sm12326781:
R.E.M. I'm Gonna DJ **HQ** Video:  
The Who - Had Enough from WHO ARE YOU:
world's end girlfriend - Les Enfants du Paradis (MUSIC VIDEO):
 Eric Cartman - Come Sail Away:
Elvis Costello-- Waiting For The End Of The World:
Elvis Costello - Hurry Down Doomsday (The Bugs Are Takin' Over):


Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Commenter to ATLANTIC magazine blog post guesses next move of National Rifle Association.

Spike Gomes' comment on the AtlanticWire site:
"My theory? The NRA is going to offer gun control "concessions" not explicitly outlined in return for America discussing issues with news media fueling gunman notoriety, movies and video games glorifying ultra-violence, which will seem eminently reasonable; the one thing most young mass-murderers share outside of access to firearms and mental-emotional disorders is an inordinate interest in violent video games, movies and music. This draws out the discussion, gores some of their strongest opponent's sacred cows and takes advantage of America's notoriously short (if intense) attention span. I suppose some bill will be passed, a modified version of the Brady Bill grudgingly supported by the NRA-ILA this time around, along with stronger government tracking of firearm sales and registration."

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Something to remember when violent movies get re-condemned in the wake of Connecticut and Oregon.

Reposting this comment made by "djiggs" on the HOLLYWOOD ELSEWHERE site:
"From his review of Gus Van Sant's 'Elephant,' a fictionalized account of a Columbine-like school shooting, here's Roger Ebert on the media's behavior while reporting these kinds of events:
"Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. "Wouldn't you say," she asked, "that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?" No, I said, I wouldn't say that. "But what about 'Basketball Diaries'?" she asked. "Doesn't that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun?"
"The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office (it grossed only $2.5 million), and it's unlikely the Columbine killers saw it.
"The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. "Events like this," I said, "if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn't have messed with me. I'll go out in a blaze of glory."
"In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of "explaining" them.
"I commended the policy at the Sun-Times, where our editor said the paper would no longer feature school killings on Page 1. The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. Of course the interview was never used. They found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy."
This is Ebert again. I gather my point is what goes around, comes around.

Granite hearts and minds need to change after Connecticut gun tragedy.

From a David Remnick post on yesterday's tragedy in Connecticut:

"What is needed is gun control—strict, comprehensive gun control that places the values of public safety and security before the values of deer hunting and a perverse ahistorical reading of the Second Amendment"



I would amend the above to say that deer hunters who are responsible gun owners don't need assault weapons to do their hunting.

Over the years I've been alive,  everyday citizens, civil rights leaders, Presidential candidates, two Presidents, teenagers and children have been wounded or killed due to guns in the hands of mentally ill people.

That's not counting the irresponsible parents who fail to lock away or put trigger locks on their firearms--causing their children to kill themselves, their siblings, other neighborhood children.

President Obama can wipe away tears; Jay Leno can speak soberly on THE TONIGHT SHOW--but nothing affects people like the NRA head Wayne LaPierre or the friend of a college friend of mine who ranted on Facebook about "gun control freaks."

I wish something would convince people that background checks and other tightened laws governing gun show and online firearms sales won't "take their guns away", as people like LaPierre claim.

But the deaths of 20 children yesterday won't do it.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Kate Gale's brutal honesty about how poetry business gets done in SoCal.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kate-gale/la-poet-laureate_b_2259587.html

Excerpt from the above article by Ms. Gale with the "brutal honesty" portions highlighted by me:

What seemed exciting, quickly became daunting. Los Angeles is home to many talented poets. There's a difference between winning a prize and receiving a job as a city's laureate. I'm on the Claremont Graduate University Kingsley Tufts Committee and there, we are looking for a winning book. The poet doesn't have to be ready for civic engagements and many levels of education and entertainment over two years. We look for a book that blows our socks off by an author with a significant body of work.
Here we had to consider not only the poet's body of work, but also his or her willingness to work for poetry over a two year period, a job that involves getting along with people. That's not an easy task for many poets who are often wildly uncensored or tragically introverted while pathologically paranoid, and although unwilling to work with others, they're convinced that not being invited to the party is everyone else's fault.
For a poet's work to matter, it has to resonate for a large group of people and be part of the cultural conversation. In other words, they've written something we can all argue about. Working at a level of excellence, being part of the critical dialogue and being someone who has given back to the literary community, that's what great poets do. And not just teaching. You get paid for teaching, and if you have tenure, you're paid well. I'm interested in people who mentor students, teach workshops, build writing programs, and give to cultural institutions that do the same. The city needs someone who writes at a level of excellence and has generosity of spirit. A dose of sanity wouldn't hurt either.

Ravi Shankar teaches George Harrison how to play sitar 1968 (Rishikesh, ...


RIP Ravi Shankar, whose passing at the age of 92 was announced hours ago.
Link to video of Ravi Shankar on THE DICK CAVETT SHOW:http://youtu.be/4gWCiLexilY

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Elaborate poetry video--filmmaking good, poem not so.


Giving credit to David and Daniel Holechek for classy, professional filmmaking.  Otherwise, staying silent.

Another prescient post from a poetry veteran.

Quoting Bowerbird Intelligentleman from a CobaltPoets listserve 2004 post.  In its original context, Mr. Intelligentleman was talking about (what I feel was) a larger and more diverse "poetry community", where poets could find eventual approval if they put in the work of actually supporting other poets and readings instead of showing up only when they had features.

Today's community is a bit smaller and more precise in its likes/dislikes/expectations, so the quote is relevant to SoCal poetry in 2012 (highlighting by me):
"...if you want to get noticed by the weekly's "in-crowd",
start taking workshops from some of them and kiss their ass.
oh yeah, you'll have to sever your ties with the "crap" poets too.
after a few years of that, they will start throwing you crumbs.
after years of _that_, you might make as much money as them.
it might sound crass, but there is no other way they'll notice you."

Monday, December 10, 2012

A poetry Rorschach test.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_test
http://www.redfez.net/poetry/1723

You have the opportunity to read the poem in the second link above and decipher it as you may--regardless of whether or not you know the two poets referenced in it.

To me, it's nakedly honest about how certain tribes of Long Beach/Orange County poets and their moved-to-other-parts-of-America friends/acolytes see themselves and their art.



Tom Cruise becomes the Sylvester Stallone of his generation.

Exhibits A, B, C: OBLIVION, ALL YOU NEED IS KILL (re titled EDGE OF TOMORROW and LIVE DIE REPEAT on video), JACK REACHER etc. etc.

Tom Cruise is in his fifties now--but given Hollywood logic for veteran male stars, he gets ten years taken off his age (remembering how the 70-year-old Paul Newman was only 60 in NOBODY'S FOOL, but Newman, even in the 90s, was ageless).

Here's moviesquad commenting on the HOLLYWOOD ELSEWHERE site (highlighting by me):
I think Tom is in the midst of a mid-life crisis where he's trying to pump out as many of the sort of movies that prove he's still young as he can... and I'm glad for it.
He can do the more serious pics you want him to do when he is no longer believable in these sorts of roles. We need this Tom Cruise at this moment in time.

Meanwhile, Sylvester Stallone continues his post-EXPENDABLES career upturn in BULLET TO THE HEAD (directed by Walter Hill, who had a run of good actioners between 1978 and 1987), in which (from evidence in the trailer) he tries to erase two decades from his actual age.

Friday, December 7, 2012

Ten possible future Los Angeles Poets Laureate

Eloise Klein Healy is the first Poet Laureate of Los Angeles.

And here are ten poets I'm guessing will either get the post (or be in the finals) in the years to come:
1. Suzanne Lummis
2. Carol Muske Dukes
3. Ron Koertge
4. Wanda Coleman
5. Amy Uyematsu
6. Brendan Constantine
7. Laurel Ann Bogen
8. Kate Gale
9. Cecilia Woloch
10. Ellyn Maybe

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Mindy Nettifee shares her GLITTER IN THE BLOOD with other poets.

Somehow, in spite of a distinguished career as a page-and-stage dynamo, former LBC/OC powerhouse Mindy Nettifee is still referred to as a "rising" poet--such are the ways of modern poetry communities.

For those who may be interested, Mindy has a writing-poetry-better-tips book (from Write Bloody) called GLITTER IN THE BLOOD.

Here's the purchase link: http://www.amazon.com/Glitter-Blood-Manifesto-Better-Writing/dp/1938912012/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354777282&sr=1-2&keywords=mindy+nettifee

Here's the blurb from Amazon.com:
You do not want to write good poems. You want to write great poems. You want to write poems that challenge, inspire and awe. You want to write poems that forever alter your audience, that forever alter yourself. Those poems take guts. Glitter in the Blood: A Poet's Manifesto to Better, Braver Writing will put you in constant contact with your guts. Pushcart prize nominated and highly accomplished performance poet Mindy Nettifee is not going to lead you step-by-step up a how-to staircase. With this collection of essays, prompts and exercises, Mindy is giving you the wrench you need to open up the blood and let it flow into your writing.
 

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Suggesting possible series that CNN head Jeff Zucker might consider



Jeff Zucker's NBC career spanned the heights of the Matt-and-Katie era of THE TODAY SHOW to the depths of THE JAY LENO SHOW/throwing Conan O'Brien into the Siberia of basic cable.

Given that CNN pre-Zucker was planning to manage for margins by giving series deals to edgy gourmand Anthony Bourdain and pop-documentarian Morgan Spurlock, one can easily imagine the kind of programming that Jeff might greenlight:
WHERE ON WALL STREET IS ERIN BURNETT?
PARKER BLITZER (teaming conservative columnist Kathleen Parker with Wolf Blitzer)
WINNING HEARTS AND MINDS IN AFGHANISTAN WITH LARA LOGAN
THE KATIE COURIC INTERVIEWS (goodbye, Piers Morgan)
and, of course,
THE NEW JAY LENO SHOW.

Partial list of art house films given wide releases because of Movie Star leads.

http://www.deadline.com/2012/12/brad-pitts-killing-them-softly-dies-as-twilight-saga-james-bond-and-steven-spielberg-dominate-again/

LONELY ARE THE BRAVE--Kirk Douglas
SOLARIS, THE AMERICAN-- George Clooney
KILLING THEM SOFTLY--Brad Pitt
CLOUD ATLAS (to be fair, wide release was inevitable due to $100 million budget)--
Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant

There are more, but these films come immediately to mind.