The Icepick Cometh

Dear readers (both of you),

We're now more or less blogging exclusively over at our WordPress.com site at http://theicepickcometh.wordpress.com.

So c'mon and visit us over there and read The Icepick's new post on the Dark Knight and President Bush, a reaction from a movie nerd to a piece earlier this summer in the Wall Street Journal.

Thanks for reading and for following us over there.
That is all.

Hugs and hisses,
PublisherCat

Cameo spoiler alert follows…

It features Tommy "Tiny" Lister (a.k.a. Zeus) in a small but significant role — not much more than a cameo, really. It really is no spoiler (beyond the fact, that, yes, the former pro wrestler who played Deebo is in the greatest Batman film of all time) to reveal that he does not once utter "my bike" to Bruce Wayne.

There's a throwaway shot in the opening episode of Generation Kill, which premiered on Sunday night on HBO, that establishes that These Are Not Your Father's Marines. With the sun setting on their encampment, two silhouetted Marines wearing boxing gloves throw some wild, leaping kicks at each other without ever throwing a punch.

The wide shot lasts for a mere few seconds as we transition from one scene to the next, but it's a telling few seconds — previous generation's warriors might climb into the base ring and go at it for a few rounds as a physical way of blowing off steam. Today's soldiers and Marines (and by extension, today's civilian 20-somethings) are bred on MMA and video games (and as we see in this episode too, irony and satire) and are more likely to engage in driveway boxing or backyard wrestling as they are a game of baseball on the base. As Mark Kriegel once wrote of this generation (he was talking about civilians), "These are the guys who made 300 a huge hit."

I don't know if it is too early to call it a profane version of Band of Brothers or merely the Marines version of The Wire, but after watching that premier episode for the third time, I am ready to be hooked again on another David Simon show, if only for the seven-episode arc of this miniseries adaption of Evan Wright's book.

But that transitional shot aside, I am hoping that the new HBO miniseries will go beyond the War is Hell and the They're Different Millennial/Gen X Soldier themes we've already seen in Iraq War (I and II)-related movies, like Three Kings (one of my favorites) and Jarhead. Those movies, to varying degrees, covered the nihilism apparently necessary in modern warriors, along with the misogyny, racism and homophobia which is presented at times as a coping mechanism in a World Gone Mad and also as something obviously deadly and seriously wrong (sometimes all in the same scene or in the same line of dialogue, though certainly not always or with all characters).

You never really saw any of this to the same degree in previous war movies about previous wars, with one notable exception that I can think of — Full Metal Jacket.

More to the point, and where I think and hope this new show is going, and as the Newark Star-Ledger's Alan Sepinwall has observed, Generation Kill's first episode is already setting up the David Simon theme of the individual vs. the institution which he explored for five seasons of The Wire — the futility of One vs. The Machine, the lack of Voice for the knowing rank-and-file vs. the obliviousness of management (even if this obliviousness is sometimes necessary).

This is all not to say that older warriors never used gallows humor or said things among themselves that they'd never say in public — shhhh, go into any locker room in the country, or for that matter, spend time in an all-male office.

And, as Sepinwall also noted, it's interesting getting thrown into a new show and being thoroughly confused and not understanding a thing about it for the first 30 minutes, and then still needing repeat viewings of the same episode to gain greater understanding. I used to enjoy mocking those who complained that the Baltimore world of The Wire was too dense and difficult to understand for novices, but I forgot how hard and yet how rewarding it can be discovering a new world on an intelligent TV show.

Perhaps it is the right time for a reckoning of sorts. We've spent a lot of space here slagging on the Boomers, and justly so. But this is not to forget what my own generation has wrought.

I was reminded of this by a comment from an obviously angry Boomer to a Talking Points Memo Café Reader Post last week, and also because I was returning some videos, er, up late last night watching American Psycho on HBOZ (which I think is an underrated, though often poorly directed, satire on the ’80s. I'm digressing again, I know.)

My generation largely revered Reagan as youngsters, looked up to late-Boomer (and early Gen X'er) Yuppies and DINKs and the ’80s stockbroker culture, to say nothing of unleashing Charlie Sheen (both in real life and Bud Fox from Wall Street). My generation also whelped Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity (both born in 1961, the same year as Obama). My own politics aside, we were fast on our way to becoming a more conservative generation than our parents — think Alex P. Keaton and you're not far off the mark — at least until George W. Bush came along.

According to Michael Connery on TPM Café, late-era Baby Boomers and Gen Xers are still the most conservative segment of voters in the country, raised in part during the boom of College Republicans in the 1980s and into the 1990s, during a time period, Connery notes, when Democrats ceded the seeding of the next generation of would-be liberals in the aftermath of Mondale and Dukakis. Democrats didn't begin to rise again until after Bill Clinton came to power, who nevertheless appealed more to the centrist base represented by the Democratic Leadership Council than traditional liberals.

In Strauss & Howe's book Generations, the authors note that in 15 of 16 polls from 1981 to 1988, my generation gave Ronald Reagan a higher approval rating than other other generation, except for the still-living members of Gen X's related generation, the Lost Generation (born between 1883-1900).

All is not lost, though, from my Progressive perspective. In fact, Republicans have to be kicking themselves for potentially blowing it with the Young because of the turn-off of George W. Bush — I wonder if, in the back of their minds, this is where some of the Republican backlash at Bush is coming from. Not that former Bush-supporters are suddenly going to become liberals, but the lustre is long gone.

Still, aside from Obama's popularity with my generation, and especially with the Millennials, it's possible the majority of my generation (born 1961-approx. 1980) may end up considered more conservative.

But putting the Left and Right aside, Gen X is nearly certain to end up in the Pragmatic camp, regardless of how that is defined on the political spectrum.

You see this already in Obama's post-primary shift in recent weeks, if not true to his hoped-for liberal roots, to some centrist-sounding stances. It's rather easy seeing the more centrist Hillary taking the position Obama recently staked on the FISA amendment, for instance, until you consider the gains he may realize from this position in the general election, as well as his necessary reversal to rejecting public campaign funding.

If you follow Strauss & Howe's logic and timeline, our "reactive" or "nomad" generational type, bound together as we are by our birth years, typically is less interested in ideology and more concerned about getting things done. Our "doing-what-you-gotta-do" generation is the only true way to combat the excess of the Boomers, which will haunt us for years to come with longer lifestyles embodied by "spending our children's inheritance" attitudes in prolonged retirement (hey, at least we're not Europe).

I consider myself a Pragmatic Progressive (as I would consider Obama, considering his life story and borne out by his recent political moves). Pragmatism is a hallmark of our generation. Pragmatism was the way we survived (if not thrived) growing up and beginning our careers, and it certainly will be the way we mature as leaders and advise as elders in old age. Think Harry S Truman or Eisenhower (especially upon Ike's exit, warning of the growing power of the institutions he helped promote), both members of the Lost Generation that Strauss & Howe links through history to Gen X.

Even the Wall Street types we helped popularize understand this pragmatism in coming out and supporting Obama. (link to Daily News via Talking Points Memo)

Time will tell if our conservative base or our pragmatism (or both) define Gen X in the history books, as we have the very real possibility of electing our generation's first president in the liberal yet pragmatic Barack Obama.

Can't endorse the new Indiana Jones movie, which we saw at the drive-in last weekend while The Baby more or less slept in the back seat (Iron Man, the second half of the double feature, was much better, and since I dug out my Black Sabbath CD and started playing "Iron Man" in the car, The Baby has taken to saying "Ionman" — but I'm digressing again).

It's not that the new Indy is particularly bad, though it's not good, or that it wastes Karen Allen in a comeback role (someone on Gawker said, "Oh, that's what a MILF looks like"), or that it manages to rip off the first X-Files movie, Back to the Future, and Spike Milligan's old crazy guy from the Bastille from History of the World, Part I, while forgetting how much fun the old Indiana Jones movies could be (though Harrison Ford looks like he's having tons of fun without having to lift the undernourished Calista Flockhart around). It even wastes a pretty good premise of Indy getting older (it takes place in 1957), if no less adventuresome, proving for the fourth time in nine years that George Lucas, God bless him, should be nowhere near a laptop (somehow, he didn't write the screenplay, though Steven Spielberg does a pretty good George Lucas imitation in directing — that's not a compliment).

No, it's merely because St. Jimmy is upset that Too Short isn't in it, as Lord Jim misidentified him. He meant Short Round, and the actor who portrayed him also played Data in The Goonies. He is alive and well (though he used to be called "Ke Huy Quan" and not "Jonathan Ke Quan," as Babble calls him, but jeez, he turns 37 this year — not very funny).

———

UPDATE JUNE 10: I should say that the motorcycle chase through Indy's New England college was pretty cool (and at least they weren't on skateboards, which the Back to the Future-like scene preceding it seemed to be leading to).

Also, He-Man seemed to enjoy Shia LaBeouf's performance, so the movie was not without redeeming value.

Other than the anomaly of the golden year of 2005, what else has this decade given us in film? You got the Lord of the Rings triology and Million Dollar Baby. And then …? The Departed was OK, but it ranks well below Scorsese's other stuff. What else you got? Studios sending out flicks like 21, last week's big money-maker, the film based on that allegedly fictional non-fiction book? (link to Boston Globe thanks to Gawker)

No, this is TV's decade. As I said before, this is decade that's given us great shows, almost all dramas, many of whom I haven't even had the chance to catch up and see yet: “The Wire,” “Mad Men,” “Deadwood,” “The Sopranos” (yes, I know it began in 1999), “Band of Brothers,” “The Shield,” “Rome,” “John Adams,” and even more populist stuff like “Rescue Me,” “Sex and the City,” “Entourage,” “Playmakers” and “Battlestar Galactica.” What else am I forgetting? (“Friday Night Lights,” perhaps, another one I haven't seen.) The jury may still be out on some of the network comedy items — I'm thinking the American “The Office” and “30 Rock” — but it's enough to offset the Reality Crap and make you want to invest in a good DVR.

Why is all this? Well, I'm developing a theory that we're seeing the rise of writers and producers (and especially writer/producers) and the decline of directors, or at least in the power structure. A writer can stretch his or her legs out better over the course of a 7- to 20-episode season than can be done in a 2- to 2½-hour flick.

Sensing this, younger actors with producing ambitions are turning to TV and away from movies. Whereas you have aging and powerful actors like Robert Redford and Tom Cruise turning out panned self-important would-be Oscar bait like Lions for Lambs, you have another set of actors like Denis Leary going for something else on TV. And that's not to say Denis Leary will ever have the chops to compete with a Redford or even (it pains me to write this) a Cruise. But can you see Tom Cruise making a TV series? He's a Movie Star. The only one I can think of capable of crossing over is Tom Hanks, and that's as a producer, not as an actor/producer.

And the great series of this decade has had the net effect of raising the bar for all other dramas, even the overtly action-oriented popcorn ones. You can't just have “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” or even “24” and have them always blowing shit up — well, you can, but you've got to at least attempt to make it so the characters have a little more depth behind them, more than you'd find in a 90-minute action flick. This goes especially for the rich supporting characters that help carry a long narrative arc.

This is, of course, not counting the low-end of the spectrum on TV — your American Idols, your reality shows, etc. But the low-brow was the balancing end of movies, too. For every Godfather, Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction and Unforgiven you had your Home Alones and your 8mm's ("Hello, Machine. I'm a big fan of your work").

As it was, the Writers Strike could have been worse for viewers than it turned out to be — and why the Studios, who must know the balance of power is swinging, were lucky it ended as relatively quickly as it did. A few months was more than enough time for the writers to get their points across. If it wasn't for HBO with “The Wire” and “John Adams,” think about how much deeper the void there would have been, and may still be as other shows are just now getting back into new episodes, with the re-start of others pushed back.

Meanwhile, the new auteur age of film ushered in by the ’70s crop of Coppola, Spielberg and Scorsese is, like the Baby Boomers, aging and declining in its influence, Munich and Coppola's wine aside. In fact, other than Munich, Spielberg's greatest impact this decade may well be in his influence on “Band of Brothers” and “John Adams.”

Which brings me to my recent post on “John Adams.” If this is the kind of show that gets panned by critics, then TV is doing something good, because not only is it better than any of the other movies out there, it does takes the dramatic approach that film cannot — the novelistic approach. It's like this year's criticism of “The Wire.” Even in what many considered was an off-year for the final season of the series, it was still the best thing on any screen.

Think I've seen “The Wire” series finale four times now (thanks to HBO's repeated showings). I've already discussed my thoughts, and I've got at least one or two others percolating that I may or may not get to.

One digression: After the third time I watched the montage at the end of this episode, for the life of me, it got me to thinking about the montage that came at the end of Boogie Nights, which used "God Only Knows" by the Beach Boys as its music. Maybe because it was late when I was watching “The Wire” re-run, but after Rawls got his promotion to State Police super, I could've sworn the next shot would've been of The Colonel getting the beat down by his prison-cell roommate ("shut up, Colonel!"). Or maybe it was wishful thinking that Rawls would someday still get his just desserts.

But on a serious note, “The Wire's” last montage was one of the many things I loved about that final episode, and bringing back the Blind Boys of Alabama's version of "Way Down in the Hole" was note-perfect. That was one of the first songs I picked up when I began my iTunes account (that, and the Ryan Adams tune from the opening credits of Old School and the Black Flag version of "Louie, Louie" from the same flick — an odd trifecta, I know). I'm glad this montage used the full (or nearly full) version of "Way Down in the Hole" (when it's used as a credit-sequence opener, the song is necessarily truncated); it's such a perfect song, and it was the perfect way to punctuate the end of the series, segueing from McNulty on the expressway to the drug dealers to the politicians to Dukie to the newsroom to the prison yard in slow motion to the empty Season 1 sofa in the Pit to the Ports to that great rapid-fire sequence of real-life Baltimore residents to suddenly close back on McNulty.

Any other great movie- or season-ending montages? (not sure if the end of Animal House counts.)

For the record, I liked the other montage songs that closed the previous four seasons — they're on “The Wire” soundtrack, which I got last month and have been listening to almost non-stop since.

Best in Show is an acknowledged classic over in these parts. No discussion. It's like a unanimous decision, only with more people.

But even I wouldn't wish this irrelevant silliness on the yuppie couple with the weimaraner and the busy bee.

Never knew if the whole Fishkill thing was a hoax or not (this was a PoJournal front pager), but this is about when I finally stopped paying attention to these people. Y'all remember that, don’cha?

But, hey, you don't think self-promotion — rather than shedding light on the pet-shelter crisis — was their real motive, do you?… Don't look at all the fat-ass losers, they're freaks! You look at us!!!




I think that's about enough on this topic.


moar humorous pics

The staff have been permitted soy sauce. In its honour, we present this classic film:…

Apropos of nothing: There were Kriegel-like sports columns I wanted to write, and then there was this one from the former Boston Sports Guy (Bill Simmons, who has been ESPN.com's Sports Guy for a long time, and was never as good as this after he moved from Boston to L.A. and the Sox in 2004 won their first Series since Oog invented fire — the ESPN platform seemingly went to his head).

Incidentally, this column is from the NBA preview of more than 6 years ago (before the 2001-02 seaosn, I think) and is currently apropos of nothing, except it was late one night and I was Googling and wondering if I could find this column. Really, I don't care about the NBA part of this column because it is so old (except for the Patrick Ewing line at No. 33 — that never gets old), but the Boogie Nights quotes are priceless. How he matched them to the NBA offseason was relevant at the time.

Heath Ledger's death got me back thinking on this, but it's been on my mind for a while. Two Thousand and Five was the best year for movies this decade.

Not that I get out to the movies much anymore, but a spate of these flicks on cable a few months ago reminded me out this. Here's my general thoughts:

After much internal debate, and I know it's not as well-liked, but I'm picking Munich as the Best Picture. Too bad you don't like it as much as I did. It pulls you in like a political espionage thriller, but it has something important to say about the nature of revenge and war and the bloody emptiness of it all. [Spoiler Alert:] The final shot, with the Twin Towers oh so subtly (or not) placed in the background makes me cry almost every time. It's the final point to it all. That final powerful shot says so much about the mess we're in overseas, and why it is so complicated to both be in there and to want to be out of there.

A close second is Capote, which to me is the one film that nails what it is to be a writer and largely a journalist. Nothing else has ever come closer to portraying the toll writing takes on an artist. To me, Capote, is all about the costs of writing to a writer (and by extension, the cost of art to an artist). The film shows how much internal pain and betrayal is truly involved in really great writing and in coming to a Truth about an idea or a subject.

I've already discussed Heath Ledger's performance in Brokeback Mountain, but overall, the film is very good too. It fools you that it is a love story that happens to be a romance between two men. But what it really is about is what it means to be the typical man in American, especially the ideal of the strong, silent, taciturn type with the square jaw. That's Heath Ledger's Ennis character in the film, and the film shows how being so unemotional on the outside eats you alive from the inside.

What else do we have to praise from 2005? A History of Violence, about the inability of someone to escape their past, no matter how deeply it's buried. Syriana, the oil-industry conspiracy movie with four (at least) interlocking stories trying to connect the dots. Good Night and Good Luck, which has a lot to say about not only today's media, but also today's leadership in this country. And though it's a comic-book hero movie, Batman Begins is the best of its genre, showing us the origins of the hero. It's the first Batman movie where Bruce Wayne is the hero, and not Batman (who doesn't appear for the first hour of the film). I liked the first two Spider-Man movies, but they don't compare to this film, which, like Munich, is also a meditation on revenge.

Of note is that the Best Picture Oscar was won by Crash that year. Never saw it, and some critics derided it as a bit simplistic. I deride it simply because Cronenberg had a film with the same name in 1996. Except that film dealt with car crash victims who got off on being in car crashes. I think there was a scene where James Spader humps the, er, gash of Holly Hunter — that's her gash along her leg. From a car crash. Oh, never mind.

There were other great films in this ’00s decade — The Lord of the Rings films and Million Dollar Baby spring to mind. But it's been tough to compete with the ’90s, which kicked off the decade with Goodfellas, and included Pulp Fiction, Unforgiven, Boogie Nights, Three Kings, Out of Sight, The Usual Suspects, L.A. Confidential, Fight Club, Saving Private Ryan, Trainspotting, Clerks, Glengarry Glen Ross ("Put that coffee down."), and, of course, Reservoir Dogs. And that's just the ones I can come up with real quick. Plus, it was the decade that introduced us to Kate Winslet for God's sake! But this is another post for some other time.

Like everyone I am sure, I was deeply saddened by the death of Heath Ledger this week. His work in Brokeback Mountain was one of the best in my lifetime. I'll get to my thoughts on his too-young-to-die death and comparisons with Kurt Cobain later in this post, but a few days after Ledger died, I remembered how unbelievably incredible 2005 — the year Brokeback Mountain was released — was for movies. This in a decade where there have been scant few good films, even fewer great ones, and a whole lot of shitty ones. The exceptions to this are the Lord of the Rings trilogy (of course) and many of the films of 2005. That year was such an anomaly for this '00s decade by far. It's something I'll post about later. [update: here it is.]

But as far as Ledger's work in Brokeback Mountain, specifically, it ranked up there as among the best I've ever seen. Phillip Seymour Hoffman won Best Actor for Capote in 2005. I loved that movie — it depicted the writing life perfectly, and for a time I thought it was the best picture of that year. Hoffman was incredible as Truman Capote, and any other year this decade he'd win my Best Actor award.

I thought Heath Ledger was better.

Ledger's mumbles, his restraint, his fucking eyes, all perfectly portrayed Ennis' internalized pain, regret, restraint, and rare (but volcanic) explosions of anger.

Ledger so accurately portrayed so many rural men (straight or gay), men "in the country." Growing up in Dutchess and spending three-plus years covering the rural part of that county, I saw a lot of men out there like Heath's performance as Ennis — fuck it that the character was gay. I said it before: that they're gay is almost beside the point in that film. Slate's reviewer made the note that it was impossible for anyone to love Ennis. Kind of sums up a lot of men out in the country, and a lot of men in this country.

I'd put Ledger's performance up with Al Pacino as Michael in Godfather II. And that takes nothing away from Hoffman as Truman. You wished the films had competed in separate years, that way they both could have won Best Actor, because no other performance even came close to those two this decade. But if you had to pick one, I go with Heath Ledger.

OK, on to Ledger and Kurt Cobain. Both died tragically young under unusual circumstances (is any young death not unusual?), both left young daughters, and they both achieved popular fame and recognition as an artist.

I'm glad I got to see Heath's work "in the present," at least in his great film. With Cobain, I was late to the party, and it took me almost 10 years to appreciate his work.

Typical of the tortured artist, Kurt Cobain, if I recall, had trouble with the fame part of it all. Don't remember if that led him to suicide, but I seem to remember it was a contributing factor. Though we don't know the exact nature of Heath's death (suicide? accidental overdose? who knows?), it sounds like he, too, was uncomfortable with fame. And like Cobain, and a lot of artists who still live, the "art" part of it took a lot out of him, and ultimately, its final toll.

We're going to address the top films over the course of this blog (when I get to it, that's when, dammit). But we're going to pay special attention to films that are about (or are "said" to be about) the American Dream. Goodfellas ranks high on my list (perhaps the highest), because it is the pure American Dream: rising up from your own particular circumstances and background to reach The Heights, often through hard-work and cunning. It just so happens that Henry Hill's hard work is in theft, beating, cheating, drug-dealing, point-shaving, murder (or at least being an accessory to murder).

Just as important, Goodfellas is also about what the American Dream has become (and may always have been) — greed, back-stabbing, paranoia. Just as one critic said Scorsese's use of The Sex Pistol's version of My Way as a "fuck-you" to any do-gooding American, Goodfella's I see as Scorsese's "fuck-you" to the American Dream; much as the same way as HBO's The Wire is an update and a "true" vision of the modern American Dream.

To be revised, but will include...

Eight Men Out — A tragic look at a baseball team, also showcasing the beginnings of America's sports-obsessed culture that continues to this day.

Major League — At the other end of the spectrum. Forget the cliched plot about the underdogs winning the pennant and the love story (despite the gorgeous Rene Russo) and enjoy how it fetishizes the culture and quirks of baseball.

Bang the Drum Slowly — Yes, the pacing of the film certainly reflects the title, but works because of the touching friendship between Michael Moriarity's Henry "Author" Wiggins and Robert DeNiro's dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks dying back-up catcher. Also looks like a piece of early '70s kitchz, which always gets a few extra points in my book.

Not on the list:

That Minor League Film with Kevin Costner as Crash Davis and Susan Sarandon — Overrated. I don't need Susan Sarandon telling me about the lyrical joys of baseball. Nor do I need Susan Sontag telling me the same fucking thing. About the only good thing about it is that it helped usher in the late 80s/early 90s boom of rediscovering Minor League Baseball, which unfortunately morphed into putting a ball team in Staten Island while abandoning classic Minor League towns like Pittsfield, Mass. (OK, that was the Coney Island team, but that gets a pass for simply being Coney Island.) The abandonment of Albany as a maket can be forgive, since it is such a shitty sports town unless you're Siena hoops, UAlbany hoops (only in a winning season) or a Saratoga pony for 6 weeks. By the way, why the fuck is Troy's minor league team playing on a college campus away from any downdown shit to do before or after a game, or at least in a quaint rural setting. And where the fuck is "Tri-City"? Another great fuck-up by the locals here. Figures.
OK, I digress...

The Natural — Looked at now as some sort of a classic, it was never beloved earlier. And can't be forgive for changing the ending to Hollywood-uplifting.

Field of Dreams — Never saw it. I put this in the same category as Forrest Gump — two late '80s/early '90s beloved films that surely must be overrated because everyone fucking loves them. Forget it. Though if you ever find yourself in Dyersville, Iowa, (we did, once) the Field of Dreams site is more than worth the visit. The chance to walk into cornfields directly from the outfield, and the farm house overlooking the field make it worth the visit to the two sites (yes, there are two sites, since the field actually straddles a property line, and thus, there are two visitor centers).